The purer the gold becomes, the more glaring the remaining impurities become.

The old medicine, (though a plague in itself) when gone,

reveals a new host of pains.

That dock has been burned, quite thoroughly too

But how scared I would be, I couldn't have knew

Though old, weakened, rotten, and not worth a dime

It still offered a measure of security.

This ocean is much too big for a little boat like me

Far too much for a weak heart to see.

I want to savor this beauty, and to do so takes time

But before that time comes, a new beauty arrives

A new thought on my mind, the first still on my lips

Drinking from the fire hose

When all I can take is a sip.

Patience, perseverance, endurance, and hope.

I need a very heavy anchor, with a very long rope.

Broken, but ...

I'm tired, tired of resting, so used to stillness that I can do nothing else

The thought is much too far for me to grasp, too great for me to see with these dull, cloudy eyes

Eyes that have wandered so far and sank so deep.

Can these eyes behold Truth and be made pure?

Can my hands, the same hands that have sat idle and worked for nothing, grasping for wind

Can hands so wretched carry the image of the Sacred?

It seems nothing short of impossible

Can a mind so twisted carry the wisdom of the Divine?

It is highly doubtable.

Can a heart so frail, so impressionable and so burdened by nothing

Can this heart become a heart worthy to bear, to lead, to teach, to love and serve?

Completely illogical.

The very hands of a murderer - can they heal?

The very eyes of an adulterer - cleave to purity?

The very tongue of a deceiver - speak only truth?

The very heart of wickedness - flow forth love?

The very mind of an utter fool - be wiser than any sage?

Every answer is no, every road a dead end. - without You.

Thus.. I walk heavy on this delicate ground. Recklessly throwing myself when ignorance abounds.

But ... Your power is perfected in weakness.

Thus..

Hope remains.

There is something more at work here - Something greater than I can understand. Something that is different than everything else.

Unbound and unmastered by anything else.

Unchained and uncaptured by anyone else.

The slightest glimpse of whom is a complete eclipse.

The tiniest understanding a total revelation.

The faintest glimmer a blinding flash.

The softest touch a wrenching conflagration.

The quietest sound a deafening blast.

The smallest taste of whom will erase the desire for anything else.

Nothing compares.

We need a taste,

a glimpse,

an embrace,

we need to see and are dying to know -

that the path is narrow,

but the burden light. The burden is light.

Our (my) only hope: To die, and be created again.

From joint to marrow, in spirit and soul.

To be made nothing, to be made whole.

Unmade. Undone.

Remade. Reformed.

To taste of the thing so sweet, so pure

that nothing else has any allure.

I have come a long way in the past two months, but there is still so far to go. The more road I cover, the more I realize how much is still ahead of me. This makes it feel like i'm going backwards and not forward. There are so many things that I don't understand, so many mistakes I make every day and so many ways in which I am nothing more than selfish, sinful, naive and ignorant child. If nothing else, I pray that I can become and always stay completely humble, low-minded, and teachable. Lord I ask that foolishness would be far from me.

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel.

There is so much wisdom in this book. To extract and apply it will be life-long and difficult. If we believe the Bible, it has to affect everything that we do. There is no area that is not reached.

Seven Years

Is how long you clung

your grip seldom bent and never broken

heavy on my heart you hung

always felt but seldom spoken

You took so much away from me

my life, my time and energy

you always looked so beautiful

but created only agony

It's over now. your power is gone

And my heart lies wreckage from your reign

but my true King has come again

and is rebuilding everything

Without you joy is so much nearer

and the dark, heavy guilt begins to lift

now my eyes are so much clearer

I know I can no longer simply drift

My heart now leaps at the sound of Your name

where before it only cowered

My God, You saved me from my shame.

Not I, but through Your power.

I have nothing of which to boast

no feats, no acts of bravery

but God has shown His love to me

and taken me from slavery

Truly I can say that I am not the same

because of what You've done

You reshaped my heart, renewed my name,

and You've only just begun.

Teach me, Lord, tell me of joy.

Tell me the story of love, show me the beauty of purity, make me a servant of all, give me a passion for truth.

Enable my feet to take Your Word, anchor my heart to who You are. Forgive my doubt, build my faith, and Lord I beg that You renew my twisted, ignorant mind.

The melter of mountains, the breather of life, the architect of creation.

The author of wisdom, the poet of love, the orchestrator of history.

The First. And the Last.

Let my hope be in You, and only there.

Because seven years have made it clear

that there truly is no hope in me.

I'm planning on a big, important, exciting post soon. There's so many things that are changing in me lately.

One thing that is seriously mind-boggling is how powerful our ability to lie to ourselves (and to believe these lies) is. When you really think about it it is hard to even believe.

I am definitely using myself as an example here, but I think that most people have at least one memory of something like this - something you did where you look back afterwards and ask "what in the world was I thinking, that was so obviously a terrible thing to do / say."

BUT. When you were there, in that moment, you were rationalizing, telling yourself that you were doing the right thing, and felt pretty much confident that you actually were doing the right thing.

If anything I think this proves our need for wisdom to come from somewhere outside of ourselves. There is a person who never had this happen, every time He would look back on what He had done He was happy with His actions, He knew that they were right. Most of you know who this is.

We have to be led by this man. Not by our own wicked and deceitful hearts (Jeremiah 17:9). I have deceived myself many times and hurt many people because of it. Inconsistency and wickedness is so rampant in my heart at all times, I have no other choice but to anchor myself to Christ if I am to have any hope of being stable and capable of doing anything worthwhile.

I'm currently undergoing on of those times where you look back and ask "was I really doing this for so long and telling myself it was okay?" I have been living with a lot of guilt and a lot of shame and not really realizing how extensive and crippling it was. I have been experiencing some freedom from this recently which has been very humbling and eye-opening. I am completely undeserving of this freedom, though and i honestly don't remember changing anything about my lifestyle that would facilitate such a big change of heart. It's actually driving me a little bit crazy because i'm like "God, this is really wonderful, but how did it even happen? I did nothing different yet my life has starting going in this very different direction." I'm also fairly paranoid of going into a relapse like I have in the past, paranoid of this new direction being a temporary and fake emotional change that will soon pendulum-swing back into where I have been going for so long.

I honestly feel like i'm just now beginning to have even the tiniest understanding of who God is and what it is to follow Christ. Kind of like i've been on the ocean my whole life but have never left the cabin of the boat, and i'm just now coming outside and realizing how huge the ocean is and how much there is to discover underneath the surface.

There are so many huge, important, complicated questions in life that I often get overwhelmed. It is a testament to how huge God must be to have orchestrated all of life's events perfectly. He knows the answer to all of these questions.

Most of you who know me know that I love heavy music, and I could talk about it forever but I have wondered so many times what it is that makes it so very dear to my heart - and the only word I can really come up with is a word I believe is one of the most overused and underappreciated words in the english language, but it is the best one for describing what I love about heavy music: Passion. I am really sick of hearing that word, but it is a powerful and important word. This music just gives such a sense of raw, pure, unbound energy and (again) passion that no other kind of music can even hold a candle to. This is not to say that other kinds of music are passionless or not worthwhile, but at least for me, heavy metal is incomparably more powerful.

This power is so misunderstood and abused and neglected, both by musicians and by the listeners, but some bands and a few listeners have really tapped into it in an awesome way. The band in the picture above has a song where at the end, there is a breakdown and the only words are "love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength." The same song says this:

If we loved God to a teaspoon
of his overflowing cup
What would this world then see?
Our land of sorrow and turmoil
would swirl to a community of joy.

For me, hearing these words screamed and the music blasted at me does so much more than just singing them softly and slowly. Please don't get me wrong, I also love soft and slow music and there is certainly a time and place for it.

*sigh* all right, there's the end of my metal rant. I hope that wasn't too boring to read or repetitive.

All for now. Thoughts welcome

I just read this quote, which very much ties in with my last post. I thought it was pretty powerful

"Christianity has fallen to its present low state from lack of spiritual desire. Among the many who profess the Christian faith, scarcely one in one thousand reveal any passionate thirst for God. We fear extremes and shy away from too much zeal as if it were possible to have too much love, or too much faith, or too much holiness. If you don't refuse to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment, you will be doomed to a dead spiritual state of mediocrity."

A.W. Tozer