God, I think it is time for me to be the pilot.

All of my life, I have heard that stupid saying, "Make God your pilot, not your co-pilot." Sadly I believed it for quite sometime too. A few days ago though, my world was rocked by a surprisingly simple and yet scary revelation. I was listening to a young man preach and he told a parable that I am going to do my best to remember and share with you.

Imagine you are going a trip to some place that you have never been before. You are completely turned around and lost in the middle of nowhere. Then you see an old man running a little roadside stand. You pull over and ask him how to find your destination. The old man proceeds to tell you to continue down the road a ways until you see a big oak tree. Take a left there and go down the road a couple of miles until you see an old stump with a bunch of bushes growing around it and take a left. This man might as well be speaking Swahili because you don’t understand his directions at all. See, he is a local, so to him this all makes sense, but you don't even know the difference between an oak tree and redwood. But now let’s say that the old man gets in the passenger seat and guides you right there. You know that he knows what he is talking about, and he is going to get you to where you need to be. The young pastor then tells the group of students, who are debating over some pretty big life decisions, that they need to let God get into the passenger seat and guide them to where they need to be.

My first thought is of course, "Is he seriously advocating God being their co-pilot?" And then the flood gates opened and I was washed away by what God had been waiting to poor into me. We have a generation that has been told so often to "let God have control" or "let God be your pilot" or even better "just wait for the Lord to move you." Now looking back, I see the consequence of such advice. It all sounds good and right on the surface, after all Jesus told his disciples to follow him, and you can't follow if you are trying to lead...right? But there is a problem that this line of thinking creates. Now there is a generation of people who are so scared to mess up that they have forgotten how to make a decision for themselves.

Nowhere in scripture has God commanded me to be his puppet, in fact it is the exact opposite. God has given me the freedom to make my own choices and sometimes my own mistakes. Because just as Jesus called his disciples, he sent them out in Luke 10. Jesus didn't tell them where to go, he just said go. What I love here is that Jesus tells them that if they enter a house and they don't have peace, leave; Jesus then says if they enter a town and they reject them, leave! We have to have faith that God is in control. We must have faith that if we step out seeking his will, we will find it. God has a will for your life without question and God undoubtedly wants you to reach your full potential, but that is just it...He wants you to do it. The moment I questioned what this pastor was preaching, God began to speak. "Do you really think I created you just so I could live your life for you? Do you think I watched my son be scorned and beaten and crucified just so I could make you my puppet? I don't desire to live for you, I desire for you to live for me!"

I can wait all day long for God to move me, but God has already spoken over my life through His Holy Word and in my very spirit. I am not perfect and of course I make mistakes, but my heart beats for my God alone and because of that he makes known my every mistake. God will not keep silent and watch his children fail! All throughout scripture we see God disciplining His children, and we are told to not despise the Lord's discipline because he loves us (Proverbs 3:11). Guys, God will let you know when you are taking a bad step; you will feel it in your spirit and see the effects of it in your life. There are just two questions to ask yourself: Do you know His voice well enough to hear Him and Do you walk in His presence enough to know when you are out of his will?

With all that said, there have been times when God has told me to wait upon Him. But there is a difference in waiting and walking. Has God asked you to wait or are you simply scared of taking the next step? There are so many decisions that I wish God would make for me, but sometimes he wants me to make them because in them I can see where I am or where I am not.

I Will Rejoice

Habakkuk 3:17-18 "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, through the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, through there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior"

How amazing is this statement by the prophet Habakkuk. Though I have no food or means which to make money(most Israelites were herders and farmers) I will rejoice. Though nothing in my life is going right, though everything is in ruins I will rejoice. Though tomorrow looks bleak and hopeless I will rejoice. What will I rejoice in? I will rejoice in the Lord. For the Lord is where I have placed my trust. In the Lord rest my hope, my strength, and my comfort. Who is like our God? There is none like Him. No other name on earth shall man call on to be saved. It is only through Jesus Christ that we may be redeemed.

Have you been redeemed? Have you found your joy? Does it feel like the world is closing in around you and you are being overwhelmed? I can't offer you a way out. I can't tell you that accepting Christ as your savoir makes it all better because it doesn't. Life is hard whether you are a believer or not. The only difference is the faith we have in Jesus our redeemer. It is that faith that gives us our joy. For even in the darkest hour, when the world is falling apart around us, we still have hope. A hope that neither came from this world, nor can be taken away by it. I know that morning will always come no matter how long the night is. I know that when that final morning comes I will be in the presence of the Lord God Almighty. That is where my joy comes from when there is no food for the table, or shelter from the rain. That is why I can still rejoice when life is crumbling all around. It is not always easy and sometimes I do fall, but falling only gives you the chance to show the world that it is possible to get back up.

What Goes Up Must Come Down!

I am having dinner with a couple of friends the other night and after some amazing chicken, we get to talking about my friend Hollywood's film getting accepted into the Sidewalk Film Festival. As I am congratulating her, I realize that I have never seen any of Hollywood's films. We go upstairs and she pulls out some DVDs and we start watching a few. One particular short she played was a film called Luck. A guy walking down the sidewalk finds a penny on the ground; he picks it up and proceeds to toss it into the air. He stands there for a few seconds looking perplexed as the penny does not come back down. Confused the young man simply walks away; as he does so, we see handfuls of pennies fall where the young man had been standing. Then the Lord began to move in me.

Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." God wants to you to have desires because he wants to fulfil them. The key to this is delighting yourself in the Lord. When He becomes your central focus, the reason behind your being, then your desires become His own. Too many people are so quick to give up their hopes and their dreams. If it was worth believing in so much, it is the thing that fills your heart with so much passion that it became your dream, then how can you so easily toss it aside? God gave you a heart and filled it with desires. If you are following Him and trusting in Him, then why would you think that they are bad?

In this life I have learned two very important things. The first is to never lose hope in your dreams. There maybe times when God says, "wait" or even "no" but don't lose hope. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Issac, but when Abraham drew his knife God stopped him (Gen 22). God told Jonah to proclaim that the destruction of Nineveh would take place period. He never said Nineveh would be destroyed unless the people repented, he simple said this was what WAS going to happen. Yet the King declared the city to repent and fast praying for God's mercy. God relented and Nineveh was spared (Jonah 3). Never lose hope in your dreams. If it is the desire of your heart then seek it. God doesn't desire us to be disappointed and if we live in surrender to Him, the He will not fill our hearts with pipe dreams.

The second thing I have learned is that when God speaks you listen! God is serious when he speaks. God told Lot and his wife to leave Sodom, to flee and not look back. When Lot's wife looked back and immediately she turned into a pillar of salt (Gen 19). God gave specific instructions that no one was allowed to touch the ark. The ark was to be carried using poles and even then only by consecrated priest. While the ark was being transported, the oxen pulling the cart stumbled and Uzzah reached out to steady the Ark and immediately was struck dead! (2 Sam 6) While I hold fast to my dreams, when God said "wait" I waited and God said "no" I stopped. I never lost hope and I never let my dreams fade away, but I remained obedient and did as I was told with joy in my heart and gladness in my soul. I don't fear God saying no because I know that He works all things for my good.(Rom 8:28). The key to that is understanding we don't decide what good is! We may not like everything that God does, but that doesn't mean it isn't still for my good.

As I watched the young man in the film give up on the penny coming back down and walk away, it saddened me. It reminded me of people who give up when the penny doesn't immediately come back down. If you want it, go after it with all you have. If God says no, then be obedient, but understand obedience doesn't mean you lose hope, it simply means you obey. Right now, I am not living my dream. My dream, my passion is to preach! It burns in every bone of my body like a fire unable to be quenched. I have spent years and thousands of dollars pursuing this dream, yet every time I start to step out, God has said, "No, I want you to serve here." So now, here I am serving God joyfully and thankful that God is using me, even though this isn't my dream. I hold my dream in my heart and I retain hope that when God sees it as being to my good, that the penny will come back down and it will come down abundantly! Until that time I remain hopeful, but I remain obedient. As Paul wrote in Philippians 4:11-13, I have learned to be content with life because if I am obedient, I will always be right where God has placed me. If this is God's will and I am in it, then why should I be down cast or disheartened that I find myself outside of my dream? In the end, if I die and leave my dreams unfulfilled, do you really think I am going to be arrive in to Heaven bitter that I lived my life in obedience to God's will?

Mad as hell instead of mad at Hell!

Last Friday night I had dinner with a couple from my church. After some amazing fish, we sat down and started talking about some difficult things that have been going on in my life recently. It amazes me how one thinking one thing can immediately take to a completely different realization. God never ceases to astound me in the rabbit trails He uses to reveal Himself to me.

So we are sitting there talking about my pending divorce and the effect it has had on me. While I will bypass most of that talk, there came a point when I was asked what was making me angry towards God. Even as I gave my answer, it shook me; I said, "That I have to face the consequences of someone else's mistake." And with the most deafening whisper God said, "Now do you understand?" Needless to say, I slept rough that night.

You see most of us can understand the grace involved in our salvation. We can appreciate what Christ did upon the cross for us, taking our sin and our shame. It is humbling and heart wrenching that all our sins were cast on Him and because of that Christ was beaten and Christ was crucified. But for the first time I saw it from the other side. I saw it from the side of the one actually carrying the cross and it burned me up inside. I became angry and bitter that God allowed this to happen; that God would allow me to be hurt so badly and not do anything to stop it. That I would have to endure such hurt and sadness as a result of someone else's actions. Why God! Why?

And as I spoke my heart to my friends, all I could hear was Jesus saying, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." You see it was never God's will for the Crucifixion to take place. It was never God's will to watch His Son be beaten and murdered! But if it wasn't God's will, then why did it happen? Because the Crucifixion was the means in which God showed His will, that man would know and see His love for them! See the Crucifixion was not about God and it wasn't about Christ! It was about you and me and every other person individually. It was about hope and possibility for us to have life and have it more abundantly! It was about Love coming in to something unclean and sinful, something evil and hateful, something monstrous and disturbing and saying, "Give that to me and I will carry it for you. Give that to me and I will restore you. Give that to me and I will make you new again. Give that to me and I will give you a hope and a future." So here I am having been trampled on, and I can lay down and cry and say I quit, or I can get it up and say, "Here God, I don't want want this anymore. Here God, would you take these ashes for Your beauty, this heaviness for Your praise?"

Oh How He Loves Us!

Springville, Alabama, home of the Tigers football team. I had the pleasure of being in attendance back in October for the annual Home Coming Parade. Falling in with tradition of southern football, faithful fans lined Main Street despite low temperatures and light rain. I joined in with the spectators to cheer on the marching band in support of some my youth group kids. I soon found the family of one of my girls anxiously awaiting to see their daughter Kassie march through the town. As the sound of the approaching band grew louder, the family begain to cheer and call out as there baby girl marched by. As Kassie's face lit up and she began to beam with joy, I found God begin to break me inside.

October had to be one of the hardest months I have ever been forced to endure in my 27 years upon this Earth. Life began to crumble around me and I felt as though I was in a tailspin heading straight for the ground. I rarely slept and I rarely ate; as much as I tried to fight, life felt as though it was nothing more but a cold deserted waist land. Hopes and dreams were circling the drain and I felt lost and out of place. Joy had become a distant memory of a time long ago. And yet here in this misery, God used a 15 year old high school student and her family to show me just how much he loved me.

Later that night, I stood in a worship service feeling like doing anything but worshiping. I was so consumed with the failures of life, that I felt to unworthy to join in worship. The more I actually tried, the worse I felt. I found myself just standing there telling God how sorry I was for my silence. And then I saw the replay of the parade running through my head. I was completely confused and then God began to make it all clear.

God: "What made Kassie so happy today?"

Me: "Well I guess it was because we were all cheering for her."

God: "Were there not others before and after you cheering as she went by?"

Me: "Yes, I guess there was."

God: "Why did they not have the same affect on her?"

Me: "I guess because she did not know them."

God: "So it was seeing those that loved her cheering her that filled her with Joy?"

Me: "I guess. I don't understand God?"

God: "I know. You are feeling bad right now because you can't find the will to join in worship right now. You think that it makes you a bad person that you are struggling to show me that you love me. What you don't understand is that I don't need you to tell me anything. Yes I do rejoice in my children and in their love for me but there is so much more that I long for. I know your heart and I know you love me, but what I need you to see and to understand is that I love you. I need you to know that even in the cold and in the rain, I am the one that is standing on the side of the the road going crazy cheering for you. You think that you have control of what is happening. You think other peoples mistakes are yours. You think that what you do affects me. What you don't get is that there is nothing that is ever going to stop me from cheering for you because there is nothing that will ever stop me loving you."

Our relationship with God is never about what we bring him, for nothing I can offer will ever suffice. Our relationship with God is simply about understanding that He loves us without condition and without hesitation. See a stranger cheering Kassie on really doesn't mean that much, but to see her family and friends out there enduring the elements just to see her march by for a few seconds brought an overflowing joy to her; a joy that immediately became evident with her smile and laughter. If we can only understand that as we march through this life, God is not only there when it is pleasant or convenient, God is there when it hurts and when it is hard and when everything is going wrong. He is there calling out our name and cheering us on. If we can only keep that picture in our minds, then the joy that overflows from that love will be the light that destroys the darkness in our life and in the lives of those around us. No matter what you have done, no matter what has been done to you, God loves you.