You are; you are good; you are good to me.

Something interesting I’m noticing about the leading of the Holy Spear-et:

I have been finding myself in situations where I know the right thing to do, but I don’t necessarily feel the Spirit’s leading to do it. However, if I start nearing the possibility of not doing what I need to do, I start feeling the Holy Spirit. Like, when I wanted to eat Subway for lunch but I knew I was supposed to fast. I didn’t feel the Holy Spirit heavy on me, leading me to fast. But I knew that going to Subway didn’t really compute in the equation of the day. However, my hunger started to take over and as I got closer to Subway, with each step I took came a little but more of a realization of the Holy Spirit saying, “no, you’re going the wrong way.” Almost as if he wants me to be able to make right decisions based out of my understanding and my will, not simply my emotions that are being targeted by Him. Interesting! It seems he is interested in my character growth and development as a mature person. That’s pretty cool.

Amy felt led to skip out on the pool party she said she would go to, and go to a farewell dinner party for her former roommate instead. She wasn’t sure about it, but I was sure that if she was having a feeling that strongly, she should probably follow it. So I said, “I think you need to go to that dinner!” Last night, she came by the studio after the dinner ended, and told me that the pool she was supposed to go to ended up being closed for the season. How cool is that?! Thanks, God, for leading. Listening to you really helps us have awesome, interesting lives. You’re so good.

Amy was incredibly emotionally impacted by six string narrative. Listening to it has opened up her heart and her emotions. Be Thou My Vision was especially impacting. If she’s saying that, she means it. Six String Narrative is an emotional treasure.

I am getting closer to Amy again and developing secure attachment with her again. Now I want it with you, Jesus. This week I will approach you with expectancy, based on this truth: You are. You are good. You are good to me, in every circumstance, in every moment of every day.

Covering the bases

Okay, don’t ask me why I randomly feel like updating this right now, after I haven’t written in here since June. But for some reason I navigated here and I feel like writing in it. We’ll see how long this lasts. I don’t even know if anyone will read this… I bet if I type Barack Obama in my post, someone will read it simply because they’ll do a search for posts containing the words Barack Obama and randomly click on mine. If this is you, you are not here by accident.

Let’s see if I can find a way to cover all the ground I’ve traversed across since June when I wrote about getting baptized. I had an amazing summer. Purely amazing. Totally getting to relax, enjoy summer in Seattle, enjoy friends. I went on a backpacking trip with my dad into the North Cascades and camped at a beautiful lake for three days. I led a worship band at an event in West Seattle called “Expectancy,” where Jesus showed up and touched the hearts of many, letting them know that his presence is real. I got to read a lot, learn a lot. My good friend and older brother Joe Arrants hired me to record some of his songs, which turned out to be some of the best work I think I’ve done so far. I got addicted to 24, and watching it gave me a desire to live a life filled with more adventure than I know.

I flew back to Nashville a couple weeks early to attend Harvest Institute, a week-long retreat sort of thing that really fueled my passion for Jesus and to bring his kingdom. I had some of the most emotionally intense worship times I’ve ever had, making a fool of myself and dancing in the front of the sanctuary like a crazy man. I learned some invaluable things about apologetics, devotion, intimacy with God, evangelism, and the like. One of the sessions was about prophecy, and a pastor prayed for me and prophesied an end to my feelings of loneliness and feeling like I don’t fit in. After the week was over, I felt like I knew every single person at the retreat and they all knew me, and we meant the world to each other.

After that week, I rode Greyhound to Chattanooga, where I met up with Amy and traveled the rest of the way with her to her home in Dalton, GA, where I spent the last week of summer, which happened to be the week I turned 19. It also happened to be the week I decided that I couldn’t live without each her. So, now her and I are here in Nashville, living life together and liking each other a lot. I only use the words “girlfriend” and “dating” in conversation because that’s unfortunately the only way to efficiently communicate the gist of what’s going on between us. But we’re really much more of best friends that see no reason not to look forward to the possibility of spending life together.

Last semester was filled with opportunities to be a “Jack Bauer” of the kingdom of God. They consisted of talking to homeless people, praying for people to receive the Holy Spirit, interceding for people, helping people with homework and showing them love, prophesying to people and speaking encouragement. After reading A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God, I’ve learned that contrary to most people’s paradigms, there should be no distinction between the “religious life” and the “secular life.” In the last chapter of the book, Tozer talks about how wonderful of a thing it is when we realize that our pursuit of God’s heart is not limited to our church attendance or our prayer and Bible reading. Rather, it’s a lifelong pursuit, and no area of my life is exempt from the possibility of God entering into it and filling it with life. What an awesome realization it was when I found that my seeking of God does not stop when I leave my bedroom in the morning and set foot into the world–no, no; it has just begun.

I learned that I often let my emotions dictate my life for me, and not my will. I found this out when a friend asked me to play drums at a recording session he had that night, and I blindly told him yes without even thinking about it. I thought about this and thought it very peculiar that I have so much trouble making decisions about how I want to spend my time, but others can make them for me no sweat. So, in light of the knowledge that words have power, I decided to speak my decisions to me for a while until I regained back the power to make them in my mind.

I also learned that I live in the future and the past way too much, and not enough in the present. The present is the most like eternity. We perceive eternity as infinitely big, while the present, if you think about it, is infinitely small, meaning that there’s no possible way you can be 100% purely in the present any more than you can be 100% purely in eternity. The present is where LIFE is experienced. It’s where memories are made. It’s where life MEANS something. It’s where the love of God is felt and not just understood. Oh, it’s so important to live in the present.

I’m going to be brave and announce this to the internet world. Over break, I dumped my addiction to lust, masturbation, and pornography. Ditched it. Lost it. Killed it. It’s gone. All gone. Yes, I had an addiction. The only way I came to admitting this is by starving myself of the stuff long enough to the point where I didn’t crave it anymore. For all you reading this who are trapped in this prison of false beauty and false fulfillment, let me tell you the truth about it. IT RUINS YOUR LIFE. It cheapens everything, it destroys your future, it makes you a slave to itself. And if you want to argue with me about the nature of this material, I’m all for it, but let me warn you, I have experienced the following three things: 1) being trapped by it and enjoying it, 2) being trapped by it and hating it, 3) being freed from it. I think you can guess which one I KNOW is the most fulfilling. The only reason you don’t want to believe that pornography is a prison is because you are addicted to it. YOU CAN GET OUT!!! I’ve dealt with the stuff since before middle school. I’ve gone through seasons of being freed from the stuff, and then falling back into it. I went through so many of those cycles that I started to believe it would never end, because each time I would be so brave as to say, “I’m never going to a porn site again!” three days later I’d mess up. I know what hopelessness feels like. And now I know what FREEDOM feels like! Freedom is BETTER. And I have dedicated my life to helping men just like me escape from the snares of sin, especially sexual sin, and regain their freedom! That means if you know you need freedom, regardless of whether you feel like getting it or not, you need to call me or email me or facebook me or something. Because I live to free people like you.

With that huge heavy load off, I have had a great start of the second semester of my sophomore year. I get to take a writing class with Amy, which is great so far! I’m playing drums in a rock/funk band with some really talented musicians from school. I get to record a song I wrote in Ocean Way Studio A on Music Row this Saturday. I’m so excited. Last year I recorded two songs I wrote with the help of my amazing roommate and engineer, Jason Piland. Jason has an incredible knowledge of recording technology and a great musical sense. He would make a dang good producer someday if he didn’t just decide to switch career paths and pursue law and politics.

The future looks bright. I get to go on tour with Jazzmin again, this time to Dallas, Austin, and Little Rock. I am taking a Music Technology course this semester which is AWESOME so far. Today we learned the ins and outs of MIDI data, and how MIDI messages are constructed and sent… geek stuff I know, but hey you know me. I get to use some really expensive school equipment this semester for my own maniacally musical schemes.

My focus this semester is not on trying to figure my life out or figure out its meaning, but rather to surrender my mind to the Spirit, let him guide my paths and show me the way of life. My part is just to show up and live, and desire to know him better. If I try to make my life exciting, it gets really one-dimensional really fast. If I follow the Spirit’s leading, I find that every day of my life is an adventure, I’m less stressed out and worried about everything, I feel more loved and more valued, and I have more life and love to give away to the people around me. I love Jesus.

A reflection on my baptism tonight

Tonight I am getting back to the basics: “If you love me, you will obey my teachings.” Jesus, I want to obey you, not because it’s what I have to do if I want something from you, but because I want to show you how much I love you! I love you because you loved me first. That’s as simple as it gets, and I need no other explanation. I love you because you loved me first. And from there, I can do anything when I’m powered by your love. So tonight I am being baptized. I’ve been baptized before, as a young child. I remember the words out of my mouth: “I’m being baptized because…I want Christ to be my personal savior.” I remember the adrenaline and the heart pounding as I muttered those words before a congregation of people. The thing is, I didn’t really know what I was talking about, or why I was doing it. Because I didn’t really get belief then. My heart was always plagued with fear that Christ wasn’t going to save me, and if I died I wouldn’t get to go to heaven. Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t really get belief until this past year in college. Now I understand that belief is not just mental assent, but it transforms the way you live. And believing something in your head is a lot different than believing in your heart. Believing something in your head can’t even legitimately be called belief. Because if you really believe something, you live by it, and your thoughts, words, and actions are shaped by it. The way that I have lived the majority of my life, especially high school, has not truly reflected a belief in Jesus Christ as my savior and Lord.

The last few years of my life have been filled with revelation of truth about who God is, and the way he works. In January 2006, God showed me that I don’t have to earn his love, but that it will break through any barrier and cross any distance to get to me; in October 2007, I learned that crucial difference between telling yourself that you believe something and knowing that you really believe it; and in February 2008, God awakened me to the reality of my life’s purpose: that it’s not all about what I can do for him, changing the world out of obligation, neither is it about living a good Christian life out of duty or even religion, but simply living to know Jesus better. To love him and be loved by him. To never stop being truly transformed into his likeness on the inside. To be content simply dwelling in his presence, and yet constantly yearning for more of him. This is the most exhilarating, electrifying, meaningful adventure a human being can ever embark on—even more meaningful than finding a soulmate on this earth to love. Because I found out that God is the lover of my soul, and I am a lover of his heart. Earthly romance is here and gone, but that precious divine love relationship between me and Jesus will last for eternity.

So, I’m not getting baptized tonight for the sake of trying to earn Jesus’ personal salvation. I am being baptized tonight because I believe that he has already performed his saving work in my life, and I don’t have to try to earn anything, or be someone I’m not. Furthermore, I am acknowledging that I don’t have to strive out of my own strength to save the world, but by simply living my life to become more intimate with Jesus, I will bear more fruit than I ever could without him. This act of baptism is the beginning of my long-distance cross-country run of obedience, but this time it’s not out of duty or trying to earn anything, but out of a desire to show him how much I love him—out of this divinely placed passion to be in his presence and to be completely found in beholding his awesome beauty and worshiping him with everything that I am. And that is something that I truly believe.

Getting rid of religion changed my life

This is kind of a special post; it’s more focused than they normally are. That’s because I have this burning on my heart to share with you, and I pray that it touches your heart or that God reveals something about Himself to you through it that you didn’t see before.

I’m going to share something with you that may seem a little strange if you don’t believe in God and a little obvious if you do. But if you fall into either of these categories (and I’m willing to bet that you do), I’d encourage you to read on because I’m going to try and put into words what’s going on in my heart right now. It is the most real, fulfilling thing I have ever experienced, and I doubt that there’s anything that can top it. You might read this and say, “I think he’s absolutely 100% nuts,” or “I’ve already been there and done that,” or “wow, I really need to take this and apply it in my own life,” but wherever you’re at with God, please hear me out because these words could potentially change your entire life.

I went to a conference in Durham, NC last weekend called Campus Harvest, expecting to get a little bit of love and encouragement to pass on to hurting lives on my campus. What I got out of it completely changed my entire perspective on God and life as I know it.

Here’s why I’m posting this. It’s obvious to most people who call themselves Christians that Christianity is “not about religion, it’s about relationship.” The idea of religion is repulsive to most people in their right minds. I’m talking about the notion of forcing yourself to live by a certain set of rules and go somewhere once a week you don’t care to go and pray to someone whom you don’t even know exists. So it makes sense that most (at least protestant) Christians I know would tell me the above quoted statement about their own personal walk with God. From my experience though, I’m guessing that about 90 percent of people who say this phrase don’t even know what they’re talking about. I’m not saying this to sound arrogant or because I think I have all the answers. Rather, I just found out last weekend that after a lifetime of being in the church, and after about two years of being what I’d call “on fire for God,” I didn’t know what I myself was talking about. And no one clued me into this for eighteen freaking years! I sure wish I could have found out what being a follower of Christ was all about a little sooner than that. So that’s why I’m writing this. I want to help YOU get to a place where you seek after God because you desperately want to, not because you feel pressured to or because you see no other choice.

Here’s the gig. Us Christians like to talk about God’s love, and how God’s love causes us to “love our neighbor as ourself”, “love our enemies and bless those who persecute us”, “take care of the widows and feed the orphans living among us”, and the list goes on. Let me tell you something from my very own experience. It’s one thing to talk about it and imagine that this connection between God’s love inside of us and our acts of love and service towards others is there. It’s a completely new level to actually experience that love in your heart, have it consume your entire mind, soul, and body, and be truly, divinely impelled from the inside to do all this love stuff. And the second way is a lot more worthwhile than the first.

Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. The first way is NOT wrong! Actually, obedience to what Jesus has asked of us is the foundation for genuinely loving God (John 14:15). I’ve messed up a lot in my life, but one thing I have going for me (at least since I’ve been in college) is that I’ve been diligent in setting aside time to meet with God. It’s a good habit, for sure, but I’ve been doing it with the same heart that makes me get the oil in my car changed, or clean the bathroom. Not because I enjoy it, but simply because I knew that without changing my oil or cleaning my bathroom my life would come to a halt and rapidly become very disgusting. But have you ever found that doing things because you know you’ll be screwed if you don’t is not a very fun way to live? I’ve pulled a lot of all nighters in high school (and a couple in college, although I’m trying as hard as I can to avoid them) because I know that if I don’t get an essay finished or a book read by the next morning, my grade in the class will be toast. But that doesn’t mean that I had a lot of fun depriving myself of sleep and basically dying the next day. In my own walk with God, I’ve tried the whole prayer list thing where I write down all my prayer requests on a piece of paper and bring it before God, checking each item off one by one as I toil laboriously through the list. If you do that on a regular basis, and actually enjoy it, please tell me, because you’ll be the first. I’m willing to bet, though, that no one considers a forced relationship with God “enjoyable.”

That’s because it wasn’t meant to be forced! Yes, God loves and searches for a heart that desires to obey Him and do His will. But there’s more to prayer than just shutting yourself in a quiet room, forcing yourself to read a chapter of the Bible every day, and praying that Bob and Suzie get saved.

So if we love God, and obey what He commands us to do, what else could there be to God besides that?

Here’s my answer to that question. Throughout the Bible there is a running metaphor of God’s hand versus God’s face. God’s hand is connected with His provision, His gifts, His blessing, His strength, His power, etc. God’s face is connected with His love. What’s the difference between love and all these other things? Well, the first list is what God does for people. But love is the very essence of WHO God is (1 John 4:8,16)! The key to having an enjoyable relationship with God instead of dead religion is to not seek the WHAT, but the WHO. What God has done for you is a good place to start. But there’s much more to it than that. Believe it or not, God didn’t create us so he could save us. We as humans turned away from God, so He needed to send His son as a human sacrifice to save us from our sins, but that’s not the reason why He created us. God didn’t create us so he could provide for our physical needs. God didn’t create us to have needs! God created you to be completely fulfilled in Him alone, to know Him, to love Him. But because we turned away from Him, he stretched out His HAND (his grace and provision) and offered us a way to be reunited with Him again (salvation). The experience of salvation, however, is not the reason why we’re here! God is a jealous lover who created us–humanity–to be His lover (Exodus 34:14). So what I’m suggesting is until we begin to see past His hand (what he does for you) and start seeking His face (living to know Him more and love Him more), get this–our relationship with God will be absolutely nothing more than boring religion. Why? Because seeking his hand is a laborious duty. We see that in order to keep receiving from the hand of God, we *sigh* HAVE to put in our due diligence and spend time praying and reading the Bible. The thing is, though, God will let you live like that. He let me live like that until a week ago, when at Campus Harvest He showed me what it really means to have a thriving, fiery, passionate relationship with Him. God is no longer religion to me. God is the lover of my soul (Psalm 31:7)! I’m done with boring religion. I’m done with passionless prayer times that end because I’m hungry and I want to eat breakfast and I’m tired of muttering words and hoping God hears them. I want nothing less out of life than Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! I’ve found that nothing satisfies the longing in my soul except being in love with Jesus.

Stop for a second. If you’re a Christian in an evangelical/charismatic church, or if you’ve been around someone who is, you’ve probably heard the phrase “in love with Jesus” so much that it’s been beat to death. At least that’s how it was for me. I heard so many people talk about it without experiencing it myself that I just assumed that consistency and devotion in my “religious duties” to God (praying, etc.) was what being in love with Jesus is all about. If that’s you, I have a paradigm shift coming up for you. I don’t want you to be stuck like I was. Because keeping up with your quiet time and making sure you pray for everyone you’ve promised to pray for, albeit important, is not what it’s all about. There’s so much more!!

Here’s the tough part, though. Try as I might, I cannot POSSIBLY to justice to the idea of being in love with Jesus by expressing myself in words. Or in any way, for that matter. If you want to truly know what I’m talking about, you’ve got to experience it for yourself. I can’t give you a step-by-step instruction manual on how to do that, because God is not a machine that can be manipulated to attain the desired result. God is a lover, just like people are lovers, and it takes something more than a mechanical approach to Him to beckon His love. I can, however, tell you how this paradigm shift happened for me, not so you can copy me, but so you can get an idea of the change that has to take place.

On the way to North Carolina last weekend, we got stuck riding in a 15-passenger van loaded to capacity, and after waking up from an attempted nap against the window of the van, I could barely move because my back had so many knots in it. About a half-hour later, my friend Rachel says, “Aaron, you look like you need a back massage. Can I give you one?” Of course I took her up on it, and while I was sitting there, letting her work out the problems in my back, God just spoke right to my heart: “Why don’t you ever have this attitude when you’re worshiping me? You sit there and let your friend Rachel massage your back, but you never sit there at my altar and let me massage your heart.” Anyone who knows me very well knows that I’m very accomplishment driven, and I’ve always struggled with just sitting and inviting God to come love on me–I always want to move forward and “get my prayer done.” Anyways, Saturday night at the conference, after the evening service, there was an extended time of worship and for some reason I really felt like I wanted to stay for it, so I and a couple friends did. I moved up to the front of the auditorium, closed my eyes, and began to sing. All of a sudden the band quieted down, leaving just the piano and violin playing music. What God had spoken to me through the massage on the van came to my mind, so I just sat down, and said, “God, I’m here. I’m not going to try to earn your love anymore. Please come and love on me, come and massage my heart.” For the next 15 minutes, I just sat there, feeling a warmth in my stomach which I knew was the tangible presence of God. I didn’t sing, and I didn’t pray. I didn’t think about His mercy, His greatness, His holiness, or (my personal favorite) how he saved me from my sinful life two years ago. I simply sat there, the same way I’d sit if Rachel was there massaging my back, and I let God massage my heart. I cannot explain how AWESOME that felt. All I can say is that afterwards, I felt like I had just slept for 15 hours. I felt refreshed and renewed. I felt like I had just reached the most meaningful level of existence that I ever had before. I was just penetrated to the core of my heart with the tangible love of God.

Here’s the bottom line. Ecclesiastes 3 says that there is a time for everything under the sun. A time to laugh and a time to cry; a time to live and a time to die. There’s a time for every spiritual discipline–prayer, fasting, intercession, the list goes on. God calls His people to all these things. But if you elevate your earthly calling above your ETERNAL calling, which is to worship God, soak in His presence, and let Him love on YOU, chances are you’re going to have a pretty miserable Christian walk. If you’ve read some of my earlier posts about living on the Lord’s strength, this is what I’m talking about. Yes, the Lord did give me strength to carry out the tasks I took on, but in making my top priority to be doing stuff for God, I missed the actual point of it: so that everyone on the Earth may know and love God! And how do I dare try to get everyone else to make knowing and loving God their top priority when it’s not my top priority?

Prayer should not be a chore, it should actually be fun. Worship should not be a laborious service you sit through once a week. Worship should be something you actually look forward to! By the time Sunday rolls around each week I am so hungry to worship God because the presence of God is what I’m made for! Being in the presence of God is the fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11) that we’re made for, and there is no denying that we as humans are designed to seek pleasure.

If you don’t consider yourself a believer or a follower of God, this next part is for you: I apologize from the bottom of my heart that we as a church have turned Jesus Christ, the most amazing person who ever walked this earth, into a boring religion. He’s not a set of rules. He’s not a code you have to follow or a class you have to attend. He is the purest form of love you’ll ever find, and if you get Him in your heart, He will change your entire life. He will turn you into a new person–a better person. He will wipe away all your tears and all your pain from all the times you’ve been hurt by someone. It doesn’t matter what kind of baggage you’re carrying around with you or things you’ve done in your past that you feel there’s no way He’ll forgive. Psalm 65:3 says, “Though we are overwhelmed by our sins, you forgive them all.” Check this out! It goes on in verse 4 to say: “What joy for those you choose to bring near, those who live in your holy courts. What festivities await us inside your holy Temple.” Haha, festivities? A party in the house of God? Did you ever imagine you’d find such text in the Bible? But there it is. Being in the “holy courts” (that is, the presence of God) isn’t a boring thing! It’s not something that you have to deny pleasure for. It is the greatest source of pleasure you’ll ever find! And Psalm 16:11 says that in God’s right hand are pleasures forever. There are lots of pleasurable things on this Earth, but I sure haven’t found any that last very long. The pleasure of being in God’s presence is eternal, because God is eternal, unchanging, the same yesterday, today, and forever!

One word of advice to anyone who has read this and wants to seek a deeper relationship with God, free of all religious connotation. Don’t seek the pleasure. That’s reducing God to a mere hand once again. Seek God’s face, and peace, joy, fulfillment and pleasure will follow. Shut yourself in a quiet room, but instead of forcing out some words from your mind, pray to Him with all your heart. Love in Him with all your heart. Tell Him that He can have everything. Sing your love to Him in the form of a love song, maybe someone else wrote it, maybe you write it on the spot. Do whatever it takes. What matters is that your heart is expressing your love to the One who saved your soul. Don’t be afraid to let your emotions express the groanings in your heart that your words cannot. Let Him massage your heart. Open your heart to Him, and I guarantee He’ll come in! How do I know that? Because Revelation 3:20 says, “I stand at the door and knock! If anyone hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come into Him, and dine with Him, and He with me.” The door is the door of your heart, and dining is the best metaphor I think the writer of Revelation could have chosen, because it represents nothing more than hanging out with God, enjoying what He’s given you while you also enjoy the most important thing in the world: His presence.

Christian, agnostic, atheist, or something else, if any of this has touched your heart, or maybe upset it a little bit, don’t let yourself down. I’m here and happy to talk.

Running and Road Trips

So I got up at 5:15 this morning and relived high school, first by waking up at 5:15, and second by running a 5K that Belmont put on. Having not had a lot of training recently I decided to run with the “9 minute mile” group with my friend Amy and a few other people who talked me into doing this. So, that lasted about half a mile, and then I was like, screw this, I can’t run this slow, and I took off. I was wearing a track jacket over a t-shirt, and at one point I got so hot that as I was running by one of the race volunteers who were telling everyone where to go, I took it off and threw it in his face and I was like “hey can you hold my jacket until I’m done?!” And before he had time to respond I was on my merry way. Anyways, finished that race with a 20:37. Not good by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m gonna keep track of all the 5K’s I do and track my progress. God also used the 5K to teach me about endurance in life and training my mind, so that was really cool.

Um, in other news, I’m going to North Caroling this weekend for this Christian leadership conference for college students called Campus Harvest. Story of how I got talked into going there: got a flyer for it, was totally hooked on it but wasn’t sure I could pay the $170 to go, so I started praying for God to provide a way if He did in fact want me to go. Basically, through scholarships and donations, the price of the weekend got cut down to *drum roll*…….25 STANKIN DOLLARS! Amazing! Plus, I was also worried about scheduling because I had to get rid of two work shifts and reschedule a piano lesson (for the third week in a row) if I wanted to go. Not a problem–those conflicts got taken care of so quickly I almost forgot they existed. So, basically there’s no doubt in my mind that I’m gonna be in the right place this weekend. I’m really excited brecause God’s been preparing me for it all week by giving me opportunities to build up my faith. Next week I’ll probably have more to write about it than you want to read, so just be forewarned, haha.

Free Indeed tonight was amazing. This kid showed up, never been there before… I’m guessing he was in his late teens or early twenties. After service he came up for prayer and got hit in the face with God’s love. Apparently he’s a pot addict, gets in trouble a lot, and has no friends. He was allegedly walking by the church and came in because “he heard the music.” The focus of the entire night was on God’s love, getting God’s love in our hearts, and taking God’s love to the streets. After the sermon I went up and started playing the song I wrote and recorded with Kayla last summer, “Love of my Life.” Pastor and another guy started praying for Jamar at the altar, and he immediately just started to weep as he felt God’s love come over him. I believe he gave his life to Jesus! YES praise God! His name is Jamar, so if you could keep him in your prayers, I’m sure that the devil will want to steal him back if he gets the chance, so definitely pray against that. It’s always extremely encouraging to see someone in such a dismal situation have a complete turnaround in a matter of minutes because of the love of Jesus. It’s so easy to get caught up in religious politics and interpretations of the Bible and our own problematic lives that we forget the pure and simple joy of someone who is lost in despair get rescued by Jesus. That is truth.

Alright, I just had to get this stuff off my mind. 30 hours until NC!!!!!

Don’t read this

Haha, I KNEW I’d pull you in with a title like that! Sorry for abusing it, I just couldn’t think of anything else to put there.

It’s been a while since I’ve written, so I’m just going to try and encapsulate all the important stuff.

Laundry lessons from the freshman dorm:

a) Washing jeans with whites actually does turn the whites blue, and

b) if you don’t want your clothes to reek of chlorine, don’t wash them with a swimsuit you used recently.

Ha ha ha. You laugh now, but… yeah.

College is a place for first-time experiences. And about two weeks ago was my first experience of running out of gas on the freeway. What’s even more embarrassing is that this awesome guy at church, Matt Shatswell, had just blessed me with $20 to purchase some gas for my car, but I hate breaking 20s, and I seriously thought I had enough to make it back to Nashville from church, so I was just like, “okay, I’ll just cruise back to Belmont and fill up my tank later.” So I’m putt-putting in my little Tercel down southbound I-65 all warm and happy, talking on the phone…and then I notice that the car is slowing down and the engine isn’t making any more noise. I knew immediately what was going on, but I didn’t want to accept it, so I started very quickly and repeatedly slamming my right foot on the gas pedal, but to no avail. After a long drawn-out conversation with AAA and being transferred from Washington, to East Tennessee, to Middle Tennessee, back to Washington, back to Middle Tennessee, and then waiting on the side of the road in the dark for two hours, the tow truck finally shows up, I get my gas, and I’m all good to go. So I’m on Wedgewood Avenue, about 30 seconds away from Belmont, when all of a sudden I notice that I’ve got a po-po on my tail pulling me over. After he pulled me over and I gave him my license, registration, AND proof of insurance, I realized my tabs were expired, one of my turn signals was out, and I hadn’t transferred the title of the car to my name yet, therefore it probably must have looked to the officer like I was driving a stolen, unlicensed, in-need-of-repair vehicle. So, what do you think I’d do now? I just prayed and said, “God, I’m just gonna let you be God over my situation.” The officer came back ten minutes later and said, “that ticket would have been about 200 dollars. Get it taken care of. Have a good night.” That’s the story of my initiation to Tennessee driving. It was kinda cool though, I looked back during my ride in the tow truck and saw that little car there, looking so innocently feeble, yet loyal to the last. I was like “yeah buddy, we’re gonna make it!” I need to give it a name, any suggestions?

Today was really cool actually, because I got to see one of my high school buddies, Ben O’Brien, and his dad. They came to Nashville to visit the city and Belmont’s campus. So, I met up with them, went out to dinner in downtown Nashville, and then took them to Belmont’s Rock Showcase to give them a little taste of the music. It was really refreshing getting to see someone from home… like a little taste of Seattle in Nashville. He might apply to Belmont…YES!! Finally, someone has his head on straight. =]

And here are a few thoughts I have about Rock Showcase:

1) AWESOME.

2) I thoroughly enjoyed the talent, the sound, the lights, the fog, the whole aura in the room. What I came away learning from it was that I need to have more passion in my own performance. The third band that performed, Kennedy, is a good example of that. I wish I could post a picture or a video up here or something. They don’t just sing the music, or play the music. They become one with the music. Yeah, cheesy I know but it’s true. Their lead singer got so into the music, it was almost worship. You could tell by simply watching them that everything about him, his body, soul, and spirit were all passionately immersed in what he was doing. His whole face and body screamed along with his voice. There were moments where he fell to his knees and lifted his hands in the air while the guitarist soloed, immersing himself in the music, seeming as if he was transcending to a higher level. And this isn’t Christian music, folks, let alone worship music. This is hard rock. Yet there was a spiritual element involved. I look at my worship team and how most of us just sit passively on chairs, with very little conviction about what we’re doing. I recognize that we’ve just started and have a lot of room to grow, but there comes a point where I have to ask myself, why aren’t we getting into this?! Are we so afraid of coming off as arrogant and prideful that we cut out all passion and conviction from our playing? Just some for thought.

3) Now, you knew I was going to complain about something, and here it is. Everything else was in place. The talent was there, the audience was there, the lights and fog were there, the energy and excitement was there. My natural response to all this captivating beauty was to just start worshiping God, and I almost started to, but that’s when I realized that all this beauty wasn’t there with then intention of glorifying God. The showcase was designed to glorify the performers instead of God.

Okay, come on, who really gives a crap? Why does music have to “glorify God”? Can’t we just go to a concert and enjoy some good music without worrying about religion? Why does religion have to pervade the fun part of our life?

I’m not against good music, and I’m certainly not against having fun. Good music is a large part of my calling in life, and if I can’t have a good time doing that, I quit. But good music and a good time aren’t the issue here. The issue is that underneath the music, there is a terrible but real emptiness for both the performer and the audience. If we come together and share music to glorify a performer, will the performer be satisfied? The basic answer is no. Maybe temporarily, with the immediate success and feeling of love and adoration by fans. But pretty soon he or she is going to want more money, more fame, more fans…essentially more worship. Will the audience be satisfied? Maybe by the quality of the music, again, temporarily. But in the long run, we expect more and more out of the performer, and when he/she lets us down, it’s not happy. When we worship people instead of God, things start to get messed up. A performer who thrives off of the worship of his or her fans rather than the approval of God on his or her life becomes corrupted through one of many things that tend to take over great, talented people–drug or alcohol addictions, teenage pregnancies, arrogance, selfishness, the list goes on. That’s because people are not designed to be worshiped. Look at what happens when a human takes the throne instead of God. Look at communism and how that ended up. Just basing off of history and the stories of various people and people groups, I have concluded that people are designed to give their worship to God, not to themselves. Why? People are not capable of being worshiped. Worshiping a person instead of God leads to corruption for you and the person you’re worshiping. When you worship God, the feeling of love and adoration comes from an eternal source. When you worship a musician, that musician is getting their security from a temporary, imperfect source (the fans), and you aren’t getting really much of anything besides a few sound waves in your ear. I’m not saying that having others look up to you as a musician is a bad thing, but when that takes the place of what you were designed to receive from God, life begins to weaken and eventually collapse.

4) Here’s the other problem I had with the showcase. It actually wasn’t really a problem with the showcase, the showcase just illuminated the real problem with popular music today. Before each band played, they showed a short clip of the band introducing themselves, and telling a joke, or a story, or something like that, which I thought was a little gimmicky but a thoughtful way to fill time while the bands were getting off and on stage. No, that’s not the problem yet. The fourth band that played, in my opinion, was great musically–good taste, good feel, and good collaboration. But their video just came off as incredibly arrogant to me. While the other bands just told funny stories about themselves or entertained the audience in a creative manner, this band told a story about their song being played on the radio which turned into some sort of advertisement, bragging rights, or list of achievements. What I got from it was “we play gigs, we have songs on the radio, our tunes are awesome, we’re awesome, now listen to us!” Then the first tune they played was called “let’s lose em” and was something about getting in trouble and running from the cops. So while I’m digging the music, I’m also sitting there thinking, “great, it’s not even the second tune and we’ve already got arrogance and rebellion. We let popular music and MTV promote this stuff to youth, and then we wonder why we’re experiencing escalating levels of domestic violence on public school and college campuses?” If you stop to actually think about what’s going on–these messages of rebelliousness (by no means limited to such) being perpetrated onto our subconscious thinking–doesn’t it seem a little silly that we’re working so hard to clean up our own mess we’re making with increased security measures on campuses, stricter graduation requirements, and the like? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just fix the problem at the source by changing the messages that are sent through the popular media, instead of continuing to send one message through the media and another through the country’s judiciary system?

So, here’s a recap of what I’m saying so you don’t misunderstand. I love good rock music. When music of any type or genre is played, however, something deeper goes on: someone is glorified. So instead of glorifying man, which leads to personal despair and disillusionment, as well as eventual social chaos, could we just simply begin to glorify God through popular music? Please understand that I am NOT suggesting that CCM take over secular music industry. Hecks no. Let’s just face the truth that right now, besides a few exceptions, from a musical standpoint, I’d take most secular music over most “Christian” music. A lot of that has to do with the mindset of CCM, but that’s another topic entirely. But what if we stopped having this gigantic rift between “Christian/religious music” and all other types of music, and we just wake up and realize that if we stop glorifying people with our music and start glorifying God, or at the very least start sending moral messages through our music, culture and society will take a turn for the better and people in general will feel more satisfied with life?

Please also realize that I’m also not accusing any single artist or band of this. I mean, I pretty much blame the devil for this mess that is American society today. But we as humans tend to do things a certain way that allows the devil to twist what is good and make it not so good. So any way that was can keep that from happening, I’m for it.

I’d really like to know what you think. I’m not perfect and neither are my ideas. Please don’t patronize me by reading this and pretending you don’t disagree with anything I said. I have learning to do too.

That’s all I have for now. Peace! If you read all the way through this you deserve an award. Maybe I’ll give you one of my truffles I got from my awesome parents for valentine’s day… maybe. If I’m feeling nice. =D

Snow in Nashville!

So my mom just emailed me today and told me I made the Dean’s list! They sent my parents a formal letter in the mail but didn’t tell me anything? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense…lol. But… praise the Lord for carrying me through last semester well enough to achieve that.

This next paragraph is typical Aaron, and if you know my tendency to overload my schedule with everything under the sun, you’re going to chuckle a little bit. (No comments please, Mr. Fosberg. =D ) This semester, I am officially a double-principal commercial music major. That means I have four private lessons a week: commercial and classical piano, and commercial and classical percussion. It also means I have to practice twice as much. I’m also taking on my worship-leading job at Free Indeed more seriously. I’m now driving out there three nights a week, Sunday and Wednesday for services, and Monday for practice. I also have a job; it’s not a “real” job though. I’m working on campus as a school of music “monitor”–basically I just get paid $6.50 an hour, 12 hours a week, to sit around and do nothing, make hourly rounds, and make sure no one steals anything. Hey, it’s better than getting paid $0 and hour to sit around and do nothing. (Don’t worry, I don’t actually indulge in such indolent sluggishness. I usually do homework or…facebook…actually mostly facebook. Okay so maybe I do indulge in indolent sluggishness after all.) All of the above stuff, plus practice time, plus homework, plus trying to have a social life (yeah, no comments there either please), plus random stuff like playing for people’s senior recitals, and my schedule has actually morphed into an real-live nightmare of epic proportions.

At least, that’s how I viewed it at first. I would like, look at my iCal and have a spaz attack, or a nervous breakdown, one of the two. You see, I felt like God was leading me to do all this stuff, but I had no idea how on Earth it was all possible. Problem yes, solution no. Hence, spaz attacks. But then I was reading the Bible (yes, that’s how the solution always begins!) and this scripture really stuck out to me: “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matt. 6:27). And I’m like, holy crap, you’re RIGHT Jesus! How is worrying about all this stuff really gonna help me? Worry doesn’t help me get my job done any better, it only keeps me from getting it done to the absolute best of my ability. So then I just decided to focus on the task at hand, ask God for strength to do it all, and let God take care of the rest. What I found was that I was able to get homework done faster, learn more, practice better, and have a more pleasant, positive attitude about it all too. I wish I would have learned this in high school. Jesus really was the wisest human being who ever lived. (I stuck the whole passage at the end of the post–read it, it’s so wise and comforting!)

On a lighter note, for commercial drum lessons this semester, I am being taught by none other than… Zoro. No, not the Spanish guy that goes gallivanting around defacing public property. Zoro is the name of my drum teacher. If you don’t know who he is, go check out zorothedrummer.com. I still can’t get over the fact that my teacher’s name is Zoro… I mean it’s like… I show up for my lesson every week and I’m like, “Hey, Zoro! How ya doin?” I just can’t believe I’m calling someone Zoro! Anyways, he’s played with all these famous people including Lenny Kravitz, and his testimony is like…radical. I think he’s my hero as far as the music world is concerned. Seriously, go check him out.

Let me just mention two of my other heroes. My mom and my dad. I can’t say it enough. I feel the need to just brag on them a little bit. God was just extremely gracious to me when he decided to stick me with them. I never stop realizing how much they gave up and sacrificed for the sake of raising me the right way. For instance, my dad sacrificed a good chunk of his Saturdays for a while when I was 7 or 8, during which time he would take me to church and let me practice on the drums while he played piano with me. (Yes, the perks of having a worship leader slash associate pastor for a dad.) But not only would he just give up his time on Saturdays to let me grow and mature on drums, he actually taught me, and put in the effort (not to mention the patience!) to make me into a musician and to beat a sense of steady tempo into me (not literally–he’s not that kind of parent). I seriously doubt that I would be pursuing music right now if he hadn’t put all that time in with me. I still have a picture to prove it! Wanna see? It’s kinda cute.

I don’t know if he knew then or not what his work would result in. My dad has such an ability to think clearly. What inspires me the most about him is his dedication. He makes realistic plans and he always follows through with them. He wakes up and jumps in a cold swimming pool every morning at 5:30am. I don’t understand it. I just hope I’m that inspirational when I have my own children. I could go on and on about my dad forever but then I’d never get to my mom. And…yeah. My mom. Don’t get me started. She has more of a servant’s heart than anyone else I know. Seriously, I’m not joking. She never asks what she can do for herself, she’s always trying to find out how she can serve other people. And she does it in love, never in spite or with a “look-what-you’re-making-me-do” attitude. She also always does what’s right, even if it means disappointing people or making them unhappy, me included. I found this out in high school when my mom wouldn’t let me go to a dance with my girlfriend (among a multitude of other times). Mother knew best for me and didn’t stop short of making sure that the best was carried out, regardless of the attitudes I copped. Both my parents have got so much wisdom, and I feel like they always have an answer to any question I could ask about anything. They’ve put up with so much of my crap, especially in high school, and have never given up on doing what’s right, no matter what I or any of my friends thought. I guess the best way I could summarize this is… my parents gave everything they could–time, money, effort, energy, and most importantly love–so that I would have a stable, enjoyable childhood, and grow up to be big and strong physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, and spiritually. And look at their work, hasn’t it paid off? Heh heh, I’m not trying to sound conceited, I promise. Really though… I just had to let out how I feel about my parents. Again, I could go on and on until I’m blue in the face, but we wouldn’t want that, would we? Maybe Courtney would. I dunno. I’ll write about Courtney next time.

Oh yeah, and everyone always tells me about how young they look. I never know how I’m supposed to react when I hear that…haha

Okay I’m done ranting. Now that you’ve read this, go watch this sbemail if you haven’t already. You’ll laugh until your stummy hurts. Yes, I did say stummy.

—————————————————————–

Full text of Matthew 6:25-34 (the worry passage):

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

-Jesus 

*ding ding ding* Round 2!

Here we go. I’m back in Nashville after a wonderful vacation. Round 2.

So, I’m definitely glad that there were so many student orientation activities at the beginning of last semester. Why? Because when you go from spending the most wonderful 3 weeks ever with your family to flying across the country where you feel like you don’t have anyone to call family, it really really really sucks. It’s never fun. But I’m getting over it. The best part, though, is that it’s reminding me how much I need God. Because when I call on his name for help, he’s there. He makes me feel warm when I feel alone. He sends people my way to cheer me up, like he did this evening in the cafeteria.

This is a lesson I’ve already learned, but could afford to learn 100 times over. Attitude is a choice. It is not controlled by circumstances. Circumstances certainly push you towards choosing one attitude over the other, but they do not have the final say. It is definitely harder to have a good attitude in the midst of sub-par circumstance, yes. But it’s not impossible. It’s a whole lot easier when Jesus is there helping you to make that choice. So yeah, random tidbit of information there.

I’ll post more profound things when they come to me. Peace out.

A month…holy crap

Wow, so it’s been exactly one month since I wrote in this. I know, what a slacker I am. I’ve gone through everything from tornadoes to mentoring autistic children. Life is crazy. But life is good. I got to go back and visit my family last week for Thanksgiving; that was a huge relief. I was so excited by the time my plane touched down in Seattle that I was basically running through the airport towards baggage claim, and I did this whole James Bond reconnaissance deal and jumped on my dad. That was super fun. I also got to meet Sara, our awesome exchange student! She is such a joy to have at home, and she doesn’t feel like an invasion at all; she feels like nothing less than a valuable addition to my family, and I’m really glad she gets to live with us for a year. Lots of other fun stuff occured, i.e. going downtown on (black) Friday, watching the parade and walking around with friends, cutting the family Christmas tree and putting up lights, drinking eggnog mixed with sprite and playing apples to apples, going to my church on Sunday and getting recharged and pumped up for Jesus! YEAH!

Then I had to fly back to Nashville. My first few days back were a little rough. This is because of a lot of reasons, but primarily because I realized that I really don’t have anyone whom I can call family here. And I also realized that I can’t turn going back home or Christmas into my primary goal anymore, for two reasons. One, doing so would make me take school less seriously and try to just get it over with, so I can just get home. But the more important (and frankly, crappier) reason is that, I am moved out of my house. And as much as I love my family and my home, I am not moving back in. I’m not going to be that kid. And so, to cling to my home as my only sense of security is simply to turn away from the future. And turning away from the future is the worst possible thing I can do for myself. This is going to take some time, because I still am very attached to my family. I don’t think that a close bond with my family is necessarily a bad thing; I wish everyone could have what I’ve been blessed with. It just becomes potentially harmful when I cling to my family at the cost of my future life (job, wife, family, etc.). So I guess I’ve just learned (and I think this kinda oes for all college kids out there) that when I’m in Nashville, I focus on Nashville, and when I’m at home, I focus on home. But I don’t focus on home while I’m in Nashville–that’s not good. Gosh I hope that made sense…

Jesus really made my day on Wednesday. He helped me through my last speech of the semester, helped me perform well in piano seminar, helped me perform well at my drum lesson, and sent lots of people my way to encourage me, and even to bless me with free toothpaste since I left mine at home over break. (Haha long story…)

Read Feed, by M.T. Anderson. I read it for one of my classes, it’s entertaining and reads incredibly fast. It’s one of those books about futuristic societies that creatively displays through metaphor the harmful effects of elements of mass media on individuals. It’s got a little potty language (the only thing I really didn’t like about it), but if you look past that I think you’ll find a really insightful commentary on the state of the world we live in.

If you could, please be praying for me. I’m helping to start a youth ministry at a church in Gallatin called Free Indeed Fellowship. How God put me there is a long story. (I might have actually told it in one of my blogs, I don’t remember.) There aren’t very many youth at that church right now (i.e. like 3). So please pray that God would allow youth to flood this church and that he would anoint the leadership to guide kids in Gallatin to what they really need and are really looking for: a real encounter with a real Jesus.

Thanks for making it through my random thoughts once again. Thank you Jesus for my family, the month of December, Starbucks, your unfailing love and forgiveness, making girls attractive (hey…just being honest, okay?), sunshine, and friends who read this big thing of nonsense. Peace and love.

Does telling yourself you believe something mean you believe it?

Alright so, this is one of the longer journal entries I have made, but I promise you it is completely worth the read if you have the time.

Have you ever had someone say something to you that completely changed the way you saw yourself or the world, or it freed you from some attitude you had, and the person didn’t even intend for it to do that, but what they did accomplished that anyway?

Yeah, that happened today. And it was my private classical piano teacher.

I walked into my lesson, exchanged “greetings” with my teacher, and sat down at the piano. “I thought you played very well at seminar last week, Aaron.”

Thinking back to seminar last week… oh boy. Yikes. Seminar is the time of week where push comes to shove with piano lessons. Seminar is where you play what you’ve been working on in your private lesson for a bunch of other piano students. Luckily for me, I got over my sense of stage fright long ago in high school… or so I thought, until the first day I had to play at seminar. Last week, I played a Chopin Etude (Op. 10 No. 3 for all you classical music junkies) that I’d been working on since last summer… or at least I attempted to play it. If you’ve never heard it, it basically has ABA (exposition, development, recapitulation) form, where the A part is very smooth, legato, lush, beautiful, singing melody, etc.; the B section is faster and definitely technically harder. It has this subsection about 7 or 8 measures long that’s just a sequence of diminished 7ths in both hands, ascending and descending all over the place. It is so difficult and fast and demanding and treacherous, that if you miss one note in it you’ve lost the whole thing–there’s no way to recover. So, guess what I did? The piece was going just beautifully–all the way through the A theme, and even into some of the faster, more technically demanding parts of B. When I got to the really hard part… I completely crashed and burned in front of everybody. It wasn’t that I hadn’t practiced it like crazy–I had.

“I think I just got nervous, Dr. Landes,” I said. “It’s like every time I get to that part, I lose my concentration. I know that I can’t lose my concentration or else I’ll lose control. But I get nervous every time and I start thinking ‘oh no, what if I lose my concentration?’ But ironically, the second I think about losing my concentration, I’ve already lost my concentration and the whole piece falls apart.”

My professor replied with this. “It sounds like you just need to trust yourself, Aaron. And trusting yourself is something that you learn. You’ve got to trust that you know the piece. It’s not enough to just know the piece; you’ve got to KNOW that you know it, so that when the part comes up, it doesn’t even phase you. But the question is: do you REALLY know it? Finger memory is NOT knowing the piece. If you’re in the middle of that hard section and one of your fingers slips, you’ve lost it. You’ve got to be able to look at the keyboard and say to yourself, ‘I know where the chord is. It’s right here.’ You’ve got to know that you know it so that in those moments of existential self-doubt, you can say ‘nonsense! I know that I know this piece!’”

I think Dr. Landes said more to me than he meant to when he said this. His words, in effect, freed me of a mental disease that had been plaguing my mind since childhood. Let me explain.

I grew up in what you’d call a pentecostal church. Around me there were always people getting healed, people speaking in tongues, people prophesying, people manifesting demonic spirits and getting delivered, and so on and so forth. Naturally, I just accepted this stuff to be true–what else was I supposed to do? I had no reason to question it. I just believed it.

What I didn’t realize though, is that I really didn’t believe ANYTHING that was going on. I agreed with it, simply because I had no reason to disagree. I knew it simply because I didn’t know anything else. But, even to this day, to employ Dr. Landes’ analogy, it was all finger memory to me–I only knew it because I had been around it so much. Basically, I “knew that I knew” that it was all real, or at least I told myself that, but I didn’t actually KNOW that it was real! (If that makes any sense.) It never sunk into me at the heart level.

This wave of unsureness about what I believe has became all the more apparent to me in college now, as I’ve tried to take a stand for things I believe about God and found that I don’t really know how to explain them to people. Why? Well, the Bible says that out of the heart the mouth speaks. When I try to speak about God to other people that don’t believe what I’d been brought up to believe, I find that I have no words to say because I search my heart and all I find is a lot of confusion about what I actually believe myself. So, naturally, I resort to what I’ve heard about God, what other people tell me, and I try in a messy, jumbled effort to pass this lifeless head knowledge along to the unfortunate listener.

On example is when I try to tell people about the awesome stuff God does at Soldiers of Light church. When I’m trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t understand it (which may or may not be you–just warning you), more often than not I find myself tongue-tied because I can’t escape my own fear that what goes on there is freaky, scary, and fake.

Traditionally, I haven’t been able to bring up any of my doubts about spiritual things because I’ve been afraid of being labeled as a “doubter” or a “heretic” or somehow being excluded from the group. Whenever I try to tell other people about the things I believe, I always find myself unable to speak, and here’s why. I have to be extremely careful of what I say, because I have to make sure everything that I say is true and jibes with what everyone else around me believes. I used to be afraid that if I ever spoke from my heart, I’d say something that didn’t agree with the Bible, and I’d be written off as “one of those Christians who has deficient doctrines or heretical beliefs.” So anytime I would pray with a group of people, I’d never every pray from my heart–I’d always pray from my head because I had to use words and beliefs and doctrines that I knew other people would agree with.

What’s also been a struggle for me is seeing the stuff I’ve grown up with take place, and knowing that it’s real, but not believing it. Let me explain. I went to Soldiers of Light church the first weekend of school here, back in August. Pastor Tony prophesied over me–if you don’t know what that means, it means that God told him some stuff about me and he just passed along the message. Some of the stuff was what is called a “word of knowledge,” meaning that God revealed to Pastor Tony things that were already true in my life and I knew about, but Tony would only have known them had he spoken to me beforehand about them, which he didn’t. For example, a few things the Lord told Tony that night were that I play drums, I work with youth, and I travel–these are all true. I’ve played drums for 10 years, I’ve been involved with leading worship for youth for the last couple years, and I’ve been traveling over the last couple years also to minister musically and spiritually to youth at camps and conferences. The fact that he knew all this without me or anyone else telling him is a big reason for me to believe that he’s not making it up, that what he’s doing is really true. He then went on to the more prophetic part of his message, which means that he told me things about myself that I didn’t know at that time. A few things he said to me were, “you’re going to travel, but you will be more prepared,” “you’re going to work with youth at a greater level,” and “someone’s about to be your partner.” (See bottom of this entry if you want to find out whether these prophetic words are being fulfilled or not.) All this is reason for me to believe that it’s real and that God really does this stuff. But for some reason, I feel this immense sense of fear and doubt whenever I try to tell anyone about it. Some people might say, “that’s the devil,” but in this case I really feel like it’s because I believe it in my head, but not my heart. To be honest, I’m not even sure whether I fully understand the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge yet.

Lately this conflict with what I say I believe and what I really believe has been surfacing in a way that has been bringing me down in an unhealthy way. Ever since I got to college, I’ve really been desiring to have the ability to speak prophetic words to people, and have them be correct and significantly affect their lives. I’ve also been desiring to lay hands on the sick and debilitated and see them recover on the spot. I’d like to say that I believe this stuff can happen, but honestly, I don’t. In my head I do, because I don’t want to be seen by my Christian peers as a “doubter.” But in reality, when I see someone get healed of a sinus infection or neck injury right before my eyes, (both of which have happened during the last two months), and I’m afraid to tell people about what happened, now I see that this is a big fat red flag to me, signaling that even though I saw it happen with my very own eyes, I didn’t accept it in my heart. Same with prophecy–since I’ve been around it for so long, and I’ve been prophesied to several times, by friends, pastors, and famous men and women of God, I’ve never really asked myself if I really believed that it’s legit–I just passively OK’ed it, and swept any subconscious doubt I had under the rug, to avoid the fear of confrontation.

Here’s the worst part about doing this: it’s caused me to contrive spiritual things and tell myself that they’re from God because I was afraid of failing. To be more precise, when I was like 12 or so, I wanted to be filled with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues. But I didn’t really want to; I just wanted it because it was what my friends were doing and maybe I wanted to impress them or impress my parents or something… actually I don’t really know. So when someone laid his hands on me and prayed for me, and told me “if you start hearing any strange sounds just let them out,” I started making them up because I didn’t want to be the one kid who didn’t get filled with the Holy Spirit. To be completely honest, even right now as I’m typing this, I’m not 100% sure that I do speak in tongues… I might still be making it up. But I’m happy to do whatever it takes to defeat that unbelief and get to a point where I believe in my heart that speaking in tongues really is legit, even though it sounds weird, because I’ve seen people who speak in tongues, and what they do–I’ve seen broken bones healed, I’ve seen lame people in wheelchairs get up and walk. That’s one thing that I believe in my heart, based on the things I’ve witnessed: God CAN do miracles, even today. But I have a hard time believing in my heart that I personally can do these things. Unfortunately, I’ve been too afraid to admit this in the presence of other Christians who believe it…

…and it’s killing me.

Now as I try to prophesy to other people, I get this wave of doubt every time–what if what I have to say to this person isn’t really true, or from God, what if it’s just me making it up? What if I lay hands on this person and pray for them, and they DON’T recover; what will they think of me then? These are the doubts that I have swept under the rug coming out. They’re under the rug because I’m afraid of bringing them up before my Christian peers. But now I realize what’s really going on: when I try to prophesy, it’s all “finger memory,” because I’ve been around it so long and gone through the motions so many times that I just expect it to come out perfectly, the same way I expected that hard section of the Chopin Etude to come out perfectly. The reason why neither of these things happened is that I didn’t really KNOW either of them. I didn’t know that Chopin Etude by heart, and I didn’t believe in my heart that prophecy is legit, even though I believe the things that have been prophesied over me by other people. Does that make sense?

It’s kind of like this. I have listened to the recording of that Chopin Etude in E Major probably a million times. I have heard my teacher pull it off. I have heard other people pull it off. I don’t doubt that it can be done. What I DO doubt is that I can do it. And no matter how much I tell myself that I can do it, and maybe even believe in my head that I can, the truth always comes out when I get to that part of the piece in front of an audience–I can’t do it, I always mess up. Because I don’t KNOW the piece!

Aha, now I see it. There is a distinct difference between wishful thinking and true belief. What’s the difference? Well, in one, God is involved, and in the other, He’s not.

I met with my spiritual life assistant (SLA), Stephen, this evening. We were talking about Revelation and the end times and we got on the subject of the rapture. Stephen noted how one pastor he had heard said something to the effect of, “I’m not trying to change your beliefs or change the Bible or doctrine or anything–all I’m saying is that I don’t see evidence in the Bible that there will be a rapture in the sense that we will be snatched from the Earth–to me, the “rapture” seems more like Jesus coming to Earth and making it new again.”

I don’t know whether this view is right or wrong. I haven’t read the Bible enough to where I’d be able to apply it to this argument. But I do know that there’s either going to be a rapture, or there isn’t. Both cannot be true at the same time. And so there are two choices I can make: 1) find out which one is true, and then preach that the other one is false, because if I pretended that they’re both true and was okay with that, I would lose my mind; or, 2) sweep one of these teachings “under the rug” and pretend I never heard it. This obviously is not a very effective way to go about searching for truth. But frankly it’s what I’ve been doing with counterarguments to my faith for as long as I’ve been alive.

I told Stephen all this stuff, and after we got done chatting, I was walking to the Curb Cafe to get my dose of Starbucks. While I was walking there, something felt different–and I KNOW that I know that I wasn’t making this up or imagining it. I felt like I had been freed from something. I felt refreshed. I felt…I dunno… new. Like something had been lifted off my shoulders. I suddenly felt incredibly happy, incredibly honest, incredibly real. A couple other things that happened on the way there–walking past the Curb Event Center/Maddox Grand Atrium, I looked up and I swear I saw a purple up there on the side of the building. It was like someone was shining a purple light on the windows, but I seriously looked around me, looking for a purple light or any reason I could find to show that it was an actual light. I couldn’t find anything! Last night, I was listening to a man tell me about how he can visually see the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is purple. I believe that the Holy Spirit is real, but at first I didn’t really believe that he could see what he claimed to see (although I probably would have told him that I did believe it). Now I’m starting to wonder. I looked away, and back; away, and back; hoping that the purple would go away so I knew that it was just my eyes. It wasn’t. No matter how hard I tried to imagine that the purple wasn’t there, it was still there, and there was absolutely no apparent physical reason for it! On my way back from getting coffee, I saw something in the air swirling around me. I’ll try to describe it; it was almost like I saw a wisp of air flit from my left side to my right side, really really fast. Again, I know that this wasn’t my imagination–I SAW it. I’ve heard Pastor Tony talking about how he can see angels. Again, this is a situation where I “believed” him (or rather suppressed my doubts) because I was afraid of not believing in God. But I didn’t truly believe him. Now I might be starting to. I think I might have seen an angel fly around me. One other thing. I am finding it way incredibly easier to socialize with people! I’ve been praying that God would remove all the walls of social isolation that I built up around myself during homeschool, and I can see that He’s finally starting to answer my prayer. I always find it hard to initiate small talk–it’s flowing out of me naturally now, for some reason.

I don’t know what all of this means. All I’m trying to say is that whatever my piano teacher said to me this afternoon, I believe (in my heart!) that God used it to teach me about the difference between telling myself I believe something and really believing it. Something I’ve been needing to come to terms with for a very, very long time.

I used to wonder why it was so easy for me to believe in God, and so hard for my friends to do so. What I realize now is that I never really believed in God, I just told myself that I did, in order to avoid conflict with my family and people at my church. I think that in order to truly believe something in your heart, you’ve got to have that belief challenged, and although you may have legitimate doubt, you’ve got to overcome it without running away from it. It’s sort of the way your body handles viruses; once a certain type passes through your body, you become immune to it and that particular virus never can come back. Once a certain objection to your belief enters your brain, challenges you for a little while, but you finally overcome it, it can’t come back and plague you anymore. I think head knowledge might be a gift that God has granted to us so that while we are in the process of doubting things in our hearts, we may not lose hold of them completely. I might be wrong about that…but that’s where I’m at right now.

To all my Christian brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers: please don’t be freaked out if I question beliefs that I once appeared to believe. All I am doing is seeking to safely store them in my heart instead of just trying to convince myself that I believe them when on the inside I never really did. All I’d ask for is your patience and guidance as I seek to build a strong foundation for my beliefs on the rock of ages: Jesus Christ.

To anyone reading this who hasn’t come to a belief in Christ: my hope is that all this has made sense to you. If not, I’d be more than happy to talk to you about anything you have questions about, and not to “implant my beliefs” in your head by any means–nah, just simply to seek truth. I’m really not judgmental, or self-righteous, or anything like that… I’m just a young man seeking truth like all the rest of us.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9, KJV).

—————————————————————–

*Let me just share some confirmation of this message, so that if you’re skeptical about the whole prophecy thing, you might have more reason to believe it. A few days after Tony spoke this word to me, I got a call from my good friend Sam in North Dakota, who had ministered alongside me at a couple youth camps/conferences. She asked me to be her “prayer PARTNER.” Since the Lord had told me through Pastor Tony that someone was about to be my partner, I both accepted her request and believed even more firmly that what Pastor Tony prophesied was indeed true, directly from God, and not made up. About the youth, I was praying for God to show me where to get involved here with youth, and I miraculously met a youth minister who was praying for God to send him a piano player. Can you say, puzzle pieces? So that’s a fulfillment of that part. About the traveling, I’ve been approached about the possibility of traveling to Panama Beach, FL, over Spring Break ’08 for a mission trip, and as I look at the way God’s been purifying my heart and mind lately, I can see that He’s already begun to prepare me for this. These are all just beginnings of fulfillments of this prophecy that was given to me back in August–there’s more coming and I believe it.