High Fidelity, Must Love Dogs, Martian Child, Being John Malkovich, Say Anything, Serendipity*, America’s Sweethearts*, The Thin Red Line*, Anastasia*, and Shadows and Fog.

I don’t know why I’ve been watching all this.  I guess it’s mostly for movies like Must Love Dogs, High Fidelity, Serendipity, and Say Anything.  In all those movies you know that it’s going to work out but John’s character is going through a kind of hell before it all works out.

This makes me think about Adam in the garden.  Does anyone ever realize that Adam was created with a penis.  So here’s Adam, created for sexual interaction with Woman but there is no Woman.  Adam had to go through this period of what I envision as intense longing first.  Imagine it.  Adam is created for Woman but there is no Woman.  There never has been, ever.

Then one days God says “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”  I think Adam may have known this.  ”Yes, God I am alone.  What’s the deal?  We should fix that!”  So what does God do?  He brings all the animals before Adam and has him name them and Adam was still alone.  God knew Adam would still be alone after naming the animals.  It’s almost as if Adam had to go through being alone before Woman was created.

He had to suffer.  He had to deal with loneliness.  He walked with God and there was something missing.  He worked his job and was still incomplete.  He had the company of animals and that wasn’t enough.

God had Woman planned from the beginning but doesn’t seem to even tell Adam about it.

We all have these deep craving to do something or be something.  It’s because we are created for something.  The problem is, sometimes all we have is the longing.  We don’t even know what it’s for but it’s a longing as deep as the soul because we were made for a purpose.  And sometimes God doesn’t tell us right away and all we have is the longing.

So Adam tries everything.  He has this craving and he is active about it.  He tries everything that may bring him to his full purpose.  And then one day God reveals His plan.  Just out of the blue, without warning, after Adam has tried with all his might to fill this craving.

I think in my life I’m naming animals right now and trying to tend my garden and walk with God, but I’m craving something.  I’m not even sure what I’m craving but something tells me that I’m not created for the 9-5 weekly grind and I know I’ve cried at the thought of one day being a father (good cry).  I think the most horrible thing about being single is not having someone to buy flowers for and to cheer up on grey days.  I don’t know what else I can try to do.  I just hope that one day God will knock me out and I’ll wake up and see that there is something beautiful there that wasn’t there before.

One of God’s biggest plans for Adam was for him to father a lot of children.  I am convinced that this desire was in Adam’s soul long before Woman was created.  God please reveal to me what this desire in my soul is for.  I want my story to end like Serendipity not Being John Malkovich.

This sentence has been rattling around my brain all week.  Then I started reading the book of John.  I got into chapter three and I saw something I’d never noticed before.  

In John 3:14 Jesus says “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.”

Here Jesus is referring to four verses in Numbers.  It’s a really weird story.

Numbers 21:6-9, “The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.  So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people.  Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.” And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.”

“Hope is for people who have no power.”

The people of Israel were being bitten by fiery snakes and were dying.  Running to family or physician didn’t help.  The only thing that could cure the bite was to look upon the bronze serpent.  Jesus has taken the place of that bronze serpent.

However, we are still being bit.  We are dying and in need of healing.  We are all incomplete, longing, hurting, searching for something to fill the gap.  Are we trying to hold onto power and suck the poison out ourselves or have we surrendered?

The truth is the only way we can be healed is by look to Jesus and surrendering any small bit of power we have.  That is the only way we find hope and begin living to our fullest potential, healed.

I often put this responsibility on the shoulders of a significant other.  However, I’m starting to suspect that the intense wanting to not be lonely could possibly be what’s driven me to go too far physically with girls in the past.  

We started talking about how guys and girls view relationships differently.  How guys normally compartmentalize their friends whereas girls don’t.  Then Nick said something possibly profound.  

The problem is, he said, is that we’re not compartmentalizing loneliness at all.  He went on to share that when he moved to Ohio with his wife he was “guy lonely” and that we could compartmentalize it further to include “girl lonely” and “lip lonely.”  He then concluded that since I had been in contact with guys and girls today I must be “lip lonely.”

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with that, but I think it means something.

The next part is what I’ve been chewing on.  In the later part of chapter 14, the day after God tells the people they would wander 40 year it says, “In the morning, however, they rose up early and went up to the ridge of the hill country, saying, ‘Here we are, we have sinned, but we will go up to the place which the Lord has promised.’” And they were defeated.

So the question is, can I sin and completely screw up what God’s good plan for my life is.  Have I screwed anything up this bad?

I’ve been told by Ps. Simon that God has an ultimate plan and if we don’t walk out our plan He’ll use someone else.  So maybe it’s about will.  When given the opportunity to live out my purpose in life am I afraid?  Maybe the point of the story is that generation of Israelites said they weren’t strong enough to take the promise land so God used someone else. 

Jesus’ sacrifice covers all our transgressions and sin.  However, we still have a choice in how we live after grace.  At the point of salvation we all get an opportunity to look to God to see what incredible plan he wants to work in our lives or we can slink away and fall into the cycle of fear and repentance, fear and repentance.  The comforting thing is that God’s grace is sufficient in spite of what choice we make.

Maybe a good example of this is fear of commitment between couples.  I recently had one person who’s very close to me get dumped because her boyfriend of 4 years wasn’t sure he could commit.  She really loved him and would have been a loving wife to him, but his fear stopped him from taking the next step.  If he won’t love her, someone else will.

You know God is a loving God and we are his children.  I believe we are all his children even if you don’t believe in God.

“You know what I ask people sometimes, I ask them “hey if you had a child and he came by and knocked your coffee off the table you’d say, ‘no don’t do that’ and then maybe the child comes back and knocks your books off the table and you say ‘no don’t do that’ and then maybe he takes your laptop out.  Then you take the toddler home and you put him in the bathtub and just let the water rise because you are angry and you drown the child.”  I ask people sometimes, “what would you do to a person like that.”  They say maybe put that person’s head under water or put that person in jail.

Now I don’t think God would just drown his children because he’s angry.  So the story about Noah in the Bible, I just don’t believe that part; didn’t happen.  I just don’t believe that God would do that to his children.

I also don’t believe God told Moses to have the Israelites kill all those people who they fought for the promised land.  They would go to battle, win and then have captive all the women and children and God told Moses to kill all the women and children.  That’s not just a few children it was a lot.  It’s like filling New Albany High School full of children and killing them.

So I don’t believe God told Moses or the other people in the Old Testament to do that.  But what I do believe is that even though Moses and those other people did horrible things.

So say you want to climb Mt. Everest and maybe your parents tell you “hey you can’t do that” but you work up for because it’s something you really want and you finally get to the point where you might be able to do it.  I think that with God maybe before I was born I asked to be stretched in life so I could be stronger.  I used to get mad when bed things happened to me like when I would get a flat tire or something and I don’t believe it’s God’s will that I have a flat tire, but I don’t get mad anymore because I just remember, hey I asked for this before I was born.”

Ok, there you go.  Now let me tell you my favorite insight from C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy.  Man is not inherently evil.  Everything that Man does that is evil was originally intended for good.  In the book men want to kill an intelligent alien race (which also had a spirit in the likeness of God).  They were considered bent because it is natural to love one’s own race but bend for that to translate to the destruction of another race.

For this man it was true that God is a father and that God is loving.  However, it is bend to then discredit the Bible based on moments where pain appears in the Old Testament.  I will be honest, I have been greatly puzzled by God’s actions in the Old Testament.  And I struggle with the killing that the man was so adamantly against.  I can not discredit the Bible though or pick and choose what I believe from the text.  It is what it is.  I believe that God is bigger than a book, but I also believe that God speaks to us through the scriptures and they are divine.

If something is challenging it’s ok to be unnerved.  It’s also ok to be shaken and rattled.  Those very struggles we wrestle with are the very things that in the end make our faith strong.

” Every song a gift from God?”

I just thought I would pass this bit of thought onto everyone.

Today I got a message that asked:

After all, every song is a gift from God.

What about Cannibal Corpse – Stripped, Raped, and Strangled?

My answer:

I believe music and song writing is a God given gift. But just like anything else this gift can be used in different ways.

I choose to worship God with the music I write.
If I chose not to I would have no less of a gift.

It’s kind of like a pocket knife. If can be used to carve wood, cut cloth or open boxes.

No matter how a person uses the pocket knife (even in ways in which I don’t agree) it is no less a gift or a possession of that person.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that just because I believe that music is a gift from God it doesn’t mean that I think that all music glorifies or worships him. A lot of music doesn’t.

Have a nice day and God bless.

———————————————-

I believe that God invented music to worship him.

I believe that some artists worship God without knowing it.

I also believe that some artists use their gift against God.

All my songs are God themed. In the core they are all about a young Christian man stumbling through life, relying on grace and those whom he meets along the way.

(Do note that I am not trying to say anything against Cannibal Corpse. I have not listened to any of their music and plead complete ignorance to anything they stand for or sing about. I only know the name because it was enclosed in the message which I received.)

This is not a blog about my day to day events or about my music or about religion or politics.

It is about revelation and adding to the discussion.

Which discussion you ask? The one about the mystery of life, why we are here, and what we are made for. A word that may describe this blog may be ‘spiritual’ in that it is about the moments when I discover something new about life, or stumble upon something that gets my brain pondering in an unusual way.

It is about being a worshipwannabe. A worshipwannabe is a person that wants to live a life of worship but understands he or she has serious downfall or stumbling points.

Let me explain.

The concept behind worshipwannabe was and is that worship isn’t a type of music but a lifestyle that should encompass our whole being. The end result is that a person, not an action, is the embodiment of worship. It is man in his/her perfection, it is also something everyone falls short of being, making us all wannabes.

I will be posting things as they are revealed to me. I hope this become something special that you all enjoy.