return

no father should ever live to bury his own son.

but to see your dad speak Isaiah 55:8 over himself and your family in the midst of grief and sorrow and unanswered questions.. it renewed a hope in me which i never thought needed to be renewed.

you're home now, Mark. face-to-face with the Beautiful One.

til we meet again, singing together unto the King.

hiatus

this is my success: to love You and be loved by You.

to love You and be loved by You.

intenerate

i'm a mess. i'm a mess. i'm a mess.

but i'm loved. i'm loved. i'm loved.

by my King, and that's all that matters.

treasure

"In Philippians 3:13 Paul said, "One thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind." Part of our offering to the Lord is forgetting our dedication and personal sacrifice. Paul counted them as nothing. We do not stand before the Lord and calculate how much we have given Him in prayer, fasting, finances, and persecution. We forget all that because our glory is not found in anything we can give.

Our glory is in being loved by Him and in the anointing to love Him. That alone gives us value. When we become preoccupied with our sacrifice, religious pride steals in, and our motives become corrupt.

We also should forget our accomplishments. God doesn't look at spiritual résumés. The great revivals we lead, the Bible schools we started, the ministries we run—these are not our offering. No matter how many people we lead to the Lord or how many sermons we preach or how many people grow to spiritual maturity under our leadership, these mean nothing when compared to the privilege of knowing Christ. We should discount them, let them go. God will reckon them in proper balance when we get to heaven, but for us there is nothing so valuable as simply knowing God.

For this reason we should also let our failures go. These can distract us more than our accomplishments. Paul tells us to forget all these things and press in to God's heart with a spiritual violence, reaching toward the prize with all the energy we have.

That's how we want to live. We want to be a people of one thing: forgetting what is behind and pressing in to what is ahead. That's how we become men and women after God's own heart."

— After God's Own Heart, Mike Bickle

this book? crazy. too good.

meraki

we're all authors, but we're just a little different.

some of us write in melodies and harmonies. the tone of our words carried by legatos and arpeggios.

some of us write in rhythmic sways and twirls. flourishing, then withering, all in graceful majesty.

some of us write in brushstrokes and colors. in words defined by shades and hues.

but all of us have this one thing in common: we write the storybook of our lives, daily.

with the breaths that we take. the words we utter. the love we give.

we're all authors, but not all authors are writers.

sufficient

You are good.

in the pain. in the tears. in the disappointment. in the aching. in the grieving. in the quiet. in the silence. in the dry and weary land. in the anger. in the bitterness. in the mess.

in it all, You are good. and that's enough for me. 

it has to be.

nemesism

i'm not the only one not sleeping.

he stirs and lurks in that dark, dusty corner. his presence steals every ounce of peace that i had owned.

i finally fall into deep slumber, but he is there still; he haunts my dreams. i suffocate in my dreams, as they strangle my understanding.

i wake, and he is there still, the bitterness of yesterday.

she is there still, the envy of former days and former selves.

i struggle against the waves of bitterness, gasping for breaths of peace and love, but i find myself drowning in the overwhelming currents of anger and rage.

overdependence

"In Acts 2, Peter is filled. In Acts 4, he needs to be refilled. Why? If you are doing this right, you must get filled often. There is one baptism. But we are to live in such a way that we give away all we've got, while our capacity for Him increases.

Needing to be refilled is not a sign of something gone wrong. Continual dependence on more is a good thing."

— Bill Johnson, Hosting the Presence

wear

i feel like my heart is on the brink of imploding.

that all it would take would be for someone to prod my heart, to further agitate what's already stirring.

i don't understand how mind and heart and soul can be so contradictory and in conflict with spirit.

i don't get the waves of depression that i constantly fight and drown in, even when the atmosphere and people and everything around me tell me otherwise.

i don't comprehend how to truly lay down a hundred percent of my affections at Your feet, and for them to be given wholly to You.

i've come to realize that my little heart can only take so much.

oh it can only take so much.

my afflictions eclipsed by Your glory

"Somewhere deep within we may still be asking, "Jesus, why am I suffering this way?" But before long that question, as valid as it may be, will be superseded by another one. 

Standing at the foot of the cross, we begin to ask, "Jesus, how can it be that You would suffer in that way?"

— Matt & Beth Redman, Blessed be Your Name

hold my heart

i'm not sure.

i'm not sure about tomorrow. i'm not sure what i'll be doing five / ten / twenty years from now. i'm not sure about my career. i'm not sure about my calling.

i'm not sure about my feelings. i'm not sure what you feel about me. i'm not sure about the mess that is my emotions and affections.

i'm not sure if i'm a sinner struggling to love God, or a lover of God struggling with sin.

i'm not sure about these things i cling onto. i'm not sure about the whys. i'm not sure about certain things i say, and certain things i do.

still i cling.

concerning leadership

"When Christ said, "Let the leader become as one who serves," He did not mean the leader ceases to be a leader. Even while He was on His knees washing the disciples feet, no one doubted who the leader was."

— John Piper, Desiring God

irene

you've probably heard of the phrase "hurt people, hurt people" right?

quite true, isn't it? and tragic.

it's easy to take offence when we get hurt, but even easier to use this phrase to condemn the person that hurt us.

there are two ways we could interpret / construe / use this phrase. the first being a statement to use against someone. to condemn, or to shame. which is to say, to further hurt him or her. you've hurt me so that means you're hurt so shame on you for being hurt then hurting me in the process because i am sooo much more important than you.

yikes.

or you could look at it from a different perspective. the perspective of love. to have someone hurt you, yet keep a cool head and take time to consider the fact that the tragedy is not that you got hurt, but that somewhere along the line he or she got hurt first. and now that you know this, what can you do to ease that hurt? 

it's not easy, heck no. but it is the right and better thing is it not?

harbor

i wish i didn't have a heart. life would be so much easier that way. no need to deal with feelings and emotions, affections and attachments. loving Him would be so much easier. because my heart is such a fool. because my heart strays from the course and falls for pretty things and ideas and people, and it only ends with me getting hurt. and it's stupid how much it hurts. pathetic.

i am restricted by my affections.

then again, what would life be like without the heart? is a relationship with Father even possible without a heart? because out of the heart is birthed mercy that overrules judgement. faith that overthrows reason. hope that steadies the soul. love that covers all wrongs.

but let the King of my heart be the anchor in the storm, the mountain where i run, the shadow where i hide. Father, you are my song.

grazie

"Avoid those who seek friends in order to maintain a certain social status or to open doors they would not otherwise be able to approach.

Stay close to those who are interested in opening only one important door: the one to your heart. They will never invade your soul without your consent or shoot a deadly arrow through that open door.

Friendship is like a river; it flows around rocks, adapts itself to valleys and mountains, occasionally turns into a pool until the hollow in the ground is full and it can continue on its way. Just as the river never forgets that its goal is the sea, so friendship never forgets that its only reason for existence is to love other people."

— Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra

~

here's to genuine friends who care about others more than themselves. even if it were only for a season, i'm grateful to be able to journey with you.

aeipathy

have you ever liked someone? of course you have.

do you know the way their presence somehow makes everything seem brighter? i bet you do. you just feel happier they're around, don't you? their joy infectiously becomes your joy as well, and the insignificant things become so much more meaningful when it's shared with them.

yet there are times when they destroy you, albeit unintentionally. like when they choose to sit with someone else for a meal. or even through the little things. like forgetting to say goodbye, or not keeping contact for a while. even the act of saying goodbye could break your heart, simply because you don't ever want to.

it's quite amazing how one person could bring so much joy yet so much pain at the same time.

and maybe that's how our Father feels about us most of the time?

mindset, heartset

"Intense focus restricts what you're willing and able to see. And while this approach will keep you from seeing many things, it will also open your eyes to see more of what you hunger for.

Self-control is not the ability to say no to a thousand other voices. It's the ability to say yes to the one thing so completely that there's nothing left to give to the other options."

— Bill Johnson, Hosting the Presence

carousel

as kids we grew up watching the ones we looked up to most pushing, pulling, bending, breaking, crashing, hurting, leaving.

now we've grown up and here we are pushing, pulling, bending, breaking, crashing, hurting.

and maybe soon, leaving.

habromania

one day, we woke up and we knew everything. we rose from our slumber, and in our minds, we had all the answers. everything just made sense.

we were gods, and so was everyone else. the world was perfect. flawless.

and dead.

life lost its luster, lost its meaning. we tried our best, masquerading as the divine, parading our knowledge best we could. all this, a lie. masks covering our druxy.

our prayers, what we thought would be blessings to us, turned into a curse laid heavily upon us.

so we chase sleep. we chase after dreams. that which we longed so much for, now we despise; and that which we once despised, now we yearn for. the irony.

it's who we are as humans, easily dissatisfied.

maybe that's the price of maturity: discontentment.

and so we chase. we chase an end to all.

what was once something we would so eagerly kill for, caused us to seek Death himself.

sciamachy

some days, words fail. today is one of those days.

but this, this will suffice.

orphic

she is / was like the ocean.

raging, yet still. fierce, yet gentle. tempestuous, and harmonious, all at once.

maybe that's why i love the ocean so much, because it reminds me of her.

or maybe that's why i love her so much, because she reminds me of the ocean.

despite it all, i'd still choose the riddles of her voice over the roiling of the deepest of seas.

niente

someone once said that, sometimes we won't get the answers. sometimes all He gives is hope.

and sometimes hope is all we have left. 

and maybe it's all we need.

a little late, but happy new year. let's place our hope in the right person / place / position this year.

let's keep looking to Him.