| who's really in charge? |

Jesus is supposed to be the Lord of our lives...

Why is it that I feel that this is not the case? I feel like so often, I am the bottom line for decisions that need to be made. I'm the one who chooses what I do everyday. I choose my moods and I decide if I'm going to have a good day, a great day, or a crappy day. I decide what I want to do with my money, I decide if I even want to make money on a particular day. I get to make the rules for myself, and I choose whether or not I want to follow them or not. I have rights, I have privileges, and I can assign or retract both from my life as I deem necessary. I wake myself up in the morning and I put myself to sleep every night. I survive my days and my nights. I don't have to listen to anything that people say, because I am my own person. I stand on my own two feet. I look out for myself, no one else wants to do such things for me. I can't trust people, because they let me down.

When I was pledging for my fraternity, there was a rule that all the pledges had to adhere to. We were not allowed to refer to ourselves in the first person at all. This was crazy, most people thought. All the pledges had to refer to themselves in the third person only. That meant that we couldn't use the words: I, me, my, mine, or myself. This really drove my friends crazy, as well as my pledge brothers. It was really hard to see what the point of speaking in third person was. What I realized as we went on in this process, was the fact that there are a lot of times where we refer to ourselves in our everyday thoughts, prayers, or conversations. Having to change my pattern every time I was about to mention something about myself made me pay special attention to just how often I used such words. After a while, I realized that I was pretty self absorbed. Almost everything that came out of my mouth referred to me. I saw how easy it was to put myself into everything, and not to put God into anything.

One of the secrets that we like to hide from God and from each other sometimes is the fact that we like control. We like to be able to have control of all kinds of things. We like to control situations, feelings, and outcomes. Lots of times when we get frustrated about things, it is because we cannot control circumstances that surround us. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten angry because something did not go the way that I planned it, or something that I couldn't control hampered my plans. I think we like to have the last say in lots of things. We are raised in a society that is very individualistic, and we grow into these ideas that we are our number one priorities. We have to focus on how we feel, what we get out of things, how things affect us, etc. At work, I generally seem to get mad when people don't listen to me, because I have particular insights about things. We are so quick to be able to give 95% of things up to God (actually that might be pretty high), but there is that 5% that God is just not allowed to touch.

"It's better if I can handle that one God"

How much sense does that make? He created us, He provides for us, and we can't give Him everything? All He asks is that we trust Him, and allow Him to shoulder our burdens. What's better than being free of troubles, because we can give them up? We go through a lot of self inflicted suffering throughout our lives. This is mostly due to the fact that we have the mentality: "I've gotten myself into this, and I can get myself out of this." or "lemme try to fix things before I go to God about it". How often have I gone to people, complaining about the things that were going on with me, and how I couldn't do anything to change the situation, only to be met with the question: "have you prayed about it?" and me answering "not yet, I think I can figure this out". Why do we think we can figure out our own things? Why do we think that we can outwit God?! He gave us the intellect that we ABUSE most of the time.

What's the deal? What's holding us back from giving complete control of things over to God? What are we afraid of? It can't be that He will find out about the kind of people that we are, or the things we've done. If it is, I have a secret for you: HE ALREADY KNOWS! A lot of the time, we're so much harder on ourselves than God is on us. We are the ones that don't allow for forgiveness. He's all about forgiving people. We are the ones that hold on to sin and think that it somehow permanently damages us. He's quite the opposite! Once we ask for forgiveness, God completely writes things off as if they've never happened.We are made white as the freshly fallen snow in His eyes; Shouldn't that be enough for us!? How is it possible that we hold ourselves up to a higher standard than God does?

the answer is, for most of us, we are our own little gods...

time for a change yes? He is for us...For a reason!

Give up Lordship to the true Ruler and King of all creation.

I'm out...

| comfortability |

It is very clichéd, but it is true... We humans are very much creatures of habit.

Everyday I have the same morning routine. I get up. I pray. I read some scripture. I try to dwell on it. I pray again. I get out of my bed, grab my toothbrush and head to the bathroom. I wet my brush, apply toothpaste while walking back to my room, start brushing, and turn on some morning music. I brush my teeth for about 5-7 minutes (any less and I feel like I haven't done a thorough job). While brushing my teeth, I use only my right hand (my left hand is used only to hold my toothbrush while I'm rinsing my mouth out). I go back to my room and retrieve my mouthwash, gargle for about 50 seconds, then I'm off to the shower. I get dressed, and then turn my music off and head out to face the day at work.

So I admit that when it's broken down into such anal details, I do sound like I'm pretty obsessive compulsive. This has to be done the same way every time that I do it. I might sound particularly crazy, but I promise that this is not a plan of attack I come up with every night before I wake up (that plan would be the same as every other night... trying to take over the world.) I don't set things in action before each new day, just so that I can repeat it day after day. It's just the way that I've become comfortable doing things. I don't even think about it. I'm so comfortable with the process, that I really just blindly fall into doing them the way that they get done. It's only when I stop and take time to break down my actions, that I realize how specific, rigid, and crazy this all sounds to me.

That's just how it is though, right? We get stuck doing things so often, in the same exact way, that it becomes habitual to us. Living life is just that, and part of living is having things go just the way that we are used to them going. We have ideas of how things should be, and those ideas constantly stay with us, no matter what. Living with secrets is just like that. There may not be a lot of constant thought about the secrets that we have, or the specifics that keep them something to be secretive, but we are constantly carrying them with us. We hold them close to us, and a lot of times we feel lost without them. These things that we hold onto in life are things that are sometimes only understood by us. The idea is that maybe if we were to let people in on them, they would be freaked out by the secrets. Of course, we don't want to have that happen to us. With that, we decide that it'd be the best thing if we learn to live comfortably while keeping these secrets with us.

Sadly enough, the things that are the secrets in our lives usually affect how we define ourselves. For example: I would always feel alone. That was my secret... Even in a room full of people (friends or not), I could feel like no one got me or understood me. That thought constantly made me feel like I was alone. That secret led me to start alienating myself from people. I would begin to deliberately sabatoge social situations and blame things on the fact that I was made to feel like I was alone. No one understood me or cared about me, so it was ok to be solitary. I got very comfortable with living life like that. I was so comfortable in fact, that I would deny myself chances for heavy social interaction altogether. When other people would call me out for being hermit-like, I would cower in fear. I thought they would try to discredit my secret or challenge the ways that I was comfortable!

A lot of times, I think that we Christians view our faith like that too. We get comfortable in seeing our faith in the same way all the time. A lot of times, our beliefs are so static. We read the Bible with the same lens, we pray in the same way all the time. We have the same way of connecting with God, or even having ways of experiencing Him. We get set in our ways, and we have a cow when a different way is presented to us. "How can someone tell me how to relate to God?!? I've been doing it for years, and I've not had any problems." We have the tendency to really latch on to the ways that we are introduced to God, generally with little deviation.

How do we get past doing or feeling things when they are so comfortable to us? How do we open ourselves up to new ways of doing, feeling, or even experiencing things in life? We have to challenge our comfortability! This would include even our better habits. When dealing with our faith, we definitely have to think outside of the box (such a corporate idea, that I feel connected to every ceo in the universe right now). It's true though, Jesus was so revolutionary, because He was never overly comfortable with anything. He was able to be in a state of constant change.Being a certain way was not good enough for Him. Having a standard relationship with His heavenly father was not good enough for Him. When we die to our comfortability in things, we can let ourselves be open to experiencing new, different, and awesome things. Jesus was not comfortable in carrying secrets with Him. He really included His community when thinking about things and doing things. Holding onto these secrets and being comfortable with them make it hard to get rid of them. Keeping things in the open is truly freeing. In God's vision, the world was void of secrets, there was true intimacy with Him and with other people. He calls us to be part of a revolution! A revolution in which we develop real community with each other, in order to really love and uplift one another. In order to do that, we have to be able to become uncomfy with being secretive. Let's try to set ourselves free.

What are you too comfortable with?

I'm out...

| dr jekyll, mr hyde |

Being a Christian is hard...

There are really times where I want to just have things the easy way. I want to be able to do the things that everyone else does, not really thinking about the way things are, or the consequences of some of my actions. I kinda long for the blissful ignorance of not knowing how this affects my soul or my ways to heaven.

At the same time, I really don't think I would be able to live like that. Knowing God has really shown me so much, I've been able to grow in so many different ways, and understand the world around me so much better. I feel like, even though I have a lot to consider during my days, that I'm really much more ALIVE with the knowledge of Him and how He controls the things around and including me.

I had a conversation a couple of weeks back, where a friend of mine told me that I'm not really like other Christians that she has met. Which made me think about what the criteria is for being a Christian person. Am I supposed to be a rosary carrying, Bible thumping, openly judging person? Is that what people are expecting when they hear the word Christian?! Are they expecting me to jump up at them and throw the gospel down their throats? Is there the idea that I'm constantly on a "change your mind" mission?

I think we should be willing to evangelize, but I'm not going to change your mind about anything. I'm not trying to be out to just tell you that the way I think is the ONLY way in the world to go about things. The beautiful thing about Jesus is that He loves us corporately and INDIVIDUALLY. That means that I can't tell you who Jesus is to/for you. That's something that you have the pleasure of figuring out for yourself. I can help you to discern how God has been trying to get your attention, and recognize those things. In that process, it's definitely a lot of questions to be asked and lots of different options to be explored.

Back to topic though, sometimes it really seems like non-believers have life so easy. They don't have to do any worrying, and don't really seem to be held back by so many rules. However, when I think about it, I see the flip side of things. There is so much hurt in this world. So much loss and so much pain that is just rampant through our world. So many people feel alone and disconnected and have little hope. Knowing that God loves me, affords me the luxury of not having to go through things alone. I don't even have to deal with stuff completely on my own. I have a backup who is really infallible. There is a being that is much stronger than I am, who is willing to lend His strength and goodness to me. A father that is constantly on watch over me.

There's no way that I would be able to live life without Him. However, sometimes it seems that the grass really is greener on the other side. When I look into my neighbor's yard, I see all the weeds though, and I realize we're all really trying to strive to find a way to make it through the same struggles. Some of us have a little extra help... I wanna help everyone have access to the same resource.

I'm out...

| secrets |

Everyone is hiding something....

During the Intern Trek, we helped to participate in a proxy station on the campus of UNLV. This proxy station is all the new rage amongst people trying to do evangelism on college campuses. A proxy station is basically a big display which is meant to ask a probing question of people who witness it. The question that we asked on the trek was: "what are your secrets?" The premise of this question was to get some discussion about the ways in which today's society operates behind secrets. Everyone has them , and we keep them held so tight that we begin to let them dictate our existence.

There is so much drama in our world today. So much pain, so much hurt, so much mistrust. Most of this can be attributed to the fact that we are keeping secrets (many of them horrible and shameful). We keep secrets about all kinds of things, little things: (like my fear of butterflies), because we're afraid that being exposed in this very individualistic society can be certainly embarassing beyond all repair. We keep secrets about big things: (like my suicide attempt in high school), because we don't want to re-live certain problems or issues that are happening around or to us.

Whatever it really is, these secrets are supposed to stay deep down inside of us, because if they were to ever be revealed, we would be made unnecessarily exposed in front of family, friends, or strangers. This would include us keeping things from others to save face. Christians are especially fond of that one. We like to give off the idea that we are all doing quite well. A good Christian doesn't have problems, because we have God on our side! He provides for us and we don't have any reason to be hurting or struggling. There's also the popular idea that we have no reason to be complaining, because we're so much better off than millions of other people in this world. There might be some pressure for us to present ourselves as doing well, because we want to have something tangible for non-Christians to see. We have better lives, because we know God, and because of that, you should want to know Him too. This of course keeps us from letting people see the power of God. Part of the problem with us keeping secrets is that we don't let people see us suffer. If someone knows that we're having a hard time with something, we just assume that it's easiest to pray about things and leave that as it is. When non-Christians find out that we have problems, it makes us seem like we are hypocrites.

Secrets even affect our romantic relationships. As a result of our secrets, we're constantly in a back and forth game with the opposite sex. No one wants to seem more attached to someone than they are, so they have to put on some fake bravado. Instead of admitting that I have been hurt by women before, I'll just put on a "hard to get" facade, so that I don't have to deal with being real with girls. Instead of admitting that some guy has broken your heart, you'll play the "I'm going to string men along" role, because you'd rather re-gain the power that you feel men can have over you. These secrets, although maybe not always conventional secrets, can really affect our lives in deeper ways than we can imagine.

Secrets definitely murk up our relationship with God. We want to be able to hide things from Him, even though He knows what we're going through, even better than we do. Sometimes, instead of keeping a secret, we'll lock a door to a part of our life that we aren't ready for Him to be involved in. We'll give everything else up to Him, but we won't be willing to let Him behind door number 2. "You can have every other part of me God, but I have to have this thing to myself. It's all for me! No one else can have access to that." Unfortunately, when we do this, we're allowing ourselves to be opened to deception from satan. Anything that is not of God, that we attempt to hide from Him, is giving satan the opportunity to work in. When we aren't in true community, we are vulnerable to attack from satan. We are essentially, out of the position that God has set up for us. We gather strength from being with brothers and sisters in Christ. Being separated from them makes you vulnerable in a different way.

Secrets, they're tearing our world apart, one withheld story by the next. Jesus came to us so that we could regain our openness with God and with each other. We don't have to have secrets from each other. That doesn't mean that we go about spilling absolutely everything about ourselves with anyone, but we are to live in real community. Community calls us to be real with ourselves and real with others. Christianity is about having community, so if you're harboring secrets, you're really allowing yourself to be separated from community, thus instantly making your religious walk much harder than it has to be. It is not wrong to be real with each other! We need to do that, because we need each other to be looking out for each other. There is no shame in being vulnerable with family.

That's a lesson that I'm working through right now. Just thought I'd share.

I'm out...

| prince charming in training |

Yesterday, I got a text message and a question from my friend Peggy. She wanted to know, since girls dream about their prince charming from young ages, what do boys dream about.

I didn't know how to answer such things. I definitely did not think about having a princess of my own to be "rescuing" when I was younger. Peggy was right, that was kind of the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn't interested in setting things in order for the day that I might meet the woman that God has for me. I just figured that when it would happen, it would happen. Something about planning ahead did not appeal to me.

In all actuality, It wasn't until I got into my 3rd year of college that I even thought of those kinds of things. I entertained the idea of writing letters to my future wife, perhaps concocting a poem or two that I would give her on our wedding night (or something unimaginably romantic like that). That stuck for a little while. I was into reading all of these Christian relationship books. "I Kissed Dating Goodbye", "When God Writes Your Love Story", and I think there was even one called "I Gave Dating a Chance". All of these books would put these crazily romantic ideas in my head about how things should go in a relationship. I think they were ok for the most part, but really they didn't get to anything that I wanted to learn about. I was beginning to think about more of what I was looking for in a person, and building up this perfect scenario in my head about how everything would take shape.

A lot of people spend time putting thought into the type of partner the would like to find. They need to be Christian, they have to have a nice smile, must be compassionate... etc. "I want to have a prince, or a princess!" I don't think that it's wrong to be putting together ideas about the type of person you want to date/marry, but I am more into the idea of thinking about yourself.

I want to be a prince!!!

This is the way I'm thinking about things. I really do want to be some girl's prince charming someday. I'm really concerned about being someone that a woman would like to marry. Instead of putting a list of expectations/wants/desires onto someone else, I'm thinking my characteristics. (Am I someone that I would want to marry?) Am I like the person that I'm building up in my head? Am I compassionate? Am I patient? Am I loving? Am I understanding? I really want to make sure that I am embodying these things, instead of using them as the criteria to find acceptable candidates for the position of significant other. The chances are pretty good that there is a woman out there looking for the same things. I want to make sure that the lucky woman is not going to be shortchanged. I don't want to find someone who is amazingly, abundantly, and indescribably wonderful, and have them deal with ordinary ol' me, who is not bringing anything to the table for her.

I think that in focusing on myself, I am able to work with Jesus quite closely, to figure out who I am, and what kind of person He has in mind for me to be. I'm not griping with Him for not sending a particular kind of person my way, I'm looking to make myself the best I can be for Him, and in turn, He can handle the dealings of someone's heart. He'll prepare a woman for me, that is His perfect match for me, regardless of what I think that might look like.

One day, I'll hopefully find that princess, and she'll love me as her prince charming, as "charming" or not, as I may be.

I'm out...

| This is what I signed up for... |

I got to hang out with my new staff partner, Jackie today. She seems really cool. I think we're different, so that will be a great thing to work with next year. We didn't really talk a whole lot about "work" stuff, cause she just wanted to have some pure hangout/get to know each other time. I'm looking forward to getting to work with her, but I'm having some reservations about next year in general...

I've wanted to work with Intervarsity for about 4 years now. It has really been what I've aspired to. As I sit on the cusp of being able to start work with them, it is just hitting me how real this all is. I'm gonna have to be fundraising all the time. That's gonna be crazy! My mom told me that when I first told her that this is what I wanted to do, but I am just thinking about the reality of that.

Today, I think that got cemented, even though I just got back from an intern staff trek. I was in Sacramento, and I saw my boss, and he told me that he had something for me. I was presented with a large box, which was quite heavy when I think about it. It was full of envelopes and letterhead, and thank you cards.

It's really going to happen. This is the first step to my new future.

Today I got a taste of that. Next week is the area prayer retreat, and I hear from then on, my summer is over.

I'm out...

| Identity¿ |

Who Am I ?!?...

It really is hard to be able to just walk in the truth. Definitely difficult to uncover and admit to the things that make us who we are. There might be some painful secrets that contribute to our emotional/psychological makeup as people. What's funny is the amount of time that we spend trying to put ourselves into our own truth, and really trying to live in that, when it's not completely self defined, I think it's more self discovered than anything else.

Gimmick
–noun

1.	an ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, esp. one designed to attract attention or increase appeal.

–verb (used with object)

2.	to equip or embellish with unnecessary features, esp. in order to increase salability, acceptance, etc.

For the majority of my formative years, I thought there was something that I had to sell about myself. I thought that I needed an angle. I could be the funny guy, or the sensitive guy. I thought there had to be some kind of Gimmick to me (not helped by the fact that I kinda love infomercials, weird I know...) In my head, that was the way to acceptance. If I fit into some niche, then I could find my purpose among people. There's always a need for certain kinds of people in community, right? So I thought I'd shape myself into this "everyman" who could quite easily morph into whatever character some section of community was lacking. This gave me enough fluidity to move between all kinds of groups of people(this is not necessarily a bad quality, but the way of getting that quality was quite damaging).

It's quite easy to get lost in the "reality" that we create for ourselves. I spent a lot of time in this fog about who I was supposed to be and allowed myself to get into what I thought people wanted me to be. There were parts of me that shined through, of course, but the thing that drove me was really acceptance. Just like that kid who wants to play basketball, but is always picked last, I tried to do things that made me more appealing, so someone or some group would pick me. Through this process, I found out that I actually became more mysterious to people. They would be able to see less of who I was, and lots of what I decided to let them see. I used to think that it was a cool thing to have some mystery about myself actually. I needed some private type me, so that I wouldn't lose who I was completely.

Discovering who I was, took a long time. It's really something I'm still trying to figure out. I recently went on a Trek with Intervarsity. It was not a mission trip (although there are times when I feel like it really was, just disguised under a different name). There were about 30 Interns, who all got together to get some training about really being a leader. There was also a big theme of being able to take spiritual authority in our lives, in order to benefit ourselves and the people that we would be ministering to over the next year. This trek really was a cover up for God to come and confront me about who I really was. (tricky God...)

The first couple of days there were really hard for me. I had problems dealing with the reality that I was the only African American Intern at the trek. I desparately wanted to know that there were other African Americans out there who were going through the same thing I was. Wasn't it good enough that I was there with people who are all trying to get to the same place? Not really, I had to have some kind of identification with people on a different level. I needed to know that I wasn't "alone". This was the foundation of my ideas of my identity being shaken. What came after, was a bunch of hard questions about who I was as a person. Did I hide behind an ambiguous shade of multi-ethnic conglomeration? What are my loves in life? How do they help shape who I am as a Christian, as an African American, as just a Man in general?

I came to realize a couple of things during that week. My identity is solidified in Jesus. He made me who I am, and He loves me for who I am. I cannot please all the people all the time. As a matter of fact, many people may hate me. Jesus did not make a mistake when creating me. I am His perfect little slice of Him (in His eyes). I have my faults, but those were faults that were given to me, to make me the best I can be. There is a comfortability in my ethnicity. Even though the Gospel is color blind, God did not create us to be. The idea of seeing everyone as the same takes away from some of the brilliance of His designs. He did not create us to be the same as everyone else. There is a great blessing in that realization. Ethnicity is important, as it is part of your individual story and identity. Jesus doesn't glance over my ethnicity, He embraces it, because He is the creator of it (that was really freeing to investigate and discover.) I was shown that when we use gimmicks we are covering up the God in us.

Identity
–noun

1.	the collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known.

I am a dork! I love dorky things, and I have quite dorky pursuits. I LOVE music. I love the relaxation, realization, and composition of music. I AM a writer. I need to express myself through words, as opposed to dance or visual art. I'm a word man. During the trek, we had a free day, where we went to the Grand Canyon. On the train ride back from the Canyon, I got the chance to get together with some people in an empty part of a car, and we got verbally creative. We were freestyling, and we were sharing poetry with one another. It was one of the most joyful moments that I have had in years! It really sparked something in me that helped me realize that writing was a means through which I met God. He blessed me with the talent and love of words, and suppressing such things were in fact me, in some way, turning away from God.

My friend Katherine likes to think about how we are captives. We're slaves to our sins, slaves to our lifestyles, slaves to our ideas of healthy selves and how we should act, slaves to our own histories and the things that we've set up for ouselves. Formation of identity is one of the ways that God offers us liberation from these things. When we can realize the things that make us who we are (not the things we try to force ourselves to be) there is a freedom in how we live life. I feel so unrestricted now. Exploring the ways that God specifically created me, is a joyful pursuit. In finding this, I feel like I can be more useful as a tool for His kingdom. It also allows me to see how much and how in so many different ways He loves me.

Yay for Freedom from Gimmicks! The reality is that my natural giftings are enough for Him, and are enough for me and others to see.

Reflect Him

I'm out...