A Planned Church?

I wonder,

Are we playing a game to get everyone involved? Are we playing a game to get everyone playing?

Although we play with passion and convection, are we simply playing this game to get everyone around us involved and to get our safety accomplished, to receive our bandaid and a low cost. Are we drudging through to maintain the same look with a new friend now and then.

Could we be coming to church to receive what we always receive something meaningful to us but the same meaning over and over. A bandaid to cover the injury, and maybe not mainly to heal the wound but to cover up its nastiness.

Was church meant to have a program? Was church meant to run down a set idea with little pieces here and little pieces here that we know will hit a mark so everyone can have multiple chances to feel God. Do we think we have any control over those moments. Do we come to church to hear that one song, to see that one friend, to listen to that one pastor, or maybe to see that one special service. Do we come expecting to see a well planned service or do we come expecting to feel Jesus, to experience the holy spirit? Do we even give ourselves a chance to receive him? Does the service agenda or timeline allow for it or prepare for it or even expect it?

Have we... Have we gotten to a point where we need to add lights, a certain song, a solo, and a pastor that jumps up and down to allow us to receive God and his message?

Simple question... Actually two simple questions.

Why do we come to church? And do we take away God by adding in ourselves in church?

A Simple Task

I may have a little bit of a hero complex so the following thoughts that you are about to read will ultimately come because of that fact. But also because when I speak I will always hope that the person listening will at least hear something and not something that they have heard their whole life. Something real and something real for me.

When I speak to people about God I really hope that a sense of passion comes screaming off my words and I hope that they can at the very least hear someone who really believes... maybe not someone who is trying to share, critique, condemn, but someone who is just telling the other something that they believe with all of their heart. The same way I would stand up for a friend, the same way I would stand up for a sports team or idea that I trust and follow. I hope for at the very least the person I speak to hears  someone speaking who really and truly believes in God. That being said after all of that I can only be passionate to what I know and there is no one that can keep on fire about some little detail over and over. In our relationships, romantic or not, we fall deeper into that relationship because of the details we learn and accept about one another, we dont fall deeper because we keep holding on to one little detail that we learned so long ago. And my passion for God will only come from learning more and more about him. I will only be able to produce or let loose the passion that I receive from him to others if I learn more about him. And what do I have to do to get to that point ladies and gentlemen... What simple little task must I do to learn more about him? I must read! I must read what he has left for me to read. My father has graciously left me a key to the world written down from perspectives from many people far before my time and this simple key is sitting on the end table next to my couch waiting for me to just simply pick it up. I am not waiting on him.... He will always be waiting for me.

Ranting... Maybe raving...

Sometimes it just makes me laugh in my little head how we or maybe just I operate. I think my generation really believes that the world would just shut us up if it had the chance. Our voices, our opinions, or thoughts and ideas could just go away and never be heard of again.. I think sometimes we feel this way so strongly that we fight and kick and scream when it really wasn't the right moment, further contributing to the older generations wanting to take our voices away in the first place. The true problem behind it all is that in those rare moments when we are tested and given a chance to speak we clam up, the idea of speaking has become something so large that we fear it. I have not yet decided what I believe is the reason but I think I have narrowed it down to two different options. One is that we simply have nothing to say. We bark and scream about the things that we have to say, how our thoughts and opinions are so important yet we really don't have anything worth listening to and when we get the chance to share this brilliance we quickly realize after trying to form the first moronic sentence in our heads that we really have nothing to say. Or two, and I hesitate to even have this thought because it really just blames the groups for not letting us speak on so many levels. But just maybe we end up buying into the lie that we really have nothing to say. That our voice is to immature to really bring anything worth while to the table. It is silly to think there is a magic age that your thoughts and opinions mature and really start to matter. That there will be this amazing moment in our lives that we will wake up and society will have decided that we have lived enough and seen enough to merit having something to speak about. So when that sought after day comes and someone cues up the mic ready for our thoughts and we freeze up maybe, just maybe we finally started to believe what we had been avoiding for so long. Maybe we finally started to believe without evening knowing that we were junk and all we knew was stupid and not worth anyone's time.

Take 8 Minutes

Sit back and relax... Take 8 minutes to listen to something beautiful. Hear the music and relax - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbafIbcO7m8

Deposit?

I wonder if I were to look at my friends and ask the simply if I deposit good into their lives just what they would say. I wonder if they could look at me and say you listened when I needed to speak or you were busy and had a lot going on. I wonder if they would say you were there for me to lean on when I was falling or if they would say you watched me fall. I wonder if they could simply say you gave me a smile when the room was ever so dark.

I can only hope... that my life has been a deposit and that deposit be as simple as a smile.

Testing 1,2,3

Could this work??? Will this work??? well if it does we are in good spirits...

No one needs us to speak passively. We tend to hold back on things that we believe we are not experts on. With the fear of harming or detouring someone from the right choice. We tend to fear to be wrong simply either affecting us or affecting them. But if we speak with steadfast courage, if we speak with purpose we may be able to change something for someone.