The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star, and reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care, God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled, and pardoned from his sin.

Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Oh, love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure — the saints’ and angels’ song.

I wanted to write down the lyrics to my favorite song ever. I was thirteen when I first sang this song in church. I remember being so nervous. The Sunday morning before I was going to sing the song, I tried to act like I had lost my voice to try and get out of it. That did not work and I ended up singing it anyway.

Being ten years later, this is a great memory. I have come a long way. I never thought that I would have the opportunity to sing in the capacity that I have for so long.

I will sometimes fail the people in my life. Sometimes we forget to love someone. Sometimes life is just too busy. God never forgets. He ALWAYS loves.

Oh, How He Loves Us…

I have not made many friends at college. Not because I do not want to, but because I have found that I am actually shy. (If you know me, you probably think this is dumb and you do not believe me but it is true.) I grew up in a small town. And in that small town I was a hero. Everyone knew me. I was somebody. I did not just blend into the crowd. But now that I am away from that, I find myself walking down the sidewalks between classes and I know that the people that pass by forget my face the moment that they pass me. I am not a hero to them. But in my mind I am still a hero. (Maybe this is just pride, but a thought nonetheless.) So it makes it a hard reality to swallow. It is weird. I never understood the need for people to be different. To find their own individuality. To have self-expression. Like shaving your head into a green mohawk. But now I see it. I understand because I am feeling it. To them I am nobody. Just a face.

So with the scarred image of Democracy as it stands today, why should we believe in it? I believe in democracy because I believe in the fall of man. While, I think, many believe because of the opposite. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellow man. Democracy, as it stands today, has a fleeted from this position.

That revelation, no matter how insignificant the correlation, got me thinking. In our quest to worship, whether it be corporately or alone or just with our lives in general, it is always a constant battle. I am not writing about obvious facts here so do not just check out. We are constantly bombarded by all of the stuff that we know will only lead us somewhere that we do not want to go.

This is true in something that we probably rarely think about: idolatry. So many of us know that there is a place called “God’s Best” and God wants us to live in that. But, many times it is so easy to want prosperity or to want health or whatever it may be and in asking God to give us these things we in turn make them into idols. For example, the Bible talks about money over two-thousand times. While, the Bible offers about five-hundred verses on prayer and a little less than five-hundred verses on faith. So obviously God wants us to be blessed and knowledgeable concerning money. But too many times that prosperity in the area of money or health or whatever it may be can become an idol. We pour ourselves into either gaining wealth or simply just being comfortable in our amount of money that we have and in turn end up worshiping it. “Well, we are God’s people.” “God’s people are suppose to prosper.” I am not saying that as God’s people we are not suppose to prosper. I am saying that if prosperity or health are the only things that we are in this for then we have made them idols. When it is no longer enough that God is God and he loves us and he has stored up all of our riches in heaven then it is an idol. We are no longer worshiping God because He is God but because He has something to offer us.

And sometimes I think that my posts are just too long. Probably because our lives are just too busy. So as I was thinking today I was listening to this song. I thought that it had great words. So I will share it with you.

Also I know that not everyone is a “word” person, and to those I have posted a link to the song. This part of it is about halfway through.

All the words are good. But for some reason these are the words that I “heard” today. I hope you hear them too…

I hear You say,
“My love is over. It’s underneath.
It’s inside. It’s in between.
The times you doubt Me, when you can’t feel.
The times that you question, ‘Is this for real? ‘
The times you’re broken.
The times that you mend.
The times that you hate Me, and the times that you bend.
Well, My love is over, it’s underneath.
It’s inside, it’s in between.
These times you’re healing, and when your heart breaks.
The times that you feel like you’re falling from grace.
The times you’re hurting.
The times that you heal.
The times you go hungry, and are tempted to steal.
In times of confusion, in chaos and pain.
I’m there in your sorrow, under the weight of your shame.
I’m there through your heartache.
I’m there in the storm.
My love I will keep you, by My pow’r alone.
I don’t care where you fall, where you have been.
I’ll never forsake you, My love never ends.
It never ends.”

Times-Tenth Avenue North

We live in a world that is always right there in front of our face. And it can be easy to let our carnal everyday lives take precedence over our spiritual lives. (Which one do we think about or tend to more?) We feed our bodies but not our spirit. This is the reason for the analogy about the pinnacle spiritual events in our lives. If we only live life in the flesh or mainly in the flesh and expect a youth camp or a Revival to get us back on track, how can we say that our hearts belong to Jesus? How can we say that our lives belong?

Matthew 6:21 and again in Luke the Bible says that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” You should not need a revival every summer to help you get your life back on track. We do not need a “Revival” but a continuous “vival.” A continuous and humble renewal of our love for our Savior.

This brings me back to the two words that I was thinking about when I began the last post: Uncomfortable and Belong. Jesus says in John 15:19 that ” If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” As Christians we are not called to feel comfortable here. I am trying to write this post, leaving a lot of loose ends. Not making everything crystal clear. (If everything is crystal clear to you up to this point I am sorry. I did a better job than I intended to.)  So that you are uncomfortable with what I am writing. So that you have questions. Questions are good. Questions like: Where are you on a scale of comfortability? Are you a 10? (Totally comfortable.)

Maybe, when we begin to feel uncomfortable we are just beginning to get somewhere. We are just beginning to find our place and belong.  But for many of us, we have not yet even reached Nazareth.