Embracing Me:Part II (Actually Embracing Christ)

I am so thankful for God today! His grace, mercy and love has brought me to a point in life I really never thought possible for me. Totally free from having to feel as if I have to live up to some standard that is impossible to live up to. Free from having to over compensate in my personality and life in order to be accepted by my peers and those around me. Through God's grace and transforming love I no longer have to put on the fronts, I understand the beauty of living life genuinely I no longer have to feel as if I am hiding something because that something is no longer there it has been cast as far as the east is from the west. In its place my identity is now solely in my relationship with Christ, not of the things of this world or the people in it, but in the one who sustains it all. All those other things fail me, let me down, produce false images of who I think I should be when in the end it is just a masquerade of lies. No, I must put my faith in Jesus and allow him to define who I am, to allow his truth and his word to transform my life, daily giving my life to him as he did for me in an attempt to not serve myself but rather serve him. Not in a heart a slavery but in  a heart of love, obedience and gratitude because today I know a small piece of life and who I am through him. Prior to Jesus I was mearly existing but now I live, this has only been possible through the transforming love, grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. I have learned that it is really okay for me to be me, because it is only when I am truly embracing who he created me to be that I am most useful to him and those around me. The only way I can do this is by living openly and honestly with God, myself and those around me practicing humility, love and obedience as I continue to persevere in trying to understand life and who I am in Christ, always hoping to be more and more like him everyday.

Embracing Me: Part I (Me Not Embracing)

Who I am...This concept or idea has baffled me for as long as I remember. Not that I have it all figured out as of today or anything, but because of the work of Christ in my newly embraced life with Him I can definitely say I have a little better understanding now then ever.

.....I have spent most of my life being what everyone else wanted me to be or what I thought would make everyone including myself happy. That is so hard to say because I think that deep down everyone wants to believe that they are their own person; that they wear what they want to wear, act how they want to act, that they are different than everyone else. I had myself convinced at a very young age that this was true for me, however it was a lie just like all the things I used to define who I was. Its like my whole life up to my mid twenties I defined who I was by always compensating to make up for what I felt I lacked, just so I would come across as whole while on the inside I was in bondage and despair. It never brought happiness or fulfillment to my life, on the contrary it brought mostly pain, guilt, and anguish. I constantly felt as though I was failing everyone including myself because I could not possibly live up to the standards and expectations I had put on who I was...no one could. I can totally see why alcohol and other things seemed to play such a huge role in my life, they were a crutch for me to deal with life and to forget about who I was. Until eventually alcohol and the lifestyle that came with it was pretty much the dictator of who I was, it dictated what I was doing, where I was going and who I would be with. What hurt most of all was that I embraced that as who I was.

Where Is the Love?

I am very blessed to have a wonderful girlfriend who really seems to show me and teach me many things, I dont think she knows all the things I learn from her...good and bad for that matter! j/k! Anyway "Where is the Love?" by the Black Eyed Peas is one of her favorite songs and here recently we were cruising around town and she put that track on. The whole song is about love or rather the lack there of in the world, which has terrible effects such as murder, suffering, oppression, etc. Now I dont know if the definition of evil equals the lack of love, but I think that may be best saved for another day. Sorry for that detour...ADD or something. 

In one part of the song the lyrics state "you got to practice what you preach" or something along those lines, and for some reason that sent me searching deeply inward...one of the reasons I love music. My first path after hearing this was to of course to look at the members of the Peas lives to see if I could find anywhere they weren't practicing what they were preaching! I tried to wade through all the random tabloids I read while standing in line at supermarkets, or the random blurbs I heard on MTV, in the end I had to settle with judging Fergie as a hypocrite because of some shady video and lyric choices in the past...and that's where it hit me wheres the love in that!? That move right there was hypocritical on my part...Lord knows with a past like mine I have no place to be judging someone else or thinking I am better than anyone.

So I started looking at all my relationships and all my dealings with anyone and I came to the conclusion I suck at love! I realized that the dependency of my love really depends on how into myself I am at that time or how into my walk with Jesus I am at that time. When I am focused on Christ and my faith in him by his grace love seems to pour out of me and I dont even realize I am doing it. Yet when I am into other things besides Christ my love is lazy and spotty at best, so I see that without Christ I do not really know love and I would even venture to say that apart from Christ I dont even know true love. I am the branch he is my root, if fruit is to grow from my life it first has to be rooted deep into God's love, mercy and grace leaving a direct route for the light of the Spirit to pour out on the world around me. So to answer the Peas question the love is in Christ.

I realize that I may be foolish for taking on a topic like love but this topic has been on my heart for the last few weeks, however one thing I am being reminded about from my girl is that it should be on my heart all the time.

"Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance." - 1Cor - 13:4-7

A Hopeless State

Today I was reflecting and thinking about a place in my life two and a half years ago where I found myself utterly hopeless and defeated. I was in a prison cell processing through my past life and decisions trying to figure out just how it all went wrong, and how I was going to possibly get through the coming months. I had no answers...its sad to think just how helpless and hopeless I was when the realization finally came to me that I really had no clue how to live any other way than the party lifestyle that completely failed me. It was a crutch, a way for me to escape to another reality where I no longer had to deal with the demons of my childhood. A lifestyle which allowed me to be something other than me, I had friends, top shelf alcohol and drugs, which lead me on many a great adventures. However right then and right there in that prison cell all those things were meaningless, the friends were gone, no more adventures, and worse yet I had the demons of my past there haunting and nagging my heart unchecked.
It was in this state that I was led to pickup the Holy Bible and in the word of God I found stories of men who like me had not led great lives yet God loved them all the same. It was through the word that the Holy Spirit began to transform my dead hardened heart to one filled with willingness and hope. I continued to read about those me in the Bible who were being redeemed back to God, and even though their lives got hard and trying they continued to put their faith in God. In Him they found meaningfulness, a way of life that is truly life as it was intended to be. This is the faith that I hold onto until this day, one of grace, love and transformation only found in Jesus Christ. A way of life in which I don't feel the need to fill my life full of meaningless things because those things no longer define me.....today I have peace knowing that I am only defined by Christ.

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

- Romans 12:1-2 ESV