"I want to be different today from what I was yesterday..."

"...as the fruit of the Spirit becomes more manifest in me."

I think these post on top of each other...so if you're just getting here, the post before this is a little explanation about why I'm doing this. If you'd rather not go back - these are a few of my thoughts from Chapter 1 of Forgotten God by Francis Chan.

Ok, so this is working backward a little bit, as this is one of the closing sentences in the first paragraph...but it sure did sum up what I've been trying to get at. I'm not who I want to be. I desperately want to be a person of compassion, gentle, hard to anger, and unselfish. Recently during a communion time at church I was so frustrated with myself because I felt like every week during that time I was praying for the same thing - this week I want to do better, I want to be better. Then the next Sunday would come around and I'd find myself in the same place.

In the introduction Chan talks a lot about the power of people who are possessed by the Holy Spirit and the incredible things that the 1st Christians were able to accomplish through that power. That when we try and do things on our own, we only get human sized results, but to think of what could be accomplished if we let God work through His Spirit in us??

One thing that really stood out to me was this: "the Spirit is more obviously active where people are desperate, humble, and not distracted by their pursuit of wealth or comforts."

I really feel like the distance I was feeling in my relationship with God was my pursuit of my own personal wants, comforts, and desires. A couple of posts back I touched on that part of my life, so I won't revisit it here, but we need to get out of the way! I was just thinking the other day - we are supposed to be good stewards right? Usually we think about our money, but what about our lives? God is blessing us with breath and life and resources every day to live out His will, and I've been wasting a whole lot of that (ok - the majority of it) on myself. What could God have accomplished through me by now if I had been a better steward of my life?

What do you think about this: "I don't want to keep crawling when I have the ability to fly."

How do we go about getting out of the way?

A Preface...

So I looked up "preface" in the dictionary before I started this post. I've never been certain what it actually means, but almost all the books I read have them. I figured it was a fancy word for introduction - turns out it is derived from a Latin phrase meaning "the words spoken before hand," so I guess I wasn't too far off :)

Now that we have that cleared up :) I think a little introduction, or preface if you will, is in order. Just in case your wondering why this book, why a blog, why now?

Prior to my reading this book our church worked through a sermon series on the Holy Spirit. Now, if you go to Landmark with me you already know Buddy is awesome, or at least I think so anyway :) Over the couple of years I've been going to Landmark he's preached a lot of sermons that have been not only very moving but also really influential in my life, this series though - life changing.

Over the few weeks Buddy talked about the Holy Spirit it became VERY apparent to me that this is an area of my faith that has been beyond neglected, almost bordering on non-existent. I spent a lot of time over the summer in prayer and preparation to be a better person, athletic trainer, servant, and friend during the upcoming football season than I had in years past. In doing so I spent a lot of time mulling over Galatians 5:22-23: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." Once the season rolled around I was only met with frustration and disappointment when I couldn't be who I wanted to be. In one of his sermons Buddy touched on that and how he had preached a sermon years ago about obtaining the fruits of the Spirit when it occurred to him that they are the fruits OF THE Spirit, and that you can't "get" them - they are what come from you when you are filled with the the Spirit, qualities that His presence creates. All of my frustrations and disappointment kind of made sense in that moment, I was trying to be all of those things instead of letting the Holy Spirit be them through me.

In short, all of the self evaluation that went on during that time revealed a lot of areas of my faith that need to be developed and nourished - my relationship with the Holy Spirit being at the top of that list. About the same time a few of my friends were reading Francis Chan's new book, Forgotten God, and I was hearing some great things about it. So, here I am. Very few, if any, people will probably venture to this blog and it may be more of a journal than a blog - which is still good for me :) but I hope that we can discuss some stuff, and being a bit selfish here, I can grow from your experiences and your thoughts. We worked through a book in LifeGroup the few weeks leading up to the break and hearing the way other people saw and understood things helped me learn a lot. I love to learn from other people's experiences and ideas, and my hope is this could be a place for that. I'm not sure how to go about developing a real and significant relationship with the Holy Spirit. I don't know how to nourish this part of my faith and have it grow. Reading this book is only part of my journey and search, and I'm thinking that your thoughts and insights are going to help me along the way as well....so bring it on!! :)

I'm fairly novice at blogging, so please bear with me :)

Since this one appears to be getting a bit lengthy, I'll let that serve as my background and start some discussion in the next post.