Open the eyes of my heart, Lord
Open the eyes of my heart
I want to see You
I want to see You
Open the eyes of my heart, Lord
Open the eyes of my heart
I want to see You
I want to see You
To see You high and lifted up
Shinin' in the light of Your glory
Pour out Your power and love
As we sing holy, holy, holy
Open the eyes of my heart, Lord
Open the eyes of my heart
I want to see You
I want to see You
Open the eyes of my heart, Lord
Open the eyes of my heart
I want to see You
I want to see You
To see You high and lifted up
Shinin' in the light of Your glory
Pour out Your power and love
As we sing holy, holy, holy
(Repeat two more times)
Holy, holy, holy
We cry holy, holy, holy
You are holy, holy, holy
I want to see you
Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy
You are holy, holy, holy
I want to see you
Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy,
I want to see you
This was Open The Eyes of My Heart by Paul Baloche. Amazing lyrics, my prayer everynight and day.
Just thought I'd post this before the next post.
~the sc.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Struggles, God, and some other stuff
I just realised what I was doing all this time of not praying and giving into temptation with little, if any, struggle and even trying to get out of church by making up excuses for myself like "it's boring, I don't belong there" and so on. I came upon the reality of my actions by listening one day to MyFavoriteStation.net. Actually, I just found that website when I was looking for piano music I can play because, yes folks, Im learning to play the piano and the music in the lesson plan just doesn't cut it with me or my teacher. But on that station there was this "commercial", in quotations as there are no commercials on that station but the ones about themselves and encouraging you, saying something like "At one point or another we all try to run away from God". And that was my realisation point. I was running away from God! It then went on stating that, well, there is no place we can go where He isn't there. Can we flee to the stars? Can we flee so far from the sun that it looks like a flashlight shining from the end of the street? They left the answer to you, and my answer was "uhh....". So right now that's what I'm going to talk about. My mistakes. I may add a couple "testimonies", as Americans like to call them, from the NYC trip in my ranting if that is what some of you want to read instead, but you will have to dig and dig hard. No matter how hard I try I just can't organize my posts into "Well Monday we went tothe UN headcourters to pray" and "On Tuesday...". Soon I lose interest in it. So I will post in my own, un-unique, selfish style. I will talk about whatever comes to mind and whatever I feel like talking about. So deal with it! :P
But running away from God. It sounds so silly to us all I suppose, even the non-Christians, or maybe even Atheists! But yet we all want to do just that. Over the weeks I noticed a new feeling in my adolescent and growing body, a feeling that I just wanted to shut out: I felt like giving God a big punch in the nose and running away to somewhere where He wont find me! That's so thilly sc, tho thilly though. But still, I wanted to punch Him and then run. That's all I wanted. And, actually, it's not as hard as it sounds. I started using the excuse "I'm too tired to kneel and pray" and only prayed when I hit a rock bottom. My struggles with pornography came back and I started looking actively (with some reserve. I was still trying to pull myself back to the praying person I used to be a year or so ago) for a way around the filter, which I found but will not tell ya'll. After a while pornography became less and less a threat and more and more an open invitation to let go of the stress and thinking and indulge into beautiful people of all kinds. Then I noticed something terrifying: I was starting to lose my sense of guilt. I was starting to have two or more personalities as well. A good Christian at church, a good son at home, a peace keeper between my brothers upstairs. And yet, I still feel like I want to be that Christian again. I want to pray, I want to be with God, I want to...*LOVE*...God. Speaking of which, that was, is, and I suspect will be my problem in the future as well. I have absolutely no idea on how to love God, I mean I know what my Youth Pastor told me in his email: that to love Him is to love the least of His. And I love people with a passion, especially after NYC and the homeless woman teaching me things I forgot by now but will be in my subconscious memory forever. But still, I don't feel anything for God. Yes, yes, I know that believing in God is not some feeling that we are supposed to have but true faith that He will be with us. I know that God wants us to love each other as ourselves and love Him with all our being (paraphrase)…but…have you ever noticed how for everything there is some excuse? Usually to the equivalent of “but it’s too hard”, but it’s always an excuse. Anyway, look at this paragraphy as a crying out to you to tell me how love God. I mean, how do I love an infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniloving being who came down to this limited earth and gave His son into our hands? It shouldn't be -that- hard.
Well, that's all I could rant right now. So onwards to NYC and stories! We were visiting the homeless next to the only Kmart in Manhatten, and I was praying and singing to myself praises for God all the way on the trip there via the subway, when we (we meaning me, Cole the Youth Pastor, and a girl whose name I can't remember right now but we'll call her Kate) found our first victims. They were 3 homeless guys who told us that they are Christians and that yes, they would like the food, iced tea, and hygiene things in a bag. It seemed like there was a leader among them, who was the loudest of all and who liked to talk to us a lot. He told us how if they really wanted they could mug us, steal our money, steal our clothes, and leave us for the dead. But they won't; because that would be wrong. He told us how we wouldn't last a day on the streets. I asked him if we can pray for them, which he said yes, and we prayed that God would guide them in all they do and that they would be lifted up to Him. But that was only the beginning. We went after the group, as we were walking to them a lady overheard me tell the three homeless people that "May God bless you!", and this lady (who was not homeless) muttered "And God bless you too!". We started talking, she was speed walking real fast, but by the time we got to the God part us 3 arrived by the rest of our group and Kate had to yank me aside so I wont miss them. But that was still only the beginning! I went to our group and asked how it was going, so we started talking a little. Cole came back to us after about 5 minutes to tell us that there was one lady who was already talked to but was not given food, iced tea, or hygiene stuff. Erin and I decided to go over there and give her the items. I'm telling all of you, do NOT stereotype!:
stupid. And they are not in as much need spiritually as the government and organizations might have you think.The lady, Passa was her name, was an African-American, single, homeless lady with a little baggage of clothes. She looks like the stereotypical poor. But then she opens her mouth and you can literally feel the Holy Spirit moving around and in her! Her Bible is underlined and highlighted, just like a Pastors, but with one key difference: there was not one word left unhighlighted or un-underlined. Everysingle word was covered. The Bible was falling apart, she had to ducktape it a couple times, for which Passa even apologized. She told us about how she is waiting for the second coming, how everything we do we have to do for the Lord, expressing our love to Him. That was the key thing: everything we do we must do to glorify Him, that is how we express our love for Him. You know, now that I think about it, loving God might be hard, but I can express my earnest desire to love Him. If I love the "least of these", I am, theoratically, loving Christ. Think about that for a second. ;) I know this sounds very rushed now, but I just want to thank Passa: Passa, I thank you for your teachings and for letting God work through you. You have no idea how much you taught me. Even if I forgot your exact words, I do remember one thing: that God can and will work through everyone, that the homeless is not synonymous with useless even though both have "less" in them. So thank you Passa.
For my readers, I apologize for the confusing post. Hopefully it could serve someone something, maybe a little hope that if this confused teenage boy can get through this in a half an hour then so could I. If the certain someone will allow me, I will post a post of hers that just got me going today, and not just that post but I will post my thoughts on that. Thoughts meaning how it gave me hope. But thats for another post, not this one.
As always, may God bless you in all you do and may He guide you closer to Him,
sc
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
New York City
Just because of the lengthiness of the trip (a mere one week...but tons of stuff happened!) I decided to write one day at a time. Maybe two. :)
Anyway, to start things off, I woke up at 1:15am on a Saturday morning, the 22nd of July. Took a shower, quickly ate a little oatmeal with no toppings or flavor, and then went to the door to open it for Dan, who will take us to the train station. Well, I guess you could say that that is where my "bad luck" started happening, with me getting the wrong key to open the door. Things just started going downhill from then on, though I think it was a part of God's plan to humble myself which is all very good and fine, thats what I've been praying for after all. Just, you know, its kind of like: "Why now Lord, cant it wait until Im actually in NYC and working?" On the way to the station, Dan decided to take a shortcut (no, we didn't get lost), and told us to start counting deer. Well, we found a total of 2o some deers on that backroad! It was amazing as one of them was even pregnant! As we reached the station, another bad news, Amtrack decided to delay the train for a whole 45 minutes, the train will now leave at 4:45am instead of the planned 4:00am. We are to be there 1 hour before departure. Actually, it wasn't that bad, the Lord used the time to prepare me with some fellowship with the fellow teens there. And you must understand, I am the introverted, not-talking and quiet type so this was kind of a little push for me. We started playing Apples to Apples which is a cool game but not my type, it's a little boring imho. The way you play is, someone from the group deals everyone 6 cards, and then picks one from a pile that contains words from "Suspicious" to "Dark". Everyone will pick a card from their own pile that they feel best describes the word and definition, the goal is to get the most "Word Cards" at the end of the game. It can be funny at times, just by everyone's choice of cards, but, to me, a little boring. Im not the word type. :P After an hour of that, we piled on the train and luck would have it that I would be at the very back with an old lady. It was alright, I didn't know that many people from my group anyway, and she was very nice. The train ride was delayed by seven hours all together, however, so instead of a 12 hour ride trip it became a 19 hour trip. Fun, fun, fun! The others told me that it was an experience that brought them closer, and many wanted me to move up there to them, but I refused. The little stubborn and shy buggard that I am. It was fun though, the train ride was. A little long, but alright. The lady told me how she never flies anymore because the last airplane she flew on got sucked into a tornado but managed to get out somehow. People were screaming and praying, and a soldier held her broken chair up all throughout the ride. She'd rather deal with Amtrak.
There's one thing that I learned from the trainride though, now that I look back and include my thoughts from the rest of the week as well. It is that God can use anything, anything at all, for His purpose. He used a 19 hour trip and brought the community closer, and made me think of all the things I am losing by staying in my comfort zone. He taught me that talking and being embarrassed is a lot, lot better than staying back and just looking on. That trainride was just the start of our adventure for the week, and what a ride it will be!
May God bless and guide you in His love forever and ever,
sc
Anyway, to start things off, I woke up at 1:15am on a Saturday morning, the 22nd of July. Took a shower, quickly ate a little oatmeal with no toppings or flavor, and then went to the door to open it for Dan, who will take us to the train station. Well, I guess you could say that that is where my "bad luck" started happening, with me getting the wrong key to open the door. Things just started going downhill from then on, though I think it was a part of God's plan to humble myself which is all very good and fine, thats what I've been praying for after all. Just, you know, its kind of like: "Why now Lord, cant it wait until Im actually in NYC and working?" On the way to the station, Dan decided to take a shortcut (no, we didn't get lost), and told us to start counting deer. Well, we found a total of 2o some deers on that backroad! It was amazing as one of them was even pregnant! As we reached the station, another bad news, Amtrack decided to delay the train for a whole 45 minutes, the train will now leave at 4:45am instead of the planned 4:00am. We are to be there 1 hour before departure. Actually, it wasn't that bad, the Lord used the time to prepare me with some fellowship with the fellow teens there. And you must understand, I am the introverted, not-talking and quiet type so this was kind of a little push for me. We started playing Apples to Apples which is a cool game but not my type, it's a little boring imho. The way you play is, someone from the group deals everyone 6 cards, and then picks one from a pile that contains words from "Suspicious" to "Dark". Everyone will pick a card from their own pile that they feel best describes the word and definition, the goal is to get the most "Word Cards" at the end of the game. It can be funny at times, just by everyone's choice of cards, but, to me, a little boring. Im not the word type. :P After an hour of that, we piled on the train and luck would have it that I would be at the very back with an old lady. It was alright, I didn't know that many people from my group anyway, and she was very nice. The train ride was delayed by seven hours all together, however, so instead of a 12 hour ride trip it became a 19 hour trip. Fun, fun, fun! The others told me that it was an experience that brought them closer, and many wanted me to move up there to them, but I refused. The little stubborn and shy buggard that I am. It was fun though, the train ride was. A little long, but alright. The lady told me how she never flies anymore because the last airplane she flew on got sucked into a tornado but managed to get out somehow. People were screaming and praying, and a soldier held her broken chair up all throughout the ride. She'd rather deal with Amtrak.
There's one thing that I learned from the trainride though, now that I look back and include my thoughts from the rest of the week as well. It is that God can use anything, anything at all, for His purpose. He used a 19 hour trip and brought the community closer, and made me think of all the things I am losing by staying in my comfort zone. He taught me that talking and being embarrassed is a lot, lot better than staying back and just looking on. That trainride was just the start of our adventure for the week, and what a ride it will be!
May God bless and guide you in His love forever and ever,
sc
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