bittersweet.

So many memories..

Leaving friends for the last time..some I may not see again.
Reminiscing on the past four years.
Coming in as a freshman and putting on the #11 for the first time. Putting on #11 for the last time.
Walking around campus feeling cool because you are on the soccer team. Walking around campus while your teammates practice and you've turned in your 4 year old jersey.
Hearing the National Anthem while the nerves are racing inside.
Scoring the game winner.
Random trips to Indy with pictures to prove our good time.
New friends and oldies but goodies.
Realizing that life is so much bigger than soccer...or school.
Learning to love the random movie nights and polar pops just because you're in the mood.
Walmart runs.
Intramurals with a big brother who realizes you are kind of cool.
Three different roommates in the first three semesters.
Trips home to visit high school friends.
Weekends in Nashville.
True brokenness and redemption for the first time.
Watching the Lord's plan unfold.
Learning to love bittersweet.


This won't be the last blog like this...yeah, I'm becoming a little sentimental. Not really sure that I care. It's a good thing. It's true, I've really grown to love bittersweet.

a God who wrestles.

Jacob wrestled with God.

A friend of mine tonight told me that it's okay that I'm a fighter. She said, "Even Jacob wrestled with God." And yet, he was still blessed.

I needed to hear that.
I feel like there are certain times in my life where I fight. I wrestle with God. That is such a weird thought to me. My personality is one that has a hard time giving up...while this can definitely be a negative thing, it's who I am. I am a fighter at heart.

Something else this friend and I talked about was when Abraham negotiated. Have you ever wanted to do that? Negotiate with God? "What if You did this instead of that?" "What if You blessed me here instead of there?" Whether or not we want to admit it, we all have a little bit of Abraham in us. However, the difference between us and Abraham is that most of the time we do it for selfish reasons, we want our lives to be better...Abraham's reason was selfless. Even after the Lord saved him, he risked negotiating with GOD. He had the guts to ask the Lord to change His mind. This is mind-blowing to me. This passage, almost more than any other, reminds me that talking to God works.

I don't now about you but I see similarities between Jacob and Abraham...both didn't like what the Lord was doing and so in their own way, they fought.

What would my life look like if when I wrestled with God, I did it the same way that Abraham did? What if, instead of wrestling and negotiating about things that didn't matter, I negotiated with God for the lives of lost people and for issues that would directly affect eternity?

I'm not sure if any of this makes sense. All I know is that the reminder tonight about Jacob and Abraham was just what I needed. Sometimes I completely dislike what the Lord is doing. Thank goodness He is a God that will "wrestle" back.

God forbid.

The other day while I was running, I was listening to a sermon that Francis Chan gave awhile ago to some university at chapel. It was all about the reality of Christ and remembering who we are praying to.

A couple of summers ago, I gave a sermon to the youth group I was working at that talked about the tabernacle and the Holy of Holies and how meeting with the Lord actually went back then. I was re-reading it and was remembering some of the research that I had done. I still can't even grasp the fact that only one man, one time of year, could go into the Lord's presence. ONE TIME a year. It blows my mind that the curtain separating the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place was too thick to cut...which means it really blows my mind when it was torn in two by no one. It was the truth that the Lord's holiness was too much for humans...He was too worthy and perfect to be beheld.

The thing is that the magnificence of the Lord hasn't changed. The only difference is that the curtain was torn.


Christ died to allow us to have a relationship. BUT that relationship does not make us any more worthy to enter into His presence that those people had. The relationship is not something we have earned. The relationship does not lessen Christ’s Holiness nor does it mean that the God that resided behind that curtain has changed. The relationship is a gift. Prayer is a gift.
The only thing that has changed is how we pray; not Who we pray to.

I'm not sure if any of this makes sense but I have just seen a few different connections throughout the past few months that are all leading me to the same conclusion: I've lost reverence towards the God that I pray to. It's become casual. God forbid.


"The more I know Your power Lord,
The more I'm mindful
of how casually we sing and speak Your name.
How often we have come to you
with no fear or wonder
and called upon you only for what we stand to gain.

God forbid, that I find You so familiar
that I think of You as less than who You are.
God forbid, that I should speak of You at all,
Without a humble reverence in my heart.
God forbid.

Lord, I often talk about Your love and mercy
how it seems to me Your goodness has no end.
It frightens me to think that I could take You for granted,
though You're closer than a brother,
You are more than just my friend.

God forbid, that I find You so familiar
that I think of You as less than who You are.
God forbid, that I should speak of You at all,
Without a humble reverence in my heart.
God forbid.

You are father, God almighty
Lord of lords, Kind of kings
Beyond my understanding
No less than everything."

_Point of Grace