What you hate.

My girlfriend Melody and I were out together the other night, sipping Starbucks and causally wandering about in the warm evening weather outside. Somehow, through our thread of many different conversations, we got talking about the mysterious topic of “purpose”.
That word, purpose, has been a huge growing passion in my heart anyways, so we were just talking about various aspects of it... what it means to different people and how we are to live it out.

In our conversation, she said something that really struck a chord with me, that I haven’t been able to shake since. She shared this idea that she heard from Rob Bell about not thinking of what you want to do with your life in terms of asking yourself what you love... but instead, what you hate. In other words, what is it that appalls, hurts, and breaks you in the world? For her, it's human trafficking and slavery. I thought about it seriously myself, and decided for me, it's the thought of people wasting their lives. So in turn, taking those things we hate and see as complete injustices, we find however we can to live our life in a way that will impact and change that injustice or situation. I LOVE that way of looking at things!
Our purpose is simple. We're all called to love God and others. Period. But have you found what that looks like specifically in our lives is where it's gets a bit more complicated? That’s why I love this perspective. It can be so overwhelming when considering what we want to do with our lives and someone aks, “What do you love? What do you want to do?” Uhhhh... welll.... what if I love a LOT of things?? What if there’s a lot of things I COULD do? Now what??
Stop for a second and seriously consider this. What do you HATE?? I mean what truly, utterly, appalls you?

Got it?

Alright... here’s the cool part. Now flip it around. What can you do to solve it?Change it? Abolish it?

Any things coming to mind?

See the world has given us this twisted idea that “what we do with our lives” should be practical, comfortable, and mediocre. That way it’s “safe” and no one gets hurt.
ha, CLEARLY.
This lack of living is creating a walking dead.

So here it is: I HATE the thought of people wasting their lives. So I’m going for it. I am going to do anything I possibly can with my life to show people why they should live theirs. I feel like my PURPOSE, is to help other people find theirs. That’s what I want to do.
Whether you believe it or not... God has an AMAZING, passionate and fulfilling purpose for your life. You can take it or leave it.

For now... the questions stands. What do you hate? It just might be worth giving your life to.

vlog madness

Chasing Perfect

Have you ever tried to runaway to what you thought would be perfect, only to find out your so called "perfect" is no better than where you last were?

I have.

In fact, I'm the queen of doing that.

There's a quote somewhere that says "Wherever you go, there you are." Sounds kinda lame and trite... but it's actually pretty profound. It's funny how we think we can actually run away from all the "bad stuff" and all our emotional baggage when we're taking ourselves with us! The quote of the year when friends were going off to college was "Oh, I'm totally going to start over!" ha Yeahh. You can guess that worked out well. If they partied in high school, they partied away in college too. If they couldn't keep their mouth shut about gossip in high school, they couldn't keep it shut in college either... and so on.

Without a definite, decisive decision to change their actions and what was important to them... things were exactly the same. Same people, different names. Same problems, different scenery.

I'm seeing that i've been making certain goals this so called "perfect" that i'm waiting to attain. I tell myself that once I reach that, everything will fall into place. Ironically, every time i've reached that "perfect"... it never is.

This isn't an entry that presents a problem and solves it... i can't solve the world tonight. (not that i do other nights...!) I just know i've been running... but in my attempted escape, i'm running back into myself. I'm running into things that will ALWAYS be a part of the world. I'm beginning to think chasing this "perfect" is like chasing the wind.

Proverbs 20:24 says, "A man's steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way?"

Maybe it's not about that "perfect goal". Maybe it's about how we're living out the steps in between... trusting God for each one of them.

I'm tired and can't reason more right now... just felt like rambling on this subject. More later i'm sure.

What are your thoughts on this?

Night for now.

"Oh, well they're JUST kids..."

So tonight I was driving home from a young adult group i've been going to when I can, and had the radio on one of the local stations... The announcer lady was rambling about some situation that apparently has been on the news regarding a food fight that occurred at a school recently. She went on to talk about how it was unfair the way the school leaders handled it and how the punishment was a little silly... which from what I heard, I somewhat agree with. BUT, what really caught my attention was at the end of her rant how she closed out by saying... "You know what? It's not a big deal. They're JUST kids! I mean, they could be doing a whole lot worse!"

Um... "JUST kids"? And, they "could be doing a whole lot worse"???

Okay lady... great, thanks. So are you saying in other words you expect me to be doing drugs, sneaking around, having sex and being rebellious...? Because I mean, after all, "that's what kids do"... right?

See, the problem with kids today (wow, that sounded like something a grandparent would say ha) is that most adults have such low expectations for them that they never even see the potential they have inside of them! What's crazy is as much as this belittling mindset should make us young people upset and want to prove them wrong... We seem to have bought into it. We play along, using it as our excuse saying, "hey, they're right! we're 'just kids', so let's goof off and pretend what we do doesn't matter and we don't know any better! after all, they're the ones who said it!"

I confess.

I've used that excuse. You know why? Cause it was easy. It was a cop out. It justified my irrational, rebellious decisions and even sprinkled "blessing" on them because that's what the world expected! As much as I tried to convince myself that this mindset was normal and just the way things were... deep down, I knew it was wrong. I knew I was meant for more than this condescending compromise... but who was stepping out to say so?

1 Timothy 4:12 says, "Don't let anyone look down on you because you're young, but set an example for believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity."

Dangg. That's a pretty high calling! It straight up calls us out on this exact topic saying "don't you dare think that just because you're young you can skate out of your important role by doing stupid things!" Snap.

While I'm frustrated by many adult's belittling mindset, i'm also frustrated with myself for buying into it. See, because we've bought into it, we feed their reasons for saying we're "just kids". Instead of proving them wrong... we live out their low expectations. Disastrously.

It's been said that you teach people how to treat you. In that case, we've got some work to do.

God specifically says that, as young people, we've got something AMAZING to offer right now... whatever age we are!

I say, it's time we prove their low expectations wrong.