lately.

in the past month, God has showm me lots. one thing he showed me i said i would write a blog about, but its not time for that one yet.

right now God is telling me to ask him to show me people how he sees them. so i have been. i have been praying i see everyone around me through his eyes. with some friends i have come to see not only who they are and how God sees that part, but how God sees who they will be. i have almost cried seeing friends and who they are going to become.

God also showed me who other friends were supposed to be. and i did actually cry. becasue he was showing me who they were supposed to be when he created them. who they weren't becoming.

he showed me even more about a few friends and had me speak to them. had me tell them the things they need to hear to progress towards who he has shown me they will be.

and today in chapel, i realized something. i see al these christians around me and i pray for God to have me see them the way he sees them. beautiful children searching for his will. he takes delight in seeing them search for him. and thus i take delight in seeing them search for him. two weeks from now i will be at home again. i will be out of the simpson bubble. i will see people who are not striving after his will, but running from it. i am scared, and yet extremely hopeful that he will show me them the way he sees them too. that he will break my heart for the thingst hat break his heart.

okay. john's done working out, i can go to sleep/ update recessed. we will adjourn at a later date. at an earlier time.

OH MY GOODNESS! new 25 random tidbits-blog!

its been a few months since the last list of 25 ramblings.

1. i love my family.
2. i'm saddened that my little cousin has cried for an hour in her bathtub because she was too lonely, and wanted a sibling
3. i want another Dog.
4. i'm stoked beyond stoked that i get to play guitar at my home church tomorrow
5. i miss someone. okay, mabye more than one person.
6. my grandma is friends with becky weber. they sat on the mount of olives late one night this summer and prayed and talked about me and my siblings.
7. i'm scared i will run out of things to say.
8. i am going to wear migh hightop sneakers tomorrow at church and i kinda hope someone says something about them.
9. i think nolan burns and katie tam are the cutest couple i have seen at simpson. sorry to the rest of you.
10. i think whoever i end up with and i will be cuter than katie and nolan.
11. i'm wearing an alliance redwoods staff shirt for the third day in a row. (its my "at home laundry")
12. i have had turkey for five meals since thanksgiving dinner. (including the t-giving dinner)
13. i just realized all my friends from highschool robably hate seeing my status updates that are super spiritual on facebook.
14. i don't really care...
15. OOH! God showed me some really cool stuff about a few friends and their friend and about me and my former friends last weekend. i want to share, but thats for another time.
16. i'm really super excited about when i do share that number 15 with people.
17. I got a really cool idea last night, but that one is between me and the people involved, when it happens.
18. i want to start a lectio divina group soon. next semester?
19. i need to find something to put my new stirring.org sticker on.
20. i need money.
21. i need food water shelter and love more than i need money
22. i think brian reagan is hilarious
23. i still love puns. even more so than last time i wrote one of these.
24. i have a friend who i call wife, another who i call love of my life. i do not like either of them in a romantic way.
25. when looking up words rhyming with died, i found only four syllable words online, and thought up a five syllable one myself. (unidentified)thats right, smarter than the internet.

okay, so twice in one day, both inspired by the same message.

tonight travis spoke again, and after the message, nate had everyone who felt stressed about the relational status they are not in hold out their hands. (if you're single, and stressed about marriage, or married and stressed about singleness. the second one made less sense to me) and everyone around me raised their hands. and i felt God telling me to wait. then nate said "and for some of you its not the stress, but realizing that God may be asking you to be single for a while, be it a year or ten. to commit to him that if he wants you to, you'll stay unattached so you can get up and go where he sends you." and God said to me "you're up."

the one thing i want the most in life is not to be a pastor. its not to be rich, or to be famous, or to be amazing at guitar. its not even a wife. its to have kids with my wife, and raise them to be God loving men and women. and tonight God asked me to give up my desire to be married. ever. i cfried. i clutched my chest. i didn't know how to take it. i just knew he told me to. so i told him "okay. its yours." and my hand that was clucthing my chest felt like it was holding my heart. not the thing we see on valenines day. but the muscle. just a pure blob of flesh squirting blood. and i held it out, slowly opened my hand, and told him, it was his. he looked down on me and said "okay, i'll hold it for you. then he wrapped my heart in his love. then he did somehting that shocked me. he put it back. myheart is wrapped in his love. it almost seemed that part of him became like a peice of foil around a baked potato that was my heart. and he told me, i need this, but i need it to be in you. and when i want to, i will let you have a wife and kids, but now you need to be okay with the fact you might not ever marry. i wanted to drop to the floor and sob.

but my heart was wrapped in him.

_______________________

i got back to school tonight and as i walked down the stairs to my room he told me i will marry and have kids. eventually, but before i do, he is going to do something. and i'm not sure what it is yet. and i don't get to know yet. i think it will be something that shapes me into a someone who can actually support a family, and be responsible for them. but i'm not sure if that will take a year or ten years or fifteen years. but i'm okay with that. scared, but okay.

today at the stirring

travis osbourne talked, and i figured something out... are you ready for this? you better be sitting. and make suere your laptop is not on your lap but safely on a table and out of flail range. i realized, i am Perfectly fine with being single... holy crap. SO AWESOME. oaky, thats all. if you want something more spiritual or lomnger, then read my last blog again. this is all you get today.

oh, and i broke my amp, so if you want to give me 100 bucks to fix it you can.

My Psalm

God, help.
I feel extremely unintelligent right now.
Extremely idiotic.

Those around me look and see that life is going well.
They say “Andrew has it together." and "I love Andrew”
I know they say it. They say it to me a lot. So why don’t I feel it?

A feeling of loneliness seems as though it will drown my hope.

Why do I feel as though none of them love me?
I think I am the one who drifts randomly between groups of friends and never grows close to any of them. and seems to never grow up at all.

But you love me.
You affection towards me IS like an sloppy wet kiss.
Not two teenagers making out in the halls when they sold be in class, but like a couple, Married for twenty years, who still has that spark, and who still continues to see the twinkle in each others eyes. They embrace and hold each other they do not notice the others around watching them. They know people are there, watching, but they ignore it, because the love is so Great it covers over all feelings of embarrassment.

I lie here in your arms.
They lift me.
They hold me to your face so you can whisper in my ear.
Your ever-strong, immensely gentle voice tells me “You Are Loved.”
Then “I love you. That is why I created you. To be loved by me. And to love me. And to show others how to love me. And to show the world what it looks like to cry and laugh with Joy in MY presence. To ramble on in your blog while you smile and stare at your ceiling like an idiot,because you want to look up at me.”

And again “you are loved”





and now i post things that seem rather personal because you called me to be an example.

I sit here inside on a cloudy day and bask in the sunshine of your love.

Father, remind me of your love. remind me that i am Yours. that you created me and that your fingerprints are all over me.
Jesus, let me continue to remember that you laid down your life for me to show me your love.
Holy spirit, be here to guide me and to keep me company as i journey towards you. let me ever be reminded that you are here to help me in every way possible, be it miraculous or mundane. continue to whisper in my ear that You love me and that i need to look to you to feel wholly loved, and not to others. remind me not to blame it on them, and not to despair, but to turn back to you. compared to your love, their love is simply an added benefit.

God, i am yours. use me.

And I feel comforted. And I feel ready to go out and conquer the world for you. But first I need to do some homework.

Chuppah. again

on sunday two things happened. one, i blew a tube in my amp, so i had to borrow one. lame. but i fixed it today, so all ends well.

two, nate spoke about sex. he likes doing that. he finds a reason to every year. and every tie he does i sit and listen and pay close attention to everything he says. see, i won't need to use any of the stuff he says for a few years, so i just file it all away in the back of my mind. this time i reflected a lot. i listened as nate spoke about how the song of songs the lover (solomon) talks to his beloved( his wife) and builds her up. they are in the bridal chambers ready to consummate their marriage and he is affirming every part of her before he touches her. he stands there with his wife and tells her she is beautiful. at the begining of the book we see she does not like her body, and he spends the better part of a chapter telling her how beautiful she is. now, granted, they are about to get it on, but thats not the reason he is saying this, just to get her in bed. he is telling the love of his life "you are perfect in every way imaginable. you are even perfect in the ways i never imagined." its so beautiful. i feel really sappy for saying this. or rather that others will think me really sappy for having said this, but i want to be that guy. not only in the bridal chambers, about to make love to his wife, but i want the chance to tell my beloved, who ever she ends up being, that she is beautiful. i know God has me single and waiting now so i can try to describe his beauty to him (however impossible that may be) and i know taht when he gives me a wife, i will have had so much practice trying to describe him, i will be able to look at her and tell her how beautiful she is. i just hope i don't use the same words solomon used, cause no woman i have met wants her hair described as a flock of goats descending mt. gilead. thats just weird.

a sense of beloning, that makes me feel out of place.

i just re-read alot of my blogs. one in particular caught my attention. well, its the last on i re-read, so it was hard to miss...

i wrote a blog a while back on my attitude towards compliments in worship. int hat blog i said i do not appreciate compliments on my skills with a guitar, but appreciate compliments on my freedom to worship God. i still believe that. i pray i never stop believing that. the weird part was when i started thinking about the compliments i have gotten this year at school. a rather considerable number of people have come up to me adn told me they like listening to me playing guitar. on the one hand, i am on chapel band and at the stirring, so they hear me play a lot, but i think if you take the number of compliments and spread them out over the hours of playing this past month over any other month, i have gotten more comments this month by far. and i realized, i appreciated at least half of them more than i usually do. to some, i still feel awkward when i hear them tell me i was good, but to others, i earnestly tell them thank you, and that i appreciate their comments. and i realized, it was the people i am close to, and the ones i want to be close to whose compliments i take to heart. oyu see, i know their hearts. one of my biggest fears is that people will hear us playing music and go to their dorm rooms and write a blog about the awesome solo, or the cool bassline. i want people to meet God. when people who i don't know well tell me i sounded good, i am afraid that they missed the whole point. i have come to the conclusion that i only like it when most people tell me they liked worshiping with us (whatever band i play with) and for a select few, i absolutely love it when they tell me i sounded good. that is because with those select few i know their hearst are right, and that if i sucked,they would tell me "thank you for worshiping, and i loved it. and your guitar was out of tune, and you started taht song in the wrong time signature..."

so if really love you, then come tell me i sound good. if not, shut up :) (in case you can't tell, that sentence was utterly LOADED with sarcasm.)