Receiving, not striving

Last night I was at church and the guy that was leading mentioned this idea about when we are trying to seek God it is natural to strive to God. What this means is that we will do do do do. We try to read our Bibles x amount of minutes, we will try to pray for everyone we can think of, we will worship louder just to try and get an experience from God.

He went on to say that we should not strive for God. Instead we should receive from God. We can constantly be trying with everything that we have to become closer to God. But since we are fallen people we will never achieve what he wants us to have.

After the Q&A was over with this guy had us just sit in the presence of the Lord. I didnt really know what that meant. I dont think a lot of people do. As he was prepping us I was questioning what I was supposed to do once this started. He put some worship music on and told us to close our eyes. Him and his wife went around and just started praying for everyone that was there.

I had never experienced something in this way before. It was so good to not pray or sing or whatever. All I did was sit and let the Lord move. Nothing major was revealed except the idea that we do not need to strive or do a ton of things to make the Lord love us more. Instead all we have to do is sit and receive from Him.

I don't know what happened

I have been absent from my blog for probably close to a month now. There is a good reason for this. I signed on and none of my previous blogs were showing up. So obviously I was feeling like my deep thoughts and hard work were all for nothing. I felt as though I had no purpose anymore in this blogging world. Well I signed back in and am feeling better than ever about this!

I have been following a few blogs pretty consistently. I thought I would share them with you:

1. www.morethandodgeball.com - This is a blog written by a youth ministry guru named Josh Griffin. He is connected with Saddleback church and does High School ministry there. Griffin blogs about his ministry and random things that are helpful to other youth ministry people.

2. http://ishouldhavebeenfired.blogspot.com/ - This is written by another guru in the ministry. Tiger McCluen is a local youth ministry legend. He works at Bethel University and teaches courses that tie in with youth and ministering.

3. www.stuffchristianslike.net - SCL is my favorite that I follow. Jon Acuff writes a blog about the funny things we Christians do. It is fairly sarcastic, so if you like sarcasm or have any sense of humor I suggest you check it out. It is a twist of the popular blog called "Stuff White People Like"

4. http://olsent1.blogspot.com/ - This blog is about a man and his story. I stumbled upon it via an old Jr. High friend. It is her dad. He started out mainly writing about his experience with drugs in the 60s and 70s and has turned into how his personal faith has been formed. I dont know the guy at all but I am somehow drawn into his story. If you are going to start reading I would definitely suggest starting from post #1.

5. http://buildmomentum.blogspot.com/ - This is the last blog that I am going to write about. It is written by a new friend (the past couple months). He writes on random things that happen in his life. He finds some application for our daily lives and faith to tie into those "random things". His thoughts are deep and provoking.

I hope you can appreciate these as much as I do. More consistent blogging to follow. I think.