Rank me with whom thou wilt...

Twice in the past week, I was able to attend a very strict Wesleyan liturgical worship service and each time, this one prayer just struck deep in my heart and remained with me throughout the rest of the night. It just really hit home the concept of laying my life in the hands and will of God. Part of the prayer went like this:

Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt;
Put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee;
let me be full, let me be empty;
let me have all things, let me have nothing;
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-
Thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in Heaven.

That's a powerful prayer. In the past few weeks, I've really been stuggling with my faith. God is trying to teach me something and he wants me to work harder than I have ever had to before. It's a feeling that's new to me... It's a very lonely and frightening feeling. But I also know that if I survive this, there is something huge waiting for me. In this prayer, God taught me what it means to give myself wholly for God. I always thought that giving myself wholly to God means that I am willing to go anywhere and do anything no matter how great it is. But what it also means is that I have to be willing to do anything no matter how small it is. "Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee." If I am not of use to Him, I have to be willing to be laid aside so that his desires will be fulfilled.

It's a very humbling thought. One that I'm struggling with. But it's something that I doubt many Christians realize is part of the committment that they've made.

Please be in prayer for me.

"... for he is worthy to be praised."

I praise God for who He is. I praise him for his magnitude. I praise him for his mercy, and also for his justice. I praise him that even though we are so engulfed in our sin that we fail to see just how fallen we are, he still accepts us in his presence. I praise him for his infinite nature; that there is no possible way that our minds could bind his nature to our limited sense of time and space.

I praise God for love. I praise him for giving us that part of his nature. I praise him for the many different types of love. But mostly for the love that is God.

I praise God for humility; for breaking my pride and letting me fall when I fail to pay attention to where I am going.

i'm speechless...

I need words
As wide as sky
I need language wide as
This longing inside
And I need a voice
Bigger than mine
And I need a song to sing you
That I've yet to find

Carrying Cathy

so i played Mable for the first time plugged in today and she performed beautifully... almost... orgasmic? lol man i love that thing

and me and booth were able to record the rest of the stuff that we were planning on doing together. so now i need to master the tracks and write them to cd and they're ready to go on the shelves at your local best buy. lol just kidding. but the recordings did come out better than i thought they would. it's crazy how well our voices blend together.

it's been a really stressful week for me. i'm stoked about school, but i can't stress enough how much i loathe moving. this'll make the third time in three years i've had to pack up all my stuff and move to a different state and it's really starting to get on my nerves. man, when i have a house and family of my own i'm staying put for a good while.... then again, in reality, i'll probably have gotten used to all this moving and i'll get antsy in one place after like three years. crap

in other news... ben folds is now my favorite. and i'm not very fond of walmart at the moment. and black hair sticks to everything white. and free shipping is the shiznit. and EVERYONE HERE IS FIRED!!

I call her Mable

Man this guy was fun.. :)

Like a King...

hmm... it's been a pretty interesting few days...

first off, thank the most gracious Lord up in Heaven for sending my kids from last week home saturday. man... those kids were nuts.
lol so the last day of that week, major D came up to me and told me he had too many people working for the new week so he needed me to go home. so i'm home from camp for good now. it's a good and bad thing. gives me more time to get stuff ready to go off to school, but i could use all the money i can get.

so on my way home, i stopped by guitar center to kind of calm my nerves. so after looking in awe like i always do, i started talking to one of the sales guys there and somehow we started talking about prices. i don't know how, but i managed to talk him down on a price of the guitar i've been looking at for months. so i bought a martin 000c-16 RGTE aura for $700 less than list price HECK YEAH! and henceforth, she will be called MABLE.

and now we're packing to go on vacation for a few days. a couple days with my uncle and his family in myrtle beach, then to the g-rents in new bern. should be fun .

so until then, 4 SPF sunblock is not enough for 5 hours of uninterrupted sun on one of the hottest days of summer. "The more you know...."

Oh estaban, i really like your arm bands...

Man it's crazy how hot it can get here. Yesterday it was officially 117 degrees with the heat index. That's insane. And what's worse, we have to keep the kids moving and outside all day. It's hard to blame them if they are giving us problems...

(segue into next topic) ... the kids are giving us problems. For the first day of the camp that goes on during this week, they were pretty good, and then yesterday they all went nuts or something. I'm just gonna say it's cause it's so freakin hot.

Two more weeks of camp before i can go home for 4 days before shipping off to school in Kentucky. And in that four days, i have to get everything packed and ready for college, we have to take a vacation that's been planned for weeks, and i have to just chill out at home. It's been a good, but really busy summer. It'll be nice to just kind of chill.

And that concludes today's broadcast of "...Life as I know it..." Tune in next time for more insights into my soul.... or just what i want to tell you. Until then, always remember that when a wet moose crosses the road at night... it hurts.