Day 44 “A Year of Thoughts”: Angry? Joy is Also There

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil,for you are with me;

your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Psalms 23 (NIV)

Every time I read this each line speaks to me. The picture that David has painted here is beautiful and refreshing but often times I forget that God has restored my soul. I use to be an angry kid and found myself battling depression from time to time. Sometimes when I didn’t know how to communicate my feelings as a kid I would just cry, I’d cry myself to sleep, I’d cry when I was angry or sad. But as I’ve slowly learned to allow God to lead me to the place where I am not in want, the place where I can lie down and find rest in him, there he has restored my joy, my soul, my life.

Angry? There is still Joy.

Joy is always there, we have to receive it, allow God to lead us, let go of our anger and lie down in green pastures. God pursues us because he loves us, he can breathe life back into your soul.

Love will follow you.

Each day we have a choice to dwell in the presence of the Lord our God. To accept his love and forgiveness. To live a life full of him. Full of the joy only he can give. There is also JOY…

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 31 “A Year of Thoughts”: Relational, Not Baking Cookies

 

“Becoming a Christian might look more like falling in love than baking cookies”- Donald Miller

Relational, relational, relational, over the past weeks and months the lessons I seem to be learning and being reminded of keep pointing back to the fact that God is relational. Life is not about rules, laws, rituals and recipes but about relationship and growing in love. I want everyday to be a day to fall more in love with God. I want my life to be about relationship with God and his creation.

Today, I met with a senior pastor and youth leader about taking over the youth leaders position when he leaves. I was encouraged by our conversation and we wound up on the topic of Donald Miller. Donald is one of my favorite authors and I share a lot of the same ideas about life. I have read all of Donald’s books and find that through reading them I can see the maturity and change in Donald’s life as he has grown as a man. It’s encouraging to me to read about someone wrestling through some of the same thoughts and ideas.

One of the books he has written is titled, “Searching for God knows what.” I underlined a number of quotes from this book. As I flipped through these quotes many of them are about relationship.

“It doesn’t make a great deal of sense that a person who went to Bible college should have a better shot at heaven than someone who didn’t, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense either that somebody sentimental and spiritual has a greater access. I think it is more safe and more beautiful and more true to believe that when a person dies he will go to be with God because, on earth, he had come to know Him, that he had a relational encounter with God and not unlike meeting a friend or a lover or having a father or taking a bride, and that in order to engage God he gave up everything, repented and changed his life, as this sort of extreme sacrifice is what is required if true love is to grow. We would expect nothing less in marriage; why should we accept anything less in becoming unified with Christ?” (156)

It’s a long quote but he makes a really good point, being in relationship with God is the point. Being in relationship is like falling in love, for love to grow there is sacrifice and life change and required much of us. Relationship requires we give our lives, relationship beckons us to give our all and hold nothing back. You can’t just bake magical cookies and get to heaven. God wants to be in relationship with his creation. He wants to be in relationship with you and me. He doesn’t just want to know us and for use to know Him, he wants to walk in relationship with us through life.

“It would be most tragic for a person to know everything about God, but not God; to know all about the rules of spiritual marriage, but never walk the aisle.”(204)

We were born, created, made, to be relational people. What we are searching for is relationship. Our souls yearn for relationship with God. In the Bible it talks about the church being the bride and Christ being the groom. That is relationship. A marriage where the bride and groom know nothing about being in a relationship with each other is not just awkward but tragic.

This relationship and preparation, this falling in love is hard, it’s not a formula or recipe or time frame. Love grows with choices, choices made to live love, to sacrifice. God started the relationship by loving you. He bought the ring and has asked you for your hand, He has even sent his son to buy you back from your enslavement, adultery, and despair. God loves you.

Your soul is searching for a relationship.

God loves you.

Do you get that?

Can you grasp that?

Do you live like you know that?

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 13 “A Year of Thoughts”: Expanding Theology

 

My theology is expanding not because God is changing but my understanding, experience and relationship with him is expanding, growing, and changing.

 

I can’t put God in a box.

 

Everyday is a chance to experience him through the world that he has put us in. Today I had a very good conversation with my friend Isaac on the topic of life and theology. He expressed his frustrations with the christian buzz words that are often said without real honest action and I talked about my heart for the broken. These are a few of my thoughts after this conversation.

 

Many of the people around us have brokenness but they are unable to move past it because often as the church we have spent so much time talking rather than moving forward, finding healing, and facing the fact that we need healing.

 

God has so much more for our lives than we believe.

 

There is so much potential that we have, Why do we limit God?

 

Why do we not explore more of the world God created?

 

Why is our theology set?

 

Why is it not growing? Expanding?

 

I believe my God is bigger than I can ever understand but I will not settle for putting God in a box.

 

I Can’t put God in a Box.

 

My God is amazing beyond amazing. He is without limits. My theology is expanding because God is still working on my life. He is healing my wounds, loving me more each day, his forgiveness is endless.

 

Do you get God is not in a box. He is right beside you as you make your choices in life.

 

LIVE LIFE

 

Stop Talking

 

Start Living

 

Start Loving

 

Start Forgiving

 

Let God expand your theology

 

Let him expand your world

 

 

– Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 9 “A Year of Thoughts”: Genes or more?

There is part of you that makes you like them, but there are experiences, life, and your story that is all your own.

 

Yesterday, my best friend mentioned how eyes are hereditary. We get them from our parents. We didn’t ask for a certain eye color when we were born and thats what we got. We were made to have the eyes we have as they are genes passed to us by our parents. I have greens eyes that have a fiery yellow to them in certain light and little tents of blue from time to time. My best friend has blue eyes that when they are excited they glow and almost turn more of a teal color.

As we talked about our eyes it got me thinking about the things that I have inherited from my parents, well a least genetic things. Things like my hair I know comes more from my mom’s side of the family along with my long legs, green eyes, and my smile. From my dad I got his teeth, his long torso, and my nose. Those things make up who I am physically but they don’t really make me who I am.

 

Life is not all genetic. It’s experiences. The things that I have done, learned, seen, heard, felt, remembered, explored, and the places I’ve been, the people I have meet and the whole of life makes me different. I am not my parents. I may carry some of their genes. I may have lived in many of the same places and might know some of the same people but I am not them.

 

I love my parents and all they have done for me growing up and the support that they have shown and still show to me. But there is part of me that longs to be different then them, to find a way to live my life that is even more engaged in what God wants to do with my life then they have been. To find new ways to think and live. To never settle for anything less then a full life. To never stop adventuring. To never not be honest with who I am so those around me might know who I am and where I am going.

 

Sometimes I think people set out saying I do not want to be my parents so they do everything in rebellion against the way in which their parents live. I on the other hand want to learn from my parents experience and move on. They have been a blessing to my life though there may have been things that they have done that have hurt me, however, many of those things I’ve learned from and allowed to push me to grow. That I believe makes me different. Learning about what I see in their lives and applying myself to growing, healing, studying, adventuring, and asking God to make me more into who he wants me to be.

 

Life is not about me or proving myself to the world. It’s about learning to love and serve the world around me. Like I have said before I am broken, I am part of a generation that needs healing and love.

 

I’ve found healing in understanding where I come from and where I am going.

 

I may be a man with green eyes but life is more than the eyes in my head and the things I have seen. Life is a learning experience, an adventure, and an opportunity to find the beautiful, awesome, incredible, breathe taking fullness that God has placed in front of us to experience. Our genes may be from our parents but God picked them out to make us. Our lives from the very beginning was full of God’s love. How we chose to live that life is up to us.

 

Learn

Live

Adventure

-Caleb Ross Hunter