Lots o' Thoughts :)

Do you ever just stop in the middle of everyone worshiping through song during a church service or campus ministry service and just look at people worshiping? It's the coolest thing. Ever. Granted, I don't suggest you do it the whole time, but just stop. Be silent. Hear their voices. See them worshiping their God. Your God. God.

I wish I had been able to hear the entire series Randy just did at Perimeter. I'm sad I caught the P.S. this past Sunday. It sounded like the whole thing was about God choosing us. Salvation not resting on me, but on Him.

It's not just trusting the work of Christ. It's realizing that nothing within me left to myself would ever want to choose Christ. That God has to perform a work in ME first to even want to want Him.

And then I remembered this verse: "being CONFIDENT of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to the day of completion" (Philippians 1:6)--oh. I added the caps. Moving on...

God has begun a good work in me. He is the one who will complete it. He didn't ask me to start it. He didn't start it and ask me to finish it. HE began it. HE is carrying it on. HE is completing it.

Isn't there such peace in that? Such ability to rest? Not in a passive, I'm not going to do anything way. That's not what I mean. I just mean that...like Randy read from someone's responsive email: His yoke is truly easy, His burden truly light.

Which leads me to something else I have been thinking about lately: God has already won. But He calls us to be part of the good fight. He hasn't said "I've won, do nothing on earth until you die and come to heaven." No. He calls us to go out into the world and spread his name and his renown. He calls us to fight on behalf of the unjust. To speak on behalf of the oppressed.

You know one thing that will always stick with me for the rest of my life? David Grant, my youth pastor from high school, always reminding us before any student-led event: God doesn't need you. "Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him." (Psalm 115:3) was the verse that always seemed to follow that.

He's the God of the freaking universe. He doesn't NEED you to do anything. We could have sat on that stage and God, in His sovereignty, still could have moved the hearts of youth in that room and done what He wanted to in them.

The point is: He doesn't NEED you. But he WANTS you.

Does that not make you want to love Him more? To follow Him? I mean, what do you give the God of the universe who created everything, has everything, and lacks nothing? Honestly. What could you POSSIBLY have to offer Him?

But He still wants you. He wants you to love Him. To follow Him. To obey Him. To be His. To be wrapped up in Him to the point where you don't care about anything else. To the point where you are identified with Him. As His child.

It overwhelms me. I don't understand how there are days where I turn away from that. How everyday I sin against Him. It blows my mind that He still wants me. But I don't have to understand. I can just rest. And follow.