Re-post from April of 2008

On August 22 of this year, I thought about this song again, and decided that since I could not find it anywhere on the web, (when I Googled the words, I got my own blog!) I decided to use a little of my musicianship and transcribe it from my brain onto paper. I was so desperate to hear it again! I lost the CD about 6 years ago and somehow, I was able to still hear the chords in my head. It was tricky to transcribe because the songwriter substituted different chords than the traditional way the melody would lead me to write, but I think that's one of the things that makes the music so beautiful. 

This past Sunday I had an idea! My friend (who has a great voice but has yet to be "discovered" in our church) can sing this while I play it and her husband can play with us on the guitar. I already have the chord chart for him, so all I have to do is teach her the song. I told her the words over the phone Sunday afternoon, and when she Googled them, she found my blog....weird. We met Sunday evening to go over it, and we are hoping to share it next month in church.  If we do, I am going to have my husband record it, and I will publish it on this blog.

Then another weird thing happened. One of the girls that we took to camp the year we got this CD  messaged me on Facebook this morning. Her roommate was wondering who sang this song, and when she Googled it, my blog came up. Maybe I'm not the only one who loves this song enough to create a fuss over it on the internet.  

If whoever wrote this song finds this blog, PLEASE leave a comment and let me know who you are, what you call this song and why it isn't published anywhere on the internet!

It was a long day, even for Jesus;
First the news came that His cousin had died.
Then seeking quiet, wanting to mourn, 
He got in his boat and left and probably cried.
And I've felt that feeling so many times.
I've let that feeling escape through my eyes.

Thank You, for being Jesus, 
For putting on the same skin
That all of us are wearing,
So we would know that You know
Just how we feel.

Approaching land, He saw the crowd standing.
They'd followed Him on foot from their towns.
He chose compassion over exhaustion.
He healed their sick, and then He fed the whole crowd
With five loaves, two fish and a prayer up to heaven.
That once insufficient amount fed five thousand.

And on my weakest days you feel my pain,
And on my saddest nights you know just why.
You feel what's real to me.

Thank you for being Jesus 
So we would know that You know
Just how we feel.
This is a favorite song of mine. I don't know the title or the artist who sings it, but it gives me a new perspective on Matthew chapter 14. If you keep reading the chapter, you'll see that His day did not end until well after midnight whenever he walked out onto the water to the disciples' boat. 

"There is a God, and I am not Him"

My dad said that to me a while back, and it stuck. (He's a pretty smart guy who knows a lot of words. :o)

So, if I am not God, that means that I am not in control. I don't know everything. As much as I would like to micromanage my life down to the minute for the rest of my existence, I can't.  Because I am not God. And if I don't like that, well, whenever I get my own universe, I can do things differently. (That's from Francis Chan's Crazy Love.)

I am starting to realize that being in control all the time is much more difficult than trusting God. He's in charge anyway, whether or not I try to be in control, so why do I always try to take over His job? It's presumptuous of me to think I could do His job better than He can.

When I try to be in control, it wears me out! I get tired of carrying my "burdens" by myself. I get tired off trying to make everything perfect, because it never, is and it never will be.

Are you like me? Are you a control freak? Do you flip out whenever things don't go exactly as you planned? Or do you lay your burdens at the feet of Jesus?

"Cast all your care on Him, because He cares about you." 1 Peter 5:7 HCS

"Don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:6-7 NLT

In other words, instead of stressing out because it's not perfect, pray and be thankful. That's how you find peace.

I wish I could say that I've got this one down, but I don't. I stress out all the time. God is working on me, though. I think He is using Owen's accident to help me understand these things in a different way, all over again.

"I know it's going to be okay when I hear You say, 'Come to me when your weary. I'll give you hope when you're hurting. I'll give you rest from your burden now.'" -Jamie Grace, "Come to Me" from Matthew 11:28

Crazy Love

"Do you love God or just His stuff?"

That was a question that I read in Crazy Love by Francis Chan. 

So, do you love God, or just His stuff? When you talk to God, how do you speak to Him? How do I speak to Him? Well, it depends on the day. Sometimes I address Him like a spoiled child who thinks life is all about her. Sometimes I act like this is a movie about me and I am the main character and God is an extra. 

But this is not my movie. I am only a small extra in a crowd of billions of people on the set of God's movie that He is writing about Himself. 

Think about that for a little while, and then talk to God. 

Do I speak to Him as the Holy Creator of the universe? 

I had to stop and apologize to God for thinking that life is about me. I know it's not about me, but in my heart, sometimes I think it is about me. 

Then I read Psalm 103.

Let all that I am praise the Lord: with my whole heart, I will praise His holy name. Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things He does for me....

Wait....it sounds like David loves God's "stuff" just like I do....."all the good things he does for me." I really do love the stuff, but do I love Him because He gives me good things, or do I love Him for who He is? Let's keep reading ,...

He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies. He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle's! 

The Lord is compasstionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. 

Wow! He does a lot for me. This is not my movie, but for such a small part in God's movie, why does He do all these things, just for me? I am so sinful. I sin against this Holy powerful God every day. This is the God who can zap me at any time. He is perfect and because of His perfection, He does not look at sin. He can't. And since I sin every day, He should probably just zap me. That's what I would do if I were God. I would zap all the bad people. And then I would zap the people who think they are good. Because compared to God, none of us are good, but we sometimes think we are. And God loves us anyway! He is "filled with unfailing love."

He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He does not punish us for all our sins, He does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. For his unfailing love toward those who fear Him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. 

"As far as the east is from the west." That means what? He doesn't remember my sins? I think He does. He knows everything. He didn't just "forget." "He has removed our sins" means He took them off of the record. He chooses to forgive me.

The Lord is like a father to His children, tender and compassionate to those who fear Him. For He knows how weak we are; He remembers we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows and we are gone-as though we had never been here.

We are weak. We are dust. We are like grass. The grass that gets cut every week.  What would we think if a person loved a piece of grass and knew everything about that piece of grass, and cared about how long it lived, and watered it carefully every time it needed something.

This piece of grass certainly thinks a lot of herself. I ask God why He made it rain when I thought it should be sunny. I ask him why He let the bugs crawl on me. Doesn't He know how much I hate bugs? I ask him to help me be very green today and perfect so that He will be pleased with how I look. Then I start thinking what the other pieces of grass think about me. Did a bug take a bite out of me? Why did the He let that happen? Why didn't he keep that bug off of me?

I could go on and on about this grass. That's what we do isn't it? Make it all about us? Our short lives that are only like grass, we think that it's about us. 

The Lord is like a father to His children, tender and compassionate to those who fear Him. For He knows how weak we are; He remembers we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows and we are gone-as though we had never been here.

But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear Him. His salvation extends to the grandchildren of those who are faithful to His covenant.

Hold on! Back up! I thought we were just pieces of grass. David just said that the Lord "extends salvation to the grandchildren of those who are faithful to His covenant." 

That would be me. I am a grandchild of those who are faithful to His covenant. So the powerful Creator extended salvation to a grandchild who had never done anything to deserve it. He set things in motion before I was even born because my grandparents were faithful to His covenant. 

The Lord has made the heavens His throne; from there He rules over everything. 

Do you know how big the heavens are? The universe is so vast we cannot comprehend it's size, yet, they are God's throne. What a majestic throne He has. He is so huge and powerful! 

Praise the Lord, you angels, you mighty ones who carry out His plans, listening for each of His commands. Yes, praise the Lord, you armies of angels who serve Him and do His will! Praise the Lord, everything He has created, everything in all His kingdom. 

Let all that I am praise the Lord!

So this huge, powerful all-knowing, perfect Creator....do I love Him or just His stuff? How, after thinking about Him as He truly is, can I come to Him like a whiny child? Like a piece of grass asking why it has to rain today. 

I want to live a life that points to Him and gives Him praise because of who He is. Not because of all the times He watered this piece of grass or kept the bugs off of me. I want to be with the other grass that He looks at after cutting it and says, "Now that's a nice lawn of grass. I'm so glad I made that grass! That particular lawn I made [not necessarily one blade of grass, but the whole lawn] is especially green, and since I cut it, it smells nice, too!"

And He loves me as if I were His only piece of grass. That's crazy love, right there!

Psalm 103 taken from the New Living Translation.

If this blog post made you think, you should read Crazy Love. 

Seriously, go to the link and download it to your iPhone or Android phone. Did you do it yet? If you are reading this post on your phone, you should read this book on your phone.  You can order the real book with real pages and it says the same things as the one you can get on your phone but since you don't always have books with you, you might not read it and it will probably sit on your bookshelf for a long time and get dusty and then you will forget about it. That's what happens to good books with real pages that people buy for you and you mean to read them but you forget because when you want to read it, it's not with you, so you take out your phone and check facebook. Seriously. You know you already checked your facebook page today and you probably did it on your phone, didn't you? Because we can't go anywhere unless we know what Sally ate for breakfast or if someone liked the picture we posted last night. SERIOUSLY! BUY THE BOOK!

Are you seriously still reading this, and you have not bought the book yet?