I spent about 30 minutes yesterday reading through 18 pages of comments from a worship leading conference we played at a while back and was astounded by 2 things:

I hate conflict.  It makes my stomach turn.  But, as usual God is teaching me some things about conflict:

Since when did it become okay to deface public or private property in the name of kingdom advancement. Seriously! Today I became very aware of how some people's idea of "evangelism" is to write "John 3:16" or "Jesus Loves You" on bathroom stalls, overpasses, diner tables, and any other blank spot that they can find. It seems to be very prevalent in the company of some of society's more unruly textual offerings as if any flat surface has become a canvas for a spiritually-charged game of phonic tic-tac-toe. I may be old-fashioned (insert rim-shot here), but I don't think the message we want to send to the world at large is "Jesus Loves You, but not the person that owns this gas station!" So KNOCK IT OFF!!!! If you must respond to someone else's Sharpie shenanigans why don't you try saying a prayer for them, or better yet, ask the appropriate authority or property owner if they would mind if you cleaned the graffiti off (for free). Now that would be a statement to advance the Kingdom.

I came to a fairly alarming conclusion this week...I'M NOT GOING TO LIVE FOREVER! I stumbled upon this idea in the midst some pretty intense conversation with God about a decision that I'm dealing with. My struggle was, and is, differentiating between being busy and being passionate…and to be completely honest with you…I’ve been pretty darn busy. God has smacked me around about this matter several times in the past, yet once again here I stand before His throne battered, bruised and bleeding from trying to do it my way. I’m like a child trying to ride my bicycle with out training wheels before I’m ready, and without the balancing and protective hand of Christ firmly gripping the back of my bike seat. Now don’t get me wrong, I have forcefully been advancing God’s kingdom; just not in His way, nor His timing, and sometimes not even in His name. So after a long time of getting knocked down and beat up just to get right back up, under my own strength, to take a beating again, I finally stayed on the floor long enough to hear God whisper “Life’s just too short.” It’s a blink, a breath, a twinkle in the midst of an eternity. However the most amazing thing about our lives is that God has me, and all of us, here for such a time as this, but we cannot fulfill our God-appointed destinies under our own power or chasing after a man-sized dream. The challenge for all of this is deciding what God’s purpose is for our lives.

I live in a church-world ripe with possibilities to impact the world and eternity, and, like a glutton, I have filled my plate with as many things as I can. This is wrong. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. God did not create us to run around aimlessly trying to save the world. He did, however, create each and every one of us to impact this universe in our own, individual, God-sized way. So how do we discern what we should be chasing after? One word: PASSION! Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” This is not an invitation to wealth and prosperity. This simply states: Go after God…He will make you passionate about things…and He will have success through you in those areas! I’m not to saying that God doesn’t work in those random, divinely-appointed moments or a mission trip once and a while, but you just shouldn’t invest yourself heavily in areas that you’re not passionate about. The balance can only be found through time with the Lord, and that same time will undoubtedly, when we are looking for it, illuminate the very things that God has made us passionate about.

So here I am; battered and bruised with my mind trying to wrap around the fact that I’m not going to live forever. Here’s my conclusion: Life’s too short to not spend every moment we have finding and chasing after the exact things that God has created us for. So I pray that God will clearly show me, and you, the passions He has place in our hearts and the ways in which we can turn those passions into world-changing actions!