January 2012
1 post
WatchA new song in formation.
honestly been in a blessed but dry season these past months. I have had to keep my head down and keep on trucking ahead. I am learning, I trust, how to swim against the current of emotion when necessary and lean into truth. The Lord has been constant and stable through my journey from atlanta to CA to Chicago, though life has felt anything but stable most of the time. As...
September 2011
3 posts
Do not think me gentle because I speak in praise of gentleness, or elegant because I honor the grace that keeps this world. I am a man crude as any, gross of speech, intolerant, stubborn, angry, full of fits and furies. That I may have spoken well at times, is not natural. A wonder is what it is.
-Wendell Berry
wow. just wow. and also, yes.
Thanks for sharing josh.
Watcha newish song about wrestling with the Lord.
I’m still a runaway.
not been in vain: David Platt's Ghost Stories or... →
claridon:
I have just started reading, ‘Radical Together,’ David Platt’s second eagerly read-only-to-be-completely-ignored book.
Picking out a few quotes from the first chapter, maybe you can see why.
The Gospel compels the church to go to God with everything we have and everything we do and then ask,…
August 2011
4 posts
"Oh God of the Open Ear" - a puritan prayer -...
Below is a beautiful and challenging prayer. Full surrender is so uncomfortable until your soul sees that He is the only trustworthy resting place and that hope in the world’s promises end in death; physical, emotional, spiritual, temporal, and eternal. He is teaching me to hope in deeper things.
I have recognized in myself, as of late, intentional daily acknowledgement of God’s...
July 2011
3 posts
think about it...
“two things I ask of you, O Lord,
do not refuse me before I die:
Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
otherwise I may have too much and disown you
and say “who is the Lord?”
or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God”
—-
dang man. kinda rocked me. just think about...
Whoa, hold up, this contract is blank!?
I spent the past week speaking at a camp in northern CA. As always, I was humbled and honored to be put in such a position.
At the end of the week, after all the events and lessons were done, the students and staff sat together around a fire and reflected on what the Lord had spoken into their hearts and lives throughout the week. I stood in the back tired, hungry, humbled, and thankful, as I...
Watcha rough draft of a new song inspired by those i love about how life’s just incomplete. Christ is love. Love endures. all is not lost.
Giddy up.
DONT WE ALL DIE YOUNG
V1
just close your eyes and count to five
you’re gone
this vapor’s real
but darling it aint strong
each breath we breath
demands release
each breath we take
we give away
...
June 2011
2 posts
“It has become conventional to think as if we are all going to live in this world forever and to view every bereavement as a reason for doubting the goodness of God. We must all deep down know that this is ridiculous, but we do it all the same. And in doing it we part company with the Bible, with historic Christianity, and with a basic principle of right living, namely that only when you...
“If you want to be happy do not pray for discernment.”
– A.W. Tozer. (via claridon)
May 2011
12 posts
The Mortification of Sin
The following is an excerpt from “The Mortification of Sin” by the puritan author John Owen. I have been slowly reading through it for months now. It is incredibly meaty.
It encouraged me and convicted me recently and I thought I would share a portion of it here with any willing to read.
It is a very intense book to be sure. But it seems wise to me, if the wages of sin are truly...
“the REALITY of God weighs lightly on the American church.”
– David Wells
“Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand,...”
– -Mark Twain (via claridon)
amen and amen.
POWER
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
And the rain fell.
And the floods came.
And the winds blew and beat on that house.
But it did not fall.
Because It had been founded on the rock. “
-
“And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the...
ENOUGH!
He hates us.
We don’t understand how much he hates us.
So we don’t make war with Him.
We don’t really understand how cunning and crafty he is.
So we don’t cling to the truth of the Word of God as if our lives and souls and eternities depended on it.
He is scowling. Glaring.
We are ambivalent. Distracted.
We don’t understand that He is a master deceiver who...
Anonymous asked: Will you be up at Hume this summer?
more of me singing into my laptop for anyone who...
not been in vain: Feeding Sheep or Amusing Goats? →
claridon:
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
An evil is in the professed camp of the Lord, so gross in its impudence, that the most shortsighted can hardly fail to notice it during the past few years. It has developed at an abnormal rate, even for evil. It has worked like leaven until the whole lump…
TRUE BAPTISM: THE GREEN OR THE BROWN?
I sit at a coffee shop in the not so buzzing metropolis of Buford, GA, on the northern outskirts of the greater Atlanta area. Strangely enough, this is the place I now call home.
I landed here a little over a month ago. My good friend Sam and I made the long drive out in my feeble yet resilient 98 VW. Since touching down, I have been forced to do all the things I have avoided and feared since...
April 2011
1 post
A very rough demo of a very new song. This one is...
March 2011
2 posts
ENTITLEMENT: The Thief of Joy
I just had a moment.
I love moments. It’s just part of who I am to love moments.
I have thought it a thousand times. Maybe more. No, definitely more. This time though, it left the realm of concept and pushed its weight into reality. It all but walked in the front door and sat down on the couch next to me.
It is the truth about me. Two truths to be more precise.
1. I do not have the...
There's Grace in Gravity
I am trying to do the math, but I honestly can’t remember how many planes I’ve boarded in the past two months, or how many cities I have visited in the past five.
I am usually pretty good with words, but right now, trying to express myself seems all but impossible.
I can say this, I believe I have learned more about life and myself and God in the past five months than I know.
...
January 2011
4 posts
Lord, Help me Believe!
I have hesitated to post this blog, the weight of what it says is heavy on me. Actually I posted it yesterday and took it down. But I really do believe we need more belief and I really do believe belief produces praise and praise produces joy and joy produces fruit. So I am posting it. Lord, Help us believe. Help me believe.
—
“I will bless the LORD at all times.
His praise shall...
ULTIMATE HEALING
I ambitiously set my alarm for 6:30 last night. When it went off I glanced out the window and saw nothing but black-grey clouds. I rolled over, hitting my alarm blindly, hoping to stumble upon the button that would make it shut up. Moments later, having obtained decisive victory, I closed my eyes, and for a moment enjoyed the simple pleasure of being enveloped my warm covers, then quickly drifted...
HERE AT THE CROSS
Life makes sense when you sit and DWELL on the cross. It really does. I wish I could get me to do it so much more often.
—-
Here at the cross
I mingled see
The sting of death
And the joy of victory
Christ
mingled man and diety
absorbing His own wrath
That I might ransomed be
There on the cross
Christ chose to be
No power in hell or earth
Could crucify the King
Here at the...
SELF-LOVE
SELF-LOVE
by Frederick William Faber 1814-1863
” Christ did not please Himself.”
Romans -15:3
——————-
Oh I could go through all life’s troubles singing,
Turning earth’s night to day,
If self were not so fast around me, clinging
To all I do or say.
My very thoughts are selfish, always building
Mean castles in the air;
I use...
December 2010
6 posts
DREAMS
Dear Tyler,
We all dream. Big time.
If your dream is not knowing and glorifying Jesus Christ, it will never ever come true, because even if you get it, you’ll realize you were dreaming way too small and you still aren’t “happy”.
Read the Bible, see Christ, and long for Him and His kingdom abundantly. He is the only dream that will ever come truly true. The only dream...
if Christmas is really real...
Merry christmas everyone.
2011. So crazy.
A couple simple thoughts here tonight on the eve of Christmas.
First, Santa is lame. My friend and mentor Chuck has a toilet seat cover with Santa’s face on it. He uses it with joy and says it is the only place santa deserves, or will ever have, in his house. I like that.
On a more serious note…
It this whole Christmas thing is actually...
Read this on a pastor named JR Vassar’s Blog today. Love it.
O Christ, what burdens bowed Thy head! Our load was laid on Thee; Thou stoodest in the sinner’s stead, Didst bear all ill for me. A Victim led, Thy blood was shed; Now there’s no load for me.
Death and the curse were in our cup: O Christ, ’twas full for Thee; But Thou hast drained the last dark drop, ’Tis empty now for me....
TWENTY SEVEN
I started off my morning on my friend Matt’s floor. He had company and there were five of us in his two bed room apartment. I overslept a bit so the room was already full of people when I rolled over. I forced a smile, to make it seem like I was pleasantly surprised to find myself half asleep in a room full of people I really didn’t know, and who definitely did not know me. Matt wished me a...
My good friend JacobLewis.tv recently got in touch with me because he wanted to use a song I wrote called “Lay Me Down” in a documentary on Church planting in Indonesia. Of course, I was and am honored to get to play a part in something like this.
I went back this morning and listened to the song.
When I wrote these lyrics it was quite evidently the Spirit writing through me.
A...
A blind confidence which trusts without seeing is far dearer to God than any fancied knowledge that can explain everything….
-AW Tozer
…gulp.
November 2010
2 posts
Charlie
thejacoblewis:
October 2010
2 posts
“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” -Cyril Connolly
Taking a break. Goodbye.
through the window of my VW...
I was driving home today. San Diego to Modesto.
It’s a long drive, and it gets progressively less beautiful with every mile.
Tonight though, the most astounding view was not the San Diego shoreline or the LA smogline, it was the sky over the Central Valley at dusk.
I looked out my left window and saw the sun setting, rolled my windows down, and just started laughing out loud.
...
September 2010
5 posts
PIONEERS: Indonesia Trailer
thejacoblewis:
SUBTLE IS STRONG
Some things are subtle, some things are strong, some things are both.
The sweetest things are both.
There is nothing more subtle than something that is unshakably strong.
There is nothing stronger than something that is unshakably subtle.
Nothing.
—
I’ve been thirsty before, and I’ve also been so full of water that I was sick with it to the point that when I laid down I could hear it...
WatchThis is worth your 15 minutes.
August 2010
2 posts
What I learned this Summer.
Proverbs 27:21 The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but man is tested by the praise he receives.
————————————————————
Here I am. Stuck on a three and a half hour lay over in Salt Lake City.
Summer is over.
Sigh.
Hindsight is setting in.
What in the world did I...
HEART.
I am feeling impatient. I want my heart to write itself for me. Then I could read it and know what in the world is going on down there. Right now I write mostly for the triumph of an accomplishment. Perhaps I simply want to know that I can create, or even more so, that I am creative and create well, and at the least (or maybe the most?), that I can create honestly.
Problem is, I am most often far...
July 2010
0 posts
disturb us Lord
when we are too well pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true
because we dreamed too little
because we sailed too close to the shore
disturb us Lord
when with the abundance of things we possess
we have lost our thirst for the waters of life
having fallen in love with life
we have ceased to dream of eternity
and in our efforts to build a new earth
we have...