Steppin' It Up A Notch

I have much to say about what God has been doing in my life lately, prior to my missions trip to Mexico, during the trip and after but this is just gonna be a quick little note, just something neat that happened last night. Lately I've been learning to hear God's voice and last night as I was spending some time with Him, I did an exercise that forced me to ask Him some questions. Honestly, I had actually been putting off doing this exercise for about 10 days. Anyways, Jesus spoke and what he said just brought me to my knees in humility. One of the questions I asked was "If my heart is your home, what does that home look like?" His response: "Right now, it's a mess, but I want to clean it up for you but only if you'll let me." Talk about intense! In one sense it's like "D'oh! I am such an idiot!" but at the same time the peace and gentleness of Christ just overwhelms! So, just as the title of this post says, I'm lost inside the wonder of how amazing God is. I don't think that there has ever been a point in my life when Jesus has just been so real to me. I am so thankful that his promise holds true: that I will find Him, if I seek him with all my heart. He wants to work in my life but gives me the choice whether I'm going to let him or not. So one final thing before I wrap up this post, this one's quite funny. One of the other questions I asked was "If you could play a game with me what would it be? Why?" I laughed when I got the response. My roommate and best friend Andrew asked me what was so funny so I told him that I asked God what game he would play with me and that God said Hide and Seek. So here's the kicker: Andrew tells me he asked God the same question some time ago, and God said the same thing to him!!

Posted by Phil at 12:10 PM 0 comments  

So I went and saw the movie Up with a few friends last week. If you have not seen it yet, please please STOP reading here and come back after you have seen it. So if you haven't stopped reading by now you probably have seen the movie; it's not like what I'm writing will ruin the movie, at least I don't think so, well maybe one of them, but I'd like to present a few moments from the movie that were thought provoking and it's better to have seen the movie first. *edit: ok so after writing below I've come to the conclusion that what I'm writing may ruin the movie so if you haven't seen it yet and are still reading, PLEASE STOP NOW!!
So here goes nothing; the first thought provoking portion of the movie: after Carl meets Ellie, the movie goes into a fast forward kind of mode and you see them getting married and living their lives and growing old together. They have this dream of some day having this grand adventure and going to Paradise Falls but as you notice, the years go by and something always comes up that prevents them from realizing their dream. Eventually, Ellie passes away and Carl is all by himself, *sniff, anyways as I watched this unfold the thought that came to me was just that at the end of my life, I don't want to end up like Carl at that point in the movie. What I mean is that I don't want to look back on my life and realize that I haven't lived a grand adventure. I mean I have my dreams and things I want to achieve and hopefully you do too but life can get hectic and especially here in North America it's easy to just go with the flow of the rat race and live the "American Dream". But for me, I hope that I don't get trapped in that; it's kinda easy now because I'm still working on starting to build my career and I don't have a girlfriend so "settling down" isn't even close to being on my radar, although my parents are trying to subtly hint that it's about time I found a girlfriend. It's not really a big deal, I'm just going to keep doing my thing and I'll take whatever God throws at me, and if he decides to throw a girl into the adventure that is my life so be it. Well, back to my discussion of the movie, this next thought was one that my roommate brought up when we were discussing the movie afterwards but it was going through my head as well; so Carl eventually makes it to Paradise Falls and he takes out Ellie's Adventure Book and puts a page into it as if checking off an item in a To-do list. This is another *sniff moment but also a Yay! moment. As his hand brushes the "Things I'm going to do" page, it lifts and he notices that Ellie has put something there that he didn't know was there. He flips through the pages and sees that Ellie had put pictures of things they've done together and at the end she wrote "Thanks for the adventure, now go have one of your own!" The sad part was that Carl was so focused on Paradise Falls as the destination and beginning of an adventure that he kind of missed the journey and adventure of life with Ellie. So taking into account what I wrote earlier, it is also my hope that I don't get so focused on my goals and dreams that I miss the journey along the way. Similarly, we can also easily miss the little blessings and miracles that God gives us each day. So those are just a few thoughts I had after watching Up; time to continue living the adventure of life ;)

Posted by Phil at 6:31 PM 0 comments  

So I was cleaning my room the other day and I found this piece of paper that I wrote a lament on probably about 8 months ago. I'm going to share it here and also write a response to it. On an unrelated note, I just looked out my window and saw 2 hot air balloons take off almost right across the street, if I lived one block over it would have been across the street. Doh! I should have taken a picture, oh well, maybe if/when they come back I'll snap one. And yes I am awake at 7 AM on a Saturday, I've actually been awake since before 6:30, during the summer, I tend to wake up not too long after the sun rises and I will only be able to get back to sleep if I'm really tired.
Anyways, here's the thing I wrote 8 months ago, at the time I guess I was feeling abandoned:
Have I lost my way? I don't even know what to think anymore.
Is this the way things are supposed to be?
If you thought that maybe I was lost, why didn't you come after me?
I guess this is just the way things are supposed to be.
Or maybe you've given up on me?
Why have you given up on me; I haven't given up on you.

Today's response:
Looking back I can see I was not lost, I just took a different road and walked into an unknown forest.
Maybe you thought I got lost, maybe not, it doesn't even matter anymore.
This is just the way things are.
So I've emerged from the forest into a wide open field and maybe someday our paths will cross again but for now I'm heading for those mountains in the distance.
I don't know if you gave up on me but you have to know I forgive you if you did.

Posted by Phil at 7:10 AM 0 comments  

God is so awesome and faithful, I am in awe of how He takes care of me. Words are hard to come by to express it. In 2 months I will be heading to Mexico on a missions trip. Before today I did not completely have the means to be able to pay for the entire trip up front within the next few weeks, which is what needs to happen. But God has blessed me with a friend who was looking for some way to spend some money he had on something useful and tangible that would bless others. So my cost for this trip is now completely covered all because of Jesus! Praise Him, all glory to Him! :D

Posted by Phil at 11:18 PM 0 comments  

Every now and again, I hear a song that describes my life in some way. I will add this song to what I call the "Soundtrack Of My Life" and hopefully when my life in this world is through, people can listen to my soundtrack and know what my life was about.

There are also times when a song perfectly describes something I'm going through at some particular time. One such song at this point in time is the song "Whatever You're Doing (Something Heavenly)" by Sanctus Real. This song may yet make it onto the soundtrack of my life but right now it describes my life. God is doing something in my life, with my spirit and soul and sometimes, like this song says: "it feels like chaos", or like a heartache of conflicting emotions. This process is described in the Bible, somewhere I'm sure, as like gold being refined in fire. It's tough, it sucks but it's necessary. I know God's in it; He's having me work through things I've swept under the rug and I hope that at the end of it all, I will get some closure on certain issues.
Anyways, here are the lyrics to the song:

It's time for healing time to move on
It's time to fix what's been broken too long
Time to make right what has been wrong
It's time to find my way to where I belong
There's a wave that's crashing over me
All I can do is surrender

[Chorus]
Whatever you're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos somehow there's peace
It's hard to surrender to what I can't see
but I'm giving in to something heavenly

Time for a milestone
Time to begin again
Reevaluate who I really am
Am I doing everything to follow your will
or just climbing aimlessly over these hills
So show me what it is you want from me
I give everything I surrender...
To...

[Chorus]

Time to face up
Clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out
That I've wanted to say for so many years
Time to release all my held back tears

Whatever you're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but I believe
You're up to something bigger than me
Larger than life something heavenly

Whatever you're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but now I can see
This is something bigger than me
Larger than life something heavenly
Something heavenly

It's time to face up
Clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out

Posted by Phil at 10:14 PM 0 comments  

... when you're having fun, so they say. Well, I can definitely say for sure that January flew by waaay too fast, but I can't really say it was fun, at least the last couple of weeks weren't that fun at all. There were some fun moments, but overall not a very enjoyable last few weeks, all I did was work, sleep and eat, literally. I was going to post this a few day ago but never got around to it and now that I am getting around to it, I realized that one year ago today, I was walking around in London, England sightseeing, just a day away from being in Rwanda. Well, I don't really have much else to say.... I just woke up and am still pretty tired....so uh ciao

Posted by Phil at 11:27 AM 0 comments  

First of all let me apologize to all who consistently check my blog for updates, as you can see, I have not written on it in a long time. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the year that was 2008.

I can still remember waking up on Jan. 1, 2008 and the first thought that crossed my mind was that 2008 was going to be a great year. And it definitely was, along with being filled with plenty of adventure. It also contained its share of ups and downs as any period of time will. Looking back there are things I should have done that I didn't do and things I did that I wish I hadn't. I won't elaborate too much on that, well, because I can't change what is past, all I can do is move forward and hopefully I have learned from my mistakes.

If there is one thing I learned this year, it is that God is my Jehovah Jireh, my Provider. God provided for me in the good times and in the difficult times, sometimes at the last minute but was undeniably faithful in doing so, and often when I know I didn't deserve it. He provided for me financially, which allowed me to have some awesome adventures. He gave new friends along the way to share in the adventures, and more recently the most awesome new roommates, who are also my new brothers (which really required me to do no advertising on the availability of rooms in my house). I don't think I will ever understand how or why, God, being who He is, can bless someone like me, who fials Him everyday, with His love, presence, and guidance. But that's who Jesus is; He's my God, my Saviour, my friend and the one I serve.

Looking ahead, it definitely seems troubling times face us all; with the growing global economic crisis and political unrest in the Middle East, as well as here in Canada (albeit a different kind of unrest, but who woulda thought eh?). A few months ago I was thinking about the economic crisis nd it occurred to me that I never would have imagined that a recession or depression would occur in my lifetime. Supposedly, experts on the subject say that we have learned enough from the Great Depression of the '30s to avoid one now.... I wonder if this really is the case.

Even so, I have no fear of what lies ahead, whether good times or bad, because my experience from 2008 has taught me that God will be faithful, no matter what. I hope that you will be able to find faith and put trust in God to be with you every step of 2009 and pull you through whatever circumstances may come your way.

Happy New Year to you all, may you truly be blessed with God's love and presence in 2009.
I believe 2009 is going to be even better than 2008 was, WHY?! (Well that's a silly question.) Because we are going to Step It Up A Notch! (or maybe even a few notches) :)

Posted by Phil at 11:39 PM 0 comments