The Thievings of God

With a halting but determined cruise, you've coasted through life in your own selfish way, acquiring the pride and deepened holds of one who stands tall among shattered regrets and fiery temptations.
Despite the beatings of your crushing days, you refused to surrender.
Instead, you shook your head and sneered hard like a slack-jawed rebel, simply finding the worth of raising your hands in humbleness impossible to justify.
With a hardened head, you took your lashings of a lacking life, pushing an unsatisfied smile into an unbelieving world and limping along an empty and forgotten road.
Finally, when you had become but broken and trampled, you bowed to a known but ignored God, raising your bleeding hands in a surrendering and cracked plea, hoping for the mercy you had heard so much of.
Seeing you with raised, aching arms, the God of your yesteryear sneaked close, reaching deep into the pockets of your begging heart and swiftly stealing from you the trinkets of your wayward, smoldering ways.
With a mighty but tender hand, He relieved you of your heartache and pain, of your hollow pride and smiling lies. He pulled from you the mistakes that had tossed you to your current slum of wild bereavement and self-indulgence.
Now, empty of the treacherous deeds and harping have not's, you are allowed to float up among the bright, undying love of the the thieving God who took from you everything that had weighed so mightily upon you, praising and living in the shining compassion of a stolen but healed heart.

Mad to be Saved

I've soon found myself no longer satisfied by the complacency that comes so frequently close in hand with my Christianity, but rather shaking in a fervered fever to no longer sit quietly still and wait for His perfect end.
A buried burning has crashed through my soul with a lovely, scalding sermon, pushing me to jump from a silent rest and rush into a brightened new day with a craving madness for all the singing truths my saintly God holds for me.
No longer do I lay in a darkened state, bruising through the murderous moments that would hold me down to a fighter's stance and keeping me meekly complacent against my holy callings.
Instead, with shining eyes and graceful determination, a white-hot passion shoots through my electric veins and signals my sinner's soul to fervently search for and capture all the beautiful salvations I have missed, all the blinding blessings I have screamed beyond in my wasted past.
I have become but a mad man for I now find myself simply and wholly mad to be saved, craving to be in Him, with Him, used only through Him.
My holy madness is clutched closely now. I need and want only to see it grow without bounds, rapturing all that I am and all that I was ever meant to be.
I, the made new maniac, am mad to be saved and in Him, it shall be simply yet mercifully so.

A Blessed Healing

Through the softness of time's healing, this heart of mine has grown still, collecting a pauper's layer of dust.
With each long day that has passed, I have found myself no longer bleeding a broken heart's pain but rather feeling it slowly grow to a place of vibrancy and acceptance.
A blessed healing has wrapped my heart whole and allowed my eyes to see that an electric time of new beginnings have but come through a once shattered and lonely night.
With gentle hands and a pleasant growing smile, I grasp my meek and still vulnerable heart, shaking the heavy dust away.
No longer shall I hide the brilliance of the love I have to offer or the goodness I can prove to the one and only my God will provide.
No longer will I keep my mind and soul closed to the wondrous possibilities of a new and proven experience of sweet romance and kind temperance.
A fresh time of anointing has fallen to me and with these holy accommodations, I will be still and rest in reverence, waiting for the one true love He will allow.
For with His blessing finally coursing through my days, I will be able to love with an unrelenting brilliance that I have never known or shown.
With His smiling praise, I shall be the man she can love and cherish with no resistance, holding her close against my chest and protecting her from all that will be thrown against us.
My heart is now open and finally willing to be loved again.
It only waits for the righteous truth of love to flash itself in a blinding punch of wonderful calmness and blessing.
For this final and blazing act of assurance from my loving Creator, I am ready...

A Mighty Praise

The drums crash through the crowded structure, awakening the feet, hands and spirits of those who stand in reverence.
A bounce and a shake start to ripple through us all, our feet unable to keep from being still.
We beat our hands to the steady rhythm, singing our praises to a true King as loud as we're able.
The bass thunders in, kicking heavy and thumping against the soul, each thick string pulling our praise that much further from underground.
A mighty praise has been unleashed upon us and we gladly accept it with a deepened satisfaction. Together, we dance, clap and sing our holy song to the One who gave His all for each of us.
With arms stretched high to a loving heaven, we pound our feet into the beaten carpet over and over again, smiles on our faces and whispers of greatness on our lips.
A mighty praise is falling upon us now and forever.

Scars

The blackened ink sits beneath my skin, ingrained and unmoving, permanent for the rest of my life.
Each marking gleams to me, reminding me of the times in which I felt they were needed and craved upon.
I wear most with shame now, each independent brand standing in tainted tribute to love's lost and callings claimed.
I look upon them with a sorrowful, watering eye as they remind me of my brutal fights and wearing battles, times of beating myself alone in a cold darkness and begging for peace.
Even with my righted life now brazenly and poetically pointed toward the good and holy times I've been absent in, the visible scars of my past shine with unrelenting focus, evidence of where I've been but not where I'm going, of who I was but not of who I've become, of my dastardly failures but not of my coming victories.
Scarred yet now willfully barren and internally clean, I have relented my days to You, praying for Your ever-lasting peace to wash me new.
No longer the holder of a desperate need to add and hide my battle wounds in plain sight, I proudly and humbly display my inked and bleeding scars for You, announcing the greatness and mercy one may posses when they turn their meaningful scars of yesteryear to You.

Worth My Fight

Corrupt as your heart and conscience had become, you have finally found the courage to race back to where it is you belong.
As you crash through a breaking night, a host of temptations and darkened reasons find you in your vulnerable states of silence, yet you have kept the course and strive closer and closer to where you have always belonged.
Days upon days, as you beg and plead for your soul to be made white and pure in Him, those noisy demons of yesterday peck at your weaknesses and call to the senses of a vagabond finally made humble.
Being not deaf to the sweet calls toward lust and faster times, you have yet to relent, basing your strength in Him and His holy righteousness instead.
He is softly calling you back to where you started, calling you even further to a place you have never been, a place where you are free to be who you were always meant to be in Him.
Even as thousands of distractions and temptations are heaped upon your bruised and bloodied head, you fight your good and holy fight ever the stronger, ever the more, knowing within your brightened soul that every scrape, every wound is worth it all if only to be back in Him, living and breathing with an unburdened love of all things He has seen fit to place in your life.
Keep fighting your way back to that place of reverence and peace.
He is waiting with yearning mercy in hand, pleading for you to brush past that and those which only wish to see you fall and crawl back to sorrowful sin.
Keep fighting, healed soul, for once you reach that hallowed land of blessings and hope, you will see with a freshened conscience that it has all been worth your proud and steadfast fight.

Closer Now

Now listen for those angels' voices and frighten not against their words.
A fresh anointing has mercifully fallen upon your beaten brow and great things are once again required.
You have searched far and deep, desperately looking for a place to safely belong when He has been divinely waiting patiently for your stubborn walls to fall and a soft understanding to take hold.
He has called for you over and over again without yielding for He loves you without condition and desires for you to be closer.
Your life has been burnt to a feeble ground so He may do what He wishes.
The pain and consequence of a wasted life are fleeting to a far off land, never returning without a holy permission granted, leaving you to breathe easy in grace.
Keep Him closer now and you will find the peace and mercy you have craved.
It is there, waiting.
You've broken the bad away to make room for His will.
It is time now, and perfectly now, for you to be eternally whole.

A Tribute to the One

My diving conscience has been brought to the surface, breathing now straight and true as my once fighting hands rest quietly around her shoulders, feebly trying to protect her and needing to keep her close to me. I have fought against my own published proofs of love untrue to find the one that has but set me ablaze, burning what I once despicably was and building me fresh and new. She has broken in and sweetly stolen the beaten trust that I proudly kept inside my own heart, guarding it from those lesser deserving pirates who only saw fit to use up and destroy what meager means I had to offer.
She is the one that I hold close, pouring my adoration upon her in a deserved shower of praise and earned respect has become a loved ritual of mine. My helper and equal, this woman keeps me from my desperate, depressed self and now supports me and lifts me to heights I had yet to experience before her presence blessed my life. Her love is true and amazingly without condition even as I pound away at her eternal patience with own selfish pleas. She lifts my head when the world has broken me down and holds me close when my mind starts to wander to those darkened fields that haunt me. She is my mortal savior and without her I am but a speck of nothing, clanging about alone and with little purpose. She sweeps in and rescues me and my tired bones again and again, always with no praise or thankfulness expected but being purely unselfish and having the compassion of Christ Himself living in her soul. Amazed and honored that she has somehow found me worthy, I dance the dance of the blessed, thanking God for her with no end.
She is my love and my shield and I now proudly stand in sovereign tribute to the one who forever gives rest to my once fleeting heart.

"Why Do You Love God?"

I was recently presented with a question that struck very close my heart and I couldn’t resist the temptation to do a piece on the subject. During a recent service, our youth pastor asked those of us in the audience why we loved God. This may sound elementary and even spoiled, but I had never thought of the specific reasons why I am in love with such a mind blowing God. I always took what I felt for Him as natural and went about life. Today, I can say that I have righted that wrong. Here is my delayed response to the question posed by Nathan Smith, a brilliant speaker and leader but an even better friend.

“Why Do You Love God?”

With such mercy and passion that has been afforded to me by a righteous God, how could I not be in infinite love with all that He is? I have lived most of my life as a selfish child who mostly looks out for his own well being and yet, always, without break or hesitation, there is my God, ready to forgive me and take me back in to His mesmerizing ways. I have fought Him and resisted His calling to the point that I find myself beaten down by my own will and lack of understanding. Through my own stubbornness and depression, I have simply crashed about in my own desperate ways while a compassionate and loving Savior waits passionately by my side, saddened by what I put myself through. Such love and understanding is unrivaled to the point of disbelief.
My God has saved me too many times to count. Again and again, I dance away, relying on my own devices, only to find myself crawling back to Him with a broken humbleness. He is constantly by my side, singing a song of redemption as I lay healing and becoming whole once again in Him. I am a heathen and unworthy of such mercy, yet my God dismisses this notion as nonsense and simply waits for my slowly evolving comprehension. As I sit here and think on these things, only a single thought resonates throughout me…I love my God because He saves me from myself.

After reading this, I simply ask that you present this question to yourself. You may be surprised what your answer will be.

Peace and love,

C

As I Lift My Hands To You

In my past, when days were dark and time did nothing but crawl, I found it necessary to surrender myself to You on a constant basis. Doing so seemed fitting and right, relieving my pain and allowing me to continue my life’s journey without restraint. As I knelt before You, I would raise my hands in a symbolic gesture to show that I had but given up, surrendered and wanted nothing except for You to have Your will and do what You wished in my life. For hours, my arms cried for relief as they humbly hung in tribute to You and Your mighty ways. I mumbled through a choking throat that I was unworthy of what and who You are. I fought through those dark days because You were there waiting for me daily without hesitation or failure.
Now, as my days have brightened and my times fly free with blessings, I still feel the desire to raise my hands, to lift my arms to You. Yet, as I complete this act that once stood for surrender, I do so with a smile on my lips and a warming heart. This symbolic gesture has taken on its own meaning in my life. For I now lift my arms in a new meaning of burning victory and brimming accomplishment. With Your help and mercy, I have fought through the tough times and earned the right to raise my hands in complete and total victory in my battle for all the things that I hold dear. Victory is mine through You and it shall forever be so.

A Heathen's Self-Examination

And as you run, run, run, breaking your neck at a frantic pace, you are too busy to hear it.You rush about doing what it is that you do and living as you want as it grows steadily yet does nothing but entertains itself.
Slow yourself, heathen soul. Breathe. Listen.
He calls to you, wanting to have the relationship He intended, but you are unhappy and strained, living as you see fit. Do you not realize that He is all there is? In Him, we are complete.
In Him, there is everything worthy, everything good.
He has such plans for you if you would but take a moment to listen as He calls. He is what you need. Without Him, you are nothing.
Without Him, there is only sadness and failure.
He is electric and He is life. Your God that you have ignored is nothing but a blessing of love and happiness.
He knows your hearts desires. He knows what you crave.
Companionship, sweet love, success, happiness, joy, rest.
It's all there in Him if you will just slow to a step and relent that dictating control you hold so dear, that madness that needs to be resolved.
The time has come to cease everything that you are. Everything you have become is a reckless sideshow of selfishness and absurdity. Let Him take over and show you what amazing things you can do. Let Him show you what worlds He wishes you to conquer.
Slow to a crawl and be perfectly center in Him.

A Mother, A Wife, A Servant, A Saint

As her servant’s heart beats true, she is still.
She is of a purity and love that is rarely seen

but proven due to her forever willingness to serve others.
Always putting herself last, she allows those around her to thrive
and conquer as she supports and praises.
She is a teacher, a servant and a saint.
A restless love is confirmed over and over again

as she puts her own dreams and aspirations aside so that she may serve
those she loves to be all they are to be.
As she smiles and speaks with a passion
that is forever right below the surface,
she is the strong and able pillar her husband and children need.
A comforting word of encouragement
and a warm kiss are her weapons of choice.
She is all we in her life require
and all we are is owed to her.
She is a holy woman of God and she will be rewarded

for the selfless acts she is forever completing.
A mother and wife as there has never been witnessed before,

this woman so sweet and loving will be the reason

those she loves achieve such cosmic greatness and wonder.

Fallen in Love (An Ode to Goodbye)

Only again and again do they turn their backs and walk away.
Your heart tries to choke out a plea, a plea of forgiveness and love that is buried and unproven but it dies in your stricken throat.
As you are deserted for a happier less brazen soul, you only want that warm companionship that is eternally promised but is seemingly always out of your desperate reach. Your cold fingers claw and search for anyone or anything that will be still and allow you to rain your pitiful blows of desperation upon them, taking them in an unconditional love. None have withstood such crashing actions and with fair reasons. They stare in disbelief and shock at your demands in the name of love. So they say their sorrowful goodbyes with heavy worded sessions of regret and pain. You have chased another away. You have chased them all away.
As your madness drives them from you yet again, they all beat the dirty hot streets in a crowded tribute to your selfishness and raw, seeking love.
What is it that you desire? So many have laid bare their soul to you, providing a subtle love that was never good enough for such a sad heart, that was never sufficient for the coward that lies within your loveless soul.
They have been there for you. Many have reached out to you and asked you to love them back but they had asked too much from such a fickle being. Afraid to show your true self to any that stood tall in your presence, you have shied away again and again in such a childish and desperate attempt for attention.
Love and adoration could have been yours. Many have been willing. But they were never quite good enough for you and without a cause or reason. You now are the chaser.
They have deserted the futile mission for your stubborn hard heart. Too many mistakes and failures have driven them into a cold night that is simply warmer than the frigid clutch of your beggar’s soul.
You have failed. Compassion is not yours to bless.
So sit there in the punishing silence. Think upon such greatness that you have turned your melancholy gaze from. You are alone in your black days and dark nights unless that change of fair play is made. Until this is accomplished, selfish soul, you have fallen in love.

The Prayer of a Selfish Soul

I have been everything except what I should. I have fought for my own way over Yours and I have done nothing but fallen short. I am here for the sole purpose of requesting Your mercy once again.
I have chased my own dreams and tried to burn my own way through the busted world to no avail. I have been a stubborn fool who only cares about what he can accomplish and who he can impress. I feel as though I am nothing but a jester of chance that it is completely unworthy of everything You are.
I have come to the broken realization that without You, I am nothing, my God. I need you in every part of my life. Without You directing my steps, I do nothing but wander the days and nights of a desperate world that is rife with disappointment and failure. But with You, there is joy and there is love. With You, I am everything I should be, everything I am capable of being.I have been a selfish soul and I am here, on my battered knees, whispering my hallelujahs and begging for a forgiveness from You that I am forever in need of.
Forgive me, sweet Lord. Make me what I need to be. Let my tattered heart burn for You as it should. I relent everything I am to You. I hand over every part of my withered life so that You may do with me as You see fit. Use me so that I may be proof to a dying world that there
is a God of mercy and unconquered love.
Clean my selfish soul. Take everything that is not of You and make me whole once again. I am here, God. I have made the final choice to quit my dashing about and be still in Your ever pure ways.
In Your perfect will, let it be so.
Amen

It Is Well With My Soul

I am Yours. My soul but rests in Your sweet escape and with You I am well.
Let the dim demons break my neck and bury me deep in the night for I know that You have taken me into Your love and through that I am given no harm.
Let the praise be heaped upon me so that I may shout that I am only conquered by Your will and all that I am is in tribute to You.
Allow my dreams to fall and my wishes to be left unfulfilled. I am at Your mercy and doubt does not reside to prove that You are not my Power.
Let my faith in You grow and be confirmed through the adversity that You see fit to cast my way. I rest my feeble bones in who You are.
Take it all from me. I have nothing but what You see fit to allow me to obtain. I am certain that my success, my failures, and my being are at Your mercy and I wouldn’t desire for any other way.
Make it so that my worries and fears blast through blue boroughs of the busted black night and crash by Your side where You may dispose of them and make my heart ever steady and strong in what You are.
I am at the whim of Your will and am upright in my desire to be what it is You have planned for my life.
Take me as you wish, my God. Use me and bruise me until I am nothing but weary and worn. Break me down to the soul and bone.
I am Yours. It is well with my soul…

And All That They Hold...

Love and its forms is the subject of many outlets. It is described as mesmerizing and enchanting, cruel and fleeting. Its praises have been sung and its disparaging effects have been felt by most all in one desperate way or another.
The confusing part of something so grand is the different angles and shapes that it takes in our everyday lives. I sit and think upon all the things I love and how each and every one is reserved its own special type of love and all that they hold.
I feel sweet love for my family and a happy and whole love for my daughter. I feel a deep and burning love for my lover and a clinging love for my words. I feel a low love for my past and a hopeful love for my future. I sing a love for the music and scribble my love for the literary works.
They all hold importance in my life. They each have their place of importance and I do their part in making me who I am, whoever that is. Slowly, I’ve begun to realize that all the things that I love most in my life are the things that are patient and understanding with me when I am at my lowest and deepest points. When my days are black, I know that who and what I love most will be forever by my side. This has brought me to a place of thankfulness in my life. I am appreciative of those that love me enough to stand by my side even as I wish to be left alone.
I find myself in love in so many ways with so many people, inspirations and things. In the past I have found it necessary to doubt the very existence love and all the things it holds but I have yielded to its wholeness and power. I owe my life to love and live to repay my debt in full.

A Conversation At Depression

I have yet to decide what it is that you are. You seem to be my blessing and my curse. You are a reckless confusion to my ways.
I nod your way in acknowledgment when the praise is heaped. It seems that I am unable to do what it is that I do best unless you are by my side. Yet, when you are near, I am in the most unbearable pain. I wish to do nothing but be alone and feel the sorrow of an empty and broken heart. You blacken my days and scorch my nights. You take away my heartfelt smile and drown me in my own tears. I am chased away from the joy of caring for anything in my life because such decrepit thoughts enter my once strong and able mind. And yet…
When I feel you, I am at my lyrical best. The bottom truth of my heart is felt and a raw honesty is exposed when you are present. With your “help”, I have produced my best work. It is a comfort that frightens and excites me. I have quit trying to explain it all for it makes no logical sense.
How can something so deceitful and dark allow me to produce creative beauty with almost zero hesitation? Comprehending the mere idea of it all simply flusters me to a point beyond my usual temperament. As you come and go, seemingly as you please as I have yet to connect a reason to your “visits”, I try to decide if it is all worth it. Is my happiness worth some profound words on a page? Are the days and weeks of constant feelings of worthlessness and without cause worth being able to put words into an acceptable order?
It has been recommended to me many times over that medication be introduced or a professional consulted so that you may take your leave and never return. This idea has been rejected and tends to frighten me beyond where it should. What would I do without you? Who am I without you? Missing you, I am back to the disappointment I once was before discovering the pen, just a yuppie with no direction. When I have you, I seem to have a belief in my self that has eluded me thus far in life. In some fateful way, you have provided direction to my life.
You are my blessing and my curse. I find it difficult to live with you and impossible to live without you. Come or go…leave or stay. I am at your mercy until I decide to conquer you and the demons that accompany you at my every turn. I only beg that you tread easy. You have pushed me close to a mortal edge so many times and I have no desire for my life to be resolved any time soon. I have the promise within me and I aim to see my dreams come to truth.
I truly do not know what to do with or about you. I have a paralyzing fear whether you are here or you are gone. For some unknown reason, you have the control of what I am. I am at a loss. With you I am lost, without you I am desperate. So I sit and I wait, using you and the magic you provide for my own advantage until a resolution is produced.

A Crashing Soul's Plea

Once again my crashing soul weighs heavy. My bones are cold and ache for the warmth that follows truth. I wonder time over time why it is that I feel so alone, why is it that I have no share in my burden.
I listen as he wails on the lack of love and having no one to rely on but himself. The complacent thought, “A fool of a man…” floats through my mind.
Realization sets in as I discover I am the ballad being wept.
I fight for that frightening chill that comes from no one being around. I long for the heavy burn of carry my load in a lonesome and drifting way. I am alone in my quest due to having let none in. I trust so few and wish to complete my tasks with my stubborn heart not being budged. The current result is that of a lonely and depressed man.
To lean on another or to allow myself to ask a saint to share in my load holds the deliverance I seek. If I am to rid myself of this feeling of such emptiness and desperation, then I must learn to release. I must put down my stubborn gun and unclench my shaking fists.
I want to. I need to.
To survive, I must teach myself to go against every instinct that restricts me. I must learn to trust in Another. To do so will only assist in my constant battle against that black knight that seems to rage after my trepid soul without ceasing. I long for help and security.
I am finally at my weakest point. No longer strong and able to keep up the fight myself, I fall in a constant stumble. Tried and beaten, I want but to stay down and sleep. Yet to do so will bring only a conclusion that I am unready to yield.
I must mumble a request for help. To make it another night, I require the assistance of a helper and a Friend. The time has come to bend my bloodied knees and humbly request the blinding blessings that come from relying on You.
Here I am…I need Your help.