Tag: Song

The Woodshed

thearrowpreacherLeave a comment

The Woodshed

Have you ever felt the world just took you behind the woodshed for the worst beating of your life? Have you felt like you’ve been the farthest down you could be and everywhere you looked was destruction and chaos? Let me tell you there’s hope.

I’m no stranger to the prison of my own despair. I’ve been bonded to heartbreak and I never felt like I would be whole again. If you really want to be free of the pain of old, the cracks in your armor that let the feelings of negativity, doubt, and helplessness seep through. I’ve felt broken down and beaten, and I have been broken more then a time or two. Jesus Christ is the one who can make all broken things new. Jesus Christ can rebuild you and use your pain for the purposes of good and grace. If you fall to your knees and let go of yourself, let yourself submit to the Lord, you will know all your sins are forgiven, and you will be reborn. You may have questions, and fear, but in the waters that come from Jesus Christ you will be washed clean of your past, and you will become a soldier for the Lord. Your pain will be your weapon for God. Your scars will be your testimony and you will be able to help save souls. Once you submit to the Lord you will never be the same. When you place all your hope in Christ, you will know and understand there’s a better way.

All My Hope, By: Crowder

 I’m no stranger to the prison

I’ve worn shackles and chains

But I’ve been freed and forgiven

And I’m not going back, I’ll never be the same

That’s why I sing

 All my hope is in Jesus

Thank God my yesterday’s gone

All my sins are forgiven

I’ve been washed by the blood

 There’s a kind of thing that just breaks a man

Break him down to his knees

God, I’ve been broken more than a time or two

Yes, Lord then He picked me up and showed me

What it means to be a man

 Colossians 3:8-10 “But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self[d] with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”

Colossians 3:12-17 “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” We must learn to do these things regardless of the pain we hold. When we hold onto that pain it’s like a cancer for our souls. We must learn to learn from our pain, and let it go. Let it past as dust in the wind and focus on how we can use that for the betterment of our lives.

God will use the broken things in your life and for the Glory you will follow because you are asked to. Jesus so loved those who were broken, and he would use them to spread the gospel. You only need to submit to the Lord and you will be made new. You want hope look to those that God used in the Bible. Look at all those who were broken, and hurting, and suffering, and in all things, God was able to use them because of that pain to reach others. I myself am a broken man. I’ve been targeted time and time again, yet here I stand, speaking for, and preaching for God. This life is but a speck of dust in the greatness of time. But in that speck of time you are so loved by God that when the dust blows, you will have the chance to be remade new in forever.

If you’re lost and you are weary from the beatings of life, have hope and faith that it was not all for nothing.

Lift your head weary sinner, By: crowder

 Lift your head weary sinner, the river’s just ahead
Down the path of forgiveness, salvation’s waiting there
You built a mighty fortress 10, 000 burdens high
Love is here to lift you up, here to lift you high

If you’re lost and wandering
Come stumbling in like a prodigal child
See the walls start crumbling
Let the gates of glory open wide

All who’ve strayed and walked away, unspeakable things you’ve done
Fix your eyes on the mountain, let the past be dead and gone
Come all saints and sinners, you can’t outrun God
Whatever you’ve done can’t overcome the power of the blood

 When we mess up we expect the punishment to be equal to the mistake. We are sinners and when we sin we expect a measure of blowback. When we walk this life be sure to own up to your mistakes. I have often taken the blame for things I didn’t do. I have placed blame upon myself when things go wrong even if I didn’t do anything to cause it. For me it was easier to explain why something happened if I just placed myself on the chopping block. This isn’t healthy or needed. Let God be the one to judge. You may want to find answers and sometimes they may never come. If you’re going down to the woodshed be sure you deserve it.

God’s love for us is the only thing that truly matters. Whatever we do should be to glorify our Abba. Take your beatings and own up to your culpability, but don’t take on more then you should. The weight of the world isn’t for you to hold. Be kind to one another. Love one another and forgive one another. Bare one another’s burdens and trust in the Lord. In every situation God is working and we must learn to pray and have faith in not just the big things, but the small as well. The Devil will test you, the Devil will try to draw you away from Christ and steal your salvation by making you question it. The Devil wants you to fail, and sometimes the Devil will destroy everything you have to make you fall from the grace that’s been bestowed onto you. The grace from Jesus Christ was a gift for humanity and no one can take it from you, unless you give it to them. The Devil may take your worldly possessions from you, your career, your family, your friends, your home, but no matter what the Devil cannot take your salvation. How much of a beating can you take? The Devil will try every means of torture to break you. If you believe that Jesus is always with you, then you can withstand the torture from the Devil and never give in. When the beatings are over you will have your scars to prove it, but you are still wanted by our one and only heavenly father. Jesus healed the blind man, rose Lazarus from the dead, helped the lame walk, and overcame death Himself. So by the power of his Blood don’t loose hope, don’t loose sight, and don’t let the woodshed be where you loose your faith. Because our God Lives and is in everything, we will one day rise to paradise.

 

 

 

What I Gave Away

thearrowpreacherLeave a comment

What I Gave Away

All my life I wanted to be accepted by my friends. All my life I wanted to be liked by those around me. For whatever reason I have always had the need to fit in, I just never felt like I have. I spent the first part of my life being tortured in school being told I was ugly, that I looked like particular animals. I was laughed at for things that would happen to me, I was picked on for things that were traumatic in my home life, and no matter what I did I never found a way out. Eventually the teasing became physical. I was beat up after school, I was shoved around in school. I was given a swirley. My shoes were taken and thrown into urinals, and in the hallways my books where kicked around the hallways. When I liked a girl and people found out I was teased because she was so far out of my league everyone thought I was crazy. That’s when the mean tricks started. I was told that she actually thought I was cute and wanted to kiss me. Obviously they lied, and well, getting slapped across the face was a good clue I was lied to. Ever since then I have gone out of my way to get people to like me. Sadly, even as I got older and the place from which my actions came where honest and sincere, I would find that I was still not part of the ‘in’ crowd’. I would never truly be accepted, and I would find in time that I gave away parts of me that were my self esteem, my self worth, my heart, and my generosity would be taken advantage of time and time again. What I gave away was the best parts of me, just to all the wrong people.

To this day I haven’t quite found where I fit in. I feel like I’m a million miles from everyone in a crowded room. I feel like everyone’s moving all around me, talking to one another while I’m listening, watching, just entirely unsure of what to say. I never found how to interact with people. I never became someone anyone wanted to be around. I never found myself as accepted. I’ve always been a little different. I’ve always been a little nerdy. I’ve always been a little quirky, and sadly, it’s never gotten me anywhere. When I was in High School I often helped out as a counselor for my fellow classmates. I would give advice, and I would be an ear to listen, and in some cases I was a shoulder to cry on. Always a friend, never more, but on the rare occasion I was more, I wasn’t for long. I became the guy people would leave behind. When it came time to get married I never thought that I would be left behind again, but I was. I was cheated on, and lied to, and humiliated. I was displaced and forced to leave an entire country with nothing. I gave the best part of me and it was thrown away like used trash. Years later I would find myself loving another, and it seemed like that love was something special. After four years of marriage she would cheat, and again I was left wondering what I had done. I felt like I had given my everything and I felt as if I had been understanding, respectful, loving, caring, and yet it wasn’t good enough. I asked myself what I had done wrong? I blamed myself, and with all that anger, all that rage, I pointed it literally at myself. I poured every bit of blame into a tiny punch. The pain I felt was amplified by my anger at failure in my life. Every hurt I felt, every promise broken. Every loss I watched in front of me, death, and abandonment, all wrapped into the same moment. Years of abandonment, years of suffering, years of anger built up and at the center of it all I was the common denominator thus I was the one to blame. My value had been given to others to define. I allowed others to tell me if I was worth it or not. I gave away the very part of myself that is supposed to stay with you, knowing that you are a child of the one true King. You’ve been saved, changed and set free from bondage. Yet I would believe the lies I was told and I fell for the Devils schemes.

How do you come back from all of that? How do you change the years of behavior built into your personality? How do you rid yourself of years of heart, and conditioning? Sadly, I don’t have the answer for you. What I do have is a direction. You are a child of the Lord and the Lord doesn’t do anything by accident. You are not an accident. You are beautifully created for a purpose and we know that each of us has gifts, and a roll to play in the big picture. We all have our reason for being here and that we must trust in the big plan. We may experience the worst that humanity has to offer. We may undergo pain, and suffering on a regular basis, more then our fair share it seems, but perhaps we have suffered long for a reason. Maybe you can make the difference in a life.

Hard Love, By: Needtobreathe

Hold on tight a little longer
What don’t kill ya, makes ya stronger
Get back up, ’cause it’s a hard love
You can’t change without a fallout
It’s gon’ hurt, but don’t you slow down
Get back up, ’cause it’s a hard love

You know the situation can’t be right
And all you ever do is fight
But there’s a reason that the road is long
It takes some time to make your courage strong

 It’s not easy being an outcast, but at the foot of the cross we are all the same. When it comes to the cross the bullies who lived a cruel life will have to answer for that cruelty. We cannot let the world stain or harden our hearts. We must learn to give because we are pulled in our heart to do so. We must help because we want to. We must love live Christ loved. We must treat others fairly, and never loose sight of the love we were given that fateful day 2000 years ago. Christ sacrificed himself because of His love for us. We were never deserving of it, but we have it anyway. Those bullies in our lives don’t deserve it, but perhaps they are one step away from seeing the error of their ways and they turn around from the path they were on. We never know how our love and kindness will make an affect, and we must keep loving no matter how much it hurts. We can’t give up on this life. We cannot give up on our commandments, and once we realize that those who treated us that way cannot define who we are, then we may start to realize that power we gave away, we can actually take it back. For all those who’ve been bullied, and tortured, and beat up, and treated badly, you’re something special. You’ve endured hardships and yet you are still loving. Keep loving others, and keep giving, but more importantly, never stop loving yourself. Love others and help others because it’s the right thing to do. Do this knowing you will likely never get anything in return for it, and you may never see it come back to you, but we don’t love for the return, we love because it’s right. Stop giving away your value to others. Stop giving your happiness when others don’t deserve to have it. Psalm 146:3 “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” Scripture is clear about putting our trust in people. Isaiah 2:22 “Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?” God is faithful and never lies, never breaks a promise, and forever bares the truth. Numbers 23:19 “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” The words of a man do not make them true. The cruel things someone says, even someone who claimed to love you isn’t necessarily the truth, so don’t allow the falsehoods spoken through a wicked tongue define you. It’s easier said then done of course, I myself haven’t gotten the hang of it, but the truth is the truth. Have faith in the word, and the word shall set you free.

 

 

 

 

Driving Force

thearrowpreacherLeave a comment

Driving Force

What pushes you? Do you have a motivation to push yourself because of a desire to be the best? Do you push yourself to provide for others? Do you do it out of greed, or a need to make the world a better place? We all have our dreams, but how do those dreams affect those around us? We want what we want, but at what cost? The life I’ve lived I have learned to weigh the good of the mission, verses the good of what’s truly important.

Driving Force 1

In our life we may only get a few chances to finally and fully meet our better half. How often does life get in the way, and divide the home. All I ever wanted in my life was to be remembered for something great. I wanted to make a difference and to leave a legacy for my children to have. I wanted to have a bunch of kids and in that hope and that dream my soul purpose was to make a happy home. All I wanted to do was come runnin’ home to the woman I loved. I tried every day to be a good man, a good husband, a good Christian. The days that unfold in front of us don’t always play by the rules, and we aren’t always given the fair shot.

See, the thing is, for some people the hard work that gains them notoriety, the success and happiness in life, comes with a measure of ease that’s not often true for everyone. No matter the hard work, sometimes things just go badly. What can a man do when he marries a girl, lives a good life, and looses her? When he picks up the pieces and starts over, meeting a new girl, spending more time together, getting married, and when you feel like you’ve got the keys to the city, so many blessings, what can you do when it explodes in your face? The explosion sends shrapnel through your body and you feel like your insides are oozing out onto the ground. How do you triage the worst of the worst and bandage yourself up? There’s something inside us all that forces us to pick ourselves up, and even if we limp on, we still move. For every one of us that driving force is different.

Driving Force 3

For me, it was God. God spoke to me, and although the words were about forgiveness the act itself was very clear. Go and make disciples. Go and expand the flock, spread the Gospel and fight the good fight. With the hardships of Job, and the mission of Paul, who said this life would be easy? The thing that most people miss when they say they are alone, and although they may be in this world, God is always with them. God is with us when we are broken, and if God spoke to all of us, I’m sure He’d say we are “Broken Together” How many of us wish in adulthood we could go back to simpler times. I myself have been thinking a lot about my time in high school and how simple it was. Do the homework, go to the club meetings, and try to keep up with friends. Friends, seems that concept gets lost as time moves us along. As friends get scattered by the wind it’s harder and harder to keep track of where they go, or rather, they stop keeping track of you. I have stumbled and I’ve fallen, and now I’m at the precipice of my life changing forever and I can’t hear what I’m supposed to do. I’ve tried to quiet my mind and listen, but the storm’s so loud I can’t hear. I’ve doubted myself, I’ve doubted my resolve and now that the time is upon me, I don’t know if I’m making the right choice. The prayers I’m sure are being heard, but I suppose at some point I have to just take the leap, plunge into the darkness and pray that the light of the Lord will shine brightly if nothing else through me. I know that no matter where I am the Lord is with me, and no matter how bad it gets, no matter how bad I feel, no matter the despair I’m in, God is always with me.

Driving Force 4

Knowing the knife is no longer there it feels as fresh as the day it plunged into my heart. I recently received a small set of cheap throwing knives. I figured I’d expand my list of talents in the hopes of adding more useless bullets to my growing list of useless talents. Knife throwing doesn’t exactly win you prizes with the ladies fathers, and it certainly doesn’t give you a good bullet for a resume. While I wasn’t expecting to be great, I wasn’t expecting to be horrible either. Boy was I wrong. I threw the knife twice, missed the box the first time (my aim sucked) and then threw a second time, and I’m pretty sure I hit the box with the handle side of the knife. For the record I watched an 8 minute video on knife throwing, and I was pretty sure I had a good handle on it, no pun intended. Sadly it started to rain and as I was throwing into a cardboard box, I decided to call it quits. I cleaned off the knife and placed it back in its sheath. While I was sitting here on the couch pondering the nature of this blog, it occurred to me that life is a lot like that experience. I failed my first two tries, but that doesn’t mean I will never get it. Sure the first video isn’t appealing, but neither was the first time I picked up my recurve bow, the arrow completely missed the target bag. You have to keep trying and practicing to be good at something isn’t life the same way? We can’t be expected to get life right all the time. We stumble, we fall, we crash, we love, we loose, and through it all, the only thing we can do is sleep, and wake up the next day and try again. Anything is possible if we only believe, and we have to have the faith in God that anything can be remade. Anything in our life can be fixed, and we can if we have the blessings from God to do so.

Broken Together by Casting Crowns

How I wish we could go back to simpler times
Before all our scars and all our secrets were in the light
Now on this hallowed ground, we’ve drawn the battle lines
Will we make it through the night?

It’s going to take much more than promises this time
Only God can change our minds

Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete
Could we just be broken together
If you can bring your shattered dreams and I’ll bring mine
Could healing still be spoken and save us
The only way we’ll last forever is broken together

 I was told recently we could never go back to the way things were. While that’s true, fixing what’s broken isn’t impossible. Though the broken, or shattered lives of the past may never be put back together, all we can do is focus on how we can pick ourselves up. See that’s what the driving force is all about isn’t it? What drives you to get back up when you’ve been knocked down? Why do you get up time and again, why do you stay in the fight? I think it’s important for all of us to review those traits inside each and every one of us. We must know what we fight for, what we want, what our personal code is, and live by it. My code aligns with Gods word the truth. I fight for justice; I fight for truth because truth is sometimes all we have in this world. I don’t like bullies and I stand firm against them even at the cost of myself. I pick myself up because I don’t like the idea of being seen as weak. I don’t like the idea of being deemed a failure. This last year I’ve fought to redeem myself. I fell hard last year, and I lost what I felt was my entire credibility. I felt as if my actions would be the doom of my life forever. While this may or may not be the actual case, some of the facts are undeniable.

Remember though, it’s okay to fall, and it’s okay to get knocked down. The Devil will try to keep you there, and what you need to do is listen to the voice of truth.

Voice of Truth by Casting Crowns

But the waves are calling out my name
And they laugh at me
Reminding me of all the times
I’ve tried before and failed
The waves they keep on telling me
Time and time again. “Boy, you’ll never win!”
“You’ll never win!”

But the voice of truth tells me a different story
The voice of truth says, “Do not be afraid!”
The voice of truth says, “This is for My glory”
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the voice of truth

 Don’t listen to the lies, the half-truths, or the feelings of worthlessness the Devil tries to tell you. You know you were perfectly made, and that is what’s important. You need to get back up because even if you’re broken, God uses broken people the most. You may be broken, but you can change the world even when you don’t know how to fix yourself. There’s a song that the Angels sing, and they sing for you. You can be the redeemed and through Christ made new. What drives you? Jesus, Jesus drives me to get back up and to always try to be better. You may not be good at everything, but there’s something you can do and be the best at. Find it, use it, and glorify God with it. Be the best at something, and if you’re going to take a beating in this life at least do it for God. Stand up, and look the Devil straight in the eyes and say, “I can do this all day!” (Captain America)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Embrace of God

thearrowpreacher1 Comment

The Embrace of God

Have you have felt so lost and afraid you didn’t know where to turn or what to do next? The last 8 months of my life have been filled with plenty of those days. Thankfully for me there is plenty of scripture to help those in need. Isaiah 50:44 “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.” There have been many players who’ve been important to continue to carry on the plot in our great story. There have been particular people along the way who’ve had a special relationship with God in order to give us the tools to reach salvation, the final stage in our story. Although God has been angry with humanity in the past, today, the covenant hold true. Psalm 86:15 “But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” It’s the love of God that gives us our comfort. Psalm 33:22 “May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.” No matter how big or small a mistake we make, God will always be with us, because there is always hope that before our last breath we can give our lives to the Lord. Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

When you need that proverbial hug from the big guy upstairs, may I suggest, Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And John 16:33 “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

 Some day’s scripture may not provide the comfort we’d like or hope for, but never the less, I guarantee it would be better to have it then the alternative to not. When I was in Paris I fell in love with a particular sculpture Cupid and Psyche’s Embrace, or sometimes called Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss. Although this is from Roman mythology it always reminds me of the sweet tender nature of the one true God.

We may not always feel as if God is there with us, but fear not God isn’t going anywhere. James 1:2 “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,” No matter how weary and low we get know that God will always be at the ready and by our side. Isaiah 40:28 “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.” Don’t get me wrong, I often feel weak and low, but that’s when I rely more on my faith to get me through. When my faith is low and I don’t feel like I can carry my own cross anymore, there’s only one thing I can do. I listen to

Lean On Me.

 Sometimes in our lives we all have pain

We all have sorrow

But if we are wise

We know that there’s always tomorrow

Lean on me, when you’re not strong

And I’ll be your friend

I’ll help you carry on

For it won’t be long

‘Til I’m gonna need

Somebody to lean on

Please swallow your pride

If I have faith you need to borrow

For no one can fill those of your needs

That you won’t let show

You just call on me brother, when you need a hand

We all need somebody to lean on

I just might have a problem that you’ll understand

We all need somebody to lean on

 As Great as this is when referring to a friend, think of it more if God is that friend to lean on. God will always be there to lighten our load. We can’t get help if we don’t ask. God will always put someone in our life for us to lean on. We just need to look in the right place.