Adequate.

So I have this big deal of a decision to make in the next few days. I am not a person that is easily stressed, so this past week has been a little foreign to me. And as always, when in "distress" you seem to go to the Lord more.
So there I am 1:30ish in the am, laying in bed, I decide to consult with God. So I lay there praying that typical prayer, "thanks for the day, blah...I pray for so and so and for this and that." We all do it sometimes, fall into the habitual prayer the old "fall back prayer," but anyways I was praying and truly meaning what I was saying, and I prayed specifically for God to not let me worry about feeling adequate, because I know I am... And then God slapped me and said what makes you think you are adequate, he practically yelled at me and told me I wasn't even close to being adequate, I was actually very INadequate.
As I laid in my bed I grew even more restless, and being confused and unable to sleep. I made a the decision to get back out of bed and watch some terrible scary movie that was bound to be on at almost 2 in the am on the Sci-Fi channel.
As I got up my mind began to race, "am I really not adequate?" Nope. It finally was clicking. I'm not adequate in the least, and sorry to bust your bubble (the one person that reads this) neither are you. Now, you may be good at something, have natural talent or just have worked so hard at something that you are now skilled in that one thing. But none the less, you are still not adequate.
The only thing that makes us adequate is Christ. Jesus' sacrifice was made so that we would become adequate. What is crazy is that the things we do, on this earth to become adequate at (fill in the blank), don't work at all for us later. We can work all our lives to become adequate in Gods eyes but it just won't happen, and we aren't born with it, like a natural talent! Its a crazy huge gift!
What's great is that the more we relize that we are inadequte without Jesus, the more we will strive to be like Him, which in turn makes us more adequate. So relizing your inadequacy equals being more adequate. I know pretty mind boggling, all at 2 in the morning.

all

I am a worship leader. I love it. I love the fact that I get to get in front of people and play music, but besides that I love that I have the "duty" or "responsibility" to lead people into worship. Its awesome. This week I am not at Northstar I am leading for a different congregation and I am looking forward to it. We are playing a song called Jesus Paid it All. Its an old hymn, but a guy named Kristian Standfill redid it and made it very cool. Anyways, I was just sitting here listening to our lineup for Sunday and got stuck listening to this song.
I know all of us know what the word "all" means, but I think therein lies the problem. It is such a common phrase that we sometimes just skip right over it. So I looked up the definition, just to refocus myself, heres what I came up with...

"used to emphasize the greatest possible amount of a quality"
"used to refer to the whole quantity"
"completely"

Wow. Jesus paid it all. Completely. Everything possible. HA! I know its common, the song is even common. But think about this. Jesus paid it all, every single thing. He did it for me and you. If you throw in a different word it completely changes everything. Jesus paid most, Jesus paid some, Jesus put a down payment on my sin.

NO. He paid it all. Every last bit, so much in fact, that there is nothing left that I have to pay. There is nothing that helps me get a better payment, its taken care of. All I have to do is acknowledge his payment, and just hand over the reigns of my life. Something that I need to do daily.

Obsession.

Do you remember those old Calvin Klein ads where people would just be standing around without shirts on, and there was just a white backdrop; then someone would look straight into the camera and whisper "obsession." Oh I get it, the white back drop is a metaphor for life on earth and shirtless means you are still a child inside and um... wait, no it meant nothing!! Those commercials and ads were stupid, they did the job cause here I am talking about it 10 years after the fact, but none the less, stupid and very heroin sheik.

That really had nothing to do with anything I am writing about other then the name of the product they were trying to sell, Obsession. What is that? What does this word mean. Well I was pretty bored yesterday so I thought I would take a gander at the true definition, so here are two different ones for ya; 1. "The domination of ones thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, ect" 2. "An unhealthy and compulsive preoccupation with something or someone."

I am a youth leader at the church I work at, and two of the girls in my group are obsessed with a Korean boy band. There name...Big Bang. They have played some of there music for me and I won't say its bad, but I will include the link so you can decide for yourself... http://youtube.com/watch?v=cYr9pkxUOrI&feature=related and yes they did steal the whole song from Maroon 5.

But I can't point my finger and laugh to hard at Ester and Olivia, because when I was there age I had obsession with someone, her name....Jessica Simpson. Yes, I was in love with this woman. Now, don't get me wrong this was pre-skank days of Jessica. Pre-Newlyweds fam. Pre-divorce-trashy looking days. I bought her first album and fell in love. "I wanna love you forever" oh it takes me back to my youth.... Anyways, everyone has some kind of obsession, could be sports, could be your g/f or b/f, it could even be facebook. But this all depends on the person.

So my thoughts of obsession turned to the Bible, and I asked the question, "out of all the Bible, who was obsessed with God?" You could probably name people all day, from Moses to Paul. But one person jumped out at me. David. David is the only one in the Bible who is referred to as a man after Gods own heart. It is a known fact that David himself wrote AT LEAST 73 of the chapters in Psalms! Try to grasp this, out of all the Bible the book of Psalms is completely different, its not history, or prophecy, its a book of songs. So David had at least 73 songs, published for people to read over the past 3000 years. I am sure he wasn't the only guy writing songs back then, but he was the standard. He was the Ben Folds, the Jay-z, or whoever you think writes good songs, Chris Tomlin? One of the best examples is Psalms 63. You can see his passion in the first verse.

Psalms 63:1 "..Earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water."

What in your life makes you feel like this. I am engaged and I don't ever want to live with out her, but the honest truth is I could and she could live with out me, even thought it would be very tough. But David is here screaming out to God saying "God I thirst for you! My body aches and longs for you, I am like a man wandering in a desert!" wow. David was obsessed with God.

You may think you feel that way about some new thing you have. An ipod, clothes, maybe even a girl or a boy. But its fleeting, it won't last. There will be a new ipod out next summer. You will get a hole in your jeans. That girl or boy will break your heart, even if he/she doesn't, you aren't going to hold hands and follow each other into the dark...thanks death cab. Bottom line is you can live without Jesus. You can go through every single day of your life with out him. But as soon as that second life comes around you won't be able to live without Jesus, and you will have lost your chance to.

Obsess over Christ. let me repeat the definitions, and put Jesus in this spot..."Jesus dominates my thoughts and feelings, I am persistent in bringing all my reasoning back to Him, I am compulsive and preoccupied with my relationship with Jesus." If you put any other thing instead of Jesus, it is wrong. But its okay to be obsessed with Christ. So do it.