Author: revkevjr

Let the kick drum kick one time
Breathe out let your mind unwind
Eyes on the ceiling
Looking for the feeling
Wide open let your own eyes shine

Yeah, it’s where the fight begins
Yeah, underneath the skin
Between these hopes and where we’ve been
Every fight comes from the fight within

– Chorus –
I am the war inside
I am the battle line
I am the rising tide
I am the war I fight

Eyes open open wide
I can feel it like a crack in my spine
I can feel it like the back of my mind
I am the war inside

I get the feeling that we’re living in sci-fi
I get the the feeling that our weapons are lo-fi
Ain’t no killer like pride
No killer like I
No killer like what’s inside

Yeah, it’s in the air we breathe
Yeah, it’s in the blood we bleed
Beneath these dreams and what we’ve seen
We are the kids of the in-between

Put your hands up open up wide
put your hands up side by side
Age don’t matter like
Race don’t matter like
Place don’t matter like what’s inside

Yeah, every thought or deed
Yeah, every tree or seed
The big things come from the little dreams
Every world is made by make believe

I found this moose antler while hiking in the Rockie Mountains in October 2010, and I finally got around to painting it.

This past weekend we wrapped up a 6-week series called “The Diary of a Wired Kid.” The Wire is the name of our middle school ministry, and we wanted to address questions that a lot of our students are thinking but not asking out loud – things that they might wrestle with in a diary. They might not be asking it for any number of reasons – fear of embarrassment, because they just don’t know if it’s appropriate or not, they’ve never considered whether or not God might be interested in their question or have anything to say about it in the Bible, or because it’s simply never dawned on them to do so.

Our series BIG IDEA was this: God cares about me and what I’m going through.

Here are the six questions we addressed in the series (obviously there are many more, but …):

1. Why am I going through all of these changes? Does God not like me or something?
2. What should I do my friend is, or I am getting bullied?
3. How can I talk to my friends about God without throwing up?
4. What am I supposed to do if my parents don’t get along?
5. My parents always say dumb stuff. What do they mean?
6. God tells me to forgive, but what if the other person really hurt me and they don’t deserve it?

The People of God in Community. God creates us for community, but intimacy often leads to conflict. It was no different for the early Christian community, which brought together people from a multitude of backgrounds and ethnicities. So for Paul and other leaders, the task becomes not only proclaiming that the kingdom of God is here in the person of Jesus Christ, but actualizing it in the lives of individuals in the all-inclusive, loving community that this message creates. Because the leaders could not be with every community all of the time and God’s purposes reach far beyond the contemporary problems, theological instruction, pastoral care, and training in discipleship are needed. Thus these first leaders instruct Christians by writing letters to the various groups, letters that continue to instruct us today.

The People of God into Eternity. The efforts of God to form an all-inclusive community of loving persons on earth comes to fulfillment beyond time in the formation of a new heaven and new earth. Old ways of oppression, alienation, travail, suffering, and mortality end, and life eternal takes their place. Worship of self gives way to worship of God. “And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face” (Revelation 22:2-4). To everyone who longs to be part of this loving, nurturing, all-inclusive community: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift” (Revelation 22:17).

(From The Life With God Bible)

Related Post with Diagram: A Panoramic View of God’s Purpose in History