go in peace...

Worldly speaking, I would say my head knowledge of the things of God is decent. I am at a point where I can communicate them to others and I can allow my knowledge to shape the way I may view life events. I'm not a scholar by any means but I can talk confidently about Jesus.

It's my heart that suffers though.

What good is having a voice like an angel but not having love? You are but merely sound.
What good is head knowledge if in your heart, you are unable to reach it.

To my folly, I have come to accept the lack of 'experiencing God' as the norm. I have held tight to my head knowledge, not letting my heart drink fully from the streams of living water.

(For example...I've become very weary of outward signs of the spirit, yet I believe in them. Maybe its fear but I'm obsessed with "doing it right". If you speak in tongues, do it right or not at all...etc. Actually 'experiencing God' for me has been a journey back and forth through my head and my heart.)

I don't think it has been on purpose. The world is so busy that it is easy to neglect my soul's cries and rely on what I already know.

After listening to a sermon about the woman who wipes the feet of Jesus with her tears, I was taken back by the words of Christ.

"Your sins are forgiven, go in peace."

I felt the dam in my head break and the living words of Christ flow down into my parched soul carrying this truth to the deepest recesses of my being that only He can reach. This area is the 'God shaped hole' inside us that we all talk about but are not aware of it until God fills it.

I see a need for more of this experience. God wants to meet all of my needs, even emotionally. 'Going in peace' is a feeling. A feeling I've longed for but have not had much experience with. It felt great though and I still carry this with me a few weeks later. The gospel is to be experienced. It brings change and change is an experience. Head knowledge is good but it can't reach fill that hole mentioned earlier.

That is a God thing and God things are to be experienced. I'm looking forward to finding out more about this.

go in peace....

OH-NO!

Forgive the lack of posts recently. Creativity tank is lacking. Either that or I just have nothing literary to add. I'll take the latter. I'm opting for a sports theme this time....

So Ohio State lost again. The sting of it is less irritating this year though still present. There more it happens, the more you get used to it.

I didn't want to believe all the hype about not being able to compete with the SEC teams but that is the current reality. It's one thing if your team earns the spot to play in the National title game and then loses, but seeing that the Big Ten is not a very good conference, it's easy for us to get to this game, it's just way harder to win. We will probably be right there next year again as we are the class of the Big Ten, but if the Big Ten is not very good, what does that really make us? Thankfully the Big Ten is a BCS conference or else we would never see the championship game after these last two performances. Look, I love the Buckeyes but I also follow college football and it's not too hard to see this fact. In addition, I don't see the conference improving soon, outside of Michigan.
Weak competition all year makes playing good competition a lot harder if you only face it once a year.

LSU played 6 teams in the final top 15 this year, OSU played- 1 and that was LSU. We were not ready for them.

Also, it was not so much the speed of the teams. I watched the game and both teams had fast, strong players. The problem is playing that type of team once a year,with 50 days off doesn't really give us much chance against them. It's not an excuse but playing Akron doesn't train us for 'SEC' talent.

September 13th, 2008. OSU plays at USC. This game is HUGE for the Bucks. IF we win, we can still salvage some respect across the country...if we lose...it is to the pit of mediocreity we go, it may take years to come back from that.