D-e-M-O... not the store that used to be in the mall.

I have been really lazy lately when it comes to blogging. I actually have been overwhelming myself with busyness (Which I tend to do a lot). I am trying to get my priorities right and just try to focus on Young Life, School, and Music. I have been doing really well otherwise. God has been really affirming me in a lot of things so far.

Speaking of Music. I have been working on this 3 song EP in the studio. So far it has been working out really well. I have been blessed with phenomenal musicians to help me with recording. The EP should be out and ready to go around April 24th ish?

Cardboard box Testimonies

So today was pretty interesting. I started off the day with only three hours of sleep because my church (Grace Gathering) was having a 24 hour prayer night. My friends and I decided to go to the church and pray at 3am because its not likely for people to be praying around that time. I also had to play guitar at Grace this morning for worship so my friend Pony and I just slept at the church. YES!

We did this thing at our church today called Cardboard box testimonies. Watch this video to understand it a little bit more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PolU2JRH_A

My cardboard said on one side. "Grew up without a Father" and then on the other side it said "Embraced by my Heavenly Father"

Seeing everybody's testimonies brought me to tears of joy because I was just in awe of what God did in people's lives. It was powerful.

Yesterday my sister and I received money from my mom from her taxes. My mom gave my sister 100 dollars to go shopping for spring break only if she cleaned the WHOLE house. All day yesterday my sister worked really hard to clean but today at Church my sister felt led in her heart to give all of her money away for the offering. You don't understand how much my sister LOVES shopping. This was huge!!! Its so exciting to see God work in her.

Opening up

So the beginning of today was kind of a struggle. Every now and then the feeling of loneliness and depression can come upon me. Today I was kind of overwhelmed with both. I was trying to figure out why I feel this way? Maybe its because I have never known what it feels like to be loved in a real deep way through another human being. My dad has never been around. My mom loves me so much but she usually shows it through giving me things. My family has never been "super close". Only God knows what is really going on in my heart. I have been constantly getting reminded of the beauty in counseling. I keep hearing stories of how it has really just brought out some deep stuff in people. I really think that the Spirit is putting it on my heart to find counseling. I used to think that counseling was only for people that were messed up but when I really look at the fruit from it, it seems like everybody could use some. I really just want to let God in on the deepest parts of my heart. I really want deep things to come out of my heart for my them to be healed by Gods hand. I want to surrender completely.

Grace is compelling.

Something really exciting happened to me today. First off to give you a little background, my family is a little different then most peoples family. We just constantly have craziness going on in our family but I still love everyone with all my heart. Well my little brother Noah has really bad anger problems and my youngest brother Mikey told me a secret of how Noah was going to beat these kids up at school who have been picking on him and his friends everyday after school gets out. Once Noah heard Mikey tell me this then immediately Noah ran at Mikey and hit him as hard as he could and he tackled him. Then Noah started slamming the door and I tried talking to him but he wasn't listening. I offered him GRACE instead of punishment. I told Noah if he let me talk to these kids who have been picking on him and if he apologizes to Mikey in a real way from his heart that I would take him out to the IMAX theater to Alice in Wonderland 3d. His heart went immediately from being hard to soft. He told me that he trusts that I would take care of the situation. Then I saw him apologize to Mikey ( which he never does) in a REAL way. It just made me think of how we as Gods children don't deserve his Grace but he still offers it. Grace is compelling when we except in our hearts.

Praise God for his amazing love!

Gods Kingdom is here.

I am so privileged to help out with this organization called Young Life. Young Life is an organization that works with High school kids and the key of Young Life is just to build relationships with High School kids. God just blew my mind today! Listen to all the situations where he shined today. I went to Northside today for lunch (the school I do Young Life at) and there is this kid who told me that he attempted to commit suicide last week. He was really open about it and trusted me with the information. I just offered out a hand to help him and he really wanted the help from me. He wanted someone to be there to talk about his life situations with. I got show Christ to him!

So there is this other kid who has been really wanting to get involved with Young life but he can't because his Grandmas a Jehovah witness and she is against anything else that doesn't have to do with being a Jehovah witness. He asked his Grandma if he could go but then she just said no but guess what..? He was at club tonight and he loved it!

Young Life club was so good tonight. There was so much diversity in the room which is something that we all have been praying for. I really felt like club tonight was an answered prayer in many different ways.

There is this other kid who has been struggling with some things in his life. He really just explained to me that he had this moment tonight where he just felt God speaking to him. He felt God's presence during the song came to my rescue and also during the club talk. I gave the talk tonight at club which I felt pretty good about just because I really felt God speaking through me. I talked about how God wants to enter into our messy situations but how its easy for us to put up fences up around our messy situations. This Young Life kid was telling me how he wants to bring the fences down because he has been keeping them up. He wants to let God in.

Amen
God is good.