#2

“My Time in Exile”

One of my favorite Third Eye Blind songs. I don’t listen to them much anymore. I filter my influences more strictly these days. Plus I just don’t enjoy music of that nature as much anymore. Wallowing in sin. Celebrating the pain. It’s like poking a wound, pulling at a scab over and over. The enjoyment is in the prolonging of the process, focusing on the hurt, wanting to be well and to be saved but not recognizing the patience and process required to actual get out of the darkness. God uses broken people; those who stray; those who sin greatly; those who have redemptive stories to tell. Look at Saul of Tarsus who then became Paul who wrote the majority of the New Testament, he became one of the greatest Christian leaders after a life of energetically persecuting Christians. Today we water down stories like these. We compare King David’s adultery with Bathsheba, his roundabout murder of her husband Uriah, with our little outbursts of anger, our mediocre struggles in our comfortable lives. Many of us don’t challenge ourselves. Many of us have a real issue with compassion and being able to truly view the magnitude of trials that others have experienced. The greatness of the men and women who lived through the gospel of the old prophets, those who put their lives on the line for their King and Savoir Jesus. Now we are so comfortable, so removed, so dispassionate, so blocked by the hands of Satan to the reality that we’ve arrived in. Jesus was real. He was a real man born to die for the sins of trillions of human beings. The story is infinite and vast and powerful and beautifully complex. Many of us stop ourselves well short of any risk or discomfort that could bring us a closer gaze into the reality of this being, of this God we have, of this Savior and King that leads us to witness to others. I must concede and humble myself in this opinion as well. There need to be God’s servants in all walks of life. Not everyone is on the same page. Not everyone has the same perspective. Not everyone has the same needs. I do think that we as Christians must challenge ourselves continually; to put ourselves through depravation and challenge and lessening and want in order to be faced with the reality that can only come from stripping our lives away and being met with the face of our Creator. We have to lower ourselves to the state of widows and orphans and outcasts and lepers, like our King the Christ did. Do we imitated Him? Or do we just satisfy ourselves with emotional wanderings into His Word for an hour or two at a time? Do we walk with our Father or do we intellectually understand the emotions we ought to be feeling at a distance? Am I judging my brothers and sisters without examining my own behavior closely? I don’t know. All I can do is humble myself and spend time talking to God, to spend time in His word and to lessen myself and increase Him. I feel I have a clear sense of what He’s calling me to. It’s the challenge of a lifetime and I cannot wait to see what treasures He has for me in this life and in the next. I praise Him for the difficulties He allowed me to go through. I used to hate myself. Now in His Glory I love myself because I love Him first and I can look back and see exactly from experience how wide that gap is. I can reach people there with earnestness and honesty. I praise Him for that. I am a strong soldier in His cause. Pray for me, brothers. I am praying for you. In Jesus’ name.

Blog Post Title One

How do we apply ourselves as believers in the modern world? This is not a new question. This is what I’m asking myself in November 2022. Coming back to faith in Jesus after a 10-year wandering period, I find myself with new challenges. I believed as a child, a teen, a young man; then I wandered away. As a habit, I have continually placed my past firmly in the past. Anything I have done before, especially that which has not worked, I have been content to leave in the past. This includes faith, practices of faith, lack of faith, and practices of lack of faith. How do I reconcile my experience? The world is different now at 34 than how it was at 17. It is important to remember that nothing is new; the more things change, the more they stay the same, and all of my experience is but a blip within a blip of God’s greater plan.

My answer to this question: how do we apply ourselves? Prayer first, I’d say, prayer and reading God’s word. Every day. Start and end each day with prayer and reading. Look to examples of strong men in the bible. Look to Jesus. Take the wisdom, take the lessons. Surround yourself with other biblical men. Go to church. Steep yourself in as much Godly behavior as you can. Then turn around and look at what gifts God has given you. What do you love? What do you yearn to do? What skills do you have? What do others know you for? Lean into those things, all the while putting God as your first step. Before beginning and ending, consult God. Pray. Walk with God. Everything you do is for him. Then bust out. Feel him fill you with His spirit and His guidance. Let yourself be His beautiful creation. Run, hard. Bring others to Him through your gifts. Be loud. Be energetic. Be courageous. Be humble. Then go for it. Everything you’ve ever wanted, keeping your desires below God’s plan, within his plan, never elevating anything into an idol before Him. But pay attention to where your mind goes after Him. He speaks to you. He wants your service. He made you uniquely and magnificently. He knows what you want. He put some of those desires in your heart. Get after it.

To anyone out there who might read this: call me, text me, email me, DM me on social. If you struggle, if you want help, if you want an excited ear to listen to your crazy plan, hit me up. I love you and I want to support you.

-Trevor