This is real life.

It's 2010.

I made absolutely NO resolutions.

But so much has changed in my life since the new year began. I didn't even ask for it. It just sort of happened-by the grace of God.

Has your relationship with God ever grown stagnant? Have you ever sat back and thought about your old relationship with God--where there was so much passion, commitment, and honesty--and wished it was still like that? What happened?

Well, that was where I was a little less than a month ago. I had never felt so much IN the will of God and OUT of the will of God at the same time. Could that even be possible? For me it was. See, I was in the position of the will of God, but heart was out of it. It's kind of like a married couple who share the same last name and live in the same house (position) but have no passion for each other (heart). This caused such a strain on my relationship with God. What a broken relationship it became. My passion for Him slowly died out. The Word became more of an accessory in my life than a standard by which I lived by.

But something happened in 2010. I'm still not really sure what it was, other than a collision with His grace. I was tired of the dry spell, but I wasn't doing anything about it. God just started shaking me up unexpectedly.

Holiness had always been a big thing for me, but I slowly began losing sight of it. But now my desire for holiness is stronger than ever before. God has been convicting me left and right about everything I do--what I watch, what I listen to, what I say, what I think, and who I spend time with (or Facebook). THIS IS NOT CONDEMNATION OR LEGALISM!!! If you've never experienced it before, it's called holiness--living a life set apart from the world. In all honestly, it's more liberating than anything else!

I'm tired of being around Christians who are more influenced by the world than the world is influenced by them (this includes myself). I do not agree that you have to act like the world in order to reach them for Christ. The majority of churches today have forgotten this lifestyle of holiness and is, therefore, no longer preaching it.

I'm NOT sorry if what I say offends anyone. I feel God wants to open the eyes of His bride to a new revelation of who He is--a deeper understanding of the word "Holy." This does not come without repentance.

I want to challenge you to pursue this lifestyle. I can't help but spread this message God has impressed in me. So if I offend you by something I say (or put on Facebook) that God is convicting ME about (like my status on "American Idol"), pray about it, and ask God to show you His standard of Holiness. It will rock your world. I promise.

The Bible tells us in Hebrews 12:14, "...Without holiness no one will see the Lord." If God requires it of us, shouldn't we live it? I want to see God in 2010.

Okay. So I know it’s been months since I posted my last blog. I’m so bad about it. My only reasoning is I feel like I need to wait and blog until I feel like I have something meaningful to say to the world. So I’ve been waiting until something profound hit me. But it never did.

I recently moved into a house that was purchased by the church for extra classroom space, meetings, etc. I am very excited to have a place to call my own (for the most part). In the process of moving, I came across one my journals. I began reading some of my entries. Man, I was going through a rough time when I began that journal. Ugh!

Since I still don’t have anything that I feel is worth sharing, I will share something I wrote that was taped in the journal. I wrote this in the summer of 2006, and I can still completely relate with it in 2010. Wow!

Here it is:

“I long to enter into that secret place where Christ’s bride feels comforted, protected, confident, bold. But I am stuck outside, only looking...only, I can’t see anything but a smudged mirror that is reflecting my heart.

It is ugly.

I am constantly in spiritual surgery getting heart transplants several times a year. I destroy His heart inside of me. Just like eating junk food, my sin is clogging up the arteries through which His blood is trying to pump through. It gets blacker and blacker, weaker and weaker until the life is choked out of me. Then I ask the Doctor to fix me up. I get a new heart again, start exercising again (reading my Bible, praying, worshipping...you know, all the Christian stuff), skip a day, then two, three...and it’s all down hill from there. My heart that was once beating rhythmically the way God created it to, is now beating slower and slower.

I think I’ve been here before.

Good thing God has plenty of hearts to give away (that’s His way of showing forgiveness), but my spiritual health is failing. It’s time for “IT.” The real deal. This heart transplant will be my last. It has to be. NOT because I hate the surgery, but because I’m going to finally let Christ’s heart heal me. I’m finally ready to get ride of the bitterness and selfish desires that caused my heart disease in the first place. My Doctor longs to see positive results from the surgery, but it’s up to me, His patient, to take all the necessary steps to a healthier life.

But I’ve failed too many times. Can I possibly get it right this time around? How do I keep my heart really healthy?”