welcome to the story.

Confident foolishness. Supreme satisfaction. An overarching smile. These are just random thoughts. I need to expound on them one day. Right now I'm dead smack in the middle of an incredible book by Leonard Sweet, Soul Tsunami. Every "church" leader who wants to particpate in effective ministry from this point in time and in the future, should be forced to read this book or anything else by Sweet for that matter. This guy is way ahead of his time. Way ahead. Right now I'm reading through Romans. Good stuff. That must sound like the hugest understatement to God. But its a great book. Extremely deep. You could honestly read in Romans for the rest of your life and still not get as deep as you could go. Lets see . . . I've been listening to Coldplay, The Hives, Dashboard Confessional, The Rentals, David Crowder Band, The Strokes, and a worship cd from Mars Hill Fellowship. For my future reference. Ok, heres something that may sound wierd to me later on in the future. But I just thought it was an incredible moment of realization for me tonight. I know this sounds dumb, but the little light in my head clicked on for a brief second in an other wise ordinary situation. So here it is. I'm housesitting for this couple. They have two dogs. I don't know what kind cause I'm not that smart. They have this little one, named Shelby. So I'm sitting on the ground, have a nice cd compilation thrown on in the background, and I'm just playing with Shelby on the ground. Very peaceful. She keeps chasing me. Jumping on me. I blow in her face and then cover my face so she can't get to me. I hold her up in the air. She keeps licking my toes. She's all over the place. So we're just sitting there playing for about 15 minutes or so. Then I find her bag of toys. So I get out some chew toy ball or something like that. I get it out for her, so she can play with it, right? Well then she starts playing with it and quits playing with me. To be honest, it kinda chapped me. Here I am giving this toy to Shelby so she can play with it, and then I get mad when she starts to play with it. And for some reason and I have no idea why, a little light clicked on in my brain and I immediately thought about God giving me a gift to enjoy and then when He gives it to me, I quit playing with Him directly and play instead with the gift. Then I thought about how God must get chapped when he sees me doing this. But then the second light clicked on in my little brain. You see my motives aren't pure. I gave the toy to Shelby, so I could have her enjoy it with me, not so she could enjoy it by herself. Which shows that I didn't care about Shelby enjoying the gift. I cared more about myself and my satisfaction than I cared about Shelby and her satisfaction. Tainted motives. John Piper says God is most satisfied in us, when we are most satisfied in Him. So you see, God has a pure heart and pure motives. Therefore, the gift that he gives, He gives out of a pure heart. The gift is also an extension of himself. I don't think that God gets chapped when he sees me playing with his gift instead of directly playing with Him. I believe He sees it as me directly playing with Him since the gift is an extension of Him. He gave it to me out of a pure heart for my enjoyment. So why would he get mad if I enjoy His gifts, His pleasures as long as I recgonize who the gift came from? God sees it as me enjoying His pleasure. He is most satisfied with me, when I am most satisfied in Him. This will probably sound real spacey when I read it a year from now. But right now, tonight, it clicked with me. I thought I'd share it. I know I'm dumb. Just please don't say it to my face cause then it'll hurt my feelings and I'll get a really low self esteem and that won't be good for anybody. =)