Chase the Setting Sun...

Yesterday morning I was listening to a sermon podcast from Francis Chan as I was driving to work. During his sermon he started talking about a sermon a student of his, from his preaching class, gave recently for that class.

This girl, before giving her sermon, was talking about how nervous she was and how she kept repeating to God over and over, "God please show up, God you have to show up!" As she was repeating this to herself she realized God was telling her, "I am already here, this is MY party and I invited YOU!" I love that!

So many times we wonder, "Is God going to show up?" or "Is God going to be present in this situation?" What we keep forgetting is that God is already there. He has been there from the start and never left. At some point along the way He called us to that situation, not the other way around.

We talk about how we should expect God to show up. I think it is even beyond that. God is already there, we don't have to expect him to show up, we just have to worry about getting ourselves there and God will be waiting to be there with us.

How often do you pray that God just "show up" in a certain situation in life? Do you expect Him to be there?

This is a song by Matthew West called "The Motions" that is truly inspiring to me. It is not the newest or hippest worship song out there right now, but it is a great one purely on message and emotion. Here are the lyrics and video

Verse 1:
This might hurt, It’s not safe
But I know that I’ve gotta make a change
I don’t care if I break,
At least I’ll be feeling something
Cause just okay is not enough,
Help me fight through the nothingness of life

Chorus:
I don’t wanna go through the motions
I don’t wanna go one more day
Without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don’t wanna spend my whole life asking
What if I had given everything?
Instead of going through the motions.

Verse 2:
No regrets, not this time,
I’m gonna let my heart defeat my mind
Let Your love make me whole,
I think I’m finally feeling something
Cause just okay is not enough
Help me fight through the nothingness of this life

Take me all the way

I've been listening to this song for about a year now. I hadn't really heard it until late last summer. Once I came across it though I instantly was inspired by it. This song is just obviously a prayer from the depths of the writer's heart. He's talking about how painful it can be to just follow Christ, to go all the way, to quit going through the motions.

The motions...that's what a lot of us "Christians" are so insanely talented at. From the outside we look like Christians, but from the inside, we are little better than anyone else. This song asks God to help us in our times alone, when no one is there to see us or know what we are thinking. This song is a prayer to help us when no one on earth would know if we did something that wasn't quite Christian.

What would happen if we quit "going through the motions"? What would happen if we truly had Christ's "all consuming passion" inside of us? What if we went "all the way"?

I love this song because it inspires me to live a life that is of Christ at all times. Not just when I'm at church leading the worship team, or in a public setting. It calls me to truly live a life that is Christian at all times. It is when the deepest, darkest, depths of who we are become Christ that we are truly transformed.