“We never know what’s wrong without the pain”
Maybe you’ve heard the song these lyrics are from. Today I was listening to it, and thinking about some conversations I have been having lately. So many people have been saying they just want to be happy, they don’t want to deal with the pain. And I started to wonder... Why do we try to medicate ourselves so much from reality? If there is something wrong with our reality, shouldn’t we face it and try to fix it instead of running and hiding from it? Yet we are so afraid of the process it takes to be made whole. Why is it our natural response to run from anything that causes us pain? Why is it our natural response to find every excuse in the world not to be in uncomfortable situations? Doesn’t it say in James to "consider it pure joy when you face trials"? And in Hebrews it talks about how "no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful"? In both of those scriptures, what does it follow up with right afterward? The pain is going to develop something in you that is priceless. The struggle is what makes us who we are meant to be. Sometimes, facing the uncomfortable situations is the only way we are ever going to grow. Personally, I want to be known as a woman who is willing to fight through anything to become who God created me to become and really live out His purpose for me.
So, God help us not to run from the pain, help us not to be afraid of it. Let us choose to face it so we can fix it instead of numbing it. And make us who YOU created us to be - whole, free, powerful men and women of God that have the potential to CHANGE this world!

A captured heart

"Apart from Christ let nothing dazzle you." - A.W. Tozer

Many of the problems with the Christian church today come from the root of being so enamored with pop culture. Many of our professed Christians have their attention captured quicker by a catchy magazine headline then they do by a move of God. We have been more than dazzled by the culture around us we have become a part of it. Our hearts and minds have become so fascinated with the movie stars, musicians, and athletes that God is very often lucky to be an after thought in our lives. We say He is first but our time calls us a liar. We use the excuse that there is just no good Christian music but years ago people were very committed to God without even the possibility of recorded music. The media and not God has truly captured the heart of the Christian. We are Christian only in the cultural definition of the word not the devotion sense. We must identify that there is a problem, when, the events of a cultural icons life is our conversation topic while very few of our conversations are centered around Christ. We wear pictures of men and women on our shirts proving that Jesus is barely in our hearts or on our minds. We will seek Him and find Him when we seek Him with all of our hearts, the problem is that the desires of our hearts are pointed in so many directions i fear many of us will never find Him. I am not questioning salvation, simply providing an answer for dry Christian living.

Cole Zick

Reconditioning

Something nailed me in the face today. I felt God gave it to me for our MC group and He did but it was just as much for me. That is the need for our minds to be reconditioned. I fully believe that we diagnose way to many kids with ADD and ADHD that don’t really have it. The problem is that media has conditioned their minds to only pay attention for 7-10 minutes at a time. Commercial breaks are every 7-10 minutes and cartoons and TV shows are what raise America. All of our communication is visual. We watch movies, browse the web, and text message. Everything coming in is media driven and visual. Then we come and sit in a place to connect with God and wait for Him to show up. Without our movement and action nothing will happen. God is not like a good movie, meaning his purpose is not to entertain us. If we truly want to connect with God we need to understand a couple things. First, our minds have been conditioned to have a completely different type of communication then the type that we will have with God. satan has done a very good job at conditioning the minds of America and our world through the media. He doesn’t even have to get us to watch or listen to bad things he just needed to get us dependent on movies, music, and the TV so that we want to spend all of our time in these arenas. I mean look at where we are at, as soon as our prayer time gets boring we pop in a Hillsong CD and all of sudden God’s presence is there? I wonder if its just that our mind is conditioned to be entertained with loud noise and good music. It begs me to ask the question if it is really even God’s presence at all in that moment or our emotions. All of that to say this, we must understand that to authentically connect with God we will have to recondition our minds and what they are dependent on. God is not here for our entertainment. He is hear for our soul. This also means that we need to drastically restrict our media intake levels. Again I am not just speaking of the bad stuff I am talking about everything that has conditioned our mind to be so dependent on visual stimulation to feel enjoyment. Without restricting this area of our lives we will continue to allow it to condition our minds without us every realizing it and thus making it virtually impossible to ever truly connect with God. satan knew how to counteract the ability to connect with God, just make us dependent on an opposing type of communication. So now much of our Christian church today is filled with empty, yet entertained people wondering why it doesn't really seem real. Second, do something. Now that you see what is preventing you either act or remain the same.

Cole