Facebook Updates

On November 6, 2016November 6, 2016 By jareddiehl88In California, CHRSTIAN LIVING, DAILY LIFE, FACEBOOK, LIFE, Los Angeles, LOVE, REVIVAL, Righteousness, RuckusLeave a comment

I go back and forth with how much I post on my Facebook. One of the things that I like to do in response to negativity, complaining, or even overshare of personal things..is to post encouraging and challenging thoughts. I posted this last night.

The biggest difference between joy and happiness.

Happiness is temporal based on uncertain circumstances. As long as “this or that” is good I am happy.

Joy is eternal and not limited to the present circumstance. Joy is having God’s perspective while uncertain things take place.

Joy is having an umbrella and also trusting that without one you will still make it through the storm.

Mathew 5:45.. and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Joy is a internal peace that will enable us to stand in dark, troublesome, and even fearful events.

Joy is evidence that you are trusting in what we don’t see.

Joy is supernatural and a practice. Re-Joice means to practice Joy over and over and over again(thanks Kris Vallotton for that quote)

Joy gets more sentences then happiness because it lasts longer.

Maturing In Love

On June 20, 2015June 28, 2015 By jareddiehl88In DAILY LIFELeave a comment

From my Facebook page:

1Cor.13:11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

How you mature into an adult is largely based on your revelation and experience of God’s love. If fear is a result of no love or very little then a fear of growing up takes place. Taking ownership of your emotions, experiences, and choices all flows from a high vision of God’s goodness. If we are immature then it could be from a low vision or no vision of who God says He is. I seek to mature and to help others do the same. Paul is also telling us to put away childish ways in community not just as individuals. Thoughts?

Late night musing

On May 29, 2015 By jareddiehl88In 3415612, Blogroll, Book Reviews, California, CHRSTIAN LIVING, CHURCHLeave a comment

The word muse just sound sophisticated and so much so that it rarely gets used. I still struggle with the inserting of dictionary.com words of the day. Today’s word for myself is: proclivities. I have this bent towards 2 Timothy 3, it reads(NKJV):

“But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: ²For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, ³unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, ⁴traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, ⁵having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! ⁶For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, ⁷always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

My musing for the night is about love. Of course I have read C.S. Lewis’ Four Loves which I read December 2004 so it has been some time. The idea of love that is not rooted in sentiment and that is not us looking at love in stories and movies like the Notebook or even the depraved melancholic lines of Shakespeare, runs deep. God is love just blows my mind. I am 6 months away from being 30 years old and pretty much since I can remember I have been in church. My parent’s were in the ministry for a bit and then after that it was if I was too. I did sincerely love church and as I left by God’s mercy and grace I stuck with it. In fact, this whole love thing has driven me to press forward.

^”Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. ¹³Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, ¹⁴I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”(NKJV)

Both passages for the night here open the door to a rather wider path. Of course, it is called the narrow path in terms of the number of true converts and also because of the difficulty in living the things Christ said. Finding God’s love and responding not as the condition that men will respond when a false/demonic and evil love takes over that leads to loving ourselves wrongly, is they key for us. Pursuing and laboring to understand God’s love, however, I am stirred and encouraged to continue on this path of this great pursuit. Let us run this race of loving God and loving each other! Who’s with me?

Poverty Gift

On March 16, 2015March 16, 2015 By jareddiehl88In DAILY LIFELeave a comment

The message is in

God will win,

Yesterday was the rest of the

Best parts of me,

If I have passed then

I can outlast whatever will

Come my way

What am I missing if

I am fishing for a blessing

Without cost,

Without pain,

Without rain to work through

Without puddles to cover up for–

The just expect rust for breakfast

The criminals expect paper milk

And evaporated ramen flavors–

I do not get what I deserve–

I am so sick of the lack of love

I have for the abundance of stuff

I own—it must be harder for me then

To receive mercy

For the poverty gift

Unwraps the riches I think

I have, and I so have a need

To learn more on how to

Be poor

Often

On March 1, 2015July 28, 2015 By jareddiehl88In CHRSTIAN LIVING, Culture, DAILY LIFE, FAMILYLeave a comment

Not a child anymore,
But I go back there
I easily remember what was
So messed up and hard
Let the River Flow streamed its
Dream on the screen door,
The Interstate in my pores–
It became a daily grind to never
Stay but to always hide–
Often is no longer a caution
For often is the number of times
you failed me, you tore into me,
You broke what I had as a twig
In the wind, a bruised reed,
A unforgiven deed,
A passed down curse for the hearse
You prepare for me–
Lonely is for the lonely and
Not for the extroverts
Or the comics,
Or the master of homiletic,
I preach a great sermon on
Together, but we can live alone
In the balmy weather of ease,
Of sunlight as acceptance,
For the currency of the future
Is paid by living in the present–
For today is the day not to go
Back or to go forward, but today
Is the day to live

A Line

On January 25, 2015 By jareddiehl88In CHRSTIAN LIVING, DAILY LIFE, FAMILY, Hunger and thirstLeave a comment

A line has been crossed,
Over into, above onto,
Below and beneath the darkest
Of dreams,
“nor things present”
These ones are uneasy,
These ones are not easy,
Present means today,
Present is now,
Rain and clouds
And light that comes in
Between Halloween days,
Noah came to this life,
Came with all his heart,
Now he grows to fast now,
Now I am not very present
To watch him grow-
“Things to come!”
Yes, I never will know
The dark is getting darker,
The perverse man boasts in his
Darkness, and the clouds cover
Me again,
I have seen it all,
I have also said I have
Not seen anything,
I am still young,
For the twenties are
Slipping away now,
I am getting old,
Getting less bold about
What I cannot do,
Who I won’t be,
What I do not have
“All things working!”
Slave away at me,
Stay away at me–
What is God?
What is me?
What is a choice I
Cannot see,
What is those white halls,
Those painted blue lights,
Those midnight fights with
Peace,
Now it works cause I work
Too, now I live, and death
Does to,
Through is my new cue,
Around does not exist
Anymore,
Dodging the bullet is
More of a bullet to take,
To bleed, to feel, to
Be present,
This is the line to cross,
Where nothing hinders anymore

Shadows And Flames

On November 14, 2014November 18, 2014 By jareddiehl88In DAILY LIFELeave a comment

Love has been the final fight
The final focus to get right
The final tale that’s yet to be telled
Man cannot have one dimension
He is complex and goes without mention—
The wind passes and the fires burn,
The flame bends on and in and through
The time that I have consumed—
Its scars stay close to me, stay close
Upon me—pain is on this resume—
The hardness of nights without sleep,
Without a rest to put me at ease—
Empty have I declared,
Bankruptcy I say,
Vacancy blinks neon as the
Dusk settles in, empty is
This place, carved out for You,
What was good in the past now
Does not last—I only have particles
Of you, memories of all who have
Not given up, a mountain man He
Was, down the mountain with fire and
Brimstone, with earthly tones, with
Shades of black, with a people of lack—
For fear used to be the source,
Fear of seeing and a real fear of
Receiving—
Moses knew Your ways,
But I live for the acts,
For the miracles,
For a wandering eye will
Never rest, so satisfy me
So I can be the best—
Shadows and flames come
And go—now I can approach
Without a Moses, without a
Mountain but through a Man
Called You Jesus,
The final fight for a new kind
Of shadow—one that heals
When I walk by,
One that picks up all
The fallen particles
That embraces this earthen
Vessel-one God, one Father,
One faith, one baptism,
One resume full of suffering,
Full of sorrow, full of death,
Full of facing all the forces that
Would try to steal and kill—
Love is that steady thing,
That burns in circles,
That has a ring,
That has commitment,
That has that wealthy ointment—
That can only be understood
When man is empty
When women is empty,
When pain is the guide to
Choose love, choose God,
To choose Christ and all
That He has done—if its
All that matters in the end—
Then today is the day to
Get it, to understand, to
See what it really means

Close Again

On September 6, 2014 By jareddiehl88In CHRSTIAN LIVING, Culture, DAILY LIFE, HighSchool, Hunger and thirst2 Comments

Emptied out over the years
Edge of the driveway fears,
Left it in spring, when it never did
Rain, when the blizzard was the wizard
With the wand, with the bond, with the
Connection to you, in the aisle, all the while
Worthwhile looks from you, I thought I knew
What was close, what it meant to be a host,
What it means now to try not to boast—
I am dead around You, and around all that
You do—I see all from a distance,
Walking in resistance,
I am no miracle man,
I am a Minnesota man,
For the love of cold and
Winter—O, for all that skating
Taught me—how you came in the stands,
You clapped both hands—
Mom held her head low
For all that the injury could go-
I hope I am new, I hope I am
In the renew—I hope I cannot
Feel this way for to long—
That feeling of disconnect—
The city it sits—black, white
And full of little light–
L.A. is a lonely journey
Under the bridge,
Under the pain you
Bring to me—I have just
Firework memories now—
When sparks did fly,
When backseat was where
You did sit, when near me
Was never nearly enough—
I wait and I pause I ask for
The because—Why do I long?
Why do I thirst? The cops verse
The cape and there is still an ache—
Black Knight, black crusader,
Blackened Darth Vadar, are you
My father? For it seems the same—
A mask to blame, where you hid
Behind it—the way you talked,
The way God is not—not my dad,
Not a broken man with broken
Dreams—ache, please, longing,
Please—you are not a myth,
You are all that is true
And all that is pure,
And all that is for sure—
I cannot get this anywhere else—
Even when it seems so close
To feeling close again

Wind With

On August 17, 2014 By jareddiehl88In CHRSTIAN LIVING, CultureLeave a comment

Wind with
With wind
Time to apprehend,
Time for time to end,
For forever to begin,
For the faces that have
Nothing but shadowed
Memories of lives full of empty—
Do I have what you ask for?
Do I have what you desire?
Do I have the wind?
Wind with me please,
Someone to shield,
Someone to yield,
Some fruit to peel
Back, some hearts with
Lack—I am still empty
When the stadium is
The medium,
When the crowd is
Loud and the loudest
I can be—is the shadow
Where all men stay—
Because without light
I cannot get anything
Right—for evil is what
I crave, for knives and
Guns and explosions,
Are all men expendable?
Mercenaries or lovers?
Just simple church goers—
Not good enough,
I am waiting for the world
To fall away, so the end
Can come, so light can reign
But please let us not be apart
Of the dark things we know will
Come—let us be lovers of the
Wind, of the light—of all that
Is pure and right

THE RUCKUS JOURNAL

Tag: Love