Screaming!

Do you ever feel like just standing up and screaming at the top of your lungs until your voice cracks and you have no energy left to stand? Do you ever just want to sit and cry because for some reason you are overwhelmed by this huge weight of sadness and brokenness?

I ask because I've been dwelling in these feelings for the past couple of weeks but haven't been able to scream or weep for some reason. There is this overwhelming desire to let the cries of my heart out yet I sit in my reserved state so much so that I begin to become numb toward these emotions. So I actually began to ask the question, "What is my heart wanting to scream, and why I'm I holding back?"

Many times I look at my life and wonder, "What good am I doing? Is my life really valuable? I'm I making a difference in the world? Is it better because my feet tread this earth, or is it unmarked by my presence?" You see I have this longing to have meaning in life. I want to know that I have helped someone feel loved or picked up someone who is broken or desperate and helped stand them back on their feet again. I long to look at my day and say to myself that "Michael you did good today!" But I think that my heart wants to scream and my eyes want to weep because so much of my life is focused around myself. So much of my effort throughout the day is accomplishing my agendas and wants. It is a rare occasion that I actually stop for a second to Become Hope to someone and listen to their story, hear their pain and worst of all actually care about that pain! I mean really, I have to focus to care for others, does that even make sense? How am I ever going to help restore someone if I never take to time to learn their name, and what's important to them? How am I going to know what is needed in a broken life if I walk along head down with my schedule in hang looking to what is the next checklist item of my day that has to been finished?

My heart is shouting at me to STOP!, WAIT, LISTEN to those who are in need. My eyes are becoming blurry with tears so that I stop looking ahead and have to use my ears to hear what my surroundings are whispering to me. My Heart SCREAMS to me in the night to LOVE SO DEEPLY that it is inseparable from my very essence! It rouses me from my slumber so many nights that I can't even keep track of it anymore. My heart is exploding within me to love and give! My inner being is SCREAMING to love and restore those that need to be loved! The question I have to ask myself now is, "Michael, will your mouth, life, and efforts begin to whisper what your heart and soul are screaming?"

I want to begin to whisper and converse about these longings and love. I want to whisper love everywhere that my feet tread out my path. Let us begin to whisper together about this love, so that one day when enough of us are whispering that our voices begin a war cry against poverty, hate, brokenness, and selfishness! Then our whispers will be powerful and unnerving to the world while at the same time bringing it comfort and a sense of belonging. I want to walk whisper together now, will you whisper with me?

Dreaming Again?

Have any of you ever felt as if you were in a huge slumber and that your life was just one incoherent dream? You know the kind of dream where you barely remember any of it, but all that you know is that right before the best part of the dream you wake up and can't fall back to sleep to enjoy the sweet ending. I ask this because I have felt for many years that my life has been a constant dream that I never get to the ending of or at least the enjoyable part, but I just live in the ongoing boredom of my life! I've found myself in a sense sleep walking through this beautiful thing called LIFE and have forgotten how to dream and even how to enjoy it for the last 6 or 7 years of my life.

What really excites me is when the inner most longing of my being begins to well up inside of me and burst out all over my life no matter what condition or situation my life is in. The last time I truly experienced this longing to fulfill the inner most cry of my heart was when I was getting recruited to play college soccer. You see my life's goal from the time I was 5 was to play college soccer and move onto the pros after that. When the first coach called me and told me that they were interested in me and wanted me to come visit their campus, my heart leap because my dream of playing college soccer was right at my finger tips and I could taste the satisfaction in the air everywhere I went. I walked with my head higher and enjoyed even the mundane details of life because what made my soul most satisfied was coming true.

Over the past few years I have forgotten what that feeling was like until just recently when I began to dream again and Christ began to lay dreams in my heart all over again. You see for so long I've been this so called "Christian" leader that has followed the paths that are set up for "Christian social" success, and in doing so my soul has been rotting away! I'd forgotten that I lived for and walked with an all-powerful Savior that calls me to Love Him and Love People. I'd forgotten that He was a God of Reconciliation and Restoration! I have not experienced the quenching of my soul's thirst for Him by drinking deeply of His Love in so long! But what is so amazing about this Savior Jesus is that all it takes is one taste of His Life Giving water to restore my life and to re instill dreams in my heart.

So what are these dreams? What could I possibly be so excited about that my spirit leaps within my soul? I'm excited that I get to walk with the broken and burdened of my world. I'm excited that I get to love the unlovable and the unwanted. I'm longing to give without return, to love without reserve, to serve without reward, and to destroy this social hierarchy that has been created in our society! I'm overflowing not only to love those in 3rd world countries, but to love and serve those that are in need right now in my community around me! You see I dream of a world where we break down barriers with Unrelenting Love! I dream of a society like the one that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of in his famous speech "I Have A Dream"! I dream of a day when us as the people that call ourselves Christ followers truly follow Christ and live as He says to live in Matthew 25:31-46. I long to be a person that feeds the hungry, gives a drink to the thirsty, rooms the homeless, clothes the shivering and naked, visits the sick, broken and imprisoned. You see I long for my life to be one of Unrelenting Love for everyone that I come in contact with.

So my question is, Is this your dream? What do we want to be know for in our lives, for people of success or as people of LOVE?! When I look back at my life, what impact in the lives of the least of these can I say that I've had, not for my glory or honor but simply for the sake of Love? So I'm beginning to have these dreams well up inside of me and rejuvenate my life! I'm beginning to dream of Love again! I no longer want to slumber and miss out on the fulfillment of this dream, I want to dwell in this dream for eternity! Will anyone else dream along side of me?