Dismantle. Repair.

Wow. So much has changed since the last time that I posted. So much has changed that I'd probably have to take several days of blogs or simply write a short novel to capture them all. My life has been flipped, turned up-side down and and then turned right-side up again.
For the past several months Whitney and I have been talking about getting married and on the seventh of June, I asked her to be my wife. Things have been amazing for us and there have been several things that came in our way and presented themselves as a challenge to the relationship that we believe God had blessed us with. He has blessed us with something great and a great opportunity to serve him in different areas, in different ways and now, in different places. Wedding planning is no easy task. I'm not very involved in it and it's probably a good thing. I tend to overreact to things and worry about things needlessly. So, it's a good thing that Whitney and her mom are handling the whole thing. One might say, "Isn't the groom supposed to stay out of that anyway?" Well this is true; however, I want to be as helpful as I can. I also want to avoid making a nuisance of myself. That may be the tricky part. In getting ready to be married one must look at expenses and needs. Whitney and I have been looking at furniture for our bedroom and living room and I must say that it caused to me to border depression. Furniture is expensive! To make a long story short, a friend reminded us to look at IKEA and a good friend owns Direct Buy so my worry and depression has left, thankfully. I told you that I worried needlessly.
I've also recently accepted a worship position at First Baptist Church Broken Arrow which is located in Broken Arrow, OK, near Tulsa. It's an amazing place with amazing people and Whitney and I both love it there. It's going to be a great adventure and a great place to start our life together. I'll be leading worship for the student ministry there and working with some great people. Kyle, Jamie, Brooke, and Todd are a great team and I'm excited about doing the Father's work with them. It does suck however that I must leave oneway, the worship band that I've been a part of for the past ten years. I do have comfort however knowing that if I stayed, it would hinder God's work there and that Tim has the ability to be a great leader and all will be fine there.
There are a lot of things that I didn't mention but will be included in the short novel that will be accompanied by pictures and illustrated by Jamie Pope. God has been doing some amazing things in my life and blessed me with these last few weeks in Louisiana to focus on spending time with friends and family. However, in the midst of all of this stuff going on that I do believe was God's will which he carefully orchestrated to make happen in my life and the lives of those involved, I've managed to not spend as much time with him. Is this one of those confession blogs? No. Is this one of those confession blogs? Yes.
It's so amazing to me how we get so distracted by the things that go on around us that we forget who allowed those things to happen and put all of the right pieces in place for them to happen. It's downright embarrassing when you think about. We have what Francis Chan referred to in his book Crazy Love, as "spiritual amnesia". We get distracted by the things that we've been blessed with and allowed to participate in and wind up forgetting about spending time with, giving glory to, and worshiping the one who set all of it in motion. I've been guilty of this. I've been so focused on tying up loose ends here, spending time with friends and family, spending time with Whitney, getting ready for my last gig with oneway, getting things ready for OK, and trying to prepare for all these things that I've totally neglected my relationship with Jesus. I've not talked to him as much. I've neglected reading my bible.
None of us are immune to "spiritual amnesia". We are all able to be side-tracked by the things of our lives. Think about it. If there is someone that you are blown away by and really care about, don't you do everything within your power to spend time with that person and get to know them? It doesn't matter what you have going on. You will make and find time. I haven't. I know that we are all just as capable of doing this. I'm capable, Francis Chan is capable, C. S. Lewis was capable, Paul was capable, we all are capable. Take the time to spend with Jesus. Get to know him. He already knows everything about you and could most likely show you some things about you that you didn't know. Some cool, some not so cool. Why do we continually neglect the most important relationship of our lives? May the Holy Spirit move us to know Him.