Love War Revolution

So my friend Graham posted a tweet earlier today saying "Love War Revolution for 2012." Those are the words of Michael Ketterer in his song "Wild One." Most people don't know anything about Michael Ketterer but this dude is legit. He has some of the best and most radical lyrics all surrounding the theme of Love. Its perfect timing for my post yesterday about goals. You gotta go and check this guy out. He came out with an album earlier this year.

Go at least preview the songs, and maybe just buy it.

Start a war
Start a war
Start a war
Start a war, a love war
Start a war
Start a war
Start a war
A love war revolution

We've got your fire on inside our bodies
We'll be the ones who release your burning love
May the whole world know your heart the way we do
We'll be the ones to display your truth

I'll be your living flame I'll be the one who loves
I'd rather bear your name I'll be your Wild One

I'll be your living flame I'll be the one who loves
I'd rather bear your name I'll be your Wild One

I got a gun Lord, I keep it locked and loaded
I got a gun Lord, I know just how to use it
I got a gun Lord, I keep it locked and loaded
Loving is my ammunition it will lead in your transition
Love war revolution, ammunitionary

A love war revolution, ammunitionary
Loving is my ammunition it will lead in your transition
Love war revolution, ammunitionary


I fight for the one that's on my side
I fight for the one that's all alone
I fight that love may be known
I fight that we all make it home

I'm a wild one, Jesus I'm a wild one
I'm a wild one, Jesus I'm a wild one
They try to tame me but I don't want their life, no
Help me Jesus, cause I'm one of your wild ones

People come and go speaking you can't love that way
When I hear their lies this is what I say: "WATCH ME"
When people come and go speaking you can't love that way
When I hear their lies this is what I say:
"I got a gun Lord, I keep it locked and loaded
I got a gun Lord, I know just how to use it
I got a gun Lord, I keep it locked and loaded
Loving is my ammunition it will lead in your transition"

I'm a wild one, Jesus I'm a wild one

I'm a wild one, Jesus I'm a wild one
They try to tame me but I don't want their life, no
Help me Jesus, cause I'm one of your wild ones...

Goal Setting

I woke up early this morning, 3:15 am to be exact.
I think the Lord woke me up on purpose. Geez....
I tried to go back to sleep at first, but all I could do was think about 2012.
The Lord has some seriously awesome things for 2012. I think he does every year, but I'm just excited about it more so this year. I'm just excited to move on.
I've been meaning to take some time over this break to set aside some goals for 2012 so I thought this was a good time to do that.
I ended up going to Romans 12 and I picked up some super good things.
The theme I got in this study aside from the verses in verses 1 and 2, was the theme of humbling oneself in love. 12:10 says "Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor." (ESV) The greek word for Outdo is proēgeomai which means "to go before and show the way." Dang. That will get you. 
What if we all took on that mentality? Going around and striving to outdo each other in the way we love each other? 
I quickly decided I want to theme my goals around this.
I'm not all that great at loving people sometimes. The Lord convicts me of this a lot. But this verse, calling us to humble ourselves and go away from our selfish ways by honoring our brothers is such a good place to start. It kind of reminds me of Jesus. *wink*


My goals are rather typical; read the Bible more, workout and run more, etc. But above all of that, I think my biggest goal is to Love more. I want to love Jesus more, love my brothers more, and love my enemies more. I think that if we focused on loving more, everything else is going to take care of itself. Everything flows out of love. God's love that is. 
I don't want to get into the discussion of how you define love right now, because that's an entirely different subject. For that, look at my last post. ;) 


I just want to be more like Jesus.


What are your goals for 2012?

The Semantics of Love (from Ray Andersen)

Some profound words concerning love from Ray Andersen. I am in the middle of reading his memoir The Soul of God for class and I came across this paragraph yesterday. These words are words that I have been longing to hear for awhile. I've had many recent conversations with people talking about what we know about love, and how we can evaluate love with human standards and compare them to the divine. Just go read 1 John 4 and you'll be good.

The semantics of love (that to which the term itself refers) are clear and unambiguous. "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us. . ." (1 John 4:10). At the time I was tempted to say that if God is love, then love is God. But this is only true if we maintain the asymmetrical relation between God's love and human love. We can say that God is love, but the reverse cannot be said: love, by human standards, is not God. The reductionism of divine love to human love leads to a confusion of tongues. When the absolute demand (gift) of love is relativized to our love of the neighbor without God as the middle term, love collapses into mutual self-love. "We love God because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). At the same time, if we say that we love God but do not love others, our professed love for God is a lie (1 John 4:20).

Flesh

I've had some amazing conversation tonight. And a ton of stuff is in my head anyways because its finals week. But at the end of the conversation, all three of us came to the same conclusion. Flesh. Or sin. Basically that not of God. It's so easy to look to other things to satisfy when things get rough. I don't even know all of the negative things happening right now. But I know that with myself personally, I will so easily take my eyes off of Jesus and fall off the path.

This is such a fleshly world. This world longs for our soul. It longs for our attention, and a lot of the time it receives it. But, we have a God in heaven who also longs for our soul, demands our attention, and he WILL receive it. This is the battle we face every day with our sinful fleshly nature. But we are NOT of this world, for our citizenship is in heaven. Best and easiest thing to do is to get into the word and pray with God.

Here is some scripture that I hope can encourage you, especially in this time of the year.

"But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit." - Romans 7:6

Also I just wanna say that I feel like the entire book of Philippians is a goldmine. Those are kind of Tyler Ray's words after I called it cash money (could be considered world and flesh, but really it is holy and Godly cash money so no worries).

"Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Philippians 3:19-21