That's my boy

Wow! My son, William Geoffrey Lundy was born this week. It is so exhilarating. When the doctor pulled him out I was flooded with hundreds of emotions and thoughts, all good, of course. This is what life is all about. This is as good as it gets this side of heaven. To have an awesome wife and beautiful daughter and a perfect baby boy... Right now, I cant see how this could get any better.

If you like to experience new, adventurous, exhilarating things in life, have kids. Be there in the delivery room when your child is born. Help your wife after a C-Section. Help your wife breast feed your little tyke. Man, it feels like you're face to face with God. Talk about a worship experience. I can think of no better response when my son comes out healthy and gorgeous and my wife recovers great but to give thanks to an incredible God.

Great past couple of days.

I hope everyone gets to experience such things ... and my heart aches for those that long for such experiences but cannot have these experiences.

GOOD STUFF!

Worship

As we have continued to talk about worship in youth group at church, and... well, I am ashamed to say that i have been very neglectful in my time with God. I haven't made time for my relationship with God and today as I reflect upon my time spent with God I am ashamed and kind of frustrated with myself for the brevity of time spent with God in the past week or so. I have had the time, but i chose to do other, way less meaningful and way less productive things (i.e. Madden). By the way, Louie, if you're reading this, i blame it on you for your trash talk that you would beat me in Madden, so I found it necessary to prove to myself just how good at Madden I really am, and i have concluded that you wouldn't stand a chance. But, anyways, even having proved more than capable at Madden, I've simultaneously proved myself incapable as a worshiper / follower of Christ. And, with all that said I sit here and reflect back to see what my worship experiences have been like this week and i see that there have indeed been some incredible time of worship this week. They are the times when i have been overcome by joy in the anticipation of my son being born, which will happen on Wednesday Jan. 23rd 2008. I cant wait and I just thank God and worship him for allowing me to be apart of such miracles as this. A son being born. That kind of summarizes my week, Anticipation for the birth of a son. Maybe some of you have been a part of similar miracles; the birth of a child or whatever incredible things you have experienced or will soon experience. Cling to those things and use them as avenues to worship God.
SEEK GOD!
In Christ,
Geoff

huh?!

I am at work right now and i am trying to blog inorder to stay awake. I have gotten 3 hours of sleep in the past 3 days. I feel like I am in some kind of a daze. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be on drugs. If so, it really sucks. Well, this post officially sucks too. I have nothing to say and I certainly am not coherent enough to say anything that would make any sense anyways.

Experiencing God!

At //epidemic we are sharing about worship and what worship is all about and why we worship and who and what we worship... so I wanted to just briefly share about some worship experiences. I experienced a true worshipful experience last night at work. Me and a co-worker were talking about spirituality and fear and overcoming bad experiences. In that conversation we both recognized God's presence in difficulty and how He casts out fear and brings us new perspectives about our "bad experiences". In that my heart, and I believe hers as well, told God how awesome we think He is and how thankful we are for Him. THAT'S WORSHIP!

Be all that you can be in the aa-aarmy

I recently was talking with a friend and we were talking about some of my issues, my stupidity and my friends response was the ever-enlightening "that best thing that you can give to another person or do for them is to be the best you that you can be..." There is a great deal of truth in that statement and it really inspires me to do some things to get myself more emotionally and spiritually healthy, but something occurred to me the other day as I had my face buried in my downstairs T.V. watching/video game playing/ prayer chair. (that's my special chair where I like to go and pray and play video games and watch ESPN; all three are very important activities!) As I was praying and asking God to help me become the best Me that I could be and as I was confessing all my crap to God and apologizing for allowing so much time to elapse between our much needed visits, much needed on my part that is, I was struck. I realized that the best me that I can be isn't really all that good and that the people that I really love deserve more than the best me that i can be. I realized that I had not been retreating to God very often and that His Spirit, while available and present was not the core of my life. I realized that I have been trying to be the best me that i could be and that I was growing frustrated because it was still leaving those that I love hurt by me. I realized that the best me that i could be had nothing to do with my ability to be good. And, I know this sounds really Christianeese, but, I need to be the best me that God can make me.
I say that because when I go to God in prayer and really receive His Spirit and really seek out His Spirit in my Life and I am a different person. I am a more pleasant person. I am a more driven person, I am a more successful person, i am a more loving person...., things are just all around good. So, if you are reading this my apologies to all of you who i have offended or hurt or neglected in any way because i was not be a good enough me. I wasn't being the me that i can only be through true connection with God.

affirmation

This week I have been reading a book by Brian McLaren called "A New Kind Of Christian" and it has been so awesome. There are things that are said in that book that just really confirm and solidify a lot of thoughts and feelings that I have been dealing with lately. Some of these thoughts and feelings have left me feeling guilty, or ashamed. Feeling like I was commiting heresy for thinking and feeling like some of what I have been taught in Bible School about God and about and about church is almost obsolete. But while reading this book things are becoming so much clearer and so much easier for me to come to come to grips with.
I would suggest that everyone read this book. It will either make you happy, or relieved or confused or angry or excited or... but it will surely make you think... and in a good way.

Seek truth
SEEK GOD

HIGHER POWER

John 4:22-24
22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."



I work at a facility called Adolescent Center for Treatment (ACT) and we deal with drug and alcohol addicted teens. We teach many groups with the clients in attempt to lead them through treatment and most of these groups are developed around a 12-step program. We teach each kid the 12 steps and how to implement them and we encourage each kid to get a sponsor and we try to walk the clients through these steps on their way to recovery. As some of you may know, the 12 step model for recovery is very spiritual. It deals with many spiritual ideas and mentions God in over half of the steps, while every step focuses around getting right with God and getting right with people. (sounds an awful lot like Luke 10:27 huh!) Well, one of the groups that I teach is called “Upward Pathways” and it deals with coming to identify a “Higher Power” as they say in AA and NA groups. As I have talked with many students about identifying a Higher Power and the importance of that step in recovery, I have heard a confusing and disturbing response from several students on several occasions. The response is this; when being asked about who they would identify as their Higher Power many students have replied saying something to the effect of…”Well, I believe in God and all, but I wouldn’t call Him my Higher Power, I would say that my Higher Power is probably…” That shocks me every time, because in essence what they are claiming is that they truly believe that there is a being out there somewhere in the cosmos that is big enough and powerful enough to create this world in which I live and even create humanity and that this all powerful being is out there wanting to know them and be their “Higher Power”, to be their help, and they’re saying, “nah, I want my help, my “Higher Power” to be my sister or my boyfriend, or I have even heard one of these God believing clients say that their’s was their dog. I leave thinking, how can these clients make statements like that. I mean it makes no sense. I have actually put quite a bit of thought into this phenomenon. What I have come to realize is that these client have been told for years that thee is a God, a creator, or maybe through their own thinking and fathoming about our universe, our world they have come to conclude that there must be a creator, but they have never come to understand who God is. They have probably put very little effort into attempting to understand who God is. Their perception of God is that he is this great big magic character out there somewhere that created our universe and that there are theses weird people on earth that know some magic code and jump through all sorts of crazy hoops and follow all sorts of strict rules and so they kind of know God. That’s it! That is their understanding of God, which couldn’t be further from the truth about who God is. I truly believe with all my heart that if we could strip away all that we know or think or have seen from so-called God followers and strip away all that we think we know of God, and begin afresh with a true understanding of who God really is we would not be able to respond to him in any other way than to worship Him. Worship Him in spirit and in truth.