My Utmost - Sept 19

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http://www.myutmost.org/09/0919.html

Do You Continue To Go With Jesus?

Luke 22:28
“Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations.”

Key Passages

1. We wear His badge, but are we going with Him? “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him.”
2. The temptations of Jesus continued throughout His earthly life, and they will continue throughout the life of the Son of God in us. Are we going with Jesus in the life we are living now?
3. We have the idea that we ought to shield ourselves from some of the things God brings round us. Never! God engineers circumstances and whatever they may be like we have to see that we face them while abiding continually with Him in His temptations.
4. Do you continue to go with Jesus? The way lies through Gethsemane, through the city gate, outside the camp; the way lies alone, and the way lies until there is no trace of a footstep left, only the voice, “Follow Me.”

My Own Thoughts

I think the first point hits me the hardest here. "We wear His badge, but are we going with Him." Kinda conjures up the imagery of the crusades to me. I'm a member of the "God" party, thinking I am doing what He wants, or maybe just doing what I want and saying that it's God who really wants it. Did I stop following Him a long time ago, go home, and now I am just telling my buddies of all the great stories I have with my buddy God? I know this is where I am at quite often. I have been convicted lately of my own attitude, and in my being a part of the church body and family. I quite often think I am just there to get my weekly dosage of God, then I am off to my week with no more change of attitude or life than I had before I got to church. Did I gather there to worship a God whom I say I love, or was I just serving myself? It positions me in the place of being an enemy of the God I like to say I serve. It's a scary thing to say out loud that you are an enemy of God. But that is the position I am putting myself in when I just get in His way. That is my temptation... to float through life comfortably never taking God seriously. Then I wonder why I struggle with feeling loved and validated, and worth anything to anyone. The enemy has me so deceived into serving and looking after myself that I don't even want to look up and around or anywhere away from myself. And when people don't look after me the way I want them to, I think they don't love me. When that somebody else is God, and I think He is ignoring me, I think He doesn't love me. This in spite of me knowing that He loves me much more than I could understand.

So Father forgive me for being a self-centered, self-worshiping individual. God help me to take my eyes off myself and look around at others who may have a need I can be used by you to fill. Forgive me for being your enemy.

My Utmost For His Highest

This book has been sneaking its way back into my regular daily reading. I had this idea to post each day to a blog post with some key passages from it to share with you all. Oswald Chambers really is a genius and the passages have something for me everyday that I need to hear. Other than the Bible, this book seems to speak to me more than any other ever. Although some CS Lewis books and Dallas Willard are working their way in there as well. Anyway, I don't know that I will actually be faithful in posting each and every days reading because let's be honest, I haven't be loyal in posting anything in quite a while, but I promise to give it a try. So keep your eyes open for the upcoming posts and I hope they work their way into you...

Still Frame Available On Noisetrade Now!

I uploaded my first album to noisetrade as well, and I threw in a couple of bonus tracks, a couple of those being fun ones we made along the way. Thanks to my buddy Jon Hodge for the "clean" version of Bittersweet End... Check it out... It's free!

Facebook Fan Page

Hey there... everyone go subscribe to my Facebook Fan Page. It's a way better way to stay on top of whats going on with me. Here is a link to it... and I'll change the link on the side of my current page to point to this fan page.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rick-Hopkins/54915689053

By the way, if you go there now there is a couple of brand new songs to listen to and comment on. The recordings are really bad because I did them myself and I am no studio technician, but hopefully soon we'll get some better recordings up there for you all to hear.

Get out to one of my upcoming shows. I miss you all.

Do You Feel That Or Is It Just Me?

Over the last year or so I have had this strange ache in me that seems to be getting stronger and stronger as of late. It's not a medical issue. It's an ache in my chest that's not there because I lack proper nutrition or exercise, although those are both true. It's a longing. This longing is only made more thick and terrible because I get a gut feeling that its fulfillment is right around the corner, but I have no idea how or when it will hit exactly.

When you look around at the world, the world immediately around you and in a bigger sense the world you see on tv or in the newspapers or even tabloids, does it feel like we're hurdling towards something to you? Does it feel like there is some shift that is about to take place? Does seeing the world around you make you wish that shift would happen as soon as possible?

I have had multiple conversations with friends over the past year about life and our surroundings and the spiritual environment that we have bred here in our country and in particular here in west Michigan. Have we lulled ourselves to sleep? Where is our conviction of belief? Where is our excitement and joy in talking about a God that we say we love? Why are we so content being so damned comfortable? I confess I am in that crowd. I lead worship just about every other week and I will confess right now that I get up there and sing some days with no joy or real belief behind the words I am singing. It hit me this morning as I was driving to church to lead worship that I was getting ready to sing songs to the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE, and the only thing I could think of was whether or not to stop at Starbucks and grab a chai. This God I say that I love and want to follow, but I do it so flippantly. I treat my God like a fast food happy meal. I walk in, consume what I can of God real quick, and take off for home with little thought of what was just taken in or how to share it with others. It got me through the morning and may help me through a couple days, but my thoughts will quickly fade from that. Are you in that group with me? I think the group is large and growing by the day. One friend of mine refers to west Michigan as the church of Sardis in Revelation 3 ...
"I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead."

However, back to the ache. Something has been tearing me away from that group for that last year or so. I can only describe it as a sense of feeling that things are not right. That things should not be the way they are. That the way I am looking at things is broken. My faith is broken. The world around me is broken. I am broken. I've put God in a box made for my own comfort and now he's blowing the top off of it. So also over the last year, it seems like I have been under a restructuring. Not of my own doing. But most definitely of the Holy Spirit. He seems to be crushing some things and clearing them out so as to make room for Him to come in and kick His feet up for a while. And I say all this because I don't think I am the only one that feels like the Holy Spirit is about wash over them. I think that my faith in God is becoming more real, more tangible, and even more visible than it has ever been, and its scaring me to be honest with you. It'd be like if when you were a kid you stayed up late hoping to see Santa Claus on Christmas not really believing he was going to show his face, and then out of nowhere a big fat guy in a red jumper came flying down your chimney and chewed you out for doubting that he'd show up, then ate all your cookies because that's just what he does, slapped you on the back and said "go back to sleep, you knew I was here all along stupid.". It'd probably freak you out a little right? Ok that was a weird example, but the point is there. This "Holy Spirit" that I have always felt weird talking about to be honest with you because of my baptist upbringing seems more real to me than ever. I can feel Him when I breathe. I can hear Him in the music I am listening to. I can see Him in the night sky I gaze into while walking around the small town of Saranac at 10:30pm. He's here and He's real. He's showing me where I've been wrong, and He's pointing me down the right paths. He's gunning for me in a big way it seems, and I want it more than ever. I want a real understanding of God and how to relate to Him, how to live the way He wants me to live, and how to take Him at His word. I don't believe I am the only one that feels this way.

So long blog entry short... I can feel a movement starting. I believe the Holy Spirit is real and He's coming to do something in me, and even now its begun. I believe I am a part of a bigger movement that is going to happen, and soon. The rest of the details I will fill you in on when I get them.

I Won!!! Woohoo!

Quick update... I won the Big Ticket Festival indie stage battle of the bands on Saturday! We were up first that day at 11am and we benefited from some rainy weather outside because we were inside a building... We rocked the house, had a GREAT crowd that seemed to be loving every minute of it. To them I say a big thank you for your support and votes. The prize for winning the indie stage is that next year at the Big Ticket Festival I get to play the main stage! So next year I'll be sharing a stage with some of the biggest bands in Christian music. I can not wait. I am hoping for a big year ahead of me! I can't wait to see where God is taking me on this journey. He is an awesome God who's love and blessings I don't deserve.
I hope to see as many of you as possible out at BTF next year! I can't wait!

Nearer My God To Thee

Today was Mother's day. I got to spend basically the whole day with my wife and kids doing what the wife wanted to do, which was to have lunch on the lawn outside our church, go to Fredrick Meijer Gardens and out for ice cream. While we were together, other than the moments where I had to get after my kids, I felt an overwhelming sense of fullness. I have a beautiful wife who is a great mother, I have 3 healthy, beautiful and hilarious kids, and I am provided for and blessed beyond my worth by a God who loves me more than I deserve. It kept taking me back to the longing. That sensation of being stabbed repeatedly in the chest because everything is so great, but there's still just not that completeness. Something is missing. I know instantly what it is. It's that this time can't last forever. It's that our time is limited. It's that tomorrow I am going to wake up and go to work, and be back in the routine.

After we came home today I went out to mow the lawn and I was listening to some music. A song came on that I decided to be put on repeat until further notice. I haven't stopped listening to it yet today. It's on repeat right now. The song is "Nearer My God To Thee". Fernando Ortega happens to be the artist on this version, and its only piano. No vocals, no other instruments. Something about the way he plays it captures the ache perfectly for me. The song completely engulfs all that longing and desire I have for things to be made right and complete. I decided to look up the lyrics because I'm not sure I had ever sung the song or heard the lyrics other than when I heard it played on the movie Titanic, which yes I watched in the movie theater on more than one occasion when it came out. I am not going to admit to how many times I saw it at the movie theater, but just know it was more than 2. Anyway, here are a few lyrics...

-----
Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!
E'en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
still all my song shall be,
nearer, my God, to thee;
nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!

Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
yet in my dreams I'd be
nearer, my God, to thee;
nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!

There let the way appear, steps unto heaven;
all that thou sendest me, in mercy given;
angels to beckon me
nearer, my God, to thee;
nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!

Then, with my waking thoughts bright with thy praise,
out of my stony griefs Bethel I'll raise;
so by my woes to be
nearer, my God, to thee;
nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!

Or if, on joyful wing cleaving the sky,
sun, moon, and stars forgot, upward I fly,
still all my song shall be,
nearer, my God, to thee;
nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!
-----

The first verse seems to reference Christ, and the rest seems to reference a story about Jacob from Genesis 28. Not sure of it but that's how it appears when you just read it. However, when I let the lyrics sink into me, they seem to mean much more.

The second verse captures the restlessness for me of life. The feeling of my wandering heart straying away so much from a God who loves me. Yet every once in a while in my dreams or in watching my kids play, or just waking up next to my wife, I feel that nearness. I sense God in that moment. Then the stab of ache when I know the time can't last. But for a second I feel the nearness of God.

The third verse helps me to feel the nearness of God in the blessings I have been given. Again, watching my kids and playing with them, being with my wife on a perfect day, being in front of people to sing and praise the God I love and believe in, or being able to just sing/write/play music and do what I feel God made me to do. He is beckoning and calling to me in all this.

The fourth verse is a killer for me. All these great things that happen and the perfect moments I get with my family, or the highs the come from singing and leading worship or doing a show and being able to share my heart with people, all these mountain top moments will sometimes only seem to show me that they are temporary. Then the ache hits. The depression hits me. I have a choice. I can sit and wallow in the absence of that moment, or I can take that moment and realize that God is in it. That He gave me that moment so I'd know He is there, and want more of Him. "So by my woes to be, nearer my God to thee."

All that is to say, I welcome the ache now. That pain is the welcome sign of the presence of God in my life. I am grateful for that. Happy Mother's day to all the mothers. Especially the mother of my children. I love you.