This Is Christmas.

Hey folks, been a while. Been a busy fellar recently. I just wanted to share something with you, it being that time of year when we should always remember Jesus as the reason for the season, but we never do properly (myself included). This is a song I wrote a long time ago, although I haven't used it for anything yet, i thought I'd go ahead and share. There's scripture in it from the beginning of the bible to the end. It is the gospel, it is the story of Jesus, it is God's plan that he has had since the very beginning. It's called "BluePrints."

When the foundations of the earth were laid,

You were there sculpting words into flames.

You determined the number of stars,

And call them each by name.

God in heaven what can i ask of you

That you can’t do?

You make the night You make the day,

I hear you say!

HERE AM I HERE AM I.

Painter of the skies,

HERE AM I HERE AM I.

Giver of life.

HERE AM I HERE AM I.

Who brought you from the gave.

HERE AM I HERE AM I.

Sufficient is my grace.

The plan you had at the start of it all,

Was that we be one, at the cost of the fall.

The void between so far and wide,

But hope is found in a midnight star.

A boy was born, that became a man,

He held your name in his hands.

He bore the cross and conquered death,

He saved our souls from the depths.

However a time is coming and has now come,

When the father calls home is son,

To return with praise and trumpets sound,

Every knee bow, your hope is found.

From the beginning to the end

Your name be praised above all men.

From the beginning to the end

Your name be praised above all men.

Me at the moment. Caught in circles.

I'll be frank with you folks. My spiritual life is stagnate. i feel stagnate. caught in sin, inaction, conscienceless-ness, and apathy. Ive felt dead inside the past few weeks. i had a fantastic thanksgiving, and had wonderful times with friends. i had a girl break my heart and my grandma say she was proud of me (when i know darn well she's no reason to be) and still kept my spiritual chin held high, with my "fine" mask on. well, tonight, the mask is coming off, you get to hear about my daily struggles, how unworthy i am of grace, and how much of a lustful beast i am.

you may remember our friend ryan. He is currently working on starting the "Prayer is poetry" ministry, you may also remember that he wrote our new song "circles." Weeks after receiving the lyrics from him i find them holding more and more true to my life as the days go by, so i will be breaking them down and showing you how they have been applying to my current circumstances.

"Circles"

This conversation

Is going nowhere

My tongue tied in knots

And I'm too scared

I've stopped and looked at where ive been heading, and cried out to God for help, i cant find the words, i cant be honest with myself and cant be honest with because im so ashamed of poor an example of christ i am. I've grown too afraid to ask for his help, thinking, "he's not listening. youre not worth it."

If I say, I'm sorry, will this go away?

I am guilty, I am nothing, I am everything I hate 

No amount of me saying sorry is going to make up for me continuing to not do anything about my sin. and i HATE, genuinely HATE myself for it. sometimes i think we cant forgive ourselves. just jesus.

I've been here

wasting away

Set in a course

to return to this place

Holding on

To letting go

My mind is sick

But they will never know

this is the first time. nothing's ever the first time with sin, we fall in and out of it, thats the test is staying faithful through the peaks and valleys of life. I'm trying so hard to let jesus have everything of me but ive been so discouraged lately, I'm just like "eh" trying to get back to how ive felt in spiritual peaks of my life, but we cant get back, we move forward, we have to move forward. No one knows this about me. I put my "im fine" mask on. never opening up. trying to be with god and my troubles on my own. but god more than one person for a reason, community is so important to spiritual growth. I cant just sit and not say what i feel. that i feel i NEED a girl and that i cant get along without one, that for some reason im still unsatisfied in my blind human emotions with the awe and power of our king. See ya mask.

The walls begin to spin

But that doesn't affect me

It's the fact that I give in

To these thoughts I'm collecting

Spinning, condemning

I thought that I was living

I'm always left wanting more

I feel my life spiraling out of god's hands, i want him to grab on and not let me have. i want him to break my hands off the sin i cling to.

lust. easy word for christian guys to say when they are struggling with one of the devil's greatest tools.

porn. masturbation. fantasies. scary words that you dont like to say cause your aunt or grama might hear about the fact that you do something every man struggles with. (p.s. mema and dinee, sorry this is crass, but its honest.)

Lately i had been doing so good at resisting. gotten prideful. thinking it was me. no. it was the power of god. im useless without him. im having to retrain my mind to not even look at a female when i see a pair of skinnie jeans on a girl or a beanine and think "OOOOOO cute hipster girl." its a tough way to treat it, but theres no middle ground with the beast called lust. i tense my neck and twist in a way that hurts whenever my mind travels places it shouldnt, no matter what it is i might be doing, it can happen anywhere. im sick of giving in to these thoughts.

I've thought for the past few months that since i had found jesus that it would be smooth sailing from now on. once again, peaks and valleys. he has to be there through all of them.

We circulate

Like vultures

Over our prey

We waste away.

Our sinful nature feeds off of the good in us. the devil beats us down with doubt and what he knows gets us. and then we implode on ourselves. judging and condemning ourselves, forgetting the grace and power of jesus and our worth that can be found in him.

all i ask is you please lift me up in prayer. 

push doubt and discouragement out of our lives king jesus. we need your grace and mercy, and a heart that is not callouss to sin.

-bbb

"Good God can you still get us home?" -UO 

"We know that a person is made right with God not by following the law, but by trusting in Christ Jesus." - Galatians 2:16

"Damaged Goods" by La Dispute

"She forced a smile
Said, boy come kiss my mouth
You know that hope you're holding to
It looks an awful lot like fear
Now you're so quick to fall on failure
And so quick to raise your voice
Like, if I can't find a mistake to blame
We didn't have a choice
Oh, but you had an option
I was your chance to feel complete
But when I leaned in close to you
You kissed your fear instead of me

You had my hand in your hand
You had my lip in your teeth
You had my heart on your sleeve
You had a chance to breathe
But boy, you wouldn't let your fear recede
So I moved on
Oh, and it's too late to change your mind
Now you got scared, boy, and I got gone
Now you failed and there's no way to turn back time
You had your chance
Boy, I tried

You tried
I looked her in the eye and smiled
My girl, you must understand that fear is not some product that I made
It crept unwelcome in my head
The day they had her torn away
It changed me

Now at the end of every day I lie awake at night and wait to feel
The wires of my brain get cut and quietly rearranged
And hear my beaten heart exclaim
Still I refuse to let her go
So we escape to our mistakes
For they wait patiently for us
Oh, how they always wait for me
If my fear has kept me here
Only my fear can set me free
And I'm sorry dear
But don't you dare speak another word
How could I risk holding your heart in me
While still in love with her
You were wrong"

Thankful

I am Thankful for the following,

my god.
my jesus.
my jesus' grace.
my family.
my church.
my friends.
my band.
my dad-who has shown me you have to work for everything. from making rent to accomplishing a relationship with Jesus.
my mom-who has been my partner in faith through everything. anything i have gone through she has gone through with me and we have emerged better in faith out of every skirmish.
my brother-who has a better head on his shoulders than i did, i can't wait to be an uncle to his children.
my grandmother-who i can only describe as "faithful." In my 19 years of knowing here i have never seen her doubt the love and power of Jesus.
my aunt-who is courage. i've never witnessed her be afraid of anything. you name it.
chase-my brother in failure and in joy of christ.
laker-my life preserver on earth. when i slip off the cliff side he catches and vise versa.
jade-my confidence and test in perseverance.
rebecca-my best friend since 4th grade and constant reminder of why God created more than one person.
sydney-my sister in christ through struggles and victories.

Praise God for everything you have, through thick and thin.

"I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus."

I Corinthians 1:4

 

Jesus and Band Stuff

When i had put the title for this up it read "Band Stuff and Jesus", which is all too good an example of how messed my priorities can be. My good friend James preached out of Phillipians 3 tonight, before hand people just said, "make sure you do it justice." Yes The chapter is that big of a deal and they were right to say it, dont believe me? Go read it. In my opinion James knocked it out of the park. So much good spiritual meat to chew on.
There were 3 main things that jumped out at me, one was a John Piper quote "God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in him." Its so circular. Glorifying god should bring us joy. Our joy should be/can be glorifying god. B-E-A-Utiful. The second was also a Piper quote, which i will now horribly paraphrase: "If heaven for you, was no sickness, all your friends from your entire life, any earthly pleasure you ever tasted, any natural beauty you ever saw on earth, no war, no famine, no poverty, could you be happy with that if Christ wasn't there." I'm still digesting that and I'd heard it months before James said it tonight. Its brutal, and makes you call yourself out. Which is what every sermon or spiritual discussion should make you feel.
The last thing was not large part of the sermon, but exactly what i needed to hear. Tonight we played a song called "Run." And the lyrics to the bridge are, "Run, I want to run into your heart." And James put it quite simply, "I don't want to run into your rules that I'm supposed to follow, I don't want to run into what you've called me to do this year, I just want to run into your heart." That's such a strange thing to wrap my mind around because I've been the first two things down to the letter in the past couple months. Oh here's God's plan, lets go with that and pursue it and chase it. And then forget who's plan it is or even ask why. Let's follow all these rules as best i can to the letter because it will give me a good moral compass, and then i can just put god's name on it so it's not idol worship of the rules. This can be a very successful camouflage for idol worship to take it's place over your relationship with Jesus. It's cliche to say because its so hard to understand, that if we run to god. to his heart. if we desire and truly WANT, to love jesus and WANT the love of jesus then following the rules, following the paths he's laid for you, or even being attuned to the voice of god comes naturally. this is something huge to be grasped about a personal relationship with your savior. Its circular, that we need god. but we fall. and we need god. to need god.

Those are just some things ive been mulling over in my brain recently.

on another note, the band i am a part of Eloi Eloi was mention on indievisionmusic.com  On their "latest news" section. Which came as a surprise to all of us. Turns out our good friend Ryan made it happen. Ryan is starting up a wonderful ministry called "Prayer is Poetry" it is based on faith or spiritual based poetry, lyrics, and spoken word. Whenever (i say whenever, i mean if ever haha) we start to play shows or tour, we will be giving Ryan some of our set time to have an opportunity to preach to kids about the ministry and how the gospel is related to it. I'm sure you will continue to hear more about Ryan as his ministry grows in the Lord. Ryan also wrote the lyrics to one of our new songs "Circles" which will be recorded in our next studio trip. 
and finally, TADA! our single "Bellow" is being released on iTunes this friday Nov. the 26th, as well as on a bunch of other sites, we hope you guys enjoy! :)


god bless
-bb 

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening By Robert Frost

One of my favorites Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

My Worship.

Hello everyone, the band that I am fortunate enough to be a part of, Eloi Eloi recently released it's new song called "Bellow" Here's a link to the song www.purevolume.com/eloieloiOKC. Our motives and meaning behind our name are also on there. I will also be posting the lyrics as well. If you're feeling up to the task leave comments on here or on the PV page so we know if you like it our not. Thanks a heap :)

adios-BBB


"Bellow"
"I am caught in a thunder storm, 

ive been caught in a thunder storm before,

but not quite like this.

My sin weighs me down, like a anchor around my neck, 

I’ve lost sight of the father in this vicious hurricane.

I can’t succumb to flesh,

I won’t give in.

I won’t succumb to flesh,

I can’t give in.

oh tame this restless soul,

and fill this breathless hole.

my redeemer redeemer, take my eyes from me.

This storm captures my sight.

i want you first

i want you last

for this i fight.

Wrestle my heart to the ground,

once lost,

I’m now found.

Through this torment comes understanding,

and at the end of this storm.

Your promise reigns true.

The wages of my choices end in death,

I can’t give in I wont give in to this weight around my neck.

I cant lift this burden on my own. Not by myself.

grant me sight beyond this world.

let me touch your cloak.

grant me sight beyond this world.

i long to see your glory once more.

I cry out towards the heavens,

I cry out at your feet,

oh my god let my heart be tuned to you

oh my god i am for you."