Trees of The Palm Persuasion

Ending + Beginning

2011-08-08T20:01:00.001-06:00

This is dead and ending. Yet This is alive and beginning and very much a different book.

I am here: A manifesto of Stand Firm

2011-07-31T23:35:00.010-06:00

I’m grateful for new places and new people: they have in my life given an ability to become new again: no longer constrained by past sins or past ways of living. Through them God always has a way of shaping me into the person I need to be for the moment. Different from who I was and marked more and more by resemblance to the name I bear as a son.

…

The fact we are now living in NYC is finally setting in. And the fact we are here for the long haul because of God’s faithfulness and goodness in providing financially with Elise’s new job makes it all that much more real. And makes us continue to really understand that clearly God wants us here.

And in the newness of all of this that I can’t quite articulate yet, I am finding that this time, the people, and the place have given me the ability and freedom to become new again, again.

And in this I am finding endings in beginnings. Things God’s been asking me to end. Things God’s asking me to respond to and begin.

I’ve been hearing God here. He’s been whispering saying “I am here” in the subways depths in the grand cathedrals and the many other places in-between.

I think the words for this blog came tonight from one of those whispers. A whisper of identity (I am) and place (here).When God uttered two words whispered as I stared at the stained glass window Crusader/ Knight in front of the cross in the 18^thcentury cathedral-like church where Apostles Church meets on Sunday nights.

God whispered authoritatively as I was staring at it tonight:

“Stand Firm”

He wanted to say something intimate. Say be this be no longer who you were. He put in two words with as much authority as “ it is finished” a work that has unfolded over the better course of 3 years or so.

I think God was simply saying tonight "the dark night of your soul ends. Stand firm, the work is done, so take your stand son". The career thing (my dark night) has been used as a deeply intimate instrument in God’s work in me the past 3 years It has become a source of a lot of emotion and thoughts. . Emotional in the sense I’ve felt a very deep anger, depression, and hatred. Thought filled in the sense it has left a lot of unanswered questions, late nights, written expositions etc. And it has created a very muddled and mangled mess of emotions and thoughts. And it hurts to speak or think about in most moments. A general confusion about identity and about my place.

But tonight when God spoke I think what he meant was "I’ve been shaping you for this moment where you will change your misunderstandings of me and see me. Who you view me to be and where you view me to be…because that’s what’s important."

And I think in that stained glass man I saw who God wanted me to be. Who he made me to be.

A wise man I read from often says the most important question we can ask people is which God they believe in? I should have considered this question of his for myself. Because it is not whether we believe or don’t believe it’s who we believe in. Is he good is he wrathful does he make puppets of humanity?

To be honest, if I’m honest, I’ve been misunderstanding and believing in a false god. A god who makes puppets of humanity with nowhere to escape from their God who controls everything. A god who knows who He made humanity and myself to be but wishes a denial without strength from him to do so.

I’ve understood who he is but only in part, I was skeptical of the heart of my maker. God is more than mere morality logic reason, emotions. He is authority. He is always present. In every high and low. But an authority and presence that is the best type of father you could imagine.

God’s been refining my thinking in this larger issue of freewill which ultimately controls my drive, my joy, my trust, my understanding, my willingness, my perception etc. But I find in this new place; the newness is more of an abandon, an all-in-logic-aside type of thing.

My God is a God who gives his children the freedom to stand and join Him in His work. My God is a God who hates sin but dwells and dines among the sinners. Who bled and died .Who will patiently woo for years decades centuries even millennia. Because He has the best in mind.

AND I am a sinner. Who chooses to stand firm in the cross and Christs death on it. And his conquering of it through his resurrection. Standing firm in the fact He is among us. And he’s been screaming against the many noises in the street “I am here” I am here John. I didn’t craft your sinfulness you are choosing it and if you let it continue it will become an even darker night inside your soul. Let not it take its course. The pain was for a purpose. For this joy.

“Stand firm”

J. G. Grinstead

Together

2011-07-24T20:17:00.006-06:00

You know those moments. The ones when you hear the voice of God through another human being. I had one of those last night as I was praying with my wife. And they seem to be happening a lot since I’ve moved here. There’s just something about being around an immensity of humanity that allows you to see God clearer in a strange way.

My wife told me yesterday that the transition to NYC has been easy. That is when it hit me:

"You know why? Its been easy because we are doing it together."

And in that little realization as we were lying in bed I saw a whole lot of gospel truth.

I think I’ve been realizing that when two people in marriage, meant to mirror Christ and the church are doing things together it is easy. But when we are alone and apart it is difficult. We weren't meant to live that way!

There can be great power in marriage. There is great power in being of one heart and one mind in decisions and doing life.

Yet we forfeit that so often. Why do we do it?

I think that is what I really came to last night is that if we really wish to do anything with God we need to be together in it. Of one mind and one heart in each decision. In obedience to our great loving Father. And it will be easy. Just like Elise and I doing NYC.

I’ve always wondered what Jesus meant when he said his yoke is easy and his burden light. I think the above statement and the truth in it is what he meant. Its easy when you are co-laboring and doing life together with Jesus. Not so easy when you aren’t.

…

As I believe the not having an architecture job phase of my life is ending( this 3 year long endeavor). I think I am realizing maybe it was an issue of obedience. Maybe it was an issue of not being of one heart and one mind with Christ in this area. (that’s another set of blogs in itself) but I know this much…that in NYC I am where I am supposed to be architecture job or no architecture job... and he will continue to handle the admin stuff and tell me which door to go through when that time comes. And its probably not going to look at all like I thought it would look.

I know this is where God has me because it’s easy to be here…and it should be very uncomfortable. But the burden is light with Elise and I here doing this together…and I like doing this together. There is no place else my heart would rather be than with Christ and alongside Elise.

And knowing that…it will be easy…and it will be joyful and full of peace. And it will probably be challenging and difficult and painful at points…but together…with them I feel like I have the power to do anything.

And that’s something wonderful.

-J. G. Grinstead

Unexpected, Yet still in God's plan

2011-07-20T12:04:00.005-06:00

⁸ “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. ⁹ “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. ¹⁰ As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, ¹¹ so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. ¹² You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. ¹³ Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD’s renown, for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.”

-Isaiah 55

I had the pleasure of hearing N.T. Wright speak when he was in town this past week. He spoke on this passage among a few others. It was a fitting passage to speak on for what would transpire over the past few days.

The Lord's ways are not my ways. I have learned this and it should not shock me. But it still does when God continues to move unexpectedly in the unexpected and largely unwritten life he is making for us here in NYC.

In entering into this blank canvas that is NYC, I've been trying to paint what I want things to look like rather than letting things play out as they will. I think I am a bit impatient.

On Sunday morning at 5:30am the day before I was slated to start my trainee/ intern position with an architecture firm here in NYC they sent me an email letting me know that " after much thought and consideration, they do not have a position available at this time." I handled it well on Sunday trusting God that he had something better. But when Monday came and the filling of empty time with errands in Manhattan and knowing I was so close to being in an architecture firm I was more than a little upset. I spent most of the day being a horrible human being.

I think in this whole architecture thing I am learning to trust that God has his hand in things. And nothing really matters besides my relationship with Him and letting that flow into other things... my ways are not his ways a lot of the time..... most of the time...and even this opportunity that disappeared is for His purposes.

I am clueless as to what God is doing. I am okay with that. Because he can handle all the admin stuff. I get to experience the joy of trusting in His providence. He will provide. He is a great father. Things will come in time...when they are supposed to...so we wait. Just in a new place.

-J.G.Grinstead

16 Days

2011-07-15T15:27:00.003-06:00

Well, its been a rather eventful 16 days since I last wrote. I hardly can believe all that has transpired in such little time. We have relocated our stuff from Colorado to New York City. I have an internship starting on Monday with an architecture firm and Elise has interviewed for a salaried position with a great company...and is pursuing other leads.

I wanted to take the time since I had it to write. There are so many emotions going on. So many thoughts pouring through my head that its best to organize them.

I will break things down into a couple categories to hopefully organize this for my readers: Money , Jobs/Careers, NYC, and community/church

MONEY:

Elise and I were able to save quite a bit during our first year of marriage in great part due to free rent and living with the parents. Although it wouldn't be my first recommendation for newlyweds I see God used it tremendously to show us the gifts we have in our families and to start off our independence with enough change to get our careers hopefully started without going into any debt. Needless to say we have spent a lot of money to move here more than I have on anything in my whole life! And it is definitely uncomfortable whenever I spend money on myself, I freak out a little. I'm not one to spend on myself unless it comes in a coffee package. And although we have enough to live on for quite a while we are still in tight mode til things become more settled. This means saying no to a lot of things I love and cherish like coffee shop coffee pastries and other things that are now luxury items.

JOBS/CAREERS:

I was offered a 3 mo. unpaid internship with a great architecture firm that could possibly turn into a paid position after my 3 month commitment with them and at least would offer me valuable experience that I don't have on my resume and get my foot in the door to even be considered by other firms in the area...I said yes, it is a great opportunity. I just had to stomach and am still swallowing the fact that I will be paying for the opportunity myself and putting Elise in a position where she needs to make x amount of dollars per month for 3 months to not eat up a significant chunk of our savings. This is not an ideal situation. But that is NYC for you things are as they are nothing is completely ideal especially whenever you have twelve thousand cultures merging in one giant city. Having people involved makes it complicated. But in the words of my boss of my last job where I quit...it is as it is!

But I guess that is probably the big lesson in this whole career job opportunity thing. Life is not perfect but it is how we react to the constraints put around us and how we honor God in these.

NYC

Being in a different culture (our area is largely Jewish and Caribbean black) where communities are so ethnically tied and linked is lonely, nothing is familiar...it is truly like being in another country. Everything becomes about your community because you cling to what is like you. And to be honest it's hard to be the only white people on the subway by the time we reach our stop. But perhaps this too is another great lesson as the letters on our ancient 1918 apartment building showcase " (AMBASSADORS COVRT) " we do not belong here. Here is not our home...heaven is our home. And although Elise and I have finally found a place for all of our stuff...we are still sojourners in a dessert where there is little water and much death.

I am grateful for my little black friend who met me the day we moved in and continues to think I am cool and we exchange fists to say hello in passing. He made my day today.

COMMUNITY/CHURCH

Building upon the loneliness of the city, its been a little bit of a challenge to meet people. Not to mention I don't know how to interact at all with the few cultures around me nor do I even begin to know how to interact with all of the cultures of this city! Church has been a breath of fresh air in all of this. It is nice to see people smiling and willing to meet you and actually converse. It is always a challenge though meeting people and making friends. You have to let things develop over time as they tend to do and see what God has in the opportunities and relationships He places in your path. I am largely rethinking this though...and mission....and other big topics in my life. God is guiding it though and I don't think community and church will look the same as they did in college but I am excited to step into the joy set before me in this and willing to suffer in the initial pain and disappointment that getting plugged in can often cause.

Beyond that I will continue to keep you all updated through this and other things. I am excited to see what the Lord does in the next 16 days. He has already done much in these first 6 of being here in the city. Things move so quickly here!

-J.G.Grinstead

June

2011-06-29T15:39:00.003-06:00

It's been rather of a whirlwind of a month. Between the switching coasts on adjacent weeks being a best man on the west and being an apartment hunter in the East. There is definitely no thread that ties the many things that happened in the month together besides God seeming to be in it all same God just very different places.

I was with Landon as he got married in the earlier part of this month. Seeing the life in CA I chose to lay aside to pursue what God was calling Elise and I to!

It was a joy to be beside him for an extended stay. In reflection, God wanted to simply say "I love." Nothing quite like a wedding to show that. How even inspite of all the wreckage of the past marriage happens and endures.

In reflection, God wanted to simply say " hold open your heart and hands, I will take care of your friends "

All the friends that I treasure in the west. God loves them with the same abandon. He takes care of his children.

Throughout the week especially the night a few groomsman sat down with him in a newly retrofitted exposed brick cafe with wine in low lighting and told him how much he meant to all of us in the late part of the night. It was in that moment and the conversation as I walked him home the night before his wedding. I realized that God cares deeply for all of us. I do not need to fear that in pursuing what God has called me to, I need not fear lack of providence for the ones I leave behind.

In reflection, God wanted to simply say " you should have no reason to doubt my love, my child "

And on that wedding day. I saw the gifts of the past. I saw the gifts given to others for their future.

In reflection, God wanted to simply say " step into yours now! Do not fear! "

And so we drove another 1200 miles and the odometer declared it was time to leave 80108 and step into 11213 in the 7th month of 2011.

We packed again and we printed paper work we did not really need. And early that next morning we flew to NYC.

We visited apartment after apartment and found the perfect situation: the right time frame, the right price, the right commute time, in a safe area, furnished and big too!

In reflection, God wanted to simply say "I love."

And by the time we were having dinner with a married couple from the church 3 days in to our trip and we had secured the apartment. I think both of us realized that God undeniably wanted us there. For what and why? The future will tell.

And that Sunday as we were waiting for some paperwork to come in we went to the NYC Public Library and Central Park and an old church reborn to house a beautiful congregation and fell in love with the city and the community of believers we are going to join there!

We had everything finalized for the apartment by the time we were eating lunch the day of our anniversary, 1 day later and God provided the perfect couple to sublease it from us while we are not there and here in Colorado. We celebrated that night with the gifts that God gave and the knowledge this is His will for us...

In reflection, God wanted to simply say " hold open your heart and hands, I will take care of you"

As we headed back on the Subway to our hotel there was a keyboarder at the canal street subway. His music filled the watery depths of what used to be a canal where the subway track lies. I think it was in that moment in the echoing synths and steel screeching that I sat waiting with my wife besides me for the subway that I realized this is my future, a good future.

In reflection, God wanted to simply say " you should have no reason to doubt my love, my child I am even here "

And that first day of year two...we went back to Colorado to gather our things and move East the 1800 ish miles before we move in on July 9th to our new address in Brooklyn.

In reflection, God wanted to simply say " step into your future now! Do not fear! "

-J.G.

Reflections on the end of the World

2011-05-21T00:01:00.010-06:00

“In your patience possess ye your souls.” –Luke 21:19

"Possess your souls, be your own men, keep up the authority and dominion of reason, and keep under the tumults of passion, that neither grief nor fear may tyrannize over you, nor turn you out of the possession and enjoyment of yourselves.’’

"In suffering times, set patience upon the guard for the preserving of your souls; by it keep your souls composed and in a good frame, and keep out all those impressions which would ruffle you and put you out of temper.’’

-Matthew Henry in his commentary on Luke 21

…

I write at the beginning of the end of a long engagement personally. I feel it undeniably. I know it. Things are drawing to an end a stage of life is ending and a new one is fading into beginning.

And it is fitting on this day that I write to talk about an end to things because the world is to suppose to by the authority of some men end this day. I chuckle at that idea but today, we should use this day and show respect and reverence to God and his destructive power on the 7000^th anniversary of the flood that baptized the world and made it again new.

And I must choose this day in patience to possess my soul, as should many other men. And remind others to let reason say perhaps today will most likely not bring the end. BUT in this moment, I find it a fitting opportunity to reflect on a majestic God and the last 7000 years of history and how it affects me in my own unfolding one!

The great grace-filled and loving God who never gave up on His creation the One who never gave up on me. And all the diversity of birds and dogs that came in those 7000 years since that water filled event. What beauty he breathed into the world even still…when it needed and deserved utter destruction.

...

I was struck by Luke 21 as it begins with the parable of the widow who gave the two pennies, all she had. I think she knew somehow and was caught up in the idea that the world was at an end of sorts...being willing to in a sense " throw it all away" strangely I find there is no more fitting a parable to begin with than this in any beginning.

She found something greater...and that God honors faith… holding things openly and in the proper perspective of letting it begin again.

I’ve been so struck by this thought as of late as much of the world remains in a state of flux. The profession I pursue is torn between old habits, business practices and old economies and is struggling to make itself viable in the emerging world. And my life is delayed by old ways and old powers shifting into newer ones.The thought that to begin again takes humility unprocessed by much of the world and yet how good it is to step into an open hand way of life letting Christ Rule and Reign in our little Worlds larger World and hearts.

…

The past 8 months have told me this and if I have taken any big lesson it would simply be- I would not wish to live the way my parents live and have crafted their lives because it is not the world Christ is making new with and within me as a character and part of the plot. I can understand every angle and desire they have and the world those desires and circumstances birthed- that is their story not mine.

It is better to live with open hands and go where Christ directs as the author of our lives which in Elise and I’s case for now is NYC and be willing to give all we have to follow where He directs.

Elise and I are moving to NYC. We are beginning again. Crafting a life of two diversities and letting God’s tangle us in unity. Jumping in radical faith and willing to give up all of our two pennies to do so. There is no guarantee of work. There is no guarantee of housing. Only the truth that God wants to make the world anew and he wants to infuse beauty and diversity into it and use us in that process!

We are humbled and overjoyed for the God-filled things which are slowly beginning to unfold as we move toward that new beginning at the apparent “ end of the world”.

We do hope the world doesn’t end today. But if it does we will both be in heaven with our maker and nothing else will matter but the joy that supernovas in our hearts.

I thank my God that he has never given up on me. May I never give up on Him and who He is! He makes all things new!

J.G.Grinstead

Trust

2011-04-29T11:38:00.002-06:00

It’s never really all that easy to write about the core of who you are. But nonetheless to write about anything else would be of a lesser or more inconsequential point, God is dealing with the core of me and healing a few things along the way.

And it’s complicated to say the least.

At my core I am an architect and designer. To be doing anything else doesn’t do all that much to give me joy or isn’t really something I can dive into fully. I half-ass it because I can’t really get into it. Which is on par with most employees, sadly. But its because I have known what it is to dive into something so deep, something that sings and is in concert with who I am. And to be doing anything else just feels as if something is missing, as if I have lost my love.

My buddy Landon posted this in his blog:

“If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

I think it puts rather well what I have been feeling. And I think from it we can take that the hundred chances are better than the one. As a Christian knowing that God is mightily for us we can be guaranteed he is in our 100’s chances and is in that first enterprise too! But he may have other things to do within that man( in me)in the 100 before he leads him back to the first.

In many respects I am the first man who has miscarried thus far in my enterprise not being installed into an architecture position in New York City as the time approaches the end of within a year. I believe that time will come as God continues to lay the ground work for such a thing. I am confident that my God is for me in giving me to a profession which makes my heart sing and can be an act of worship.

But he does have things to do inbetween that future reality.

I have said before I do not claim to know all that God is doing in this really awkward strange season. But I know the other day He spoke for the first time in a while and said to me.

"THIS IS IMPORTANT JOHN!!!”

…and it is. I can't deny that or logically say this is stupid...As much as I would like to at times! Every moment of this winding path every miniscule detail is important! So I must

Trust in the LORD with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding; in all my ways acknowledging Him, and Him alone making my paths straight through that obedience and trust in WHO HE IS.
-Proverbs 3:5-6 ( loosely translated)

I am learning to acknowledge him. Who he is, trusting in Him and am not leaning on my expectations or my understanding of how it will work out. I am acknowledging Him our great and awesome God. He is in this. I look forward to the day I can look back as I can look back now and say my FATHER in heaven is great and look how he fought for me with a jealous love even against my best ( still faulty and failing) thoughts.

Needs

2011-04-23T12:20:00.000-06:00

Blogs are funny thing because they can become soapboxes by which to profess our frail and often shortsighted opinions. Or they can be used to bless people. It is always my hope that this will bless. What I've found though is for that to happen truthfulness, straightforwardness, and honesty are the catalysts that tend to bless in the later case. By simply telling what is going on in our lives how we are coping in it and who we are clinging to in it. This can provide a depth of insight that gives blogging its purpose and blessing in this strange world we inhabit.

With that in mind in being honest and straightforward, this is going to be a longer that normal one: the issue I am going to try and tackle is less a blog and more a summary of the past 3 years or so... So I will try to highlight important parts only...

...

My last year of college, I paid my way through. I was engaged to a beautiful and wonderful woman. And in that first year in a sense of being financially on my own I began and saw what I wanted my life to look like. What I deemed as important. And in that I began praying for where the Lord might send my future wife and I together as we began our lives together after college. And the Lord started planting this crazy idea of moving to NYC. And the idea stuck...and hasn't gone away.

I saw the detriment of what a long car commute can do to a marriage and didn't want any part of that in mine I wanted public transportation options where I could use the transit time productively. I knew the realities of architecture and that when I do get a full time job in it it would occupy a majority of my time. I saw what suburban living did to further divide an already splintered world and frankly didn't want any part of it. I wanted a diversity of people poverty and wealth in my face day in and day out. I didn't want to ignore it by doing the garage freeway office freeway garage option.

And in looking back God started laying a ground work long before I even began considering NYC : this jump to the other side of the country:

See, I have never had an architecture job and God seems to have bitterly opposed it up to this point. I have done design-build construction but never worked in an architecture office, because frankly God didn't want me to for I imagine the NYC reason. Most people would agree with me in this statement that if a firm were to have me intern with them they would have offered me a full time job and I would have accepted and that would not have been in NYC. So instead God for whatever reason during the years I could have interned or chose to try to get a job as an intern orchestrated the biggest financial collapse and worst architectural hiring crisis since the profession began in the late 1800s. I instead during the past two summers designed and built a 2200 sf "house" for Elise and I to survive one of the most crazy winters on record for a lot of the country in a rather warm Colorado while working two management positions on my end and several graphic design jobs on my wife's end to save enough money to have us line up with this movement of God.

But it hasn't been all about saving because we really have has a year off from the craziness that is the working world reality. We have been able to bless our family. I have been able to serve my wife in ways I couldn't as an architecture student who also worked part time and had a social life and it has been a joy. We have been able to help out my brother in law who tore his ACL and LCL in a skiing accident and just bought a fixer-upper which he can't do certain things due to his accident working, physical therapy, and being the youth director at the church etc.. and me with all my design build knowledge can help out... . We were able to spend time with and see off my other brother in law who recently moved to Florida. We became part of the respective in-laws family and now know how to fit in quite comfortably.

And now that the world is on its way to recovery and we feel a great need to get our lives started for our own sanity we are going to step into what we have felt God orchestrating for a long while. I'm sure it won't pan out exactly like we think but God is still most certainly in it.

So in light of that and many other things and what we feel and see the Spirit doing Elise and I have decided to move sometime in July to NYC. We have planned a housing trip to NYC June 22nd-28th which will hopefully be enough time to secure an apartment. We will be celebrating our one year anniversary on the 27th there and beginning our journey shortly after!

Pray for us to both secure jobs or to have enough coming in to survive so hopefully we do not run out of savings in the most expensive city in the world. I have a firm that is interested in me and is very likely to hire me on a contract basis if enough work comes in, pray for that. Pray for my wife's job prospects. She is wicked talented and has many contacts she will meet with when we move. Excited for what God has for us there that week and beyond! and the six weeks we will be in Colorado two weeks in California before that!

8 months

2011-04-04T18:34:00.000-06:00

I imagine I hardly grasp what God has done in my heart over this time. 2/3 of a year has passed since Elise and I have been back in Colorado. I am now on my third job and to be honest there's been a lot of hard lessons along the way . I believe however maturity has been developed within it...and God has been glorified because of it and I am deeply thankful due to that single fact.

Lately and in part with our past few jobs here in Colorado Elise and I have been learning how to wrestle and not get pinned down by the realities of the working world and trying to grab onto the reigns of married life and the realities of day to day . I have come to the conclusion that no one can really prepare you for this and the intensity and amount of effort you must put into such a thing and the realities of I imagine seeing your selfishness and humanity due to it are something you can't prepare for. Architecture school helped because current life is a downplay from that but it will ramp up again soon! And many a sleepless selfless night will have not prepared me for that

But the reason for this blog isn't to say that, although it does run parallel to that thought; it is simple to say and sort through the fact that there's something happening in my heart in this time that is immensely new that needs to be sorted through and written down.

Perhaps its easiest to say it this way, the weight of the world has a way of showing Christ as the antithesis to what the world is and the realities of the world hinder Christ coming into it and you really have to learn how to make inroads for Christ in the world and choose whom you will serve or you will simply get bowled over by it.

Seeing God for who He is is so much clearer in a world unsheltered by family support or places in society where we have deemed by age to be places of rest and shelter from the outside world simply put, it changes your perspective. I don't think many are comfortable with this but it is a truer picture of God.

Personally it has been shaping desires for strange things and has been giving me strength to work towards long held ambitions that lie deep within my heart knowing that those are the ones that really matter.

But by choosing that it means life isn't gonna look like what I thought it would look like, and due to that my heart is both fickle and redeemed and is immensely torn in times like these.

Needless to say its been an unpredictable 8 months but it has been good. I have plans but we'll see if they pan out.

How much can one man do?
To change the world
The answer is not that you are to become that man
But their is one man who already did
And the changing goes like nothing before it has
imperceptible until you know its way
infinite complexity undoing you
to find what was deeper within
the deeper you
To show what was already done
by a father who loved you

Overwhelmed by His Goodness

2011-03-09T00:40:00.000-07:00

Trying to find my way into the second section of an architecture career( the internship junior architect working faze) has been an interesting journey to say the least . But in these 8 months or so after graduating seeing this grand plan unfold you know the one that God has for my life, I am truly severely overwhelmed at how deeply God loves me and how He has been loving in spite of my sometimes fitfull two year old like and loss of perspective depressive tendencies. His plan, is so much bigger and grander than my small scale dreams( and I dream big compared to most) and it is far better than anything I could have ever dreamed.

God’s been meddling a lot for Elise and I’s joy….It's too complicated to spell out but He is at work and it is breathtaking and I am overwhelmed by his goodness…

JG

True Love

2011-02-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

Worship Element: True Love from Adam Kring on Vimeo.

Lately I find myself speechless I am certainly at a point in life where I am really confused as to what God is doing.

Perhaps it was an illusion in the first place that I ever thought I could understand. Or perhaps my small view of God that keeps growing bigger to a point of lack of understanding. Needless to say i am largely confused and my perspective and dreaming about what will happen changes daily.

It makes it hard to blog because if anything I strive for is for this to be an honest bigger picture account of my life.

Right now there are few possibilities that could happen:

1. Elise gets this job in hackettstown nj we live in orange NJ and I look for a job in NYC or the job with SOM or Rottet NYC comes through.

2 God has us wait some more here in Colorado we continue to save money( which I am so stoked on) Elise continues her work for the broncos and I help fix up my brother in law and sisters new house they purchased while serving my wife and hopefully finding a job here that is somewhat flexible for that.

3. My uncle in LA creates an intern position for me in LA and we move out there in hopes of me transferring to the NYC office in the future.

4 or an option we have not considered yet that will pop up.

It changes daily though it really does . And God is in all those options we are just waiting for one to happen.

And personally I am happy with any of those options whatever the Lord does I am grateful.

I think that is what has really been changing within me. I have no great expectations about what God is going to do with the NYC thing. I am happy with what he has put before me. In Colorado maybe LA or even NJ.

I think that is what times of confusion are there for, to really stretch our faith and to learn habits of heart and mind to cling in faith to who God is. Hoping in his character and deliverance expecting it. And lastly and most importantly loving in the meantime.

...

See, there are these moments where I notice ways I used to think replaced by The most wonderful thoughts . For instance we have a family friend who loves the Broncos Elise working for the broncos got all these free posters and she gave them to this guy. He was having a bad day I guess and the posters really cheered him up. Maybe it is the love I hold for my wife but a thought came into my head that if we were put in Colorado for that one moment it would have been worth it. That thought was from God. A gift in the form of the way I think about Him and how He loves through us. God puts in so much effort just to love his children. And every pain we endure as believers is to show how He loves.

I May not understand what this season is all about but I know it was conceived and is controlled by someone in heaven who loves me more than I will ever realize and comprehend. And in this time I get to simply love my wife without the distractions that real life offers and what a wonderful way that is to spend the majority of my first year of marriage. The lord loves me! He loves Elise and He loves you. His name is Jesus! He died for all of us because of his love. I think that is what valentines day means to me this year and what I will choose to focus on is that I have love from my family my wife, my Jesus, etc. And I am joyful because of it and am powerful fierce and a warrior due to it.

And no matter what I am loved and am able to love because of it.

Happy valentines day everyone!

Hope in Waiting

2011-01-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

Four Hundred Years from Salomon on Vimeo.

History records that for 400 years heaven was quiet

hearts lived in famine and no prophet walked the earth.

The heart of man was a barren wasteland holding fast to the hope

that one day the silent skies would break open.

But imagine the sound of desolation

the breathe that searches for life taking in the stale air

devoid of the life of its maker

But we hold out the utterances of heaven waiting in quiet hope

that this is the age when heaven roars with a voice so powerful

it thunders over the waters

a voice that breaks the mighty cedars of Lebanon

a voice that flashes forth with flames of fire

and in his power shakes the wilderness

a voice that bring forth life from desolation

and you are holding it in your hand

...

I want to thank Salomon for this short film. It is both beautiful and captivating as well as engages me personally on a level that few things can right now. Through it I see clearer.

Thank you.

...

I don't post movies often on my blog...I reserve such things for Facebook normally but this short film really stirred something in me.

Personally, many of you know I am playing a waiting game. Waiting in many ways for the economy to get better so I can get a job in an architecture firm and begin working toward licensure.

I hope one day to be in NYC doing this and believe that is where I would best be able to serve love and benefit the world with the good news of Jesus Christ with the gifts and talents He alone has given me.

AND Although my waiting game does not compare in any way or shape to the waiting game the jews and the world waited for in their Messiah and that 400 years. I find myself focusing on that time and that thought and gaining much from such a reflection.

They must have wondered? Just as I wonder each day.

Maybe it took them that 400 years to be ready for Jesus. Maybe it took 400 years for the Jews to get rid of certain sin. I am uncertain as to that exact history. But what I do know is that they probably wondered what was going on and why they weren't hearing from God.

But the thing was they were hearing from God BUT it was not in the ways they were looking for it was in different ways then what they knew of his voice through the prophets. And in that shaping they were on track towards seeing him in a completely new way. They had to take their bibles at least what was written of it at the time and see what was coming and see the beauty of God and the seriousness of sin in that reflection.

I can relate to that. And I really believe that is what God is doing within me. Reforming and shaping me into who I need to be for what He is about to do. It was no different with the jews and the world during those 400 years.

And the one thing I keep coming back to is that you can't lose hope. Especially that God is good and has plans that will set hearts more ablaze than it ever has before. And of course when its a lengthy endeavor of God changing you to be of use to His purposes, their will be questions. But those questions are pointless really.

I can't forget knowing that the Lord is for me not against me. I am honoring Him in the actions I am taking and my heart. And I don't understand all the implications or reasons why I am here. Why I am waiting but I am here and the Lord is for me and I can put my hope in that.

J.G. Grinstead

Faith

2011-01-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

At my core I am a two year old in need of some refining; specifically in the area of wanting to get and have my way.

And I know this because I have had a nose dive into depression this week.

And in unraveling the complexities of the why, the really why, and the what’s really going on I have come to some conclusions.

1. I am hiding under the hollow shell of something that use to be but is long gone and refined.

Part of our challenge as christians is taking our identity in Christ seriously and really believing it. Because sin and how sinful we are is at the core of our new birth, it becomes very difficult to really take Christ serious when it comes to our identity in Him as his sons and daughters.

The truth is though He takes this issue very seriously He mandates in scripture that we believe we are who he says we are. It hinders Him and His glorious work when we don’t.

The beauty and oftentimes scapegoat of sanctification though is that God continually works despite us; he hollows out the things we cling to in our identity til the point we can begin to believe them where he finally is able to in essence ninja kick our version of identity, smash it and see it fall to pieces on the floor dealing it its final blow...and we move on to the next two year old tendency needing some reworking.

And when I look upon my life all the recent developments realizations and perspectives I am coming to terms with accepting that this life is this long term faith building exercise. That is real life and proper sanctification as God eagerly awaits the awakening of His sons and daughters.

2. New York City and my career/work and all things are very much tied into this. More intricately than I can articulate.

It’s taken me a long while to actually be able to articulate these complex thoughts. It took me about 4 days in the mountains of stilling life to a point of prayer journaling and reading alone to come to terms with the fact that NYC was my idea. And my idea was about to fail. I had to understand,I had to understand New York was my idea. And my idea died monday night.

I do not believe New york city died when I received that email on Monday letting me know that 3 big projects a firm was counting on for my hire didn’t come through. But my idea of how New York timing life etc. would all work out died.

I am walking in the reality of God’s providence in the in between. And I have to remember that every place is an opportunity to exercise faith and see what it brings.

God brought me to a breaking point a few days before that email where my two year old tendencies came out full force. It led me into what would normally have been a nose dive into depression if I really struggled with that still...I woke up joyful a day ago. I have simply been a two year old trying to be depressed and apathetic and unmoved to the point where God would magically do something my way.

God isn’t like that though.

I like J.I. Packer’s thought on the subject:

“What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God for his Father…Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption…The truth of our adoption gives us the deepest insights the New Testament affords into the greatness of God’s love. Were I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be – adoption through propitiation.”

“You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator. In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. ‘Father’ is the Christian name for God.”

I am a two year old. And God is a good father. But if I don’t believe Him to be that, then I simply will rot away the blessing of what Christ has for me in every moment.

And therefore I choose to believe.

Coup De Grâce

2010-12-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

Last week, I got the opportunity to go out to New York City for 3 days for an interview/meeting for a potential architecture job with a great and wonderful firm I've been in contact with since June. It was a long awaited trip and I used the opportunity of being out there to see the city interact with its people and get a picture and a more tangible reality of my possible future life there.

I can’t begin to possibly contain the trip in mere musings here and I apologize for many a delayed response to facebook comments emails etc.; but its taken me a while to reflect. I try not to spit out initial responses that might be erratic and illogical at best through those methods of communication.

So, in piecing together this thing together, as I don’t do with many others I have decided to forgo shoving emotion to the side; but I have given it sufficient time to be of benefit. I lose all the power and depth of what God has been trying to get at in me through the things behind the many tears that were shed as an emotional response over this past week in sorting through what happened in NYC, if I simply let emotion have no part. So I will be honest and bare my heart here while trying to make some sort of sense.

So I will start out with the response I would have posted on facebook..."The trip was wonderful"…it really was...but it was much more than that. I got to see some amazingly beautiful buildings meet some wonderful people and eat wonderful food but God used the last day(the day of the interview) as an opportunity to wreck me and wreck me good. The interview and the firm ended up being a big surprise…totally different than what I expected them to be and what I expected them to say and it forced me to rebuild a lot of my speculation and expectations of what I expected my life to look like in NYC.

The week following the trip was very emotional due to those 8 months of expectations being rearranged and the realities I saw and experiences not even remotely resembling what I expected. It actually hasn’t been really til today a week later that I have been able to reflect without bursting into tears. Which I am still sorting through. Elise can attest to the fact I really have been an emotional nut-job as of late.

What I can gather from the tears though is that for those who don’t know or wouldn’t suspect going to NYC, for me, meant a possible end to a long period of waiting eager expectation hopes and heart…and I really believed this trip to be the coup de grâce to the 8 months in pursuing NYC, the 3 years of strenuous emotional effort pursuing an architecture job, and the lifetime endeavor I have had since I was 4 to become an architect. NYC, though, was not the "blow of mercy(coup de grâce)" I hoped it to be… it was a simple repetition of a word I've heard a lot of for the past few years " wait. "

And don’t get me wrong the interview / meeting went immensely well and I am led to believe I am at the top of their list but a few more things have to go right before they commit to hiring a salary position and I must continue to wait.

And that was way too much for my heart to handle in this week following the trip. That's what I've been working through.

But as I’ve begun to pray through the very casual interview that resembled more of a meet and greet and the conversation I had with the principle about the company and its future and my skills and talents and how they could be used there ; I’ve begun to see ,regaining my emotional sanity, that God is in it in more wonderful ways than I expected Him to be…and He always has been and giving up in this perhaps last leg of the sprint is stupid and pointless. And I'd be a fool to do so when in reality the door is still just as open as its ever been to be sent with my wife to NYC!

And frankly…nothing has changed… besides the fact we're another week down the timeline of what God has for Elise and I...but the truth is I’m still waiting on the Lord and His timing on this thing…but things have changed a little...the door is cracked a little bit more open and the things I’m learning about my heart and myself and the Lord Himself and growing in along the way are changing me in more profound ways than I possibly could write about or summarize here…yet strangely those things are the things that matter immensely more than what we might call big. And I'm glad that God sees fit to be thorough with my heart and prepare me for wherever and whenever He is leading because I know I will need it and He's laying good things ahead of me! And that's exciting and worth enduring for!

JG

Fullness

2010-11-28T14:48:00.001-07:00

I’ve been trying to write this for several weeks now but the time of reflection and gluing together of a thousand instances was impossible to do except for now.

So I apologize but I believe these reflections come in their perfect timing!

…

I’m working currently 6 days a week with an international relief non-profit and love love my job!

In this job, I have faced and seen more spiritual warfare in these past few weeks than I ever have encountered. And in dealing with it, I could go into the thousand reasons and speculations but what I have come to realize is unexpected; but is the more proper response the greater question, the greatest question, “who is God?” And in that question finding an answer and implications that I was empty until I found.

Christ and what He did on the cross is what I’m seeing: the intermingling of the cross and my world and the implications of it.

Here it is:

“The fullness of God was pleased to dwell” in Jesus and so rests in us if we choose to believe. The one who is able to conquer death is in us.

Do you get that, what that means? I don’t even scratch the surface of the implications and am still amazed!

That has been the great mark I have seen these past few weeks between the believers and the non-believers I work with. Those non-believers who are helping us out that are in the job for money or helping out mankind are plagued by outright demonic attacks. Three tires blowing out, a house burning down, hands needing to be amputated etc. And that is only 3 days mind you.

For the believer Satan is a defeated foe by what Jesus accomplished on the cross. For the unbeliever he is still allowed to terrorize them in blatant and obvious ways because again the fullness of God does not reside in the unbeliever they are empty and open for counterfeits that will never bring them the fullness of what life was meant to bring. That may seem harsh but it is true and I stand by it. A non-believer will never step into the fullness of anything without accepting Christ.

But this thought does not end here it explodes with something not easily noted. If we have the fullness of God in us and have the victory over Satan there is no limit to who we can become in Christ as we bury the deeds of darkness and reach for the world under Christ reaching the potential and fullness that Satan bitterly opposes.

This is the beauty in fullness and what Christ death on the cross and resurrection after means.

I’ve seen fashion and ad executives join this job from Manhattan and join part in this endeavor. I have seen volunteers from 2 countries so far and 23 states join hands in helping kids. There is something to following Christ and his commands to love and the morality he taught but without Christ these people will never experience the fullness of joy that Christ promises because of Satan’s deception of them. And that breaks my heart

And I believe in this God has led me to the grand lesson of this time that as I step into my interview in NYC on the 13th of December. I was buried with Christ in baptism and am made alive in Him I suffer and love others in stark contrast to the culture I step into. I must allow Christianity to critique every culture that I step into; and it will not destroy it but will make it reach its fullness. And that is why I am sent because there is some beautiful potential that God sees for the world and for this country and for that city and for His joy as well as my own. And he is pleased to allow my wife and I to step into co laboring with Him in His victory.

We as believers are still in a war with Satan and the forces of darkness. Never forget that or be unmindful of his ways. I am going to war soon, I can feel it coming. The outer lying battles here have trained me; but they are nothing compared to what is coming…but the beauty of it is Christ is already Victor over all “ he has overcome the world”. And we have power and authority through Him alone to cast out demons and help this world grow in justice in love grace and in the glorifying of God. Calling leaders and authorities to the responsibility of keeping this great world in order because God demands it so that his gospel may go forth and making light shine in immense darkness and by dying becoming alive to the greater things in their fullness.

What a great God we serve and love!

-JG

A Cross of Joy

2010-11-05T00:50:00.000-06:00

The cross cannot be separated from the resurrection. They are they linked. The death of Christ cannot be seperated from his resurrected life. It is importantly so with our lives in Christ. We cannot experience joy and the better life here on Earth without the cross in our lives.

…

I could contentedly close my conclusions there because there is so much depth to that thought; but for me that thought is shaping me in more profound ways than I can possibly write in this time.

But nonetheless God is brilliantly working in me and I desire deeply to write. God has deeply impressed that upon my heart tonight. So I will illuminate further some recent thoughts etc.

…

I have always been one to do things immensely well at nearly everything I set my mind to…except a recent endeavor of shooting hoops with my wife and brother in law ( I thank God for such reminders that I am frail and human). But, to Most they interpret that quality and character of my work to be from God .

I’ve been asking myself as of late though how much of it is me and how much is from God.

And upon reflection I think that God does play a pivotal part but I am finding the source more applicably is myself choosing to die to myself and my desires and deciding to take up my cross.

As this time of stillness and sober reflection is showing me choosing to follow Christ’s voice and call in bigger and quicker ways shows me this truth clearer than I have ever seen it. I think the saying goes “the greater the risk the greater the reward”. It is true with Christianity too. The greater the honoring of the voice of the Lord the greater the joy..

Tonight God led me to Romans 12…but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is.

Coupled with last night’s reading from Exodus 16 I am convinced that God wanted the Israelites after He took them out of Egypt to completely and utterly to get Egypt out of their minds. He wanted them to walk think eat etc. differently. He wanted them to be completely new.

In this time I am thinking differently. I recognized it tonight. I am thinking newly and in it I am finding the good will of God Himself his love beyond anything I can fathom or take in without being moved.

God wanted me to die and in order for that to have happened I had to take up my cross. Stepping out in faith in pursuing New York when we could so easily be comfortable someplace else. We could have stayed in California and had every comfort and luxury society tells us to have. But it is my current cross that is making me die. And in dying I am finding life and finding a deep deep joy.

And I will gladly take up the next cross when it comes because there is joy in the cross.

I had the pleasure of going to dinner with Elise’s spiritual mama this evening. I was listening to them be women and converse back and forth when something hit me. She trusts God so deeply.

She told me that was part of her renewing. I find myself trusting God in deeper ways than ever before. I find the questions lacking. I use to think that so ignorant!

I trust and know God to be a good God. That is enough

It doesn’t mean I don’t wander what each day will hold or how I am to play a part in it. But I trust him at his word and by His remarkable love and I need nothing else. And that is so deeply pressed upon my heart.

I know deeper than my head
Inside my heart

Love is here
I trust so deeply
I can’t deny

Faith deeper than my head
…is here

There are no more questions
This night and forevermore!

JG

Psalm 27

2010-10-29T17:31:00.000-06:00

I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes wait for for the Lord.

-Psalm 27 13-14

To Wait is good

2010-10-29T15:16:00.000-06:00

My life is good and is so immensely blessed.

I come to that conclusion far to little in my life.

But it is true.

I look at my life, my beautiful wife, who I am, and where we are , and where we are going and I smile because life is good and I am so richly blessed by a good God.

And its not because he has given me a great architecture job, cause that hasn’t happened yet! It’s because I know deep down God loves me - that , whatever my lot it is good. It has not failed me yet and I should not doubt it will in the future

If this season has taught me anything through deep sensible reflection it is that the reason life is good is because I have let Christ be king in my life… let Him have control…even when I doubt him to be good and deny the love He has for me.

Therefore, the most sensible thing to do is let Him be Lord and let me be loved by Him even when I can’t understand or see the full picture, submitting to his will.

The decision to pursue New York City for Elise and I’s life has been an interesting journey . It hasn’t been easy by any means but as time has progressed we see God’s continued leading and wise governance over the situation.

And the simple fact has come that to wait on something is good.

Financially I will not mention numbers but we should, should a certain job go through have enough money to completely pay for our move to New York, all of our furniture ,trips to NYC for interviews, first months rent and a security deposit by January 1st, 2011 just through what Elise and I have saved while in Colorado.

If I would have had my way I would have had a job with a company I applied for in SoHo in late July. And would have moved to NYC September 1st of this year. An unrealistic dream!

But this way is better and I would not trade the humility and confidence growing within Elise and I the rest and simplicity of knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves us and is directing our lives forward, for anything.

It’s been such a blessing to be here with both sets of parents, to be able to talk with them enjoy life with them and discover who they are.

The Lord is good, May we always remember even when things happen that we don’t understand.

-John Grinstead

A Quiet Place called Colorado

2010-10-17T21:54:00.000-06:00

The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.

Mark 6:30-32

Rest + Simplicity

2010-10-11T19:54:00.000-06:00

While in school I had these breaks in the chaos that was architecture school: working, managing a social life, trying to have generally good sleeping habits and wooing a woman. But those breaks were not enough time to rest and to get at what God really wished to do. Because other things had to come first.I am seeing that every day more and more.

There is an adjustable time-line to God's working in our lives. We have to pass the test before we can move on.

See, God shaped me while in school. He did a lot of shaping that I am only now really discovering the immensity of . He was working with my breaking point giving enough rest to develop me and shape me in the breaking point to bring me to this point where He could accomplish what he is accomplishing now.

Surprisingly though, even though I have been here in Colorado for two months now and been four months tomorrow since I graduated; It is only really just now in this length of time of stopping that I am finally having these moments like these... where I finally feel like I am on the precipice of walking into what I was meant to all along.

There are these rare moments that are becoming more commonplace where I simply enjoy the fact I am married and becoming who I am. Rejoicing in God's goodness graced in my present where my education and experience collides with my career heart and action. It is different than anything I have experienced before it is so good yet defies my best attempt to conjure up words.

I get to share a bed with a woman and get to live life's simplicities with her: Apple Cider. Reading in bed. Autumn Puzzles. Cooking tacos. Sitting at Panera for hours just catching up while eating 3 desserts. Watching Planet Earth.

I am moved by the simplicity of this time and what God is doing in me.

I am moved to my heart. to joy and immense peace and confidence.

I am moved by how God is providing for the realities of what I can imagine and have no idea.

He is very thorough.

He is very good. Even when I don't see that. The fact is true.

Why would I not believe?

Why would I not choose to trust...in Love itself?

JG

Run in the Night

2010-10-06T16:26:00.000-06:00

I’ve been reflecting.

I finally have brought myself to it.

To be honest it has taken me so long because I feared the pain of seeing the blessing of what I was letting go of…choosing to hold everything with open hands.

Why did I fear. A good God will never lead me into something that will not in time set my heart ablaze.

He is a God who works over time and perfectly and thoroughly not missing a speck in my heart. Who rips soul and spirit apart to create a perfect person in perfect will and perfect joy.

I read through all of my blogs of the past 5+ years

I saw college through a wide angle lens and in turn saw God.

Saw my narrow entries.

But despite me..

God was there…and everywhere working despite all humanity.

We have confidence in the Lord concerning you, that you are doing and will continue to do what we command. May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ.

Paul saw that. That is why there is freedom in true Christianity because God is good not because we are any better.

In the words of my sister’s pastor this weekend God did not save christians from the curse. We are still broken and in need. God deems that beneficial to us and the relationship we have with Him because we are therefore not hinging our joy on ourselves but on God’s good works despite us.

" Our lord said"go" but he also said "wait," and the waiting had to come before the going. Had the disciples gone forth as missionaries before the day of pentacost, it would have been an overwhelming spiritual disaster, for they could have done no more than make converts of their own likeness, and this would have altered for the worse the whole history of the western world and had consequences throughout the ages to come."
-Tozer (warfare of the Spirit)

There are days where I wonder what this time is here for…and I would be a fool to say I know what this time is here for.
I speculate often. But what I do know is that it is wrong to manhandle the timetable…I am here til God says “go” in his perfect timing.

He is the ultimate authority in my life. Not myself. The spirit inside of me which he has given has enabled me to go but certain things must happen before others.

I saw that in my writing how perfect was the timing of it all, perfect against my will and frustration. And that is why I can reflect in such overwhelming joy and holding it with open hands.

God is in this moment even now. I can rejoice in this time to reflect and realize who I am; all those people I took the blessing that God gave me and met them impacted them and was able to be a blessing to them. I have 22 letters from 22 men who I was blessed to impact.

That book brings me to rejoicing tears every time I go through it by myself.

In Landon’s words I left a legacy for others to walk into. I trust God that even if they fail in reaching my most lofty hopes for their lives God is still working within the larger timetable and working in their lives. I pray they can become spiritually worthy realizing their own brokenness and sinfulness in order that they might be able to go to the ends of the world proclaiming the gospel and not delaying any longer and making it more painful for God to finally break them and bring them to their knees.

This song from Jars of Clay entitled Run In the Night describe my situation very well. The things I am learning and describes this blogs reasoning better than I could do.Enjoy.

I know who I am

Once I was nameless, alone and You found me

You formed my knees to bend

You called me beloved

I am perfection

All my failures won't condemn me

Or leave me paralyzed and bound

And when I'm at my worst

Your love, it finds me first

By You I can run in the night

For by You I can run in the night

For I am such a man

Seized by the power of a great perfection

No matter where I am

Peace spreads below me in every direction

When evil sets the war upon me

I won't stumble, I won't fall

And though they do their worst

Your love has found me first

For by You I can run in the night

For by You I can run in the night

For by You I can run in the night

Hide me in the shelter of...

Keep me in the cover of...

Lead me in the light of Your love

Hide me in the light of Your love

For by You I can run in the night

For by You I can run in the night

For by You I can run in the night

For by You I can run in the night

For by You I can run in the night

For by You I can run in the night

For by You I can run in the night

For by You I can run in the night

JG

Compass

2010-09-08T15:10:00.000-06:00

“Dream a dream so big it is doomed to fail if God is not in it”

…

In many respects I am idealist.

To you that probably doesn’t make much sense. To me it really doesn’t either.

Especially in the world we inhabit!

I am finding when doing things for God’s kingdom: being in community and engaging with people, the situation is never ideal. It never has been with sinful people. The idealism comes when God steps in.

This is an aspect of myself I am learning to lay down: the gentle whisper that is the Spirit telling me that the dreams He dreams for me and my life are the true ideal things.

…

When it comes to people understanding me fully, few if any ever really come close. Perhaps, I withhold much or perhaps I simply don’t understand myself enough to convey it or come close. But I think the above quote sums me up more than any words I could write because that is simply what I am doing with my life: I am dreaming a big dream and working towards it and seeing where God leads between point A and point B.

Destination B ( New York ) is where Elise and I believe we are called: we believe wholeheartedly God is leading us there!

But we are more excited about how it’s all going to play out because B is a point and place a climax to a story, not a story in itself it is simply the answer to a really big question and an idealistic dream. But it is the in-between that we are finding to be quite more exciting.

See, in a time without structure, I am learning what it means to be led by the spirit and follow him into the strange things he leads us into as believers when we heed and follow his soft yet authoritative voice. And it is immensely strange and exciting and uncomfortable; its a lot like good art.

Because it has been a while since my life has been unstructured or my schedule opened up it is an art I am learning again or perhaps for the first time to be in-sync with a greater art going on.

And its been strange finding God in all the normal everyday things from playing Zelda to a shower that does not give forth hot water until two days ago a paved bicycle path that ends in a grove of trees etc. and all those wonderful people we have met in the two months, so far, between A and B!

And I say all this to simple echo the words of Jacob “ surely God is in this place and I was unaware”! He is with Elise and I on this journey and it probably won't be ideal until God steps in and boy does he!

So we hold out a compass with open hands and submit ourselves to that spinning needle that is led by forces outside of our control but it is pointing to the one who spins the needle along the journey.

-John Grinstead

A story of the spinning needle

2010-09-08T14:46:00.000-06:00

Fall is quickly approaching.

I can feel it in the air.

The days are cooler now.

The air a bit more biting.

The leaves are changing.

Through the evening air the other night

with a low hanging sun peeking behind the grain filled hills

Fall five years coming for her and I.

Excited to feel these things again.

Excited to feel again

I use to understand it

been a long while.

my bicycle and me

my girl behind me

Through the evening air the other night

with a low hanging sun peeking behind the grain filled hills

Excited to feel these things again.

Excited to feel again, been a long while.

A glorious Dependence

2010-08-25T13:43:00.001-06:00

John Wesley once wrote that a church is “ all at it, and always at it”

I’ve been thinking about this idea …

And one interesting idea comes to the surface “unfavorable circumstance…leading to immense benefit and kingdom progress and building.”

We must turn to Paul to understand this well...

See, I would say Paul was always at it even in his often-unfavorable circumstance; those moments where he was probably asking God why but trusting in his immense faithfulness and sovereignty. See, Paul wrote most of his letters from prison and I strangely find myself encouraged because even though Paul could do little and had little to do he found himself “at it”…following the impulses of his heart and his love for mission even when mission seemed impossible.

In my circumstance and in Paul’s he always returned to faith in God’s good purpose for the world even if it meant difficulty for himself. In this “ all at it, and always at it” he was always encouraging others to trust in God’s good purpose for the world and work toward it which perhaps was God’s greater purpose through Paul besides his mission trips and speaking engagements: because Paul’s true purpose was only shown through time and known through God’s lens. Which points to the fact that there is a glorious dependence to be had upon God as his children and as our father for the purposes unseen.

“All at it, and always at it” doesn’t mean there is not differing circumstances. It doesn’t exclude the season of Sabbath and rest it simply means that we must find ourselves doing what we can for others and for God’s Kingdom even in seasons of rest. Trusting that when we have been given seasons of rest that we are not given them for ourselves but for others. We have to follow and trust in the fact that the things that are for others will fill our soul with more rest than we know and are in God’s good purpose and that the intentions for God’s kingdom are being worked out by the Father himself: faith coupled with confidence.

May we be “all at it, and always at it!”

: Rest :

2010-08-15T22:18:00.000-06:00

Time will tell of all the purposes yet unrevealed. I wait upon the Lord…

In the meantime, I am safely back at home in Colorado with my bride. Have left my college town in California and am waiting on God to show forth his calling. I wait upon the Lord to reveal Elise and I’s future

AND

In the meantime am finding myself immensely grateful for home and my family.

In the meantime, Elise and I will be living in the basement I designed and built with my bare hands designed with my sensibilities and dreamed of until a point where God directs and opens his door to our future. The basement is a few days from completion: only a few things are left unfinished like a shower door that needs to be installed and a few pictures to hang and a few boxes to sort through and the putting of those items into their proper places.

God has thoroughly given me a place to rest here, I am immensely grateful for a place for the re-cultivation of the things I lost while in college. The pieces of my character and delight I am finding again.

And to be honest it’s hard to have moved back in with the parents and in-laws because it is against nearly every guiding principle based direction I put upon my life. But whom am I to deny God’s leading…I know He has me here with incredible purpose…and I am beginning to see that. I am rejoicing in it.

In many respects the basement is God’s design coupled with my own. A tangible representation of where I can be at peace. I feel it every time I go down there. There is a deep satisfaction of it nearing completion and seeing vision turned reality.

Beyond that, there are fears here and there but I am at rest. God is surely good and showers his goodness upon his children.

He is so deeply good!

I heard the voice of Jesus say

“Come unto me and rest.

Lay down thou weary one, lay down,

Thy head upon my breast.”

I came to Jesus as I was,

Weary and worn and sad.

I found in Him a resting place,

And He hath made me glad.

Reflections on Light. Joy. Marriage.

2010-07-31T20:28:00.000-06:00

So much has happened over the past month. I have scarce to take it all in and reflect on the movement and intertwining of God in my present. I feel these words are so immensely inadequate yet I feel this is a good and proper exercise even if it fails to achieve my highest of ambitions.

I will not be able to reflect fully here but I thought it best to do so while in the joy of it all.

…

Hard to believe I am a month and a few days into marriage. A month and a half out of graduating from college. Have moved out of my college house of three years where so much of who I am was formed and cultivated and am now living with my bride in her old place.

Hard to believe I am now starting to realize that my days in San Luis Obispo and California are coming to a close and the days of Elise and I living as one in our new life together are truly beginning.

I think I wondered a lot what this future would bring and what it would look like? Where we would be? What would it look like at this point of time? What would my relationship with God look like? What would I have learned?

And to be honest, I don’t really have those answers readily at my mind. I am still trying in vain to catch up while God presses on with his blessing. I don't know what to do half the time but learn to cling to God a little bit more each day, which is inevitably what marriage brings: every day I am reminded that it comes back to faith reliance and trust in the good God. God is full of blessing and perfect timing yet it is our decision whether or not to trust; and that is difficult at points yet so critical. Every day yields its surprises but relatively it is the same old relationship with God just a little bit more intertwined with others and simple put just more dependent upon God, which is the best place to be and the best place to see him show up and work.

To put it in metaphorical terms ; its as if the light I once cultivated within myself is finally in the process of turning inside out. The mirrors that kept light in are being rotated from inward to outward and in so doing I am finding quite a bit of light and quite a bit of unfamiliarity with the things now easily seen and shown . My interests and mind are divided with all of this new life ahead of me; but it is simply put I am no longer thinking of my little ball of light, but the sharing of that light with my wife and with others which is again a good place to be.

I see myself more every day a sinner, saved by remarkable grace, and in so doing in allowing the ridding of the things which separate me from Him see a truer picture of a glorious God and the joy that continues to grow in my heart.

I continue to find myself in need of ridding myself of expectation and control; finding what God led me into and choosing to accept it for my benefit whether it be within my plan or not: painful or easy to accept. Today’s tomorrow has become an immense fog and mystery, and somehow although it seems contradictory there is largely an overwhelming peace about the steps before Elise and I ( but the occasional doubt) as we are choosing to walk every day in the reality of a good God who gives great gifts and his ultimate joy bestowed becomes more and more infused into our reality.

And my heart becomes more authentic and honest with every step of faith especially those that are immensely painful. Every day of marriage shows me that it is no longer my control that dictates the course of my joy and my future, which oftentimes would end in periods of sadness and depression; but it is God directing my surrender and my progress to bring forth His glory and kingdom. I find myself singing these days writing poetry and music again which has been subdued in lack of joy for a long time.

Marriage brings a more vivid reality. I have realized over the past month that my world is brighter and my senses are more alive. I have found something better than what I had before in the engaged or dating or single period. It is as if I have gone from being on one knee with a ring held out to a period of being on both my knees with joyful tears filling the carpet and wetting the feet of my beloved savior for his immeasurable grace gifts and character.

And one thought sticks out more that most in this time: as I move toward becoming a father I increasingly become a son of God and realize I have little to offer the world apart from the gifts and treasure I have been given by God himself. He is teaching me how to be like him, and bring forth into the world, following in His footsteps.

Marriage is so good. It is a fight every day. But the battle is worth it because what I am fighting for in my wife and bringing forth in God and in his grace and goodness in the world is worth every ounce of effort and exhaustion. I see that now.

Somewhere along these past five years God made me a man, and made me a warrior with motivation and a reason to fight! He gave me joy. Gave me a gift in my wife that I don’t deserve. Refined me to be a blessing…and in so doing blessed me! It’s beautiful to reflect on.

-John Grinstead

Time passes and a new chapter begins

2010-07-15T14:57:00.000-06:00

Black turned to white over several varying shades of grey.

First drop to fall

Morning breaks, the first subtle shade of color in the grey

Blue filling the world.

Time passes and a new chapter begins

Blue passes away

A small but significant blade piercing the ground to begin soaking in the light of that first day.

Moving and swaying.

Breeze moving what has come in this day

Green filling the world

Time passes and a new chapter begins

Bursting into color in the light of that first day

Birds of the air, and beasts of the sea

Flowers of the field, and the many more things to come.

Green turned brown fresh canvas for life to play upon. Echos of hope. Glimmers, almost certainly gone!

Time passes and a new chapter begins

Every chapter ends

And several ripples of reflection come

Changing and making there way

To form light in wonderful shades

And so the story of color begins

Changing and making their way

To form light in wonderful shades

Time passes and a new chapter begins

Endurance and Expression

2010-04-29T00:48:00.000-06:00

The above is a movie about what I see as patient endurance in the midst of a world of instant self-gratification (pride) I find it beautiful because of the patience and tangible nature of what is birthed physically and character wise from this type of work.

…

Tonight, I imagine words like many other nights will fail ;but I wanted to note two verses that are on my heart these days.And very much correlate with the above movie.

Ecc. 7:8 notes that:

The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.

Proverbs 28:2 notes that

By the transgression of a land many are its princes, But by a man of understanding and knowledge, so it endures.

As my father notes often and sums up the above verses : “ finish well.”

…

This is our call as Christians to endure until the end and to be better than the day we began it. To grow and to flourish in a world of challenge to the Christian life, to not be children any longer but warriors carrying forth God's light into the work being tempered by patient endurance and development although its hard work and comes with great struggle and difficulty.

Thank God for people that still do things the old fashioned way who have bent fingers because there is something about doing something with your two hands that takes a long time that cannot be duplicated and is immensely satisfying.

-John Grinstead

... Reckless Joy ...

2010-04-07T09:15:00.000-06:00

“I may not understand what Jesus Christ says, but it is dangerous to say that therefore He was mistaken in what He said. It is never right to think that my obedience to a word of God will bring dishonor to Jesus. The only thing that will bring dishonor is in not obeying Him. TO put my view of His honor in place of what He is plainly impelling me to do is never right, although it may arise from a real desire to prevent Him being put to open shame. I know when the proposition comes from God because of its quiet persistence: When I have to weigh the pros and cons, and doubt and debate come in, I am bringing in an element that is not of God, and I come to the conclusion that the suggestion was not a right one. Many of us are loyal to our notions of Jesus Christ, but how many of us are loyal to Him? Loyalty to Jesus means I have to step out where I do not see anything (Matthew 14:29); loyalty to my notions means that I clear the ground first by my intelligence. Faith is not intelligent understanding, faith is deliberate commitment to a Person where I see no way.

Are you debating whether to take a step in faith in Jesus or to wait until you can see how to do the thing yourself? Obey Him with glad reckless joy. When He says something and you begin to debate, it is because you have a conception of His honor which is not His honor. Are you loyal to Jesus or loyal to your notion of Him? are you loyal to what He says, or are you trying to compromise with conceptions which never came from Him? ‘Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.

-Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, March 28th

Video for Easter

2010-04-04T00:55:00.000-06:00

THE GREATEST ART from Hillsong Church on Vimeo.

To the one who creates great art out of our lives. Shattering expectations and cultural norms. To the God who rose this day. What a great God!

-J.G.Grinstead

B-Sides

2010-03-29T20:55:00.000-06:00

In many respects I don’t know really what to make of this season of life. Certain things are coming to an end and other things are truly just beginning.Graduation, marriage careers and life is upon Elise and I. And in this time we are really at a juncture between one distinct part of life and another.

It’s difficult to know who to talk to about what and where, let alone what to talk about, where I should be when, and what to do in each moment and all those important things that seems to stitch days together into time and logical progression of events and conversation that can be contained in blogs etc.

BUT despite the fact my mind at moments is in a billion places…trying to make sense of the chaos of life and possible future eventualities; my heart is in a state of an overwhelming peace.

I just finished reading NT Wright’s After You Believe: Why Christian Character matters. Through it my heart both leaps and is still at the beauty of what God desires to do in the Earth and what he wants to do through his beloved children. His encouragement is for action not just worship alone; but for mission. To live on mission is this:

"The longer you play it safe and avoid risk and potential loss, the more you will accept the present and lose your capacity to dream about and shape the future. When your fears are given more authority than the Spirit of God, all chance of valor and generational impact is gone."

-J.R. Vassal

No matter what happens in the next part of life I should make sure that Elise and I never lose the capacity to dream of God doing big things in and among us and being obedient to the steps that are necessary to get there.

“Here is Adam, called to a great destiny and losing it by his disobedience. Here is Jesus Christ, called to undo the resultant mess, to get the human project back on track and being obedient to that calling and thereby accomplishing it…

What would it look like if God were running things?

…It would like obedient human beings, following the Obedient Human, acting as stewards over creation, bringing new creation to birth, and gathering up the praises of that creation to present them to its maker. Jesus himself as the whole New Testament makes clear acted as the Obedient Human summing up creation’s praises and inaugurating God’s saving sovereignty.

-N.T. Wright (from After You Believe)

In the difficulty that change, most likely ,will produce in the coming months I rejoice because it will force Elise and I out of our own comfort into a place where we need God . Where we see him clearer and obey because we see Him, not ourselves. Seeing the Beautiful God intimately tying together random events lessons scripture people etc.

“ get up and follow me; I am the good shepherd and I will not lead you anywhere you are not supposed to go”

"‘If you are always busy listening, you will never come to understanding;
If you are always busy gratifying your eyes, you will never perceive.’

Develop a true heart within these people;

make them hear silence and close their eyes.

So that they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears,

understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."

- Isaiah 6:9-10

-J.G.Grinstead

Joy

2010-02-08T00:38:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I forget what joy feels like.

But there are these moments of life that remind me of a proper perspective towards God’s ways and means and the joy that comes from it.

For the christian the path is often riddled with difficulty.

The life Christ calls us to is not easy, by any means.

But these moments like tonight, they remind me that some of the best things of life are the ones that take the longest and most effort to get to.

And perhaps in this I see clearer than I ever have that life is worth fighting for.

Joy is worth the overwhelming sadness of refinement.

Christ is worth it.

-John Grinstead

Guess someone Already Had the Idea

2010-01-14T02:52:00.000-07:00

I happened to reading for class. And maybe it is just sheer exhaustion or sleep deprivation but I find this to be thoroughly amusing. Especially that someone would want to patent it.

Recent Reflections

2010-01-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to write for a while and despite my best intentions I have come up empty. Blogging isn’t my highest priority as it once was.

I am glad what got done over break. How I spent it and what was done in it. Although tiring hectic and chaotic at times, the time was certainly not wasted and I would say was well spent.

...and I have a still spell to reflect here and pray through the next two quarters and wanted to write about some recent thoughts that give me reason to rejoice.

My thoughts as of late have been directed towards the two weddings I attended this past Saturday with Elise. The pleasure of bringing Elise into my family and becoming my future wife! is that I have gotten to in a sense join hers. I am a part of her family and seeing and meeting the people she grew up with. The ones who were a part of who she has become, And from the two wedding I just got this sense that these, those who grew up with Elise were immensely Christ centered and they were focused and fixated on the gospel going forth, you could tell that these people they loved God. And you see that bubble over through Elise.

And I really want to write more, but I don’t know what to say beyond to simply state that I am immensely thankful for the people that God brought into Elise’s life while she was growing up.

The first wedding we attended on Saturday I found a wine and champagne I actually liked. Which is remarkable in its own right. But I think it was more so the fact I felt willing to celebrate with these couples because I found reason to celebrate without fear because what they were embarking upon with the family that surrounded them I had no doubt that their marriages would be strong and they are surrounded by people who will encourage pray and offer wise advice.

I found myself on a couch at the second wedding and began to be overcome by sadness because I didn’t really have that in my own life growing up, At least to the same intensity of remarkable Christian people that surrounded Elise as she grew up.

And I wanted that.

I wept for that.

Pleading for God to really provide in remarkable ways in my future.

This break, silent reflection and each thought with each passing day grows in intensity and makes me realize that Elise is the most beautiful wonderful gift and best thing that God could give to me. I don’t deserve her in so many respects.

So I just wanted to mainly say to those who were a part of Elise’s spiritual formation growing up. You have given me a most wonderful gift in who she has grown up to be and become. And sincerest praise to God and to him be the ultimate glory and praise through our lives joined together. May the two of us as we become one in 6months carry on the legacy that you have given and passed on into the character wisdom and grace that you gave to her and you so wonderful showcase.

-John G. Grinstead

Ways and Thoughts

2009-12-12T01:13:00.001-07:00

I haven't blogged in a while. I feel like so many blogs begin with that statement. But it really has been a long while. I haven't had the volition to write this quarter between the 18 papers the thesis writing and the 5 substantial books I read. I for the first time in my life grew disgusted with the pen and paper and words in general. Perhaps that is why I wanted so desperatley to get out and do something if anything. Just take a drive. Which I did in plenty.

Tonight on the road up to Fort Collins and back home I got to stop for a bit and think. The first pause, with the first draft of my thesis book done and my thoughts about who I am and what I want to do in this world contained in it.

I got to think about the quarter. About my thesis class. About being largely financially on my own. About being engaged and soon to be married! About where I hear God calling Elise and I. About where God has taken me this quarter. About family and community and how I want my relationships to look in the years to come.

It was a good time of contemplation and reflection.

However, in the interest of time and me going to bed at a descent time tonight I want to focus on one aspect of the a fore mentioned reflection not all of them. Know there is a list I will be attempting to get to over the break of things I really wish to clarify my thoughts on. But one will do for tonight.

The topic is Community

Tonight while I was at the Rock up in Fort Collins we studied through the entirety of the book of Philemon. Although a short book it really packs a punch if you know how to cross reference it properly with the extra-canonical texts that many people don't reference. John did an excellent job clarifying what is a wonderful letter from Paul.

The topic pertained to reconciliation. But the reason I was there tonight is the book contains within it the idea of a community of believers and what they looked like in the 1st century. And its brilliant.

For those who have been asking me questions this quarter which have sadly seemed to be few and far between, about what God has been teaching me and what not , would see a deep pain regarding the community of believers in and around my life.

I won't go into the specifics here because that pain needs to be talked about with those individual persons that caused the pain. But I what I wanted to note is that I found community and more authentic interaction with my thesis class than those believers around me this quarter.

I remember a former student of my professor telling me about how the prof really develops a community with the class. And now I know. The depth of a community of people who didn't know each other and how they can bond over such simple actions from a person.

This quarter in that moment of realization of how community was forming in my thesis class. I realized perhaps that I the one who believed had community down was wrong. Wrong about the way I was approaching community with believers. Because I was finding a deeper community forming than I have ever seen in Christian circles.

And to be honest in this moment looking back I'm not exactly sure how I have the conception of community wrong but I know my conception of community is changing and it has to do with the idea that christian community must be mixed with faith hope and love. If it is to succeed.

Over the course of this quarter I have tried to adopt 2 principles. 1. Not saying anything of wisdom that I am not putting into practice because it then becomes empty words and 2. trying to be beneficial in every action of thing I say or do.

It's made me rather quiet and is largely why this blog probably has little practicality in it but I think it has been good in that my quiet reflection and observation have forced me to actually want to do something rather than just talking about an idea or a theology. Sometimes you just got to shut up stop giving advice and doing things the way you've always done them and reconsider your ways and thoughts. And go out and do!

-JG

A Season of Creativity and Reinventing

2009-10-31T22:54:00.000-06:00

I believe it was sometime around noon in the midst of my 18 hr day yesterday that I was sitting in my hammock on my only break throughout the day. I was delighting in the wonderful late October/ early November heat wave that has graced California. And it came upon me that I am reinventing myself.

-John G.

Sin + Action

2009-10-19T18:22:00.000-06:00

Q: What if we don't know a true form of Christianity because we were never taught it? How do we as ignorant believers not make this an excuse for improper christian living/virtue but instead live rightly for Christ and His glory?

When we grow up we tend to learn a lot about out deficiencies and let them cripple us . Likewise when we are young we believe in an infinite realm of possibilities: that we can be anything, and do anything.

Christianity is very simply put in the terms above. When one is young we believe in Christ's grandness the ability of him to intersect with the world in extraordinary ways. We grow up realize how untrue that possibility is because of the lack of Christ intersecting with the world in the way we originally thought. And in turn believe it will never happen get upset and moody either leaving the faith or being dead while stuck in empty religious ritual.We forget all possibility because of pride thinking Christ to act in the way He ought preconceived by our own notions.

AND INSTEAD OF ASKING YOURSELF THE HARD QUESTIONS, HONORING CHRIST AS YOU OUGHT YOU END UP MAKING YOUR LIFE MEANINGLESS DEVOID OF CHRIST'S LIFE , AND NOT BELIEVING THAT YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD, THROUGH CHRIST, BECAUSE YOU CAN'T GET OUT OF THE WAY.

and sadly we stop in the sorrow and never take off from there.

...

Personally this truth that this question alludes to has taken a long while to sink in. For so long I was the one who was crippled by my deficiencies, overwhelmed by sorrow. But as I have grown I have finally realized life happens outside of just observing and being crippled; Christ's life is taken hold of when we know we can't walk as we ought but are still willing to walk nonetheless into the life out there waiting to be taken hold of if we would just get up. I have got out of my wheelchair and am dealing with this problem to be reckoned with in my ownpersonal life. I am on the cusp of adulthood , marriage, life , career, graduation etc. and I am finally asking myself the question out of shear need "what do all these realizations I have made thus far point to and what do I do with it ? But more specifically" how do I move into this... whatever is to come?"

I see a well intentioned empty pursuit of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ looking for direction. And desire for them so desperately to experience Christ's love joy and delight in the simple stillness of being in the moment with Christ and letting that dictate their action.

They and myself often included are looking for a roadmap and not a leader in Christ.And this is a serious issue

AND HERE IS THE MAIN POINT:

The thing that hinders them and myself included is their inability to go to the word of God and let Christ teach them how to do the new. No one has been successful thus far in this pursuit. Why should that bother us? Christ is victor over all and walks with us. But sadly we are focusing on looking for a guide in the form of a roadmap not a person. When that new is written all over the Word of God and specifically in Jesus. Christians aren't maturing at an alarming rate and I believe it is because we aren't daring to trust Christ in a great unknown. I am willing to dare to dream as a child might in his youth. But no more ignorance. A simple belief Christ is King of the earth and Heaven. Easter accomplished a great deal...and it is truly earth shattering!

In a purity of joy

2009-10-09T00:13:00.000-06:00

For a large majority of my christian walk, joy has escaped my best attempts to capture it.

Many do not see the perhaps intense ups and downs I have experience over the course of my life.

This blog perhaps captures it to some degree. But my love of image has kept many from being let into the fullness of who I am.

These blogs have served to capture joy through a pride of my own intellect, an ability to capture truth, bottle it as some might do to a firefly on a long summer night and then show everyone what I and I alone found.

But the truth is most of my blogs were derived from the sermons of those I listen to and not really out of the times I spent with God himself.

The long silence I have recently had in my written work here has pointed out the sin in the blogging.

The lack of revelation and the incredible amount of information that really didn't sink fully into my own heart.

But as I walk into a time where I am making my own decisions more and more for practically all my life now. I am finding what I walk into is a great unknown. And I need that revelation. The old isn't satisfying any more.

But as I discover what it is to be fed into this time. I am finding joy. Beautiful incredible joy. The kind that warms my heart. Stills my steps. And moves me to tears and action.

And all the things I use to do; those things I now see so riddled with the sinful man I was and will always to some degree be. They have trained me extensively for whatever lies in the present. I am no longer overwhelmed by the lack of perfection in myself but on the need for God himself. He has already gone before me. For any type of ministry that I might find in my joy to do. And strangely there is a peace and a surprise at what is happening before my eyes and in my heart : how well I am doing with all the uncertainty.

I am leaning on God. Desperately I am leaning on him. And I am finally seeing who He is.

I can't believe it took me this long to see clearly who He is was and will always be. His love. His overwhelming love. His justice. His wrath. etc.

I am growing up.

I am excited for what comes. Where God leads. And learning more about my wonderful God!

-JG

Waiting for the Fog to Clear

2009-09-27T22:04:00.000-06:00

What I would give to hear you speak

A cool breeze: destined to raise the hair on my skin

instead of my will and mind screaming for voice and words

All my instincts have failed me

waiting for the Fog to clear

J.G. Grinstead

His Means

2009-08-21T00:37:00.000-06:00

We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast.
-2 Samuel 14:14 (ESV)

There is clarity , when one is left alone with oneself.
I've been meaning to withdraw for some while now, and the time to withdraw I aloted myself never seemed to be enough. Trying to find ways to get away etc. But God's time was now. His aloted means and way. I see this very clearly now.
There are so many things I understand and that I see clearly now thanks to God's provision in this time.

As a few know, I've been home alone for almost a week and a half now. My grandmother passed away two days ago and my parents have been in Indiana for a while now in respect to her failing and now wilted body. It's just the dog and I. Elise is back in California. And everyone else is well...beginning their various respective journeys back to school. So here I am Sammie and I.

And I'm not going to try to articulate everything here that this time has done. Cause their is no way I can give you the backstory unless you have a few hours or so to sit down for coffee or even better tea.

So I'll try to give some scripture and some thoughts that I have come to as God has led me to with them.

...

...and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle.” And Moses took the staff from before the Lord, as he commanded him.Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock. And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarreled with the Lord, and through them he showed himself holy.
- Numbers 20 :7-13 ( ESV)

Moses, the great Moses, who parted the Red Sea, saw and brought the plauges on Egypt, saw God himself in a burning bush, met God on a mountain who gave him His law for the history of mankind, who appeared beside Jesus in the transfiguration refuses to obey fully and as a result denies himself entry into all that he has worked for because he did not obey fully.

God as holy wants all and if all is what we refuse to give we are not entitled to the promises of God.

Many do not realize that when we accept Jesus it means a total denial of oneself. At the moment of our salvation and every day after we should wake each morning in a surrender of ourselves to God's will alone making him Lord of our lives. If we refuse to I'm not sure it discounts our salvation but discounts what we get to see of God and leaves the haunting question " if we want more of God, than why are we still willfully sinning? And if love is wanting more of someone, do we really love God?"

I like moses have witnessed miracles, things that don't make since apart from my Father, walked in intimate communion with Him. Seen him make ways through the seemingly impossible that only He can make.

Yet this section of scripture reminds me that any sin in my life, is serious no matter how small the detail ,which this time of clarity has revealed a few rather large ones. I need to fully obey or I will not get to experience what God has for me. And if I refuse in the littlest detail I will deny myself his promises.

God's anger burns against my sin...and is only quelled in Jesus. God is still angry with me.

Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save,or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.
-Isaiah 59 :1-2 (ESV)

I need to remind myself of this

His ways are because he loves me with a love I don't deserve and loves me enough to not leave me where I am at, through means I would never try but nevertheless are the better and best ideas.

Obedience is joyful because of what comes from it. If we see God's love than we will obey. Or we have not known God nor his love.

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
-1 John 2 :4-6 (ESV)

The Glory of a Colorado Sunset

2009-07-12T20:45:00.000-06:00

I haven't been writing much.

It's been strange, yet it's been a blessing in many respects.

It's given me a lot of time to think and continuously chew and process "where God has me" in a much broader fashion, than I normally do. Between the endless hours I have been working in the long silence of the basement, an insight that I normally wouldn't come to has been whispering its wise words to my ear.

"this season is to make you nothing that God ultimately will make something of you"

For those who aren't caught up on my life. I've been pretty pissed for really the better part of year and a half regarding the fact I haven't been able to secure an internship in my chosen course of study before I graduate.

I have succeeded the development of many of my talents to fully immerse myself in my studies as an architect. And its not that I don't have much to offer, I am fully capable of offering a firm something talent wise; but due to circumstance "where God has me" I wonder if I truly have much to offer to the architectural word. And you know that is all in the process of God's work within me. I highly doubt myself, I don't trust in my abilities, in my talents etc. And it is odd to write but that's where God wants me. It's like Moses who was a Prince for his first 40 years on earth, who learned he was nothing for the next 40, and then realized that a nothing with God's help could be quite something and deliver God's people the last 40. I'm learning I am nothing.

This is "where God has me", much like Moses doing a common man's job doing hours upon hours of physical labor with much time of long silence. Not where I want to be, but "where God has me" and where I need to be.

I've been meditating on Lamentation 3:26-29

"It is good that he waits silently For the... Lord. It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone and be silent since he has laid it on him... perhaps there is hope.

And much like Moses whose one of his few and only comforts were his sheep. My sheep dog is a great comfort. I was out paying frisbee with Samantha ( The english shepherd) this evening and I remembered what joy felt like. It was underneath the glory of the majestic Colorado Sunset. Joy, It's a terrible thing to lose but profitable in God's proper time table.

Who knows maybe Samantha will lead me to a burning bush one of these days! Til then though I wait.

Following the Lady bugs

2009-06-30T23:49:00.000-06:00

Elise told me to do a little research regarding my little friends who without fail keep landing on me. The research yielded something that I very much already knew BUT need reminded of as often as a Lady Bug lands on me. Where I am at and circumstantially is right where God wants me.

Quiescence (kwē-ĕs-ənts)

referring to a state of being quiet, still, at rest, dormant, inactive.

ARCH 453

2009-06-19T21:57:00.000-06:00

So it officially has been a long time since I blogged, it's been a pretty eventful month which I will fill you all in on later but for now I wanted to finish the quarter by sharing the project I did for architecture this quarter.

The project was an ASCA competition proposing an addition to the Salk institute in San Diego.

I will blog soon. I promise.

JG

The problem of Progress, Passion, and Patience

2009-05-16T01:39:00.000-06:00

The quarters end always brings something unexpected.

I feel very much as the disciples when Jesus broke the news He is to leave them to give them something greater.

The passage speaks of a truth that is hard to swallow.

I find myself confused as of late asking the question “what” to God quite frequently.

We so often myself included, say “ God we expect you to act and move in this way, why?”

We order to avoid any possibility of confusion.

We exclude the possibility of the unexpected and perhaps rob ourselves of great joy in the truth God is acting for our ultimate benefit.

I’ve has a lot of long nights on my knees, as of late, trying to swallow this truth.

My stubbornness and need to control has hindered a great progress from fruition.

I see this very clearly.

And all the faithful work of my Maker was for me to swallow this truth.

Tonight that truth makes my heart skip a beat. The outcome was worth every tear and painful wrenching of my heart.

If I were to choose to believe, I am no longer a part of that equation.

I may not have realized it but I’ ve been wrestling with my maker for a long while.

I’m finally being honest with myself.

The disciples in their confusion trusted Jesus.

He never ceases to surprise with what He has in store. Every day will be an unexpected turn.

But if we, if I, choose to believe and can manage to tarry in the weight of waiting something great lies in store.

And along that journey there are glimmers of that eventual outcome.

JG

Raw Avoidance

2009-04-30T16:02:00.000-06:00

(please read slowly)
Behold, you desire truth in the innermost being,
And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom
-Psalm 51:5

For a long while I've written in metaphors. As if they would somehow offer an explanation to a very complicated reality known as life. When we speak in metaphors we avoid the complexity, truth, the raw emotion and pain that comes from life. WE AVOID GOD COMING IN AND DEALING WITH OUR HEARTS.

The past few months have proved to reveal in me a raw avoidance I have maintained most of my life and a refusal to bring up many issues that deal with my heart. I never let the pain come forth and be dealt with. I've tried for so long to keep everyone out and the pain of the world from affecting me. Building elaborate facades stories and walls that would keep me in my perfect little world. But God desires to make us know wisdom in what we try to hide or unknowingly refuse to let light shine into and change.

The past month or so has been a rather painful one. The metaphors in my life have grown much more complicated, have shattered and have shown just how fragile and unfounded they all are. I'm left with a complexity of issues and heartaches, lots of questions, all silenced by the answer "wait" .

I've been drawn to my knees, I've shed more tears over the sin, the pride, the avoidance of so many things than I ever have.

For the first time perhaps ever in my life I am saying yes to the wisdom God is speaking to my often times hidden heart .
Letting the pain of this life of sin, and my life cripple me in order that God alone may heal me. Letting honesty be the burning coals that disables me from speaking and causes me to fall at my Father's feet weeping.

So I pray " let the bones which you have broken rejoice... sustain me with a willing spirit. May You build the walls where your glory will dwell( psalm 51 paraphrased)"

-JG

1 John 2:12-14

2009-04-22T01:10:00.000-06:00

Lesson one, do not hide.
Lesson two, there are right ways to fight
and if you have questions we can talk through the night

So you know who you are and you know what you want
I've been where you're going, and it's not that far
it's too far to walk, but you don't have to run
you get there in time

Lesson three, you're not alone
But since I saw you start breathing on your own
You can leave, you can run
But this will still be your home

So you know who you are and you know what you want
I've been where you're going, and it's not that far
It's too far to walk, but you don't have to run
You get there in time, get there in time

In time, to wonder where the days have gone
In time, to be old enough to wish that you were young
When good things are unraveling, bad things come undone
If you ever love or loose your innocence

There will be liars and thieves who take from you
Not to undermine the consequence, but you are not what you do
And when you need it most I have a 100 reasons why I love you

So you know who you are and you know what you want
I've been where you're going, and it's not that far
It's too far to walk, but you don't have to run
You get there in time

So you know who you are and you know what you want
I've been where you're going, and it's not that far
It's too far to walk, but you don't have to run
You get there in time, you get there in time

If you ever love or loose your innocence,
just remember....
Lesson one....

-JARS OF CLAY
Boys( Lesson One)
The long fall back to Earth

1 John 2:

12 I am writing to you, little children,
because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.
13 I am writing to you, fathers,
because you know him who is from the beginning.
I am writing to you, young men,
because you have overcome the evil one.
I write to you, children,
because you know the Father.
14 I write to you, fathers,
because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
because you are strong,
and the word of God abides in you,
and you have overcome the evil one.

-JG

Every Spring

2009-04-19T17:58:00.000-06:00

Spring and I have an interesting relationship.

I love and hate Spring, there is always major growth that happens within me at this time of year, yet I hate Spring because without fail I always seem to fall apart in it. Different reasons but same general theme every spring.

Maybe that is why I always seem to get an emo haircut around this time. Or have an emo pic as my profile on facebook...who knows?

Nevertheless, I've been through the "season" of spring enough times to no longer be bothered by the falling apart. I expect it every year and I have learned and know by now: the greatest growth in our christian walks happens when we fall apart . So I very much do love Spring but it is still hard in the various processes God uses to break me and mold me into who I was meant to be.

...

Last Spring I begun the quarter brought to my knees by overwhelming revelation via a dream I had during Spring break. Because of it I axed my worship leader position overnight and took a 50 day sabbatical around Easter. I devoted myself to two things: true biblical Communion with Christ and true biblical Community as Church. I cut out everything that didn't matter or didn't line up with the biblical definition. A lot of lessons were learned in that time about what I needed etc. but I left the season largely crippled not knowing what to do with all the knowledge and how it crushed me about who we as a christian community are and how far we are from a biblical definition. I fell apart by what I saw. I was so crushed by what I saw through God's eyes that I began a very uncomfortable and painful process to let God heal all that.

I was telling a friend, one of the few people I went to coffee with that quarter, that if somehow the sweet brokenness and humbleness of realizing we know absolutely nothing that come from such a time as I was having during that spring quarter could be maintained and sustained within the Christian walk we would see something truly wonderful happen in the kingdom of God.

It was probably the Spirit hinting at what was to come within myself a year later by that thought. But, what I thought at that moment would be the gate to a very long path that I still walk a year later. What I thought at that time a great thing for the kingdom of God to know and experience became a great thing for God to teach me personally over the following year in order that I could convey "the way" through his infinite grace.

And I don't say those two words arrogantly but merely speak them as a broken man realizing that the brokenness that comes by being broken put us in full realization of the greatness of God. And that their is great power when we portray God in the emotional wrecks we are are in in those moment. When we begin to be broken with others something incredible happens. What use to be overwhelming distraught,people coming together in it, becomes a great joy and love for one another. It's breathtaking. By God's grace I'm speaking broken and humbly.

God has me remaining in this perpetual state of brokenness and letting the wounds that come in this time due to be used for His purposes and my further growth as a man of God and the further growth of others men of God as well.

Simply this is a call from God for me to swallow my pride "gird my loins like a man" and let the simple act of brokenness be used by God himself as something to build his kingdom.

Oh Spring!

I'll continue to break down, but I'll always remember it is so very purposeful.

So very very purposeful.

Arise

2009-04-13T03:08:00.000-06:00

For about two weeks I have been trying to spit out something here:I have come to this same blank page and time and time again the words have alluded my capture.

Tonight at 2 am they come, though: unexpected as Jesus who rose from the grave, strangely beautiful, in this night where light and illumination break through.

For those few that read this: I have not done a great job of keeping up with you, I apologize, the past two weeks have brought me to my knees more than any period of my life and I find myself at my Father's feet.

It's where I have needed to remain. I'm seeing things clearer than I have ever seen before because of it and my heart both skips a beat at the God who loves me enough to wipe every tear from my cheek and yet breaks in the deepest of pains at the sight of a world who knows not He who desires to pull them out of a deceiving and deceptive death.

And in all this Jesus says" I know your agony mixed with my joy child, remain, and do not be afraid. peace be with you. take courage. I strengthen you( Daniel 10:19)"

"I know that there remains no strength in you, and your breath has given way. All this is true life : in all you may consider death. Remember who I am. The unexpected one."

"Arise child, I'm right beside you"

In Death There is Life

2009-03-29T02:18:00.000-06:00

For here in the winter wilderness lies,
A Wall, cracked broken and remnants meeting the dust of the ground:
a reminder of the flood that came

And there is hope, that an undercurrent can destroy a mighty wall
leaving ruins of what once was and truly remain rubble for the many years to come

A restful rubble of hope and testament
to the years He and I fought to bring them down
to make a new path and passage through.

The individual stones now scattered,
from all my rampage,
the little lies I now know to despise

And all the time I was looking for You
But you weren't who I thought you were
you were unexpected mysterious and captivating

I built the wall and am finding all the while you were tearing it down
All the while protecting me from my own wicked heart
All the while I was not letting your life grow

And with my defenses down
I am finally taking the breath of life I was meant to all along!
With my body lying face down in the rubble and dust that I was always meant to breathe.

In death there is life.

-JG

Update on the 8019 project

2009-03-27T22:55:00.001-06:00

So it's been a while since I updated here on the 8019 Project, no new videos this time. Sorry, I know they were entertaining and awesome but alas I do not have my video camera with me or a wide angle lens for it so this update will have to be simply pictures and text.

As we last left off on the basement construction adventure, little did I know that between framing, electrical/ duct work, hanging the drywall and there being a room done/ livable much work needed to still be done. There is a lot more that goes into the completion of a room, than I really thought or understood!

I spent a lot of my Christmas break preparing Bedroom #2 and The Recording Studio so that while I was at school these past three month they might be completed and the basement project could enter its next phase of construction during spring break while I was home applying for summer architectural internships at local Denver firms. And believe it or not both are now done. See for yourself!

Currently the bedroom is occupied with extra storage. So technically it is just a storage room but work with me.

Likewise the studio too is now done. It is awaiting unpacking but you can see it is already taking shape!

In our problem solving for the solution to the headache of the where to put all the great room stuff we devised a great idea for storage. Why not finish out the furnace room and make it a sports equipment room as well.

And believe it or not with those three storage areas / another empty non finished bedroom/ bathroom the great room is empty/ workable now.

I'm not quite sure how much will get done over the next three months while I am away but I imagine when I get back the great room may be done! What a thought!

JG

[IN]vertical

2009-03-24T14:30:00.000-06:00

As an architecture student I am taught to think a certain way about the world and my engagement in it; to breakdown what most take for granted and analyze it to its purest most metaphorical essence and then transform this into something tangible for others to experience. Most of you who read this will never understand the full complexity of what that means or let alone be able to comprehend this and my way of reasoning. As Elise says there is always a back story to what I write here and you have to understand me and the circumstances thoughts and reasoning surrounding and what I am finding captivating/ takes my breath away at a given time before you begin to understand my writing.

I guess this is why intellectuals put footnotes into their papers, because no one really understands them. So they do their best to trace their reasoning that the common man might follow along.

When I decide to talk about the [IN] vertical here you must understand that the course of my reasoning regarding this subject regards knowledge of my relation to the horizontal vertical and diagonal plane and their specific definitions to me. The vertical plane is the relationship we have with God. The horizontal the relationship we have with people. The diagonal finding God in community and people; this being I believe my best simple reasoning as to how to live my life as a Christian. That is letting God invade into my everyday life and interactions with others.

The [IN] vertical is a downward humble position: a starting point to building a bridge, the very columns that support all the verticals, horizontals and diagonals that allows for true relationship with God. Understanding that He alone is in control of what happens on the other planes and he is the very support that holds all things together. It does not allow for inaction in the christian walk but sees every action as a chance to further strengthen the other planes.

Elise sent me the above picture last night it is of my favorite bridge in the whole world located in Ventura CA. I never realized til this morning why I loved the bridge so much. I understand now! It's because all the members are so strong and the unseen supports on the sides of the highway are unseen yet immensely present but they are mighty and strong.

As Christians we ought to be like that bridge, our foundations must be true and strong. We shouldn't be swayed by trivial matters like the earthquakes that come occasionaly in Ventura, CA. Set your foundations in the [IN]vertical in the downward humble position. Understanding that He alone is in control of what happens on the other planes and He, Jesus, is the very support that holds all things together.

JG

Between the lines

2009-03-06T00:30:00.000-07:00

So next week is dead week. I am not quite sure how I found myself the week before it. But here I am. There are so many things to do. So much on my mind. On my heart.

Part of me wants to put it all here. Every burden etc.

Lists. Timetables. etc.

All the scattered actions of my Maker. The lack of knowledge. The collective knowledge of my God

digression.brokenness.lack of control.a closeness to God.

A fore mentioned things you somehow need to know. That mean nothing to you the reader.

Preparation that leads to progress. subtleness. the lines in between.

scripture, a heart. continued presence of God. His desire. profound love.

But I don't write the in between. He does.

So I'll let the lack speak.

JG

Unexpected, Undeserved Grace and Love

2009-03-04T07:48:00.000-07:00

I continue to be amazed and utterly overwhelmed by what God is doing in my heart.

How when I am honest with myself, I am stripped to a core of my self that I have not seen for a while.

And, I could be so easily distracted by the lack of responsibility and the even mindedness that seem to have vanished as if I never had such qualities in the first place. But I think perhaps a real heart is being birthed in this season. And this morning I am choosing to focus on that.

Last night I took a walk in the heavy down pour. I had finished most of my work for today. I decided to go out because I wanted to go encourage some guys who were staying up late in their various architecture studios.

I think I am learning how to love.

I could so easily say "I never had that in my own life" and get so bogged down by that lack in my own life that I miss out on the gifts I could give; but to simply love others in the most creative most meaningful ways has such a beauty about it.

I hope we can learn as christians to extend to someone the incredible unexpected undeserved grace and love that we ourselves experienced through Christ.

We learn more in those moments than in all if not most others.

JG

Nothing Cheery about Truth

2009-02-25T00:32:00.000-07:00

To be honest...I'm tired. I'm tired of all this endless reading.

How in each step i take in my education here at Cal Poly I learn more about how truly off the world is...how every newspaper I pick up tells me how bad it is...how as an architecture student I am told and asked to critique the world and in turn see it with a deeper understanding of truth.

There seems to be nothing cheery about anything...yet all is truth...and all it seems to hurt.

Sometimes it is too much for my heart to bare.

I slept for 15 hours last night. I think partly cause I didn't want to wake up to a world such as this.

While I sleep the world seems to go on in its endless spiral of dismal decay and I wake with several texts and emails and I feel like perhaps it would have been better if I didn't sleep at all cause then, then I may reach a moment when all this striving would perhaps end for a moment and the world the little I can influence wouldn't be needing me, and in the time they sleep I truly might rest.

The Christian life is hard.

I'm selfish and don't want to give away my time and my energy cause I don't have as much as is required to give.I don't know how to draw from Him in each moment. NO ONE HAS EVER SHOWN ME THAT! Every one is always saying do this or that. Most of it is so empty and meaningless. I want to stay near the only true never ending joy I have found in a set apart communion with God, I've learned more that way than anybody else taught me. I want to just run away into the hills be still and be by myself with God.

Elise said a few nights ago I'm tired of being responsible. I am. I am.

I'm tired of what should be and isn't.

JG

Brotherly Burden Bearing

2009-02-18T07:28:00.000-07:00

I think like any other christian who has read of the word of God there stands several verses that either puzzle or tend to frustrate me. Heb 12:14 stands as one this morning. It states in summary that without holiness no one will see the Lord.

I am brought to this verse this morning as I have been wrestling with whether or not we should weigh personal holiness or brotherly love as a higher priority in our christian life. As of late my schedule has been stuffed full with meetings with guys( which I love and enjoy greatly), yet,as a result I haven't had much time to myself and my personal holiness because of lack of time spent in the word has led to several things I am not normally prone to be doing...I believe after some time in the word this morning though I can only do so much.I can't be meeting with 14 guys each week, do school have a girlfriend and maintain my relationship with God. I must learn to say no once again. Personal holiness and time with God is of a far greater necessity than anything else we do and leads us to be able to carry our brothers in Christ as well as allow the non believer to see Christ through what we say preach etc. The holiness and God-relationship aspect must be there or it all falls apart.

JG

5 days

2009-02-06T01:05:00.001-07:00

I find it fascinating that when I am doing good with Christ I have this strong desire to recount it here. I shouldn't even be here at this hour anyways, I mean I am getting together with Landon at 7:30am tomorrow and I plan on getting up at like 6am. I am not even sure quite what I want to say. I just feel like being here...you know.

So here we go.

Sunday woke up, showered then drove to church, Elise lent me her car. Elise wasn't there cause she was pretty busy with school work. I was kinda bummed about that. Bryan talked on Ezra 3. It was awesome. He talked about the two types of people who had voices in the day...the discouraging and the hopeful. A good reminder to not be discouraged by the ruins of what had been brought down that we miss what Jesus can do, possibility etc. Saw the same propensity within myself to be so discouraged that I don't do anything. Was reminded that ever rubble needs to be used for His glory too. In church I decided to no longer to be overwhelmed and depressed over the ruins. I chose instead to delight in the possibilities of my savior and what he can do with them. Left church. Joey said hi to me on the way out. I liked that. I miss the guys in the community group. Went to go pick up Elise. Got to her house. She forget where her keys were. Looked for like an hour. Didn't find them. We went to the restaurant we were planning on going to for our date. It said closed for the super bowl. So we decided to take a trip down the coast to Arroyo Grande. It was a nice 75 degree day to begin February. We ate at Chile's. Delicious. Talked about stuff. Went to Wal Mart. I hate that place. Drove back up the coast to SLO and got stuff to study. Went to Linneas cause Peets was busy and studied there. We then went back to my place and studied some more then watched PS I love you. It was pretty realistic regarding relationships, which was refreshing. Said goodbye to Elise and went to bed.

Monday brought a day spent in communion with God. I awoke 6am straight out of a nightmare with Sam and Dillon in it. Not quite sure what that was all about but I began the day meditating on the truths that He was teaching me about not being crippled by the rubble... had a sweet time with God praying and being in the Word. Went to class 8am- noon. Came home for a bit to eat and pray. Headed out at 12:40 to pick some things up at the bookstore. Got to lab. My professor told me he loved my project and i was really ahead of everyone else; he was thinking of sending the next assignment my way, early. Came as a shock. Stayed in lab til 7:30pm walked to Panda express...ran into some mormons...told them respectfully I didn't want to know about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Got food at Panda...everyone was taller than me. Prayed a stupid prayer to be taller. Then went to bible study. We talked about God's faithfulness. Good discussion. Wished we had time to pray more in bible study...glad we opened the bible this week though. Caught a ride back with my friend Kyle. As I have no car...I would have had to have walked. Talked to the roomate for a bit about life and what is going on with him. That was awesome. Went to sleep reading the bible and updating my twitter account. I really need to do that more often. If only I had an Iphone and if only the service wasn't so rediculously expensive.

Tuesday I awoke to Landon's text . I made him lunch cause he wanted to go out to eat and I didn't. I need to be watching my pocket book. Landon left to go talk to the leader of Campus Crusade. I took a shower. Elise stopped by shortly after that. I love her so much. I think I spent most of my time in my room trying to get my stupid printer to spit out the take home midterm. It doesn't feed paper that well. So I had a few hiccups with that. And then an hour later got the papers printed. Scanned some stuff etc. Called the car place for Elise. Enjoyed her company. Her car was ready. Had issues with oil leaking. All better now. Guy came picked her up. I sat outside with her waiting and made sure he was legit. Went back to the table to get some take home midterm done before my good buddies stopped by. Read through the article for that. Kinda depressing. God was begining to tare my heart open. Dan and Kyle stopped by. We caught up prayed ate etc. Then I started writing. til 2am I wrote. I thought. God was showing me all about a new form of slavery in christendom through this secular article. Didn't sleep well.

Awoke Wednesday morning late. Didn't get to pray read the word or eat. I really needed that. Showed up for my 8am class twenty minutes late. Turned in the paper. Teacher gave me a little slack for that. Went to the campus market and got some trail mix. I was starved. I wasn't about that at all. Bugged me a lot, more than it should have. My heart from the previous night was still burdened by the knowledge. I came home lied down on the ground wept and prayed. Overcome with the state of christiandom and the Fathers heart for his children. Sent some texts out for prayer. Elise is wonderful. Showed up for Design lab a little late. Doesn't matter though I needed to be still before God. Professor gave us time to work on the final submittals that were due that day. Worked til about 4:30 got all my stuff printed and brought the prints back to studio. Helped some of the french girls with rendering cool sexy images of their projects... then headed home. Ev and his friend were at the table doing construction accounting homework. I decided to join in and sit down. I mixed some peach snapps with a sprite. Calmed me down a little bit. Enjoyed the roomate's company for the next couple hours. Made dinner and listened to music til 7:30. Then headed out to Unplugged. Ran into Elise on the way. It was spontaneous and wonderful. She dropped me off. Unplugged was sweet. We went through Isaiah and what God did with Hezekiah. Talked about God's faithfulness. Sweet time. Everyone left except christian Michael and Josh. talked to them for a while. Walked home with Josh, chatting about what God is teaching him. He's maturing so much in his walk ...it's so awesome to see. Stopped by to see Randy on the way back home. Caught up. Thought about doing a trip to New Zealand to go surfing. Probably will never happen but again was fun to play out the possibility. Went home crawled into bed and updated my twitter.

Thursday came. Woke. Showered. Elise showed up. We talked for a bit. I was busy cleaning up my roommate's dishes.He's been super busy. Trying to love him best. We then left to go downtown. Stopped by the bank. Went to the post office. Then stopped by Jamba. Elise bought me Jamba. Again I love her so. She dropped my off back at home. Had a good time with the Lord read some scripture and some Spurgeon. I really love the way he writes. Spent time in Titus. God was speaking saying You don't have to be perfect you are made perfect by Christ. First time I honestly saw that. Christian stopped by. Awesome guy. Cooked him lunch. Chatted about his life etc. He left. Cleaned up. spent some more time in the word. Stared out the window for quite a bit. Then decided to take a nap. Woke up. Made some coffee. Ev and I drank the coffee. Chatted for a bit. Then got ready to go to the Compton reunion( Went down to Compton to do some inner city mission spring break sophmore year). Enjoy all those guys. Ev dropped me off at the reunion. We played all sort of fun games. Had some pazookies. Walked back home.Finished a blog about the past five days. Proofread. Went to bed

NIght guys.

JG

Believe again

2009-01-31T02:38:00.000-07:00

I saw into your light
I saw into your heart
To see what could have been
And what can happen now

Father, forgive my ignorant heart for not knowing
What You were doing in this land

I choose to believe again,
The possibilities that you can do
To see what could have been
And what can happen now

Sustain me as I join this voyage
And help prepare a way
Your kingdom come
Breath a new fire in this day

Father, forgive my ignorant heart for not knowing
What You were doing in this land

Move my heart to forget my ignorance
To be overwhelmed by grace
Your ever present light
Your ever beating heart

JG

John as a verbal processor

2009-01-31T01:51:00.000-07:00

i forget sometimes how valuable the advice of long time friends are. They see through time through the elaborate facades that we even fool ourselves with.

I am reminded of their true value tonight.

Tonight, I felt like I was sitting in some counselors office on a day bed, revealing things I did not know until tonight.

Kyle is awesome. He has a way of doing that.

"has anyone ever truly been silent enough for you to truly speak."

I never knew within lied the capacity to process by the verbal persuasions. But it happened.

Tonight I found out.

He saw it. He heard it.

I heard it.

Passions have faded away to give rise to one pursuit:

Brick by brick disassembling the immensity of the wall that circumnavigates me.

But now that the fortress that I lived in alone for so long lies in large part knocked down , it's time to build something with the piles of brick that lie in the ruins of my city.

Stop being overwhelmed by desolation to see possibility.

I see a great value in such a new pursuit.

Return to passion... to build.
-JG

4am thoughts

2009-01-26T04:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it feels pointless to go to bed. That is after you have stayed up most of the night. Here I am almost 4 am...still up.

I haven't really stopped and had a sabbath this week things have been rather jammed full of things to do etc.

Landon stopped by tonight for a little bit. I miss his company. He said sarcastically" it's fun growing up." We were trying to find a time to meet this week. Its a shame it probably won't happen with two jam packed schedules.

Friendship, dating, ministry, life its all so very hard. It really is, It's very inconvenient. Its so easy to get lost in your own little world and not care about the people that are around you on a day to day basis. It's a shame but its so easy too.

I'm glad God somehow in this America I live in God has somehow got a hold of my heart and is making it break.

I drove by a homeless person today. I could have helped him out taken him out for lunch you know. I chose not too. I was too busy thinking 1. have to get gas 2.have to put rubber feet on the couch legs so that it doesn't slide anymore on the hardwood floors 3. I need to go to the library 4. I need to take a nap only got 4 hours last night 5. Need to write that paper 6. Need to read. 7.8.9.etc.

Perhaps its the lack of sleep etc. but I don't need any of that all I need is Jesus. He is the only one I need. None of this matters if He's not in it, you know.

And that is perhaps the beauty, the only beauty I can come to tonight is that as christians when God is not in it things arn't right. It's like when someone isn't around...you know things arn't right because you love that person so dearly and want to include every moment with them.

Who are we to deny God His full and utter display of Glory through our lives by the way we live and act:we get too busy to let God into our lives and come to realizations like this where its been too long since we simply all said "God invade my world, invade my life"

I understand perhaps a little bit better through this busy week why America is the way it is.

So I guess this little stretch from 3:40-4am will have to do for my sabbath til things slow down hopefully by Thursday. I look forward to my morning quiet time...God knows I will need it. I also need bare in mind God is with me all day through...

In about 2 hours I will get up. The irony of resting now when I am still awake making sure not to rest to long.oh life!

JG

10

2009-01-17T15:34:00.000-07:00

Life has been thoroughly enjoyable as of late. California has been blessed with a heat wave which has made almost two weeks of solid 70-80 degree weather. One would think winter found a new mask named summer. But again, perhaps its just the nature of California and the central coast to be so nice, I haven't made up my mind on that one.

I am taking 13 units for the first time in college. That means three classes. No classes Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mon-Wed tends to be a little jam packed, but gives me about 4 days each week to sleep, read, hang, etc. and as of late enjoy the sunshine and wonderful weather. I am just simply enjoying life! Which needless to say although I classify myself as a diligent disciplined person, over the course of my college career I still haven't had this much time to do these things until now.

And it's just nice.

But the week has not been totally undiciplined: the past week has yielded much clarity, in specific regarding God's viewpoint on who I am and things that need to be worked on. I'm going to list them here in hopes to set them as a reminder to myself.

1.The word of God needs to be put foremost above all other literature and christian activities( 1 peter 2:2)

2.The word of God needs to be a guiding light to our prayers.

3.I should not be afraid of misinterpreting/misunderstanding the Peters and Timothys to the point I do not read them or engage such texts, in turn missing the whole of Scripture. Every book was included in the cannon of the bible for a reason.

4.God does not care what method we use as long as it is backed up with scripture( look up Edwards and the sermon" sinners in the hands of an angry God" and particularily note how he preached and to what frequency he preached that sermon.It challenges our preconceptions of how God would work and that their needs to be passion etc.)

5.The disciplined intellectual mind is a gift and has the ability to loose Satan's ability to work in such a man. But every sin small or great will inevitably allow him to gain a foothold.

6.Many a christian will seek to empty their minds and have no logic in hearing God's voice and wish to be puppets of his will. Such a thing allows the enemy to come in and invade our thoughts and lives. Free will is, therefore, there for a reason and God cannot invade our minds directly he desires us to actively participate in what He is doing bringing our whole being into His will action and relationship.

7.The church is still God's vehicle but something drastic and great must happen within it regarding holiness- the throwing out of sin, pride etc. and God's word must be revered and followed in order for it to be what it ought to be. But that happens within each individual. God will work desperately to get us to this point, even to the point of the breaking of large organizations/ churches.

8.True holiness can only come for an act of the will.

9.God's love is vast and truly wonderful, yet because we do not believe that within our hearts, instead, viewing God as a taskmaster(Judging God) we can't convey his whole being to others and in turn our relationships with the lost suffer as well as their salvation.

10.There's a lot of undiscerned frankly bad advice given in christian circles. One best learn how to discern through it. Read God's word the bible!

I think that will do for the list, for now.I will stop with this note:

The week has been very freeing. Lists help. There is so much of who I am that is in desperate need of redemption. But if we find a way of action to redemptions end, finding ways to navigate in the great darkness of the journey it gives way to hope joy faith and love. And peace too!

-JG

Arch 451 Boards

2009-01-10T01:41:00.001-07:00

I forget to post things some times. I guess, I was so amped on the walkthrough last quarter I forget to post these. Here are the board submittals for last quarter.

JG

Silent-self

2009-01-10T01:18:00.000-07:00

If these words were music and music could speak as it often does it would speak of a time of wait. No words, just an interlude of sorts. It is beautiful, but words being interjected into it. It feels so unnatural.

And I am waiting for that perfect word to say…to speak. But I know not those perfect words.

If I am not to just do in these words, but do rather that which is most important in them and with them it will be to do very little with them at this time.

I’m waiting and being faithful in the meantime to do follow and heed and see what comes.

JG

To Belong

2009-01-08T15:06:00.001-07:00

Perhaps its just an observation of society as a whole, and maybe its being back in california knowing where I belong. Or maybe an observation of what I was so encouraged by last night. I feel like I belong here though.

And it's just one of those desires that I have. That you have too...that is to belong.

And how exactly to belong, its not that clear cut. But you know when you have it, and you know when you don't.

I know I have it, yet not quite sure how I got besides God's providence.

And perhaps its not about the blueprint but about feelings,emotions, and the mind that sings in chorus with the knowing.

JG

Thoughts from the chair...

2009-01-05T18:10:00.001-07:00

Last night I sat in my bowl chair...pondering and praying what might come of this quarter. Somehow trying to grasp such an intangible thing. I was reading architectural theory: the inability of most to write and view things outside a single piece of time. Dealing with what was never quite said but definitely the underlying meaning in the 23 page work: discernment.

A lot happened as I sat there last night though. My thoughts were drifting and not at all in that moment yet as God normally does God used it : there was quite a bit of honesty that was self spoken in that moment...this one surfaced

I am so far from where I feel ought to be.

But it did not come from a feeling of guilt or obligation it came out of love.

Maybe it's this dream a few nights ago that was breathed straight from the holy spirit...a much needed word...but it's been lingering like a indefinite sustained chord upon my mind. It was one of the dreams.

There was this man in the dream who spoke. But he spoke of what begun in that bowl chair last night and what the lessons of the present age are to be. That always tends to freak me out. That our God still speaks and directs and knows us well enough to speak of that which we most desperately need to hear and the laying out the tapestry of time before our eyes.

I always write from a moment wishing to capture it so distinctly but in that bowl chair I found myself realizing for the first time really that the Christian's role is not to capture a moment, it's not to stand in the middle of such a raging river. God captures each moment in perfection and doesn't need us to catalogue such a genious perfect thing... there can be no full understanding no historian christian that deals to God's movement in a place.

I will always be chasing as long as I write, record and capture. But to be fully in the middle of any moment it means that we are at the center of something far greater and in full recognition of it and participating with it.

So I sat there in that bowl chair in that moment and found myself in a moment of history and future. In desperation hoping to in that moment find how to fully engage myself in that stream.

It's gonna be an interesting quarter for sure.

JG

The Ice Filled Valley

2008-12-30T00:50:00.000-07:00

I’m not quite sure what compelled me on a day like today, 20 degrees, to go out.
But there was something about this ice filled valley that compelled me
Something about this life in apparent death
Something about how life can come out of death

That branches are willing to sway and move to a rhythm dictated by the wind
And how they really almost whisper a secret
The secret that there is a river running through this valley, this ice filled valley.

And perhaps the builders of the damn that collapsed almost 70 years ago
They should have taken note that this life, in this valley, is quite powerful.

...

You numbered the houses of Jerusalem, tearing some down to strengthen the wall;you made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to the city's Maker, nor did you consider him who built it long ago.

-ISAIAH 22:10-11

A valley is a reminder that a river has flown for thousands of years to make the very path which God wishes the water to continue in. Perhaps we recognize even more of God's power and might in the valley.

JG

.SIMPLE.

2008-12-21T22:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I actually sat down and got something I like to come out of my fingertips here. I think I finally got something tonight though. It is short.

. I write a lot. I don't really ever stop. You don't get to see most of that writing though. Especially when Life is normal. In those times I don't feel like I should frame life here. God is in the normalness of it all though and I kinda like that I don't have to write it down here.

I like the fact of the simpleness that my normallness is lived out in letting people into my life and letting God do something wonderful with each day in the normal. I like that regarding a number of core issues, the seem resolved all of a sudden. I like that I feel like I finally have made some progress and am where I feel I should be at. I like He is dumbing down my faith...to a pure simple thing , like it should be and showing me his sovereignty in charting an awesome path for my life. I like that too.That there is great responsibility but a great peace and rest too.

Nothing seems too complicated its just God me and the rest of the world. Me loving people and loving Him.

It's beautiful. It's simple.

JG

The Pheonix Spreads its wings and forms my heart

2008-12-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

Words are fickle things. Every one takes each one a different way. To convey to an audience the full meaning proves to be an impossible task all the time in the great broken world we all live in.

So I apologize if my words offend. I pray my heart comes through them. I pray that you can make your ways around the maze of walls I unknowingly put up in this land of communication and the walls Satan puts up in his twisted meaning on my words and that they can be navigated without too much effort

I have this tendency to make it difficult for people to enter into my life. I have a concrete walled maze around me most of the time. A lot of my life has been this mega lesson of trying to knock down those walls and in turn not being so alone and independent.

God blew me away last night though. I have a friend named Kyle, he makes me explain everything clearly.When I talk with him God has this way of making those concrete walls of my life turn to glass and he's able to help me see what is actually going on with me. And somehow my words comes out cohesive and not a mess, its a miracle.

Last night in explaining things clearly and God turning concrete to glass I was able to see a lot of the wounds that I still have and certain propensities I have which are so clear now, clear enough I think I can actually begin tackling them head on.

I'm tackling things differently though as of late...

I feel like I'm just now truly learning to do that and in turn am truly beginning to spread my wings and fly : soaring one moment and dive bombing in others. But I"m flying for the first time...poorly....but I'm flying.

I don't know quite how to orientate myself as of late and that probably explains the lack of blogs like this but I think it has been a good time of rest for God to turn my gaze upward and for him to say dare to do the impossible, "John, jump..." to know God, to enter into relationship with him and learn to love others out of His love. Truly learn how to love, learn how to be in relationship with Him where every day I am constantly baring in mind I have a friend in heaven. Screaming at the top of my lungs that Christ is so incredible just simply enjoying being in love and nothing else mattering. To bear in mind the love He showed as he died and the love He still has for me.Simple,joyful doing good and not worrying about impure motives and being crippled by my self analyzing inaction. Entering in.

JG

Walk Through

2008-11-28T17:37:00.000-07:00

Here it is...my final walkthrough for my project for the quarter. Enjoy!

JG

Most Favorite Image Thus far

2008-11-19T01:41:00.000-07:00

So I'm doing a complete rendered walkthrough of my final architecture project this quarter. While tweaking with all the setups to prepare for the final couple days and my computer needing to chug through it for about a week perhaps and making sure I won't render inside of a wall...I rendered this image. It's beautiful. This is going to be beautiful when it is all done!

I'm doing a sample run tonight so perhaps more beautiful images in the morning...we'll see!

JG

An end to the "perfect war"

2008-11-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

If Silence were to speak unhindered this day what would she say?
Would her knowledge reveal a new way
What you my love have found?
Could it be: this sparkle that I see in your eye?
What I Truly believe to be and see?

A Hope for a thing in ruins?
Treasures on a map once reserved for the watery deeps?
Like the butterflies
Who have become ladders to the sky

Everything that I have seen written before me
A heart overflowing in Hallelujah!
Joining in with those who have come before!

Would a fool be put to shame by such things?
A righteous man be blessed to have a heart that would skip a beat?

Perhaps words will defy this new hallelujah!
And such an unnatural grace would bring me to my knees

When I see you in Your fullness in her eyes
When you hear the subtle inflections in my voice
And the melody of this new song I sing

Know sweet stillness your time has come
Drowning out
Calling forth from watery deeps

JG

79:11

2008-11-14T01:09:00.000-07:00

Let the groanings of the prisoner come before you; According to the greatness of Your power preserve that which is doomed to die(Psalm 79:11)....restore...and cause Your face to shine upon me and I will be saved(Psalm 80:7).

I mentioned last blog that their lie "chains around my heart that still have yet to be loosed and unlocked".

I fear after tonight and with what God led me to, my heart has in fact been made a prisoner of.

Satan has robbed me of much love and joy, that beautiful thing I desire above all else.

Men must be careful to guard their hearts.

Just as the mind is a battlefield so is the heart within men.

Satan is very crafty and may in fact imprision our hearts.

Preventing us from loving as we should. Preventing us from recieving love.

Prayer is the gateway to a mighty battlefield, a wide and terrible vast flat valley in which nothing but death looms.

And perhaps after this war is waged, to return my heart back from its capture, the sun will rise out over such death lingering no longer returning her rays of hope to a land crying out for her.

JG

Chains around my Heart

2008-11-11T19:26:00.000-07:00

It always amazes me how simple life is when I'm up there on that mountain. How the stillness silence and serenity seem to calm every anxiety I haul up there.

Today I must have brought a caravan up that mountain with me, dragging along with it my heart and mind weighed down by so many things I was never meant to carry .But when I was up there, it was finally just me. No caravan. Just me.

On my way up I found these modern day cisterns. I imagine they were used for some Cal Poly infrastructure project at one point but they were no longer used by anyone only the remanants remained: steel tension chains, tarp, and wood. It was fitting though for me to see today of any day to see the reality of myself echoed in those empty cisterns.

I learned a lot today, positioning myself in a place where God was able to invade my heart in the most intimate of ways. He whispered things that almost sounded like secrets but they were simply just words of love whispered in my ears. Letting me see things as they are and responses birthed out of such knowledge.

There are chains around my heart that still have yet to be loosed and unlocked. My heart is ready to overflow it needs merely be unlocked and unchained...the enemies that have invaded the lands around me heart need to be located and killed.

Looks like its time to go to war and rescue my heart.
JG

Looking into Light

2008-11-08T00:48:00.000-07:00

I feel Like I should be writing about how this project I am working on in my design class is the culmination of many ideas God has developed within me over the years but I don't really know where to begin other than I find a culmination of many painful things God has led me through to produce something quite beautiful.

I may approach God with a feeling of duty and forget to delight but I am reminded a culmination of God's work within in me produces something I can delight in. I can delight in what my hands are creating because it is merely a reflection of His work within me.

Light is beautiful...

Worth a Thousand Words

2008-11-05T23:06:00.000-07:00

Elise sent me an email tonight. She does that. I like them. She reminded me about what happened last year at the time. We have a pretty accurate electronic database known as the blog to consult for such inquiries. It's always interesting to look back on.

But before Elise gave me the perfect opener to this blog I was thinking about how pictures film and other forms of capturing a moment do so so effectively. They define an infinite wonderful thing and are a great reminder to us looking back.

I found myself walking back from my midterm tonight and thought about this idea of capturing the beauty of God in our abilities and talents and was led to the thought of how God might use my gifts and abilities being an artistic creative person. I can only capture in a sense what I see around me and make it into a beautiful tangible thing. I only capture the shadow never the full light.

So I was thinking tonight...it would be a great idea to photograph the bible just like we photograph life. Take a bible verse that is so intimate to us and make it into a photograph.

Just a thought.

I like that thought. I think I've in a sense already been doing it...

To His glory alone,
JG

Beyond excellence

2008-10-30T02:02:00.000-06:00

I have had a lot of time on my hands as of late. And I'm not one to waste time. So In the few things I have been doing I have been going above and beyond because I have the time and energy too. Its nice I have had some time to actually be fully fully engaged in my architectural studio and have been immersing myself in the few things I have been doing below. Enjoy.

The picture above is an idea for a main gathering hall in a convent. The use of light is supposed to evoke the same emotions as churches use to( height and light) but with a new added development weightlessness.

Below is a wall section of the concrete precast panels that would allow light to function in the above fashion.

To His greater glory,
JG

I hate introductions. Let’s just get to the point.

2008-10-24T01:42:00.000-06:00

I have a Christian brother who can’t control himself in regards to a certain addiction…it is consuming him. He can’t stop. He sent me an email today and my heart just broke.

If there is no desire to run away from sin and a desire to stop it…what do I do with that especially with a Christian brother. Do I sit by idly til he hits rock bottom and God restores him fully regarding this certain issue or do I try like many in our culture do and try to cover his heart condition with elaborate pageantry and lies which avoid the true issues.Do I not associate with him as 1 Corinthians 5:11 says.

But now I am writing to you to stop associating with any so-called brother if he is sexually immoral, greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunk, or a robber. You must even stop eating with someone like that.

Cause if I followed that model I don't think there would be much christian community because many "so called" christians have one or more of these issues going on. We'd all be forced to deal with some deep sin issues alone, which perhaps is what many of us need to do. The beauty is He meets us in the aloneness and is willing to help us along the path toward a deeper holiness we just need to place ourselves there.

My heart grieves and is pained to see that one has to hit utter disparity alone in order to understand grace a little more fully and truly have a heart’s desire change to turn to God in obedience and love. It’s so painful to see. Yet I know it is worth it.

So My prayers and the cries of my heart go out tonight to such brother. May God alone change your heart in response to Love. The one love that is worth every bit of self-sacrifice.

To His Glory alone,
JG

I miss Sammy

2008-10-15T13:56:00.001-06:00

I decided...I miss sammy. She's the only dog I truly loved.

JG

Matthew 17:8

2008-10-14T13:20:00.000-06:00

I get frustrated when people say God told me this that or the other.

Its just one of those things you probably should not try and refute in other people it will just end up in a huge argument. Yet the fact remains that life has told me that not everything God "said" to these people seems to pan out.

Yet even in those moments when their "will of God" doesn't pan out they still say "God must have other plans."

It bugs me so much.

So forgive me in my ranting and frustration; I am a little skeptical and frustrated at something I can't bring up because "God told them".

By no means do I have this whole communication with God thing down. I wonder sometimes if it is even possible but I think if God speaks we should probably know it or at least be able to discern a little better than most of us do in those moments.

I know this though we get so caught up looking for specifics of what we are supposed to do , what God told us etc. that we will occasionaly miss the line that connects all those things together. God.

He is what all our focus should be on, but perhaps we should not focus so much on him and in turn miss the world around us and him speaking around us through it.

I asked a friend a couple nights ago:

How have you seen the soverignity of God manifested in your life as of late?

As of late I think that is a far better question to be asking than " what did God tell you" and a far greater way of looking at the will of God because it forces us to look around us not inside of us. We look at who God shows himself to be and what He is doing rather than what we are doing or supposed to be doing.

I love theology for that reason, it shows me who God is. I love observing for the same purpose. When all the facts in my brain filter out, revelation comes from my heart and it has helped me understand who God is and respond to that. And that is far more valuable than anything I have "learned" or "heard".

To His Glory,

Words that Define Me

2008-10-14T00:41:00.000-06:00

CC: wordle.net

Peter and Pride

2008-10-09T12:27:00.000-06:00

I have a lot of time on my hands as of late mainly due to the fact I am used to having structural engineering added to my coursework as long as twice as much lab-work for architecture, likewise am used to working around 8 or so hours a week. None of those things are added to my schedule this quarter. I don't know what to do with myself.

I feel like I suander most of the time away and am crippled by the entire days to sit in God's presence and reflect and pray. I have been doing a lot of reading though...I have been visiting ccel.org and reading some extra cannonical texts that is those books that were not originally included in what we read in the present day bible but were considered by the Council of Nicea.

I was reading an interesting one the other day I think it was called the revelation of Peter. It pointed out something that I am coming to realize more and more each day. I think watchman Nee puts it well:

"God deals with our lives... in order to help us understand ourselves. We realize the hardest lessons to learn is that of knowing oneself- to appreciate how corrupt, empty, sinful, and void of good one is. This lesson has to be absorbed throughout life."

-Watchman Nee

We are still in part flesh and humbleness needs to be in our hearts as Christians...see man is so full of pride and Peter knew this probably more than any one else in the Apostles. God reveals himself in the intimate ways as he oftentimes does and The revelation of peter captures this truth very well. But if you are against extra-cannonical texts look at John 21 and how Jesus rebukes "captain foot in the mouth."

We are so full of pride and we come to better terms with that each and every day we live the sanctified life.

Eternally Yours

2008-10-07T01:45:00.001-06:00

Is it a severe turning point in the life of a christian when he realizes that all of lifes lessons cannot be documented and there is knowledge and wisdom that cannot be contained in letters strung into words?

God's romancing and my heightened emotions and volition to offer a scrap of the love He offers me will say nothing other than I love You tonight.

...and that is all I need to say.

To Your great and awesome Glory,

Eternally Yours,

Documentation finalization for summerization vacation

2008-10-04T23:24:00.001-06:00

Sorry this is so late in getting up on this blog but I finally got done editing it tonight. The reason for the tardiness is two fold one It seems like three weeks ago when I left Colorado I was so rushed and occupied with finishing up the drywall and electrical on the basement that I didn't have time to show you the progress as of about a month ago on the basement. Two I got a new computer and getting everything up and running on my new macbook pro has been a longer process than I initially thought ie. I don't know how to work half the programs yet( you think I would be able to b now!...so here you go...enjoy.

JG

...I will trust in Your name

2008-10-04T01:53:00.001-06:00

Like the Grains of Sand put through the flame,

Purpose seldom seen of known

Strained to reflect, polished to shine

Soon to be shattered

Puzzle pieces Images and mirrors

Yet they are pieces that comprise the whole

…shards there on the ground

And I’m going to need you to Fuse what is broken back together with a fire I do not know

I have not the will or discipline to build Engetti with this sand

…I am finding it difficult to see the city to be, your purposes from dust in this dry dessert sea… but my belief in You has not faded

… it will remain

My well tested heart and will cannot see the life growing from these seeds,

Oh To feel The rain that washes these thoughts to Ink

The silents ripples that allow me to bleed

The ill placed joys rippling and drowning in the puddles growing before me

To believe now …in the first drop of rain…watering what will soon become

all of them…composing…there on the ground

They are Bleeding out, they are crying out
…I will trust in Your name

...I will believe

To His Glory alone,

In faith

2008-09-25T00:29:00.000-06:00

It's funny how you grow up and things begin to change. Those things you once thought were so important now seem so incredibly pointless. And its not at all that it lost its point, its just lost a point to you.

It seems so much is changing as of late.

I know past my ignorance and pretend bliss though that change is a great necessity.

Life has a way of growing us up and in it we learn what a great hope Christ is. How truly he loves us and how futile we are to even try to keep it all together when approaching His feet.

That perhaps is what I am coming to...finding a great immensity of grace.

...and an endless pursuit I can't see an end to.

And I can only really speculate as to what God is doing and where these jumbled thoughts will fuse together in the light of His face. And perhaps that is where I should stop in faith that all great confusion transition and change all come together and in every moment his wonderful hands work so unendlessly, without ceasing to show me its alright by the Soverignty of His mighty hands.

To His glory alone,

2008-09-23T23:50:00.000-06:00

School is back in full swing.

God's got my back.

Coffee is once again entering my veins.

-JG

An afflicted Spirit

2008-09-21T19:03:00.000-06:00

...when the cross is working deeply a believer comes to know himself. He realizes how undependable are his ideas,feelings, and desires. Hence he dare not trust himself but trembles in all matters, acknowledging that except he be sustained by the power of God he shall unquestionably fail. We must never be independent of God. The moment our spirit ceases to tremble before Him at that precise moment it declares its independence from Him. Except we sense our helplessness we shall never trust God. A spirit which trembles before Him shields one from defeat and helps him to truly apprehend God.

-Watchmen Nee

Some more honest thoughts

2008-09-19T13:34:00.000-06:00

I got back into San luis Obispo Monday night. Been spending the past couple getting my life back in order resting etc.

As of yesterday I had nothing left on my list besides:

1. pray

2.find a job

3.get print cartridges

The reason I write though is although everthing is in order for this upcoming school year and I should feel on top of things, I really don't feel on top of things at all. The bible calls men of God, me, to an impossible life. One in which if I am not leaning on the spirit for strength and renewed purpose each day I fail.

There is grace this I know oh so well, but when I ask questions like does what I am doing inspire awe in others like back in that first century church or is my life impossible to live out? I honestly can't answer those with yes.

Just some honest thoughts.

God's ways are not my ways.

I must never lose sight of that.

To His glory alone,

by His grace alone,

Communication

2008-09-09T23:55:00.000-06:00

It has been forever quite honestly. And in many senses I don't know where to begin.

I ran out of drywall to put up today.

I felt like a character in one of those civilization building games where I ran out of material and didn't know what to do. This was the first time i feel like I found myself a little ahead of where I wanted to be in regards to the basement. In many ways it just feels so overwhelming at times but it is beautiful with the prospect of me leaving this upcoming Sunday that the rest will no longer be in my care. As it slowly takes shape I found myself with much to be proud of.

I wanted to blog though because 1. I have time but 2. cause I wanted to mention some thoughts I have had lately

See, I was talking to my mom the other day as we went out shopping and running errands. We were talking about the holy spirit and how he doesn't seem to shine as bright these days as he did in that 1st century church era. That question of why still bugs me. A great deal in fact. God has healed a lot of my thoughts toward the church and given me a peace in His sovereignty regarding it but I find that the only real question that seems to still nag at my soul and I can currently discern in not trusting in is in regards to this one thought. That is a run on I know. So are my thoughts about such a question.

Perhaps this is the new question I am to search out and God wishes to lead me into.

I could speculate on why but honestly I really don't have that answer. If I had an answer it wouldn't bug me.

But one thought that i can rest in is that God is God. He doesn't communicate like us. He hardly ever speaks in audible words in the way we think of communication and so it is with the Spirit. He communicates without them oftentimes. Perhaps a lack of "display of power" or such lack of words is a testament to his character in an constant attempt for communication on the ways that we don't.

So I ask what would it look like to truly listen to the Spirit?

Anyways some thoughts to ponder on.

Signing off with body sore as usual, but Spirit shining bright within

To His Glory alone

Billion

2008-08-30T22:33:00.000-06:00

I haven't really blogged in a while. I really haven't had time nor the energy too. Construction in the basement seems to be life these days.

It seems as of late there are so many things running through my head, yet they consistently run and never stop or slow down enough for me to catch their name or hear their story.

Elise was telling me the other day this is a good thing because it forces me to hear God apart from my intellectual mindset and study and find God in the moment in the new ways He is calling me to.

I haven't been very good at it, but, you know, that's Okay. I want my old ways of meeting God back when he clearly desires for me to meet him in the new but I will obey though it may be difficult and a little overwhleming and quite exhausting...

One thing though that my mind has been dwelling on and I think I can actually somewhat grasp in the not grasping is how little we really get of what God says or does.

I am only human and in that, I get so little of what is truly going on. I mean if you stop and think about all of this life the universe etc how big it is and how many molucules or atoms are contained within it and then this idea that God holds it all together. He frickin knows all 6 billion people on this planets story and knows them intimately.He holds every single molocule together.How crazy!

We are so little and He is so great.

I got together with one of my good christian buddies last night, a good godly friend from highschool, along with a few friends of his. He introduced me to his friends as the "most solid christian guy from our highschool." I love this guy to death for who he is and who he has become in Christ but I hate complements like that. Its not about me. I am so arrogant and selfish and realize probably more than anyone how what might impress people with what I do, what I write, books I recommend, how wise I am,what God has done in my life etc. is completely worthless from my end. God alone redeems every moment and does with it what He wills. He alone, makes it absolutely incredible.

Anyways I think that is all I can muster. May God use it.

FQOTW:(favorite quote of the week)

The church is like maneur, too much of it in one place and it stinks up the place, spread it out it enriches the world.
-Aaron Stern

To HIs glory alone,
JG

A little snapshot into my summer

2008-08-21T01:04:00.000-06:00

Here it is...

JG

Unwritten

2008-08-17T23:11:00.000-06:00

It's funny how you wish you could write of the story that you see unfold before you eyes. The very words you forget to mention that capture the best memories life has given us so far.

But a lot of those memories will remain unwritten. But instead of calling it a shame why not rejoice in the simple fact that something that great could never be contained to click clacks pen ink or a song.

I could write tonight that God holds in his wonderful hands this fragile messy blue-green planet and that He has everything perfectly under his Sovereignty, but what good do words do to express such a concept. Such a wonderful concept. He has held together all the unwritten stories of the individuals who have walked this planet. Weaved them together to express His love. That's just mind blowing.

How great our PaPa in heaven's love is for us. All of us.

When we see God's great and awesome character and believe Him to be who He is and has always proven Himself to be. There is something so freeing in that thought. I rest in that thought.

To His great love ,

WOW

2008-08-07T15:11:00.001-06:00

View from the Hilton Morumbi in Sao Paulo, originally uploaded by Photomike07.

This has to be one of the most incredible bridges I have ever seen. Wow! Make's you want to move to Brazil or something!

It is called the Octavio Frias de Oliveira Bridge. Check it out its pretty awesome.

Present Mentions

2008-08-01T23:22:00.000-06:00

This summer has been a blessing in so many respects. There are these moments they hit me every now and then and in them I can't help stop & realise how there is a simplicity in this season that is so good!

I wanted to mention here as of late though that there has been an absense in my mind, a nice still to the mind and in it I find other facilities of John Garrett Grinstead rising . I believe it is because of this things growing within me and taking control that things are getting extremely clear. But one thing of note is I believe because of thi my eyes feel almost like they were opened anew in regards to how God answers prayer and how he speaks through his word etc. This is a short shout of praise from my end!

And its really weird because I would say there are these other moments where I stop & lie speechless in sheer udder shock that all of a sudden God is so apparent "are you kidding me You love me and You are speaking in tangible ways in and around my life?! ."

But I think the most worthy thing of note is that God is teaching me to love His church inspite of many things that I have held against her. At a service I attend Friday nights God gave me this word his viewpoint on a subject I wrestle with very greatly.
"The church is My bride"
- Jesus
This may not be some new grand thing to you but to me that viewpoint reshapes alot and was Jesus' personal word to me tonight.

Anyways The framing in the basement may be done within a week and a half. I am gonna post a video of it soon.

Did you know my second choice for a major was cinemetography I haven't touched a video camera since highschool but I may be making some short movie magic. Stay tuned.

To Love alone,
JG

Illumination 2.0

2008-07-31T03:00:00.000-06:00

It took Night to empty this soul
Dessert times and lone roads
To pour out thought emotion and will

To join in with the voice of the pines and cool air
Somewhere slightly before the dark meets the dawn

Lord I cannot contain my heart
the daybreak within this forgotten place
Illumination in misty light

Illumination (Ephesians 4:14-24)

2008-07-31T00:32:00.000-06:00

This season of confusion was 14.So that I may no longer be a child, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. even if it comes from God's church but to trully know how to15 speak the truth in love, growing up and maturing up in every way in him who is the head, Christ, and learning16 from whom and how the whole body body grows so that it builds itself up in love.

And17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that I must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 Being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way I learned Christ!, it was in my heart— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

This is how I must now live.In this illumination...

JG

A Lamentation

2008-07-25T23:28:00.000-06:00

I was writing in my journal the other night at Starbucks that “ I have no identity left besides the one I find in You, I no longer know who I am”

I found myself tearing up for the first time in a long time in a public place.

My pride has been ripped and torn from me.

I feel and felt so disjointed without it.

But was shown perhaps in that moment a sober picture of what life looks like when we have no other choice but to cling.

I have been praying for a long while that God would “humble me” but without the pain that often is inflicted on others because of a need to.

I believe and hold fast to the idea that He is dealing in such a way with me in this season.

It is quite extraordinary where God takes us. The journey he leads us on. How he fits all these random pieces together to create something to work with.

God has been there in every moment…he has used every weakness struggle friendship(good or bad) my whole life EVERYTHING to bring me to where I am.

I am sobered and humbled by my mistakes and my conscience has lost all confidence in the steps I take now.

I am left vulnerable and where God I believe would like me to be even in its great difficulty.

I feel for the first time in a LONG while grieved over my sin and have nothing but Him. I can boast in nothing than Christ himself and what He did on the cross for me.

I see now more than ever how I was more focused on other’s walk than my own. How I was always so quick to use we rather than I.

And even in this blog I see how I am trying to cling to something other than Him as a source of worth. But it is all I know how to do. I am sin and He alone is righteousness.

I write upon my knees…in desperate hope that God will speak through the spewing of thought emotion and my will at his feet in this way. Declaring what he is doing and not merely numbing myself to what He has been trying to bring me to for so long.

I wrote these words the other day.

“But there is more, a depth worth seeking, and a love worth everything. When my mind and my reason fail and all I have is You I will rest in Your words that Hope is not lost. My lifeline may grow faint but You remain in me. More than reason, deeper than hope, and a love worth everything.

He is worth every death I must die in order to find His life.

To Love alone,
JG

Infatuation

2008-07-22T23:06:00.001-06:00

Elise would say it best that my love language is always changing and keeps her on her toes in our relationship. But as I am finding more and more it is not that I speak a love language of rigid formulaic identity but rather a love language all my own. I have yet to find a person though willing to love me in that language and actually able to meet me in it. God gave me this language because he never wants me to forget that He alone is the only one who could fill the vast crater of love in my soul. Without him I am left with a vast hole.

This is why we must be captivated, infatuated with the Father because once it begins our hearts start glistening along with our eyes and we begin to pour out the love that was first shown to us and then accepted by us blessing other people in the way that only God could do touching live through Him alone. Meeting people where they are at not in rigid formulaic identity.

In this true love points to God alone. As it should always. It is not a manner of speech or way of beginning a sentence but it is a glisten. I have been blessed to see this in a few people over the years. There words were not pre thought out they were flowing like a fountain. They are people that find a love so captivating that the world becomes a thousand times more colorful. This is the love I know none can fully live as were meant to without and experience true love without.

I am not defined by mere psychology to limit love to five or six ways, love speaks in all ways as God does with us all.

..patience
...Kindness
....contentment
.....humbleness
.......a man's response
........the very character of a human is my love language not tangible things not conversations but actions not the touch of a human but the touch of God through a human

And this is why I say
To Love alone,
JG

Fusion (old to new)

2008-07-20T22:51:00.000-06:00

In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, 2 Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to all the remnant of the people, and say, 3 Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? 4 Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the LORD. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, 5 according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. 6 For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. 7 And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. 8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. 9 The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.
-Haggai 2:1-9

I have been making my way through the minor prophets since shortly before summer began. They are absolutely incredible books. I don't know why we are so quick to look to the new testament. I have found There is a wealth of wisdom to take from them.

I have been reading them as if they were truth/prophecies written to me and about the church in my age the one here in America.

They fit really well it's like God is speaking through scripture to me or something.

I have been writing one passage in my journal from each one and was hoping to use it to show God's heart for his "temple"( ie people or church) through them but I think this one as do many of the the other passages does just fine by itself.

I have long been troubled with God's work in His church knowing what it should be yet not understanding why it has taken so few great leaps on a whole towards what I see scripture calling it to be. This has bothered me for many years. I am encouraged though to know that I am to bear in patience and know He is sovereign still in regards to it that His scriptures and fully fulfilling words say He will make his temple greater still it may take time but He is working and beautiful. That is a great hope to dwell on.

To Love alone,
JG

Intuition

2008-07-14T22:15:00.000-06:00

If you haven't noticed I haven't been blogging much as of late.

In fact, I really haven't been blogging, not really anyways.

So you ask
Q:what have I been doing?

and I ask you
Q:Why do we have to be doing?

but if you desire an answer it goes something like this:
A:I've been taking the time to really if need be let God redefine everything about who I am... a bit of self discovery...

...and in so doing I have honestly come to a frustation about everything I do etc. There is no end to how I have found myself as of late in review over the course of my life so far, so far off from God's intent for so many situations etc. The fact He has redeemed it all amazes me so and how in perfect faithfullness makes the deformed puzzle pieces fit together moves my heart to an honest reverence and praise.

A lot of who I am, the way I operate etc is in a state of disgust right now. There is something drastically that needs to happen within my spirit, heart and intuition that I have only thus begun on . The disgust and end of my mind's ability to process any more information/ defense for christiandom sermons or knowledge etc. has led me to the simple fact without love all of this is nothing.

I know not one christian,myself included who when I compare them to the standards that they are supposed to exemplify in the bible regarding love etc. do.

I would give everything I possess away to experience that kind of love that I am supposed to have outlined in the scriptures anything to have a communion with the father that is unshaken.

I remember this morning just being distraught in starbucks over what I was reading all of who I am in gross violation of God's will. Yet a perfect beautiful God who is using it all to His great and awesome Glory. Making all things new.Shouldn't I be so lost in love with God?I see perfect faithfulness and the great difference between God and man and the necessity for a bridge. I desire that bridge I see the bridge in scripture but can't see it lived out for some reason. I don't know how to do it and I don't think anyone can teach me except God himself.

That's what I want to hear a sermon on is How to let The Spirit reign and teach in our lives. I want an older christian to actually be so spirit driven that they can teach others. I want an older christian to be so driven by his intuition that he knows how to meet people where they are at. I want someone to be led every day to see God do great and glorious things in the lives of others because he is a blessing because he is led to where he is most needed. I want to see God shine through in man as He is supposed to be.

Show me that...

To Love alone,
JG