Give me life

God wants to give us life. I think He does it when we most surrender to Him and let Him have it all. 

Last year at Acquire the Fire the theme song was Take it All. I want God to continually take all that keeps me from Him. When I have anger, and hurt, and depression, I don't always want Him to take it. I want to wallow in it. Soak it into my bones and my soul. But God is the coach on the sidelines, coaching us, encouraging us, pressing us to get up and play that last play that is so hard when all we see is the gaping wound in our side. Sometimes it takes us closing our eyes, going in blind to actually do what the wicked part of our heart wants to desperately avoid. We might fumble the ball, but we're up off the ground playing which is greater than we'll ever realize. We might not win the game, but we played the game. The game we didn't want to play for a million reasons. We forgot how much we once loved the game. We finally realized that playing the game whether we win or lose is inspiring for somebody. We have spectators whether we realize it or not, they see that we picked ourselves up with God's help and jumped back into the fire. But God won't let us get burned, cause once we've learned the lesson, we know to turn to God for direction, for forgiveness. We turn to Him and trust in Him with everything we can. Cause without Him we're just lying on the field too weak, too selfish, to get up and play the game, to fight the good fight and to run the race that was set before us.

I pray that God will touch each person going to Acquire the Fire this year. Open our hearts to you. Change me oh God with your loving mercy.