the encounter with the mirror.....

heart of timothy?

02.11.2005 11:15 am
I have been going on my 3rd day of vacation and my prayer life is so weak. Ironically I covenanted with a brother to pray an hour a day this week for the lost. Did I hit my mark. Far from. I feel like I am doing catch up all in one day. I have been feeling the gnaw stronger lately. I went out to eat and almost screamed and cried out in the middle of the restaurant. I wanted to preach the gospel. I wanted to get on my knees and repent and cry out for my nation. What did I do? Looked like an idiot with no eternal significance because my lips stayed dormant. Poor girl must have thought I was crazy. I felt it again last night at about 2:30 am. I was hanging out with Ed and all I wanted to do was scream and cry out for a generation (I included) that is lost and in need of Jesus. Today I am at IHOP-ATL (International House of Prayer--Atlanta ) and I picked up a bible for the first time in God knows how long. And just repented to the Lord and asked to rejoin the folds of his heart and embrace his love. I opened up the word to 2 Timothy and read. I didn’t read for the sake of reading this time. I didn’t read for fun. I read to be spoken to …. I was spoken to….. One thing I can not stand is religious Christians who have so far gone from the pure heart and first love of the faith that they have settled for their interpretation of what Christianity is all about instead of the Word’s interpretation of what Christianity is all about. They no longer step out in faith. They continually argue over doctrine. They do what feels good. They are always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. They allow room for contention and strife. They slander without conviction. They live in pride deceiving themselves that their eternal life is secure. They force off the time for holiness. Every sin has a hidden door. Much is not in the light. This mirror was set before me in the word today with the challenge for self examination……to my shock there was plenty of the very thing I hate in me! I was choosing to deceive myself thinking it was justifiable and not realizing that the day of repentance is today and the day of salvation is today. I don’t see how anyone who reads the word with the void of relationship with the creator can not live under condemnation. How can blind eyes stay blind when reading the living word. How can deaf ears stay deaf when reading your word. How can the spirit of religion prevail when every letter of your word is dripping of Your heart. God devastate my pride and let me not think so lofty of myself. I humble myself and desire to come to the mountain, your holy hill, I desire to know you in holiness and conviction.

some previous journal entries i had on my computer.....

frustration leads to desperation.....

01.17.2005 1:00am
God I know I need you so badly. I try to act like I can make it on my own and control as much as I can on my own. I try to control my money my time my life when I know it isn’t mine. I know the truth but it is as though I don’t believe the truth. I know of the truth but I don’t know the truth. I want to be a sold out man. I am tired of living complacently. I need a fresh breath of your reality. Touch me again to the hope of your love, your reality. I cant go another day without it. If I go a day without your vision I shall die. I want to live and die for a cause and what better cause than the cause of His heart. Awaken me again, stir me again. Let me be cherished. Teach me to relish in your presence. I am jealous for your presence I cant go a day without your attention. I must hang on every word I must get caught up in your heart. Where is your heart inclined toward today. I must know the silent movements and vibrations of you in your reality which is reality. God I need you I need you this very second to flood my heart. I need to see as you see. I need to feel as you feel. I cant handle another moment without experiencing your emotions. Frustration? No! desperation DESPERATION don’t ever leave me oh God. You are my hope my refuge my source my identity, my life my eternity. Churn churn my heart I command you to churn again for the things of God. Have questions about holiness! Have questions that gnaw at you! Be free to be free. be free to be. BE Chad BE!!! Be what he has created YOU TO BE SINCE BEFORE TIME BEGAN, burn burn burn allow your oil to burn not become cold wax waiting for something of fire to slowly melt its heart away. Be already and ever ready to be hot oil wax ready to pour out any moment.



01.19.2005 10:45 am
Frustration in complacency. It amazes me how pointless life feels without staying fresh on the vision and heart of Jesus. I can do and have everything yet it still feels lacking. Only the beatings of His heart makes my heart actually beat. My eyes are on you. Can food do it? No. can sex do it? No. can friends do it? No. what can. Can success? Can money? No no no. only He can, it is amazing. When you are moved I want to be moved.



1.30.2005 8:40am
I spent a night hanging out with ed at work. I enjoyed it. I feel such a lack though. I know there is more to life. I had a dream last night of someone coming up to me and saying you know you have destiny don’t you? So why don’t you go after it. I realized I had no excuse. I had nothing holding me back. Yet I hold back. I want to be given to the life of prayer. I want to be given to knowing His heart. I want to be given to people. I want to go through the trenches with people and be a war buddy with them. Through blood sweat and tears they know that there is an officer that is going through the trenches with them and is always inspiring them to the truth beyond the trenches. A man that dares as if he is dead man but has the hope and wisdom and love of a man that is fully and truly alive. Stir and Awaken. I feel like I need to stir and awaken myself. I want to physically shake myself and scream WAKE UP!!! AAAHHHHHHH! I have locked myself in my own prison. I live days out with even recognizing the amazing creator that allows me to breath. Have I no respect…..it seems not. All that said I feel good writing it out. It is like out of me now. On paper and out of me. I give this to you Jesus. I lay this heart cry and time at your feet, your cross and I --live for I have nothing to do with it anymore.


01.31.2005 7:30 pm
God I want to be desperate for you. I cast off all the old crap. All the old man. All the old fate. I put on your purpose and your burden and your heart. I deny myself and pick up my cross. I long for you. My words fail me now but I cry out and shed tears in the spirit and they feel like they can burst over into the natural any moment. I am in anguish for you your presence I want to fall in love with you. Ah lord god I will sit and wait on you. I will cry and make my petitions know night and day. I do not want to sound like the scriptures for cliché sake I want to be on your very heartbeat. Stir and awaken my heart!!!! Speak to me. I am dwelling on your very words you have spoken to me. Every word is a fascination. Every emotion a beautiful glimpse. I want to fall in love with you. I want to fall. I want to fall. daddy!! Oh daddy!!! That name is so unfamiliar to me. I understand but I don’t understand dad. But I speak in faith DADDY. I need you daddy. Your son lifts up his hands because he wants to fix his gaze and attention on his daddy. I want to crawl in your lap daddy. I break off all rejection in Jesus name the prolongs my independent spirit that says I have to maintain control. I don’t want to just believe and not trust I want to be fully given over in trust. I don’t care if it is crazy or whacked out or doesn’t make since I want to trust. God I declare in faith that I trust you and your ways above all else including myself. I declare in faith that you are my souls desire and I cling to you for my hope and life and joy and direction and salvation and all things. You are my high priest….you are my shepherd……you are my high priest …… you are my constant friend ……my companion to the end.



02.04.2005 9:00 am
Well here I am just chilling on the bus and listening to some worship music I just want to laugh because I realize how I cant control life. The bus is at a stand still and cant move because I water main broke and no one is able to pass. On top of that there has been such bad traffic that the earlier bus didn’t even show up….I got the bus people to call my work. Ha ha I am just enjoying your presence Lord. You are the reason I am. I thank you for your joy and your peace.

just some casual rantings :)

Where are you heading?

What is life…..life is but a vapor. But must be lived. don’t let mediocrity fill your days. don’t let youthful ideas of “it is all for fun” sell you out and let you come out short in the end. Be free to live radically for a cause. Live and die for something. Stand for something. Be a great mind. Be an influencer. You must be something. Allow yourself to live for significance. For here and in eternity. Become a warrior find something to declare war on. There is plenty of adversity. If it is your weakness wage war till the adversity to your weakness is conquered. Kill and destroy. Devour. Live. I can not promise external victory but I can promise victory. I can promise the gnaw to get stronger and as you pursue it to full abandonment the effect will be stronger. The gnaw draws destiny out of you. Gnaw makes you pursue. The pursuit is the beauty.

a letter to my family

here is a writing i did for my mom around christmas time and it so stirred me that i thought it to would be good to be apart of my first official blog posting. read and be challenged.

Thirsty?

What Matters In Life

I have been at a loss for words on what to write so I thought to just let what has been brewing in my heart spill out on paper. Just some random thoughts about life and how we so easily get lost in the day to day life not living for eternity. A friend told me that according to a statistic that every 4 seconds one person goes to heaven, sounds pretty good right? But every 4 seconds 6 people die and go to hell. And the fact that we aren’t bothered with that …….is…….well……simply bothering. Why are we not spending our lives on saving souls? Why do we think we can just live another day and deal with our own problems and that be enough. We feel like God understands why? I don’t think he does I think His heart is broken and is crying out for us to wake up and live and die for what actually matters. I think many of us are going to die and go to heaven and be ashamed of how we lived for ourselves instead of for Him and then we will be glancing in His eye to see if he will still let us in. The heart of the matter is that we don’t know His heart. That is why we don’t live with a burden of souls. I mean after all that is what He came to earth for. That is what the early church spent there lives on. Souls. Many of them lost their lives in the process. Let us not be content will allowing sinners (spiritual orphans), who don’t know who their true father to never know Him. Let us reach out to the generation of prodigals and not be the jealous brother in the story. These are our brothers and sisters. Let us not love the things of this world! This whole Christian thing has been thrown out of whack of what is truly about. It is about a love ravished God who created you since before the creation of the world and desire for you to know Him. He desires you like a bridegroom desires his bride. To be a Christian is to be the bride of Christ. The bible says that the kingdom of heaven is like a father preparing a wedding for his Son. We love so many great moving tales such as Braveheart, Lord of the Rings and Gladiator. It is God inspired! To every story there is always a villain trying to destroy love. So it is true in our lives. But so many of us live like there is no enemy that is trying to steal, kill and destroy your life. We wonder why we are getting sick and people are dying and people are giving up and committing suicide. What do we do? We hope we will get better and wonder why everything else is happening. We call on the name of Jesus but we don’t trust the name of Jesus because we can’t see how Jesus can allow everything else to happen. But the reality is we don’t trust Him because we don’t know Him. We deceive ourselves thinking to be labeled a Christian is enough. I can label myself an NFL football player but if all I do is go to the stadium and fill a pew and scream at what the real football players did wrong then I am deceiving myself. Jesus said follow me and I will make you fishers of men. I think he said that because that is what his heart beats and bleeds for. That same heart is what we hold unto for our salvation. Yet if we call ourselves fisherman and don’t catch any fish we aren’t really fisherman. If we call ourselves Christians and don’t really know him we aren’t really Christians. I can know all about Michael Jordan. I can know how he won every game. I can know where he lives. I can even know the names of his wife and kids. But if I were to go up to Michael and be like “HEY!!! What’s up Mike?” He would just look at me and be like “yeah like…. Who are you because I don’t know you?” It is the same way people are with God! They know all the stories. They know all the cliché “praise the Lord” and “amen.” They can even tell you where He is at. But they don’t really know him! I realized that at about the age of 19 after I had grown up my entire life IN CHURCH! There are many good people who go to church every Sunday and fill a pew that are still going to die one day and go to hell. Why? Because they don’t know Him. That is what the bible says. It says many people will cry LORD!!!! I did this, that and the other in your name. I went to church, I helped people. But God with tears in his eyes will reply back “but you didn’t know Me.” Then we will have the startling realization that we went after the wrong things here on earth. We are surrounded with such a great cloud of witnesses crying out for us to wake up and live for what matters in eternity. I don’t think we realize who is in this great cloud of witnesses. It is not just Abraham, Moses, Paul, Peter & all the “saints”. It is even more personal than we have ever imagined. Do you realize that Pa Pa who didn’t live for God his entire life and got saved on his death bed now understands the significance of life and wept his tear for how he lived and is now in heaven crying out before the throne for you and I to wake up and live for what actually matters. Hey Aunt Patty………Denise is in heaven right now crying out for you and I to wake up and live for what matters in eternity. Everyone you know that has died and gone to heaven now understands what the things are that really matter. 40 million aborted babies are crying out before the throne “Give them my anointing, my talents, my abilities. Give them what we were robbed of!! Allow them to wake up and live for what matters in eternity!!!! Stir and awaken there hearts God. Stir and awaken their hearts. Awaken them to destiny. Awaken them to your love. Awaken them to how real and powerful you are. Allow them to wake up and live for what matters in eternity!!!!” 40 million aborted babies are crying out for you. It doesn’t end there. Do you know someone that has gone to hell? I do. They too understand now and they are crying out for you to wake up. Think of those people and see them in hell weeping and begging and pleading for you to wake up and live and die for what actually matters. Mom you can see them can’t you. You remember my father’s brother that died overdosing on cocaine. He is in hell crying out for you. We all know someone. They are crying out for you. Is this biblical? Yes it is. Do you remember the rich man who went to hell and was pleading for his family in hell? It is definitely biblical. It is real. It is true. Unplug from the matrix of this world. The bible says that the unseen is more real than the seen. We live in a matrix and we meander through life struggling while our enemy sucks us of our very life for his glory. We were meant to live for so much more. Superhero’s have something no one else has. Something supernatural about them and it compels them to rescue people. They feel a burden to save people with the enabling of their supernatural gift. We also have been given a supernatural gift. Let it compel us to save others. Dare to be a superhero. What is the difference between a superhero and a villain? A villain also has a supernatural gift but uses it for himself. They use it for their own glory. They live for their own gain. Their own happiness. Yet they never win and are always miserable inside. They try to build their kingdom that is all about them. Thinking that would help. But they find out that gaining things in whatever form doesn’t fill the void. And most important they always lose. Are you a superhero or a villain? Are you living with this supernatural gift you have been given and are burden to save others or are you living for yourself and your family and your actions have no concerns with all the people dieing and going to hell? Are you living for your own glory being worried about your house, 2.4 kids and white picket fence and have forgotten the yearnings of His heart. Have you even talked to him lately? Do you even know what He cares about? Are you burning and churning inside for Him? Do you love your kids more than him? Do you love your husband more than Him? Do you love parents more than Him? Do you love things more than Him? Does your life reflect a life that is going after Him? Are the things you are passionate about the things He is passionate about? The wisest man of the Bible wrote three books of the bible. He wrote proverbs which is a book of do’s and don’ts, good and evil, black and white, the righteous do this and the wicked do that. It is the law. And the bible say we can’t live up to the law and so we fail and we get all depressed and go to the book of Ecclesiastes and cry, “everything sucks!” Then we get up and brush ourselves off and go back to living in the book of proverbs. There is another book! It is a book of intimacy. It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. In the garden there were two trees. There was the tree of life, but there was also that other tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil………….. the tree of do’s and don’ts, black and white, the righteous do this and the wicked do that. And God said He didn’t even want us to eat of that tree. What did he want? He wanted to be in relationship with us. He wanted to walk and talk with us. If we are in a relationship with someone we don’t point our finger at ourselves and say “I am not going to commit adultery, I am not going to commit adultery, I am not going to commit adultery, I am not going to lie, I am not going to hurt her.” No we don’t do that. What do we do? We get to know them, we spend time with them, and we hug and cherish them. We know the boundaries and we desire not to cross them but sometime we mess up. But when we do mess up the pain is less about what we did, and more about that we hurt their heart. That is the way we need to be with God. But we just look at Him and feel like we can’t hardly approach him and just recite how we are not going to sin, we are not going to sin, we are not going to screw up in that area again. But God desire for us to be about getting to know Him, spending time with Him, getting lost in love and find who you really are. Actually having a relationship with Him. Yearning for what he yearns for. And realize what the boundaries are but instead of being focused on us when we screw up we run to Him and say I am sorry I hate that I hurt your heart. Without fail He will always reply “I love you so much thank you for coming to Me instead of running from Me” We all want honesty in our relationships. So does God. I hate everything that comes between me and God. I declare war on everything that hinders love. I will not believe the lie that sin has to rule in my members. I will not believe the lie that what people actually thinks matters above what God thinks. I will not care what I look like in front of the whole world or in front of the whole church. I will live and die for the things that matter in eternity. May my life be a sweet fragrance before the Lord not some lukewarm lifestyle that makes him want to vomit. Will you join me? Please I beg you join me! Let us live for the true love of our lives. Let us live for what truly matters in life.
Your brother in Christ,
~Chad W. Curtiss

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