Structure…just a spark
so, what exactly is structure? It’s been a challenge for me to transition in to the place i am in now. But it has been a good experience. I have started establishing myself and i feel that the largest, most prominent bugs have been fixed. Now its time to go in and work on the less noticeable bugs. The unseen ones. I have gotten the main services here onto a better structure (i hope) and i believe that we are moving in a constrictive direction. Now it’s time to get the other ministries under the umbrella that i want to create. It is time to tap in to the resources that have been at my fingertips this whole time! My old supervisor, the wealth of knowledge that is here at my job. Its time to unite all of the video and sound people, organize the volunteers and really take this place to the next level. See, for the longest time, i felt like getting anything organized and running better meant that I would have to do it. That is just not true, i don’t have to do everything to be successful, I have to learn how to integrate people and find their strengths. I have to learn to truly lead. Only then will i be a truly successful leader. I am a very organized person, as i have said before, my biggest issue is coming up with the initial ideas, the spark, but once the spark goes off, its ON! So, here it goes! Please pray for me, wisdom, patience, eyes to see and ears to hear. Its time to start a fire!
Dreaming…why stop?
I heard an interesting sermon a couple weeks back. It was about dreaming and growing. This has been something that i have been meditating about for a few weeks now with the assistance of Erwin McManus’ sermons.
Why is it that as we grow up we stop dreaming, we stop wanting to discover and essentially, we stop growing. The very thing that God wants us to continue doing is the one thing we stop. Oddly enough as i watch movies with my daughter, I have noticed a major theme in all these cartoons, so simple, yet so relevant. The core message of them all is “Never stop dreaming and believing”. As kids, we believe that we can do anything, that we can be anything and that NOTHING can stop us or hold us back from achieving our dreams. As we grow up, our parents and teachers and other adults tell us to stop believing, to be more realistic. Why do we simply sit down and accept this as the norm, as the “way it is”. God created us to believe and to dream. As of recent, i have been trying to figure out how to get myself back to the core of things. I have to be careful to NOT lose my creativity.
This has been my focus as of recent. I have been trying to figure out how to get back to my creative core. See, i have always been good at the process. My old boss said that he could give me a project and a final vision and i could figure out the process of how to get there with little to no direction. I can get a project and see its process in my head before i even begin filming it. While i am filming i can see the editing timeline in my head before i even start. The place I lack the most in is the initial idea, the initial creativity. so, how can i get to that point? That is the question. More to come as things develop.
laziness
man oh man, i love how we say we want to do something, then as time progresses, we forget what we wanted to do and never do it. it can be because of lack of motivation or life just getting to darn messy. For me, its a combination of the two. I have come to the conclusion in the recent weeks that I have become a very lazy person, why i have become this way, i am not sure. I believe a large part of it is to the trials i have been facing and the depression that i constantly struggle with. Fortunately for me, i have been winning those battles. (take that stupid negative thoughts and feelings)
so, all that being said, it brings me back to my wordpress page, my blog. ( i still hate that word -.-) I have found that writing lately has been an amazing remedy for me, something that i have lacked for so long now, so its time to get back to my core. This is not just limited to writing, it also includes my physical and emotional states…yeah that sounds right. I have come to the conclusion that i need to start working out again, i am going to start with just running and sit-ups, then i will find a gym and get back into shape. It really is true, for some reason when you get married, you put on weight, why is that?! well, for one, its because i am lazy, i lack the motivation to go to the gym daily and run daily. BUT NO LONGER! I have already begun to change my diet, little to no fast food, if i do, its something like Chick-Fil-A or a salad from McDonald’s. This, the exercising, will help with my depression, it is a way for me to let out my agressions and frustrations. A healthy way, its also a time for me to spend alone with God, meditating on his word, listening to sermons on my iPod or praise and worship.
The next hurdle i have to tackle after my weight, is my staying up late. Hello, my name is Taurin…and i am an insomniac. (N. someone who can not sleep) Yeah, i have been struggling with this one for a while. When i was in college…all my life i have been a night owl, i am just not one of those “morning persons” as much as i love to see sunrises and the cool breeze and crispness of the morning air, I just cant get myself to go to bed early. The strange thing, is its not because of distractions, sure, sometimes i stay up late to play a video game or watch a movie, but there are nights i stay up just because. No rhyme or reason to it, i just stay up. I have found that if i am in bed by 12, I am golden the next morning. This is a wonderful thing because my three year old feels it necessary to wake us up in the middle of the night and then proceeds to kick me in the ribs in her sleep. so the earlier i go to bed, the better chances of me getting a good nights sleep. Now, my beautiful wonderful wife, is a morning person. She loves going to bed at ten or eleven o’clock and getting up at seven or eight AM with my daughter and then out the door for work by 8:30. We don’t get along well in the mornings, usually involves me staying up until about 2am, for no good reason and then her pulling the covers off of me or the unnecessarily large german shepherd of ours, jumping or licking me in the face. needless to say, i am not the most pleasant person in the mornings. So, the point of this is that i need to FORCE myself to go to bed early, for the sake of my health and my marriage (lol) but seriously, it will be a lot better over all, i will feel better, my wife loves falling asleep with me ( I wont lie, i love falling asleep with her also) and then we can both get to work earlier in the day. This is also laziness.
The next thing i need to improve is my laziness around the house. Sure, i clean and do the dishes, sweep and mop the kitchen, and vacuum the living room. But i need to take more initiative to help her with dinner and general maintenance. Now, she will admit, she is not a clean person, as in she is not as OCD as i am. I think another thing that causes my depression is things not being clean and organized. I used to be very organized and clean at my house. clothes hung up or folded and put away. Now, its an adventure to find my socks or even to distinguish what is clean and unclean. This is something i can help with, i can take the initiative and do laundry more, when it is finished, i can take it fold it, put it away, and clean up the bedroom. If anyone of you are OCD also, you know how i feel about this. But, lets admit, its kinda hard to keep things clean with a three year old, seven month puppy, and my wife’s brother and a friend of ours who lives with us who is not very clean in her nature either. well, i am the only one who is come to think of it. hmm…what did i get myself into!
Another thing i can do is not be so lazy with my family. as a result of staying up late i am tired during the days and on my days off, all i want to do is sleep. My family is amazingly important to me. I have has so much fun playing with my daughter and spending time with my wife in the past few weeks. sure my wife and i still argue, a lot, but you know what its because we are two completely different people. No matte HOW much we have in common, we are still not the same person. There will be arguing, but at the end of the day, we love each other. I can genuinely look at her and say, “i love you more today than i did yesterday”. My relationship with my daughter has also grown. It’s not easy coming into a relationship with someone who already has a child, I have had to work my way into her heart and her mother’s heart. But, it is amazing when she asks my wife if daddy is going to stay home with her today, because she “likes spending time with daddy”. It melts my heart to know that she WANTS to spend time with me and that she loves having me around.
The next area, which is one of the most important to me is my studies. Sure i still read and study and pray, but not nearly as much as i would like to. At my new job we have an amazing scholar. He is the type of person whom i can ask one question to and it will snowball into a two or more hour conversation. This happened yesterday. I went into his office, asking him about the fall of man, because as of recent, it has been a big discussion with myself and a few people. The core question, if man was not supposed to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, how did he make a conscious decision to choose between good and evil and eat the fruit with no knowledge of good or evil. (I will actually be posting a new blog about this after i finish this one.) Now, we talked and I had walked out of his office feeling more refreshed than i have in a long time. I LOVE learning and i had missed it so much. I didn’t walk out with my brain hurting, but i walked out wanting to talk more! I could have sat there for hours more. i mean, the discussion went into the infiniteness of God, metaphysics and logically explaining God’s existence through science and space and time. (more on that later also) I was challenged and i am hungry for more! Now, i was 2 hours late for picking up my wife for lunch, so, that wasn’t good, but she understood. This is such an area that is so easy to get lazy in but its so important for all of us. I truly believe that when we stop learning we stop living. So this is something i want to get disciplined in. I have found that writing and learning helps relieve my problems, it makes me happy. This is something i NEED to do, exercise for my brain.
SO, i will keep this place updates as i progress. If i stop writing its probably because I am depressed again, if that is the case, please check on me! I love writing, it comes so naturally to me, its therapeutic. so, i will do more of it, i don’t know if anyone even reads these things, but if they do, i hope they can take something for their own life away from it. If you ever need to or want to talk, feel free to contact me. I love talking to people. So, stay tuned, there is much more on the way. I appreciate all your prayers and the opportunity i have to write.
Until next time… Keep learning 
Hearing God, are you listening?
Hearing God, its and interesting thing, something that i have been struggling with for a long time and these are the thoughts i wanted to share.
I have been wrestling for a while with Hearing God’s voice. I have come to realize that most of the time, i dont hear his voice because i am too busy asking him and not quiet enough to hear his answer. i think we spend so much time crying out to him that we drown out his answers with our own lamenting and self-pitying. I hear people all the time cry out, “Lord, i need an answer. Shoowww mee the path! please i want to hear you i wan to see the path you have laid out for me.” now, i admit, this was me not too long ago, but what i learned to do, was not to spend so much time crying out to him and spend more time, being quiet and listening to him. It is amazing how the answer can be so clear in front of us but because we are too busy in out heads we dont hear that still small voice that is God whispering in our ear, His plan and His purpose. It is such a beautiful thing when you see someone come to the revelation of what God wants us to do, or the purpose that he has for our lives. What is even more amazing is how we can harm ourselves more than anything else by not setting our focus right. I was listening to Mcmanus last night, which i seem to be doing more and more, his sermons speak so much to me and they seem to always be what i need to hear at the time i need to hear it. But, the point is that if our focus is not in the RIGHT place, then we will make mistakes, it is so much easier to get off the Path that God has put in front of us. The story he tells us is the one of david and bathsheeba. see, we always get the point in church that David sinned, he committed adultery and the consequences of sin. But, why? why did he do what he did, what is so significant about this? His focus was not on the right thing nor we he in the right place. He was not fighting in the war, but rather he was back at his palace and he was walking around on his rooftop. He saw bathsheeba and rather than turn away, he stared and then desired and eventually took what he wanted. His focus was NOT on God, it was not on the war at hand. Because his focus was not on the thing that it should have been, and as a result he fell.
What are you putting your focus on today other than God? what has taken His place? what battle are you avoiding (so to speak). Be careful not to take your focus of the task that God has for you. We need to daily strive to re organize our priorities. We need to make sure that we are seeking God and the plan he has for us, we may need to take a few steps back and be quiet long enough to listen. God is speaking to you, are you listening?
As i said, this was something i had been struggling with, i finally learned how to stand back and listen to God, my wife was very helpful in this. But, i stopped and realized that it was my time to move on in life, step out of my comfort bubble and embrace a new job and a new location. Time to start a life with my family. So, as a result, i have realized that it is time for me to move on, i will be moving to south carolina soon and working at a new church. I am grateful for the time that i spent at my old job, but its time to move on. I learned a lot about video and production, i learned about how to do church and how not to do church. I am excited to see what God has planned for me and how He will grow me, but i know NONE of this would have been able unless i was able to stand back and listen to him, and to keep quiet long enough for God to speak to me.
well, its been a while…
so, life has not really permitted me to write in a while, unfortunately, but somethings have been stirring inside of me and well, i am gonna sit down and write, now that a few huge things are out of the way, so stay tuned.
Church… just a few thoughts
So, i just felt like sharing this today.
I sit at church and i produce the service, it is still kind of funny to me because i have been doing the “floor director” position for about six weeks now and people are still like, “we don’t really know what Taurin does” interesting, BUT that is not that i wanted to write about, this is something near and dear to my heart and has been more and more every day and every weekend, every time i sit in a service i cant help but to think about all of the people out there. I wonder, how much hurt is out there, how many people are just dying to be hugged to hear “i love you”. Its amazing the hurt that pours in and out of these doors weekly, and i am at just one campus of the 3. I am amazed that i am in such a place to be able to share what God has done in my life with others who need to hear it.
I was talking to jessica the other day and i just broke down and cried (i will be man enough to admit that i cry on occasion, but it is manly crying… whatever that may be) I have not been happy for a while now, my friends and family could all see it but i could never place it. I am not ministering in the capacity that i was made to. Sure, God has gifted me in the world of video and graphics, but i am still not fulfilling my calling. I was wired to minister TO people, to council people and to speak into their lives. well, i have not been doing that. Sure i make videos, do graphics and people like them, sure i may make a video that speaks into someone’s life. But, i was the happiest when i was socializing with people at cityplace and when i was speaking into people’s lives. This is the point in my life at which jessica met me, She fell in love with me because of who i was. Not too long ago she told me that i was not the man she fell in love with, that i was different that i had changed, and that she knew that the man she married was still there. Well, for the past 6 months or so i have been wrestling with this, nights where i could not fall asleep because i was rolling around trying to figure out how to pay the bills and why i wasn’t happy. Sure i have added stress from my job, but that is something we all have. I mean there are circumstances at work that are kind of ridiculous but oh well that is not for this post. But, something was bothering me, something was unsettled. i finally drew this conclusion. a while ago, i was pulled from city place and went to working just during the week. The weekend socialization was gone. Then the people in my life slowly dissipated. So, i lost that social part, now that was mainly my fault, life happens, i got too wrapped up in work and in my relationship that i let a lot of friendships slip away. I want to bring those back and i want to make more of an effort to be a better friend to people. I mean, there is no reason i should be sad. I have a beautiful wife that makes me smile every single day that i wake up, who wants to fall asleep me to every single night, who would sacrifice anything to make my day better. I have a wonderful daughter who daily is getting closer and closer to me, she runs to me calling me dad, cuddles up next to me on the couch while we watch movies, and runs to give me a hug every night before bed. Sure, i may not be able to pay my bills all the time, sure life may stink a little on the financial end, but the fire is soon to be over, i can sense it in the air, i feel a change coming, and every single day, my wife takes my hand and tells me that “It will be alright, we will make it, things will get better. ” She is my source of strength, well Jesus IS my source of strength, but she is something that God has put in my life to help me push through and keep climbing through what feels like a landslide.
so, all in all, i am pushing through things. I have finally figured out how to fix things in my life and it includes helping people, it goes back to what Andrew Oates taught me years ago when i was an intern in high-school. I need to be a flowing source of water, a Stagnant pool is not something that brings life, it is not something that you want to drink from. I need to constantly pour into myself and have people pouring into me so that I can be a fresh well of water. We need to be people who are constantly jumping into God’s word and reading books and listening to sermons so that we can pour back into people and encourage them and help share the love and hope that is found only in Jesus. These are my thoughts on church, kind of a personal rant about my life, but it is showing you where i was and how i got to where i am. I want to thank you all for your prayers and friendships, especially my wife for standing by me through all this, i know she is with me through the good and the bad, she is with me until the end. i could not have asked for anyone better to get through life.
Thank you and i love you all.
-Taurin
Come Thou fount come thou king
so, we were singing this song at church tonight, and it just made me think, maybe it will do the same for you.
come Thou Fount of every blessing Tune my heart to sing Thy grace Streams of mercy never ceasing Call for songs of loudest praise Teach me some melodious sonnet Sung by flaming tongues above Praise the mount I’m fixed upon it Mount of Thy redeeming love I was lost in utter darkness ‘Til You came and rescued me I was bound by all my sin when Your love came and set me free Now my soul can sing a new song Now my heart has found a home Now Your grace is always with me And I’ll never be alone Come Thou Fount come Thou King Come Thou precious Prince of Peace Hear Your bride to You we sing Come Thou Fount of every blessing O to grace how great a debtor Daily I’m constrained to be Let Thy goodness like a fetter Bind my wandering heart to Thee Prone to wander Lord I feel it Prone to leave the God I love Here’s my heart Lord take and seal it Seal it for Thy courts above
Learning and listening… random rant of sorts…
You know I feel that a lot of us complain about our churches, that the pastor doesn’t speak to us, and I don’t mean that he doesn’t say hello, but that his sermons don’t have anything that speaks into our lives. Even those of us seasoned Christians do this. We even do it with the bible. We say, it doesn’t speak to me anymore. Maybe this is because we don’t let it. We shut out hearts out and we chose not to listen to the messages. I feel that the Bible becomes stale to us because we don’t listen anymore, we don’t open ourselves up to what God has to say and what He wants to say to us. We sit here and whine and complain “God isn’t working in my life, he doesn’t hear me anymore, what do I do? Please help me Lord.” We don’t hear the answer that God has for us is because we aren’t listening. Now, he doesn’t always speak to us directly, it isn’t always clear, BUT that is why we need to listen and learn how to hear Him. He may speak to us through His word, through other people, through experiences in our lives. We just need to be open and willing to listen, since I have gotten married, I have learned that God speaks through my wife more and more. She supports me in all the decisions I make and she is always there to provide her opinion and wisdom, even when I don’t want to hear it. I have learned what it means more and more to be a Man of God, I am learning what it means to be the head of the house hold. This is something that I have heard about for years and I am now LEARNING what it means to be these things.
My challenge to you, be someone who listens, Be still and know that He is God, He is in charge. If we are just willing to listen to him, whether it be through people, experiences, or even as simple as His word. Listen.
Joy 365
So, I was on my home the other day and I have found a new way to make sure that I get my daily devotional time in, I put sermons on my iPod or on a CD and with the wonderful technology of MP3s I can now have hours worth of sermons in my car at any given time, but that is not what I am talking about today.
I was listening to a sermon by Erwin McManus (whom you will find that I listen to a lot) titled “Joy 365”. This is a phenomenal sermon that spoke to me right where I am at in life. It made me realize a few things. The main premise of the sermon was that what bring us joy? Is it new cars, houses or the things we don’t think about? The joy of the Lord is my strength, this is the main point. McManus talks about how he went through rough times where he had no money, no place to really live and he and his wife slept on the floor, but he still had joy because the things in life that mattered were the things closest to him, in this case his wife. I had to step back and ask myself, what brings me joy? At this current juncture in life, I am not financially sound and things are not going well for us. Sure I have a good job and so does Jessica, but as a result of certain circumstances in life we are now facing some bad financial situations, I honestly have felt like a failure as a husband and father. Its hard not being able to say, “hey lets go out to dinner tonight, as a family” this is a luxury we can not afford right now, and it hurts me. But I had to ask myself, what is really bringing me joy? What am I putting my hope in? where am I finding my strength? My joy wasn’t being found in my relationship with God and with my relationship with Jessica and my daughter Dani. For a period of time, I became a somewhat bitter person. Things got hard and I retreated into my shell to avoid “hurting others” in return, I did just what I was trying to avoid. I hurt the ones I loved. Well, I came to the sound realization that I needed to refocus my life and that I needed to rework my relationship with God and that I needed to get back on track with that whole thing, cuz lets face it, it is really something that is very important. It is what has gotten me through the roughest times in my life. I had to stand back and realize that I have some amazing things to be thankful for.
My joy doesn’t come from things that I don’t have, I mean no matter how much money I have no matter how big my house is, no matter what luxuries I have, I will not be happy if that is what I am focusing on to “be happy”. I am realizing that I am going through a trial of sorts. Life is not easy there have been nights that I lay in bed and rack my brain trying to figure out things. How will I pay the bills, how will I afford groceries, the usual things. But Jessica reminded me that things are well, not as bad as they seem, at night, I still have a comfortable bed to come home to and I still have a beautiful wife and wonderful daughter. These are the things that God has blessed me with. I have been weak, I have worried a lot, but it was because the joy of the Lord was not my strength, I feel that a little but, day by day that is returning to me, the joy and the passion, and the fire in my soul that I once had. Let me tell you, If anyone who claims to be a follower of Christ comes to you and tells you that things will be great once you accept him, they are lying to you. It DOES NOT get easier if you are a follower of Christ, the problems will still happen. But the thing that happens is that things do become easier to deal with, if we follow Jesus and we put our hope and trust in him, if we find out joy in him, we find our strength there and our joy there, it’s a strength and joy that are not worldly so it wont fail us in those hard times.
Life will not be easy all the time, life will get hard, we will face trials, I feel like I am bring tested at this current time. But I am beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Jessica is that thing that keeps whispering in my ear, “there is hope, this trial is only temporary, life will get better.” And you know what, I will, Last night at service, Heath evans spoke and sean Alexander showed up too, which was pretty cool, this will be in another devition/journal, but Evans said something amazing, that Tom Brady, not a Christian, has cars, women, money a huge house, MVP and 3 super bowl rings. In his 60minutes interview he said, “if this is all this world has to offer me, then I don’t want it” I mean, the guy who most people would say, has everything, and he says something like this. This gives me hope, this tells me that Jesus, might be the right way after all. So my challenge is to give Jesus a try, give him a chance to be your strength, your joy, your hope. It WONT be easy, but it will be easier to handle.
So, I did it…
well, I finally have given into the “man” I never was a huge fan of blogging, but I feel that it is a creative way for me to express myself. I am excited to get back into writing and I now type faster than I write on paper, so why not take it to the net? Oh well, so, today marks a milestone in my life, I am beginning to blog. But, its more than than, it is a new place, a new outlet for my creativity. so if someone even gets inspired or entertained by some of my ranting and creativity, then I will feel that i have made a valuable contribution of some form to this wide world we call the web. So, if anyone reads this, i would love to know, if conversations are sparked and friendships are made, so be it. but i will post something more later on as to what i do and all that jazz. maybe some insight into who i am. Stuff like, what i like, movies, music, games, things of that sory. So, i embrace this new endeavour with open arms, will it hug back? we shall see!-T
