its slow... so this is me blogging again...

the end

I am not my own, for I have been made NEW

So, despite my last trip to a starbucks, I decided to try this whole "make new friends" venture again. This time I went to a starbucks that was alittle bit closer and it's a nice and quiet one. It's pretty funny to watch people come in with their costumes... this way I dont feel TOO terribly out of place. Anyways, the barista i met had a tattoo on her wrist with a verse tattooed on it so that was the best way for me to strike up a conversation with her. So she came over a few minutes later and we started talking about why I was here and all that jazz. She invited me to her church so I think im going to check it out tomorrow morning. PS.. there are MAD cuties at this starbucks... totally worth the drive :)

I'm getting bored with life.. and thats not a good thing. My days consist of going to bed at 4 in the morning and sleeping the 3... working on graphics and stuff till 4, and going back to bed to wake up at 3. You start to question what the heck God has in store for you, because I know this is NOT the meaning of life. But at the end of the day, God will provide. I know this.. I just need to find comfort in that.

The church that i'll be attending is called Watermark... they say on their site that their an acts 2 based church which is awesome... very community based.. and thats what I long for. And when I say long for, i mean loooooooong for... Community is my favorite thing... I just need to get plugged into it.. so we'll see what happens. Honestly i'm nervous, but extremely excited to be around a body of believers... that will be really awesome for me... and more so my heart.

I just wish someone would come talk to me. Just pull up a chair and let the games begin. I feel like I could talk for hours.. but more so listen. I guess thats a big thing i've gained while being in solitary confinement (lol). I have a longing for communication in any way... even if it is just listening to someone spill their passion all over the coffee table... oh the beauty in walls coming down. Its great when you get to see someones heart for the first time.

I think I'm going to pursue a job at a local store too... just for the simple act of meeting people. BAH... and this is why my blog is titled what it is. Com-union-inity... its a play of Communion, Union, Community, and Unity. All things that keep my heart beating.

Anyways.. if this day continues to stay slow like this... i might blog again... 2 times in one day.. WHAT?! THATS UNHEARD OF!

Be blessed,
Jordan

star(s)ucks

I'm bored... so im going to blog. Im surrounded by women... I need friends. I just drove an hour and a half to come and try and make friends and needless to say, that was a failure. Being lonely is a no bueno. The ladies next to me are talking about ways to serve and its awesome to hear but I can't just butt in.. because that then makes me a creeper and i refuse to carry that status. Why cant I just find someone with a bible next to their laptop sipping on a coffee... I need a Seth Snider in here now... ASAP! C'mon God... do it to it.

Nope? Okay...

So i got the news the other day that my planned trip to NC is a no go... finances just arnt agreeing with us right now for me to take a 9 hour trip to NC and back, which in a way makes perfect sense... i just miss my friends. I wish i wasnt so different looking so people would come and talk to me. i wish THEY could make the first move... but alas.. this is not a perfect world :(

im striving to stay strong through this entire process... its new and scary but at the same time... i love being tested and pushed to new limits... ok im lying... i hate it... but i know its needed, so... i'll try and persevere!

All i keep thinking about are the cheesy sayings of, "with God on my side and can do anything!". I think people should understand its deffinately NOT that easy. I wish it was. I wish it was easy to have faith but noone said it would be easy. Having a purpose kinda sucks sometimes... but totally worth it in the end.

I really want to find a church to get connected to. It's so hard though. I want to go somewhere where i dont stick out like a sore thumb... but more so I just want to be used... and if I can be used at a church that thinks im crazy, then so be it.

This is one of those blogs where i just blurb alot of nonsense out... deal with it. I found out I have friends from college that live near me... but their busy alot... so we havnt hung out yet. I refuse to let sleeping become my hobby of choice though... even though im not too far from it.

I just have to keep telling myself... Love God, love people, change the world.... but how can i love people if i cant even meet them. BAH! Im making a shirt that says, "I love Jesus, please come talk to me!". Maybe being blunt will work more in my favor then sitting and paying for wireless use to write on my blog and talk on facebook :)

I need a refill... pause....................................

Refill accomplished

I think my main thing right now is learning to count my blessings. I have a roof over my head.. food to eat.. a vehicle to drive.. clothes to wear... and despite the travel, coffee to drink. Im blessed more than i deserve.

Mom told me tonight that Bob wanted to pay for me to take classes at a near by university... just one more thing that im blessed with. I think im going to accept. I need to go back to school and it seems like one of the best ways to meet new people.. even if it isnt until January.

I joined some groups on facebook with students from NKU which is the university i'd be attending... Northern Kentucky University is nice and its only 30 minutes from home... I've also been looking at art classes near newport which is next to downtown KY/Cincinnati. Im just ready to see what God is going to teach me through this entire experience.

Alright... prayers are welcome :)

Be blessed as I have been, even when its hard to admit,
Jordan

Purple skylines and stars ever so clear... my faith is being restored

After being in Kentucky for nearly a month now i've started to feel an extreme sense of loneliness, and I highly dislike said feelings. So this weekend I decided to take a trip to Indiana... it's only a 3 hour drive so no skin off my back. The drive was nice and quiet but the beautiful thing about it was the sky. It was really dark and not many cars were on the road but still... the way the lights in the distance collided with the dark sky, it conceived this beautiful shade of dark purple but the shades went from lightish purple at the bottom to dark at the top... to a photoshop nerd... i call this a gradient. So I texted my friend Jamie who's in Los Angeles California right now doing some awesome mission stuff but but I texted her how God was good and told her the same thing about the purple sky. She told me how she felt the same way... she had just watched the sun go down behind the ocean and it made me think... how awesome is it that God is great... even to two people thousands of miles apart. Our God is so big that He is blessing people EVERYWHERE at the same time. This is obviously a given. We know this... but it was until I stopped to think about it and tried to grasp this idea of Gods love. I keep coming back to the hebrew word "agape". That word has been on my heart like crazy lately. Passion... God has a PASSION for us... a longing for His children to feel His love and embrace Him. How often do we do this though. Sure, we pray... but do we take a second to actually enter into this nirvana state or however you would put it where we actually are just speaking to God... a conversation. We as believers in Christ get to do that WHENEVER we so choose. I know that for me, one on one conversations with my friends are some of the most exciting things in my life... but how awesome is it when we get to have a one on one conversation the King, the Creator... and there's no term that the human mind or heart can grasp to do Him justice.

I was talking to my friend Mason who lives in Indiana about faith and how I feel as if we as Christians are just acknowledging that there's a God but not actually living it out.. it's being seen in our everyday lives. The book "Sex God" by Rob Bell puts it into a beautiful perspective. We are marked by God. When our grandmothers kiss us... there's always this residue of lipstick left over... well God has kissed us... and marked us with lipstick. I suck as putting things like this into perspective but still... it's beautiful. Mason said something that was awesome though... he said ," faith with out action is nothing". So true. It's when we strap our boots on and get our cowboy gear ready that change starts. And it starts with us first.

I met some awesome folks while I was here in Indiana. But my favorite would have to be a lovely little lady by the name of Brittany Arnold. She's Mason's girlfriend but she has such an exuberant spirit and just a fun person to be around. I don't say that meaning Mason sucks... because Mason has been such a blessing to me as well as Justin "Vandetta". But this was the group I hung out with tonight and I have to tell you... my faith is being restored through conversations with just simple God honoring people. I love how we're all just "kids" and yet we have this desire to just love God and love people. We see the need for these walls to be broken.

Final paragraph, don't fret... I was on facebook this past week and I posted a comment about if we ever stopped to wonder why the church was so screwed up... and it's because we as believers... the supposed examples of who Christ was... are so sucky. So I will close here with what I posted there. It's for we has followers in Christ to love.... love the broken... find the lost and bring them back home... it's time for us to fight. This is a call to arms... arms of love and it's time or us to claim what is rightfully not ours, but Christs alone. Will you answer?

Be blessed as I have been,
Jordan

the early morning thoughts of an insomniac

This is coming to you via blackberry curve and while I'm gleeming with joy due to my inability to fall asleep. The joy part is pure crap btw.

This is the thought process of an insomniac... Or atleast of me in this case. They will go in the order that I think of them so if I think cat then right after you would assume that I would think dog, but no... I think sword. Is there a problem when puss and boots is the first thing that comes to mind with cat? I predict there could be worse outcomes.

Begin... Vintage, elvis, donald miller, jacob early, big chester mollester type van, sweet mustache, charlie chaplin, the ice cream with the guys on the bike and the umbrella, marry poppins, chim chimerry chim chimmery (whatever the heck the song is), hillsong, freedom is here!, the new levis commercial, the new cheerios commercial, facebook, like, the want of a dislike button, the panthers this season, I can't say the words I'm thinking, hail marry (catholic style), I surprised myself on that last one.

I don't know. I just want my brain to goto the blue screen of death and then I can defrag it myself in the morning. That made no sense to you the reader but all the sense in the world to me.

Last thing. I owe the way I am to the people that helped grow me in my early-ish stages of life. The people who showed me the meaning of true faith. Those that taught me what a healthy God built relationship looks like. Those who are showing me what it means to be a loving mother, and father, and mentor still for me. I pray more than a lot of other things that this is how God uses me. The way he used those people for me who took the time they didn't have to invest in a kid that noone else thought mattered. You've passed the torch and I will carry it with pride and let it go out I will not! I too will pass this torch and burns with love, hope, and faith. These are the things you have instilled in me and these are the things God is consistenly teaching me about. My final word association. Learning makes me think of discipleship. To be a disciple you must me disciplned.

Am I?

Faith+Hope+Love

Ohhh what an awesome topic and one that I'm quite familiar with at the moment. Pop a squat and lets chat... or allow me to chat and you read, since that's normally how these blogs go.

I've been in Kentucky for about a week now and strangely I feel at home. Now I've come to the great derby state many a time but never have a felt "called" to be here. When I arrived here in Falmouth, I went to a fair with my step dad where there was food and crafts and animals and people. Tons of people. Empty people. Seemingly void soulless people... and my heart was broken. Then we went to a restaurant with a very oxymoronic name. "Assembly Cafe" but no assembly. No community. No unity. No love. Just people disguised as families consuming food so that they could survive. But surviving is only half the fun. Living is essential, and by living, i mean LIVING. Having a joy when you wake up. An excitement. Our waitress' story was one that I've heard too many times here. She has three kids... 2 with one guy, and 1 with another whom just left her after 5 years. To top it off she was just evicted.

I've never been to a place where i felt so little amount of God. I know He's here... but where. Hide and go seek puts this place into perspective. God's not hiding, but these people are not seeking. Their surviving, but not living. I prayed that night asking God when He was going to do something about this... how noble of me. I put the blame of this town on God's shoulders. I felt Him ask back, "Where have you been". I got home and began reading and this is what I came across...

1 Chronicles 17 7:14 says:
7 "Now then, tell my servant David, 'This is what the LORD Almighty says: I took you from the pasture and from following the flock, to be ruler over my people Israel. 8 I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name like the names of the greatest men of the earth. 9 And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning 10 and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also subdue all your enemies.
" 'I declare to you that the LORD will build a house for you: 11 When your days are over and you go to be with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. 12 He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. 13 I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him, as I took it away from your predecessor. 14 I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever; his throne will be established forever.' "

I've never really had God straight up speak to me through His word. It's pretty stinkin dope if you ask me. So I'm having faith in God that He's gunna use me here. I want these people to know love and what it really is. But not this bull crap love that the world is feeding us. This love of one night stands and fatherless children and homeless mothers. I want them to experience this "agape" love. Its a craving for. A "have to" have type love. The most passionate form of love ever. And its a love that I cant show them, but only God himself.

Hillsong has helped me make it through this week strong though. Their new CD is phenominal and I'm pretty sure God had a little Mozart type play in it.

On a side note... My friend Matt found the sickest shirts ever online. The clothing line is called... get this... "Agape Attire". Here's their myspace http://www.myspace.com/agapeattire

So I'm stepping out in faith with the above situation and I know that God will provide for me but more so for this community. I'm excited for the journey ahead. I have a meeting with the head pastor of a church out here next week about their youth ministry. They don't have a leader so why not pursue it. If I get it, then it's a definite in with the schools and clubs and stuff around here.

Change is good... but God is better. Random, I know... but i feel like that would be a sick slogan for a Presidential campaign against Obama :) Oh fun note... spell check doesn't like Obama either. HAHA.

Ok, so plan is to actually update this thing. But plans fail, just ask Obama. Oh dear... I'll end this post with a little joke I heard... Did you hear the "Cash for Clunkers" campaign actually hurt Obama. Why you may ask... we It's taken tons of his vote for me stickers off the road.

Love you all,
Jordan

PS- Remember these bodies are merely vessels. Our souls are the only things we get to take with us when we die. Love God, Love People, Change the World. We can!