It has been a long time since I have written a letter to you informing you of my journey. This letter is going to tell you about my new steps in life. I have realized a lot of things recently, things that have really encouraged me lately. I have begun to notice that I truly do have a problem with being free. I have wondered along this journey to growing closer to God and growing deeper in the relationships around me. I have realized some of my biggest problems.
I NEVER find true rest. How can I invest in God and my friends if I am consistently tired? I talk about finding rest in Christ. I talk about the peace that Christ can bring. I talk about finding joy in Christ… What am I missing?
I feel like we miss that one a lot. I am beginning to realize that I have filled my life with ways to avoid truly growing deeper, and because of that I have missed knowing some of my friends, and in some cases, I have missed their cries for help.
I am beginning to realize that a big reason I never start a relationship with a girl is because of my filled life. I am SO good at filling my life, which in turn makes me miserable to be around.
So I start a new journey, de-filling my life and start investing in my friends, family and school work. More importantly, this journey I am on will be leading to God.
With Love,
Casey S. Hayden
Should I expand? Ok!!
Men-
I have been talking a lot about adventure recently, and how adventure truly frees us, because it is our way for us to connect to God in a thrilling way. I want to be clear though, that adventure does not mean going and going without stopping to reflect or to catch your breath. You know what happens when we don’t take time to catch our breath, we get irritable, we get frustrated, we get unruly and unreasonable. In fact, I would go as far to argue that we even begin to lose touch with ourselves and reality. That is the last thing we want. When we lose connection to our self, we stop listening to the Holy Spirits lead in our life, we often become judgmental and begin to overcompensate trying to prove ourselves over and over again.
I want to free you from yourself today with some challenges, because I am starting to do the same myself.
Here are my challenges-
1) Take a break. Breath. You have no clue your potential in life if you just keep going. The problem we have as men is we never want to say no to a challenge. We accept everything. I just keep thinking to myself why I do. I mean, challenges range from leading a small group to fixing a car. But we have the hardest time saying no. In my own life, I was asked to lead many groups, and half the time, I had no clue what the group was even about. I loved being asked though, and could never say no because of how it made me feel. What is it for you? What are you filling your life with? What challenges are you taking on that you should not be a part of, that are exhausting you, that are ruining your soul, that are destroying your rest? You see, our life is not meant to be filled with clutter, but with purpose. So I challenge you to say no, unclutter your life.
2) Being Passive is not resting. I heard a phrase recently about how girls always pick the jerks and bad kids to date. It makes perfect sense, because us passive guys are not willing to step up. We have not given them a reason not to date them. I gave up the pursuit of dating because I needed to grow up, I need to find God, I needed to step up. I realized how passive I was in most areas of my life. If I am passive, I have no right to complain when the girl I care about ends up dating some punk who has no clue how to tie his shoes, let alone care for a woman. You want to rest fully in Christ then live fully in His arms. You want to fall in Love with the girl you have been talking with and texting. Then I have a challenge. Step up in all areas of your life, and then stepping up to ask her on a date will be like fueling your passion to follow Christ. We ask why girls date jerks, I ask where are the passive guys who claim to be good men. We have to UNDO all that has been done, and begin to show girls that they are worth it. That they are valued, that they do not have to compromise. That they don’t have to go into this world alone and live by the titles given to them. Yet, until that happens, girls will continue to be snatched up by the guys of this world who could care less about them as a Child of God. May Christ’s Love compel us all to UNDO all of this.
3) Living aggressively is not resting. We confuse this one a lot. Being aggressive is over-compensating for something we are trying to hide. Think about it, the more aggressive we are, the less focused we are and harnessed energy we have. There is a large difference between passionately living and aggressively living. Passionately is striving towards a focused goal with direction and purpose. Aggressive living is striving towards a goal at all costs and unfocused desire and unsure motives. Live passionately, and you can have a more full picture filled with moments of rest. If we live passionately for God, then rest should come, otherwise we live in anger which fuels our tiredness making us unbearable to be around. How can we preach a message of Love and Hope if all we do is preach a message from our aggressive get ‘em lifestyle that leads us to more anger. Live passionately and people will want to join you. Think about it. Why do we quote Mother Teresa so much, because she lived passionately, even when she could not recognize Christ, she still found rest through the ministry by serving Him.
Woman-
You spend your whole life building up purpose in your life, but how are you finding it? Where are you placing it? Are you placing your purpose and value in your looks or your status or your friends? What is it?
What are the lies you have bought into? Do you feel like you are just running around from valued moment to valued moment?
I have some challenges, to look deeper into your heart, because as I have learned, you feel deeply, so address it.
Here they are-
1) Find rest in your soul through Jesus. There is an old hymn called “It is Well” and it talks about it being well with your soul, if you get a chance, listen to it, and hum it when you feel as if you cannot find rest. Jesus is calling you right now, but Christ is calling you to look into your heart and answer these questions, what are you placing your value in? If you place your value in what men call you, then you will never find rest. If you place your value in your good grades, then you will never find rest.
2) Being an independent individual is not resting. Relying on yourself to get through life is going to make you tired. I firmly believe in being an individual, I firmly believe that we are called to be unique, but we are never called to be alone. NEVER. Being independently free is not finding rest. Trying to make it on your own is not finding rest. I was reading recently about a girl who says she has no friends that are girls because they can’t get along with them. It was hard to read that, because she only learned what friendship meant because of her friendships with men. Men have a very different interpretation of friendship then women do. We are different. It is SO important for girls to have friendships with other girls. If you are a mother, it is SO important for you to care deeply and invest in your daughter’s life. If you are in a place of leadership, we are in a world drowning right now with a lack of female leadership willing to invest in the lives of young woman. We get so mad because they date men that treat them this way, welp, who cares enough if you are not invested in their life. The hardest thing for me to hear when I am meeting with a student or a peer or in an intervention is when they say they have a no friends that are girls or a mother that will not invest in them or a leader who will not invest in them. I will be honest, if you are not willing to invest, then you have no right to complain. I take no pity in your comments. If you try to deal with your daughter’s depression or substance abuse or pregnancy alone, I understand, but you are making a huge mistake. You live in a world crying out to be heard, the last thing you need to do is be alone in this. In the end, I pray you realize that life is so much better lived with people who care deeply about you and who you can invest in deeply.
3) This is a simple one- screw what the world says about you, because what they really need is you and all of you. Because everyone of you have a beautiful heart that can love the creation in this world in a way that will complete the Kingdom work. I am telling you, you are worthy, because God sent His SON to die and be raised again for YOU! Stop going to the slums of this world thinking you are without value. That is exactly how they can consume you, but instead go to the slums of this world with great Love, and they could never touch you.
Both-
1) This is going to be pretty harsh- You will wreck your soul and trap it if all you can do is tear people down. When you can’t find rest, check what your heart is saying. Here are some examples that I am removing from my life- I do not care to listen to John Piper preach, and I was public about it after a while. Not healthy. I have openly mocked churches, calling them out. Not Healthy. I degraded Mark Driscoll publically. Not Healthy. I have degraded CRU and belittled it for my own gain. Not Healthy. I have publically tarnished theological points on Calvinism or ridiculed Chris Tomlin for not writing most of his songs. Not Healthy. And in the end, who cares. This is something I have worked so hard on recently. It is not easy. But I think about this world too. How many of you have something mean to say about someone? How many of you have something mean to say about your church? About your pastor? About your family? About your parents? About your EX? About the human being Barack Obama? Be honest. We live in a disgustingly sick and negative world that has nothing nice to say about people, even people we have never met. I see Christian protesters march on the grounds of armed forces saying things like God hates Fags, but how many of you have said that with your actions recently? Or how many of you have called your EX a whore or a d-bag? How many of you truly forgave anyone who has wronged you? If you haven’t how long have you been following God and still live in hatred? How many of you preach a message of Love, but yet ridicule the church down the street? Do you wonder why self-mutilation is on the rise among guys and girls? Do you wonder why there is 33,000 suicides a year, and 1800 attempts by teens everyday? Look at our world. We preach hope, yet I ridicule the very man who preaches it! I call myself a Christian yet I promote hatred of a ministry. Who do I think I am? Who do you think you are? We WASTE ALL of our energy nit-picking at the smallest pointless parts of life and we miss the fact the teens and college students are cutting, burning, choking and abusing more than ever. We call Rob Bell this, and ridicule the Catholic Church for that and tease Greg Boyd and Brian McClaren for who knows what. STOP. STOP NOW. You want to know why hatred and aggressive living win out. Because we hate Obama as republicans and despise Bush as democrats. Who gives a rats butt, the president has no power compared to the senate anyway. Calvinism is just a theological concept. CRU is a campus ministry. God never said you have to follow John Piper or CRU, but God never promoted hatred of anything like this are all. We waste all of our ammo cutting down churches and ministries yet poverty, starvation, prostitution, child slavery, abortion and self-mutilation are still rampant. I am not calling you to be dishonest about how you feel, I choose not to listen to certain pastors, not because I hate them. I am not saying be dishonest, but I am saying if you have time to cut someone down, you have time to save a person’s life from any of those things, through Jesus Christ who compels us to be ministers of Reconciliation
2 Corinthians 5:11-21- 11Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. 12We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. 13If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21God made him who had no sin to be sin[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
All I can say is praise God for Grace. Without it, I would be lost and to be honest, would not have been convicted to write this. God promoted LOVE, even when your enemies beat you down. I also beg you to find rest, because your heart is in need of it. Find it in all you do. Take time away to find yourself again. Take time to be true again. Take time to sleep to eat to drink to clean up. Christ’s ways are filled with rest, and peace, not busy challenges and involvement. Christ wants you to invest in the lives of people around you, not just be involved. Christ wants you to invest in your ministry, not just show up. Christ wants you to be fully prepared to face life with energy and strength, not anger and frustration striving for purpose.
With Love,
Casey
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