God

1.1.Six

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all.

Romans 1:16 (VOICE)

For I am not the least bit embarrassed about the gospel. I won’t shy away from it, because it is God’s power to save every person who believes: first the Jew, and then the non-Jew.

In many of my poems you can search out a lot of “religious or spiritual” verses that sneakily or not so sneakily creep up, and the reason for that is because I am a Christian. Sometimes when I write, I hold back a lot of my religious freedom to express my faith and how I feel about Christianity, God and the Bible. I feel like I put a God count for how many times  I can mention His name, Christianity or faith in my poems without feeling uneasy for the person who will later read or listen to it. There’s a part of me that wants my poetry to be easily swallowed by everybody, which leads to me censor out my beliefs sometimes. I’m not saying I’m not honest in my poetry already but, there’s more I could be doing or saying to fully express all of me and what I believe. I’m not ashamed of the God I serve, I’m not scared of how you will feel or react to hearing that I love God and how much he loves me and all that he’s been doing in my life. I should say I’m not anymore, I’ve come to acknowledge that I have a “call” to answer, or a population to reach with what I do and it’s time I recognized that I’m equipped enough to do it. As a Christian, I can honestly say that I want this life of  knowing God for every person I know now and will come to know. This realization stemmed one night when I was reading the bible and in Romans I read that people who have not heard about Christ will not be judged for rejecting Him but, those who have are without an excuse. Personally, I would love to leave people without the excuse to reject Him and that starts with me first letting them hear. I never really wanted to be labelled a Christian spoken word aritst but the reality is that I am a Christian who writes poetry, and with that comes an obligation.

I already have Christian-related poems lined up to post and I’m sure I will have more to post in the future. For the moment, enjoy this short excerpt from one of my poems “His Interest”.

This poem was inspired from a quote in a sermon I once heard.

“God is not interested in your lifestyle or sin, he’s interested in your heart” – Caleb Davidson

For starters there’s no need to get defensive
This isn’t an attack on your stances
This isn’t your religious check up
or renewal for a subscription of Jehovah’s witnesses pamphlets
I want to understand the opposition
and show you how to take Jesus out of tradition
and present to you a simpler illustration
Because at the moment
you think it’s only about commandments, fear and temptations
and neglect to see His grace, love, and patience
You want to blame Him for your sickness, hatred and heartache
When you won’t pray, praise and partake in repentance
You want to believe that God is dead so that you can live guilt-free
Without the slightest inclination
that maybe something out there is pulling the strings
But I think all together you’ve envisioned a religion
and put God at a distance
It’s not all about what your latest sin is
It’s not heaven’s hottest topic,
and angels don’t tune in for a Sinflix binge
You are one of God’s children and he’s only waiting for you to let him in

Dangers of a Lazy Day

 

I’m back to kick off the IYA series this week. From here on out the upcoming posts will be more frequent. This week, I let myself get sidetracked and I got into a bit of a mental rut that included netflix binging. I usually hate when these lazy weeks happen to me, and I’m not happy that it did but I got a chance to dig deeper into why I let it continue to be a cycle.

 Lazy Days

One lazy hour can turn into lazy days, weeks, months and in retrospect sometimes a year.  Many January 1st’s I have looked back into the months prior and realized that it was a really lazy year for me.  As easy as it is to press play for that next Netflix episode it is so much harder to think of what’s next when it comes to the future of our lives.

Continue reading →

IYA Launch: Get Ready With Me

It’s February 29th 2016, the extra day of the year we get to take advantage of!  All around I’m hearing advice about not wasting the day and  I don’t intend to  do that at all. Today I am launching the very first series on my blog called Ignite Your Ambition and I’m releasing a poem called The Hour to begin! I think it’s a fitting title for a day like today.  To start the series off I’d like to take up some space to tell you all about how I got here and why I do what I do.

Why Ignite Your Ambition?                                                                                                                        This stemmed from a time in grade 11 when I  wanted to change my twitter name to something cooler. I loved Coldplay and because of that, I wanted to change my name to ignite your bones from the song Fix You, but that was already taken. I brainstormed for awhile and then evolved ignited ambition. Back then I always wanted to make something out of myself. I knew I had talents I could pursue, poetry being the most evident but, I had so many stalled ambitions because of my lack of will to pursue. “Ignited ambition” gave me hope to finally light the spark one day. This is where a lot of the messages in my poems come from, the idea of starting, pursuing purpose, doing what you love, not being held back, making a change and really walking into destined promises.  I want to lead by example, it’s easy for me to sit behind a screen and say all these things things but without walking on faith I won’t get anywhere and I won’t inspire anyone, without taking the leap first.

 

Continue reading →

It’s not your poems holding you back.

I think everyone comes to a point where they start to fall into the clichés. We all think we’re above them, that they’ll never affect us and that we don’t need anybody or any help. ( the “I can do bad all by myself” attitude). That’s a pretty unauthentic way to live but, there isn’t anybody that can stop you from feeling or thinking that way but you. You may have the high whiny nagging voice in your head saying I don’t have a talent, nobody will like me, I have no purpose, somebody out there is better than me at doing yada yada. But sure, why not think all of those things. Especially if you haven’t tried and especially because we have 9 lives to live and we have all the time in the world to wallow in our self-pity.  Wrong “ain’t nobody got time for that”. I’m just tired of us individuals thinking we’re all original strugglers, like nobody before us was ever confused about life, or wondered of their purpose and talents, who failed, who cut themselves off from the world, became “cold-hearted”, who weren’t considered normal, who coloured outside of the box, who were ostracized, who were broke and tired. None one of those things matter in terms of you reaching success unless you make them matter. You can stay sad and broke all you like but until you find out that the real riches on this earth cannot be accessed through your bank account, you’re going to have a rough time finding the gold in your dirt.

Continue reading →