I wanted to share the reasoning behind the song because it is so powerful if we realize what we are singing about. What I love about a song is that what was just one person’s thought can so easily become the thought of many. It even goes beyond a thought. People hear a song on the radio or go to church and sing and agree about that thought, all at the same time! Pretty powerful!

Do you know what’s inside of you
Do you know what you can do
Change the world with just one touch

What does this even mean?

I was sitting in a breakout session with Eric Geiger, the guy who wrote Simple Church. I remember he quoted Matthew 16:18 and went on to explain the power of this verse. It says,

“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

He went on to describe that nothing can overpower the church. He gave the example of a car going 70mph at one of those little gates that are just a piece of wood. You know the ones that raise when security approves you. I’m sure you have seen a movie where a car just plows through those and the wood has no chance.

Now, imagine the gate is the church. Evil power is the car coming at 70mph. The difference between the movie you saw and what the Bible says is this: The car is stopped dead in its tracks!

What a powerful visual he gave of the power of the church! What is beautiful is that the church is not a building. The church is made up believers of Christ! That means that if you are Christian, that power resides in you!

Now if you and I could really learn to live these words:

Do you know what’s inside of you
Do you know what you can do
Change the world with just one touch

This is a snapshot of my vision I wrote out for 2007. I knew I needed to develop some essential disciplines that I would have to carry with me if I wanted to be successful now and 90 years from now. In 2007, I knew I needed to set the foundations of life. Once I did this in 2007, 2008 was going to be the year to focus on music like I wanted.

Well, here I sit the first day of 2009 and realizing that I am still trying to accomplish my 2007 vision. I have accomplished other things, but this 2007 vision is the foundation. I have always been the one with amazing potential (no conceit intended). I have always been the one that dreamed so much bigger than where I’m at. I also knew that I could get there. You know, when you get older and respected, and people realize your abilities.

I am not old by any means, but I’m pushing 30 in the next couple of years. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not the man I will be when I’m 50, but I realized something about myself. I am inspired easily, and I inspire others very easily. I’m good at that,

but I’m not good at taking the inspiration and integrating it into my life.

My vision was inspired in 2007. I believe it was a prophetic inspiration by God. He knows what I need to do what I’m supposed to do. Where I have not done well, is integrating that inspiration into my life. That is why I sit waiting for my abilities and anointing to be realized.

I’m living in the inspiration of it, rather than the integration of it.

Many people have had huge revelations or epiphanies in life. Think about when you had one. Now, ask yourself: did you integrate that epiphany into your life, or did you just move on for a year or two until you had it again?

I’ll make a few tweaks to the snapshot above, but it is my 2009 vision again. I want to integrate these God-given inspirations into my lifestyle, not for just a month.

Spirit + Truth = True Worship

Spirit = an essence; what you feel (ex: music)
Truth = mastering your skil; personal excellencel (ex: learning theory and history of music)
True Worship = your dream (ex: great musician)

OCT23 l ’08 from aubreysanchez DOT com on Vimeo.

“I don’t want you to be without a greeting from me when Christmas comes and when you, in the midst of the holiday, are bearing your solitude more heavily than usual. But when you notice that it is vast, you should be happy; for what (you should ask yourself) would a solitude be that was not vast; there is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along, the most unworthy. . . . But perhaps these are the very hours during which solitude grows; for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of spring. But that must not confuse you. What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours – that is what you must be able to attain.

And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it. This very wish, if you use it calmly and prudently and like a tool, will help you spread out your solitude over a great distance. Most people have (with the help of conventions) turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.”

“My dear Mr. Kappus: I have left a letter from you unanswered for a long time; not because I had forgotten it – on the contrary: it is the kind that one reads again when one finds it among other letters, and I recognize you in it as if you were very near. It is your letter of May second, and I am sure you remember it. As I read it now, in the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life.

You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that – but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don’t hate anything.”

“Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them. – Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentations, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.

In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!”

“But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn’t write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self-searching that I as of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there.”

Today, I want to post a piece from his first letter. I would recommend that you read the What’s My Problem post that I posted last week and then read this piece below several times.

“You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.”

“Today I would like to tell you just two more things:

Irony: Don’t let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of life. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn’t be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it becomes small and helpless. Search into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends – and when you arrive at the edge of greatness, find out whether this way of perceiving the world arises from a necessity of your being. For under the influence of serious Things it will either fall away from you (if it is something accidental), or else (if it is really innate and belongs to you) it will grow strong, and become a serious tool and take its place among the instruments which you can form your art with.”

This post says to look beyond the irony or sarcasm. Look down deep because that is who you really are. When you take a good look down deep you see who you really are and things either grow stronger or you realize they are not really you. Just like Rilke challenged this young poet to do, I challenge you to really ask yourself some hard questions this week. Look past the front or the irony and look at yourself deep down.

“Generation X tried to change the status quo while entering into one of the worst job markets since the Great Depression. They scorned the good ole boys, but had to play by their rules anyway, while millenials are able to create our own rules.

The fact that Gen Xers worked hard with little success beyond casual Fridays means that they are “only mentioned to be polite” in generational discussions.”

That is powerful. The last thing I want to do is play by the rules and not accomplish what is in me. I feel like the church sometimes makes you play by certain rules to be “successful” in church.

I don’t want to be known as someone who had alot in me, but never let it out because I played by the rules.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?