Thoughts From Max

“Have you ever been a part of something
that you thought would never end?
And then of course it did.
Have you ever felt the weight inside you
pulling away inside your skin?
And then something had to give.”

That’s a quote from a song called Everchanging by Rise Against. Now. If you listen to the rest of the song it’s about relationships with guys and girls. Or rather the guy and his girl. But like all things in life you can take it and look at it from a Christian point of view. Or atleast I think you can do that. Sometimes I think that we all seem to be just stuck in our ways. But life isn’t like that. Everything changes around us all the time. No mater what we do we can’t change the fact that change is inevitable. However. I do believe that we can have a hand in the change and decide if it’s going to be for the better or the worst.

Recently, I’ve had several people in my life ask my why I always seem mad at them. Or why I’m always down and in the dumps. I think that it’s a time of change. Recently, I’ve begun to think of what the world would be like if I(we) lived with an attitude of hope instead of an attitude of hopelesness. I see so many Christians that have this attitude, it’s like an epidemic. It spreads, infecting everyone that it touches. Is this how we are supposed to live? I think not. I think that I(we) are called to live at a higher standard than that of the world. There are so many reasons to be full of hope: I(we) have a savior. The sun rises each day. I(we) live in a free country. I(we) can go about our buisiness however we want, this is the key. We are given the power to choose how we are going to live our lives.

Now to say that we have the power to choose how we live our lives is something totally different than saying that we should live our lives how we want to live our lives. I think that we were given free will by our Father so we could decide who’s side we were on. But once we choose. We give control over to that side. And It’s not something that we can just sit on the half-court line for all time. We must pick a side. For if we are not for him, than we are against him.

Anyways. That’s just my serrious thought of the day.

So, I recently got the new Family Force 5 CD. Can’t say that I totally love the sound, but their lyrics have totally improved, I think, over their old CD’s. Musically, it’s like this synthisiser stuff, wich works for somebands, but I really wanted some more crunk rock. I guess it didn’t happen.

Anyways, back to the purpose of this post. One of the songs has this line in the courus, actually, it is the courus. “Get your back off the wall, get you back off the wall!” And it’s talking about how we can’t be just on the wall for god. We are either for him. Or against him. It’s kind of talking about one of the churches in Revelation. “You are neither warm nor cold. So I will spit you out.” We’re not supposed to be just here. We’re supposed to be living a life that Jesus would have been living. We are supposed to be becoming more like him.

I find that all the time there are people our there that call themselves Christian, but at the same time, they live in the shadows not really doing anything good but at the same time not really doing anything bad. That’s not what we need to be doing. We need to be living out a life that reflects who we say we are. Without integrity we have nothing.

DIE 4 YOU – Family Force Five

I’d take a bullet for you
Bleed all my blood out for you
Be taken hostage, under the knife’s edge
Pay all the ransom for you

Do the hard time for you
On the front lines for you
Bring on the pain, the ball and chain
Be executed for you

I’ll cover for you, take a hit
I’m your alibi
I got your back
I’m living every day just to die

Every day I die for you
Throw me in the fire, I’d walk right through
I made a promise, it’s an I-O-U
I’d D-I-E for Y-O-U

I’d D-I-E for Y-O-U
I’d D-I-E for Y-O-U
I’d die for you, die, D-I-E for you
I’d D-I-E, I’d die for you

Give me your paranoia
I’ll walk the plank for you
Sous la guillotine, jusqu’ a la fin
Willing to suffer for you

Interrogate me for you
Accept my fate for you
Put me in a noose, turn the dogs loose
Take all the hatred for you

So summer has come and gone. No more late nights talking to friends, no more playing guitar all day and bumming around, and definitely no more just going. It seems like each summer goes by faster and faster these days. I remember the last day of school last year like it was yesterday. I guess one thing that I’ve learned over the last year or so is that we all grow up, and there’s nothing that we can do to stop that. Ultimately we all fit into a plan that God has for us, and we might not think that it’s fitting into our time frame, but he’ll show us differently.

Over the last summer I’ve had lots of things happen, some that I would rather forget and some that I wouldn’t trade for a thing in the world. The highlight of my summer would have to be going to Sonshine music festival out in MN. Such a great week of listening to music and hanging out with my brother and my dad. Sure, we didn’t get much sleep that week, but talking with bands, meeting new friends, and just being around music, there’s quite possibly nothing that’s better than that. Although the rain storms in the morning were really annoying, for the most part it was sunny with a high of 75.

I’ve done alot of searching to find myself over the last summer, trying to open up to new people, trying to figure out where I’m going in life, all in all just trying to find myself. The one thing that I’ve learned though is that you can’t expect other people to help you find yourself. Only you can find yourself. And that may sometimes easier said than done. I think that we go through life with an attitude of what happens happens, but I think that we all need to realize that it’s not what happens happens, but it’s taking the things that happen and looking at them with a attitude of this is something that God’s doing for me and he has my best interesting in mind, even if I don’t think so at the moment.

Like I said in one of my last posts, I’ve found that alot of people that I call friends are fake. And that is true, but the thing that I’ve come to realize is that we are only responsible for ourselves. We can’t take on others and feel like it was something that we’ve done to them or it was something we did to someone else that might have changed their opinion of us. Ultimately everyone has a choice of the type of person that they are going to be, and nothing that we can do is going to change who they are going to be. We are only able to change who we are, and even at that saying that we are going to change and actually changing are two totally different things. But in that same token, we all need to realize that even if people are hurting us, we do need to be the bigger person and try to work through it. I know that I’m sometimes, actually all the time, I look to create a bigger conflict, it’s something about my personality and probably not the greatest part of it, but we need to put our own feelings aside and try and be the Christians that we clame to be.

So here’s a list of feelings that I’ve felt over the summer…

Rejection – Not just by people, but seamingly by God.

Acceptance – by God, and by people that I never thought would chose to accept me.

Healing – Of old wounds.

Tiredness – just going in the same routine, over and over again.

Anger – people hurt people, nothing we can do to change this.

Revolution – sometimes all we need to do is just take a new view point.

Truth – The only thing that is true is God’s word.

Hatred – Everything has it’s bad sides, and I’ve sure found mine.

Peace – Just sit and listen… that’s all we need to do, Listen.

Happyness – Open up to someone, maybe they’ll show you something new about yourself.

Guilt – Not being around when someone needed me. I’m sorry.

Hope – This is what we all must find, for if we don’t have any, than there is nothing to live for.

We will live again. Alone. Yet so content.