Hall Mark - Your own Jesus: a God insistent on making it personal

T HIS MORNING, I AWOKE EXHAUSTED FROM THE weirdest dream. I was slogging through a battlefield, fighting some unidentified enemy in a war without explanation.

So I was already drained when I realized I couldnt eat breakfast because some buddies and I were starting a fast today. It seemed like such a good idea a few days ago. All of this was bouncing around in my head as I got into my new car only to remember it doesnt have AM radio. Im trying to wean myself off talk radio because it tells me a thousand times over that the world is going to pot. Great. Another fast on an already difficult morning.

Then I reached my office at Eagles Landing First Baptist Church and encountered a secretary who wasnt wearing her customary smile. She pointed at her watch and told me I was late in placing my first phone call for a series of scheduled media interviews. That only reminded me I needed some time to work on new songs for the next album. Then theres the upcoming tour

If a barometer could measure the degree of being flustered, my needle would have been nearing the red side.

Yet at some point during the first interview I started thinking, Man, God is good. Shut up and deal with this. This is awesome. I started talking about everything God is doing with Casting Crowns and with our ministry at church, and I got pumped. Later, I ran into someone who asked, Hey, what do you think about your record being number two in the Billboard 200? All I could say was, Thats pretty awesome, but inside I was doing cartwheels and praising the Lord. My tense morning was a distant memory. Life was good.

Then came the email.

I learned of a problem with one of the kids in our student ministry, and my heart sank. Right about then, someone showed up for another big appointment I had forgotten about, and a crammed day lost another hour. I found myself feeling gravity again.

So Ive been up and down from the moment I awoke. All of this happened today. And its only 11:00 a.m.

I sure am glad I have my own Jesus. If I didnt have my own personal walk with him, my life would be one giant vat of emotion, a tempest tossing me from one whim to the next. Which is why I have learned I need my own Jesusmy own relationship with the Lord of all creation. I cant live by what I feel but by the truth Gods Word reveals.

This last line may sound familiar because its part of the bridge in East to Westa song I wrote about learning to accept and live in the reality of Gods forgiveness. The lyrics describe where Ive been in my walk with Jesus over the past few years. No matter how many times my old life comes haunting, God calls me to rest on his truth and not on what I feel or think.

As Christians, we cant live by what we feel or go off our gut, because it is rotten (Philippians 3:19). We have to live by truth. God has been constantly reminding me lately that his Word is truth. And truth is truth. It doesnt only become truth when we start believing it. Truth just isfor everybody everywhere and at all times.

I try to rest in that fact and not in how I feel about it or what it means to me. Who cares what the Bible means to me? We need to know what it means. Thats where I have to allow God to redefine my thinking. He tells us in Romans 12:2 not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. What always gets me about this verse is hes telling believers we still need to be transformed. It means I have a saved spirit but I still think with a lost brain, and slowly but surely my mind has to be transformed. Such transformation comes but one wayby truth. By his Word.

Back in 1998, one of my former students called me a few months into his freshman year in college. He attended an institution of higher learning, yet he wanted answers to a kind of test he didnt expect.