...a new life awaits you...

...it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah.

Haunting words as she described them, my sister that is. 

But they were the perfect words. They finally captured what is was she was trying to say.

...a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies...

haunting, yet inviting words, as she used them, my friend Kari that is.

Well the words were inviting, but her look was...haunting.

Both of these lines of words touched me last week...haunted me last week.

Other words touched me too.

I guess touched might not be that accurate.

RIPPED

PIERCED

SHOVED

MOCKED

CONQUERED

and ultimately...

suffocated.

What did those painful words look like?

...for whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

These words never bothered me before. I guess they always applied to the bad stuff. Sure, lose the bad to find the good. That makes sense. That I can live with. Of course it's hard from time to time, but losing the bad for the good, that I can live with.

What happens when the calling seems to be, "lose the good stuff too."?

What happens when the calling is combined with the thought, "Aren't I enough"?

A week ago these thoughts, these callings, pierced and ripped and shoved and mocked and conquered my spirit.

My soul was suffocating, my hopes were suffocating. I was afraid. I was angry. I was...dying.

...a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies...

But what if I don't want that life?

What if I want this life?

Why did YOU show me this other stuff? 

Why did YOU re-awaken my creative spirit just to give me the calling to let it go?

I don't want to let it go.

I don't.

...whoever wants to save their life...

Over the past few months, God had re-awakened my creativity. He had placed a renewed desire on my heart to be creative which was exciting considering I hadn't felt creative in a long time. This might seem odd for the owner of an architectural design firm, but it's true. Nothing I had done lately constituted what I consider to be truly artistic or creative. I really want to just go do something that's mine. I need to struggle with this. I need to force it. I just want to

...uggggh... to do something.

So when do you feel closest to God?

Her question caught me off guard, my friend Angela that is.

I hesitated.

I guess it's when He shows me something, an outcome, a solution, an answer that is completely different than what I thought but it's perfect. It's different than what it was "supposed" to be but it is perfect. 

It's beautiful...

And even though

It all went wrong

I'll stand before the Lord of Song

With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

[to be continued]

Sometimes God gives us exactly what we're looking for but it doesn't look like we thought it would...

It's been awhile since I've posted here - sorry. Things have been crazy busy and full of both gifts from God and frustrations.

I found myself focusing on the frustrations more than the gifts this last week and found myself beginning to question my own self-worth. I really let myself go, and in a way lost a portion of my faith. Don't get me wrong, I still had unwaivering faith that God exists, but I let myself forget that He does provide for us. So in the midst of my frustration I surrendered up a humble prayer asking for forgiveness for my frustrations and asking for God, if he would, to just show Himself to me in some small way that afternoon.

I prayed this prayer after leaving church, still beating myself up and feeling sorry for myself last Sunday. I prayed this prayer on my way to a store to buy a small gift and get a card for a friend's birthday. I was running late to the party and needed to find something cool and funny, ultimately the card had to be a monkey, because the evite to the party was monkey-themed and the birthday boy was named as the "Party Monkey".

Well after picking up my gift I headed over to the greeting cards and walked through several aisles before getting to the birthday ones: 

OK, OK I have to find a monkey card.

Scanning...

Hundreds of cards....

Eyes peeled, monkey, monkey, monkey, where are you?

Scanning...

Ah, there's one.

I open it and read, kind of funny - playing off getting old, but not quite right, as it referenced the droopiness of the aging body...uh no, not quite appropriate for this guy or my relationship to him.

Scanning...

Scanning...

There's got to be another monkey.

fast car,

hot woman,

bunny rabbit,

big green pickle,

birthday cake,

No monkeys...

another hot woman,

dog,

same big green pickle,

old man,

boat,

no monkeys...

weird hat,

another dog,

OK same big green pickle - what's with this damn pickle?!

Pause...

I reach out and take a hold of the big green pickle, the card is literally shaped like a pickle and I  open it...

I rattle down through the joke inside, it's a familiar one with a twist.

As I get to the bottom I read,

"(by the way, pickles are the new monkey)"

let me repeat that, pickles ARE the new MONKEY!

Pause...

A warm smile crept over me as I enjoyed not just humor of the card but the humor and love of God who just showed himself to me in a very small way that had a very big impact on my heart at that moment.

This faith stuff, the ways God works, is sometimes so counterintuitive that many times we miss out. Not unlike a small revelation having a big effect on my heart, was the fact that the pickle was the monkey I was looking for. But if I hadn't paused long enough to act on that repeated nudging I felt and just dismissed it as a pickle, which was not the thing I was looking for, I would have totally missed out on the monkey.

As I said before God never ceases to amaze me. I pray that we all, myself included, can keep our eyes and more importantly our hearts open to recognize His nudgings. 

Thank you God!

Wow! God NEVER ceases to AMAZE me!

Wow! God never ceases to amaze me! It is so very cool, so very beautiful that this is how He's made creation, that this is how He's made us and how He's made His relationships with us!

It never ceases to amaze me

It is so awesome that our amazement, that our love and excitement of God's love is never-ending. It always renews. It always feels just as good or even better than before. What a beautiful thing!

"...God keeps renewing the promise and setting the date as today."

- Hebrews 4:7

I am speaking at Agua Viva tonight, my "crazy" friend Amalio's church project and I have been concerned with what I was going to say, not so much being nervous, but rather thinking I need to spend time to outline out what I want to say - you see I had a vision before I decided to engage God on this. I kind of couched this under the guise of I need to spend time praying and outlining with Him. Don't get me wrong if we include Him it's gonna be right. But what is amazing is that I had a particular notion which has now totally evolved based on 5 separate times when God entered my heart this last week. 

Each of these 5 experiences have now shaped what God wants me to say and it is beautiful. In fact right now, the morning of the day I go speak, I am not preparing an outline. I am sharing. I am sharing His story, the same thing I have felt called to do over the last couple months, and the same thing He wants me to do tonight. But the story I will now present tonight, is so much more complete than the story I had in mind a week ago. Thank you God!

My five gifts this week:

1. Someone said to me (I'm paraphrasing so please forgive any mistakes I may make in remembering), "Wow that's cool, but it makes me wonder. My story isn't as interesting as yours. It's not that dramatic."

My heart sank when I heard this. And all I could say at the time was, "What do you mean, you're creating your story right now, every day." I wanted this person to realize that if they truly team up with God the story can't help but be interesting - it's God's story after all.

What I realized later at home that night was, I was planning to focus on just the return to faith part of my story, which is crazy and dynamic (an atheist of 18 years turned believer over the miraculous dismissal of all penalties of a DWI even when known by all parties to be guilty.) But what I realized that night is, yeah it's a cool story but what's even cooler is all the stuff God did in me after that - that was just the beginning and anyone and everyone can have God intercede in their lives just by connecting with Him regularly!

2.  I spoke on the phone with my first serious girlfriend, a beautiful girl (inside and out) from my second year of college. We went separate ways after breaking up, in which I wasn't very loving nor did I treat her very well at that time but God has given me the gift of rekindling that friendship or at least reconciling anything that needs to be reconciled, which is great. By the way, she is doing well and has a beautiful family now.

We talked for 2 hours the other night catching up and talked a lot about God, it was great. One thing she said to me though was, "Now I know how you returned to faith but I still want to know what your faith looks like."

Again a beautiful nudging from God to quit focusing so much on this story of the DWI, but to share the more important stuff, His stuff, and how I see Him all the time, what I do to engage Him and how He responds. He always responds and:

He never ceases to amaze me!

3 & 4. I have had 2 friends, Amalio and Stevie B share the following with me:

"...do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you."

- Matthew 10:19

5. And finally what truly is amazing is that God literally showed me last night that I can do this without a script because He will be helping me. 

I came home from a night out with a friend and thought I needed to get to bed early, so I could get up and prepare. I still thought I needed to prepare some (sometimes we don't get it, we don't trust enough, or we think it's going to happen one way but God chooses another way, which we don't see but it is a more powerful way.)

Last night God did that. I came home to find about 5 to 6 responses to my video on You Tube, including the long-awaited video response from Phil, as well as lot's of commentary, and a handful of new subscribers to my videos.  I watched Phil's and it was excellent as most of his vids are, but curiously enough he talked about a faith experience that was really different than mine, or at least how my faith came about. So instead of getting to bed early to rest up to prepare this morning God prepped me right then and there.

I jotted down a few notes, started to plan out a response to Phil and then just felt very compelled to scrap the notes and just start shooting a response. It was amazing. With no script in place I loaded up the video program and hit record. What I found later as I wrapped up my response was truly amazing - I had in "one take", no edits, just talked for 20 minutes in front of the camera in a response that was honest, authentic and introduced the much more important parts of my story than the DWI. It really became a testimony to my experience with God! It was awesome as this is what I believe I'm called to do, to simply share how He reveals Himself as I know it from my  experience.

I was actually up until 3:00am doing this (so yeah - no getting up early today), as I had to break up the video and re-save it into 2 videos. You Tube has a 10 minute limit that I didn't know about.

(Anyway, go to my page and Phil's to check all this out - addresses in previous blog below)

I now feel that I am truly prepared for tonight and that God will speak through me to say whatever ever needs to be said and most importantly, it will be about his continuous love and the amazing things he does every day for us!

... He keeps renewing the promise and setting the date as today!

not sure what's got into me...

Hello everyone,

I've been given a hard time for not having any new content! Well the usual excuse...but that's not to say God hasn't been at work in my life this week since my last post. I've got several anecdotes to share but will have to wait until a later time to write all that out. My point in today's post is that for whatever reason (God's direction most likely) I stumbled across You Tube the other night. Now you might be saying, "What you've never heard of You Tube?!" No that's not the case, I just found myself surfing it a bit for the first time this week and I stumbled across a video post entitled "Why I don't believe." Needless to say watched. Needless to say I felt compelled to reply, given the fact that I too, used to be an atheist. 

The communication between me and this other person, "phil", has been very interesting so far. I think it's fascinating how people project their own thoughts and own prejudices on others. If you want to check this out you can at the following addresses below.

Please note that while you can see prejudices projected on me (in the first replies from "phil") what you cannot see was the prejudices I projected on him. I shamefully admit I was expecting a much different response to my video than what I got. I was expecting him to attack and try to make me look like an idiot, I even found myself worrying about what have I started, and will I have the answers I need to "save face" - I felt very uneasy after doing this.

When you see what happens though it truly is a testimony to God's work through the gift and teachings of Jesus. If we love one another, ie not pre-judge, not attack regardless of huge differences of opinion, if we just step out and engage each other as human beings who want the same peace and love as we do then that's what transpires. I have to admit the smiley face "phil" sent really was the last thing I expected to get.

Watch if you'd like and if you feel compelled to reply I ask you to consider your words before writing.

...for out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.

- Matthew 12:34 TNIV

The video I felt compelled to respond to can be found at:

www.youtube.com/user/philhellenes

scroll down on the lower right corner to find a post, "Why I Don't Believe"

The following link is my own step out into the video world which was an introduction of myself to "phil".

www.youtube.com/user/BrianZiska

God Bless!

what does it look like to confirm something?

Another spiritual opportunity presented itself to me today completely out of the blue. I don't want to discuss details yet but it's something that would definitely stretch my faith and current gifts, it's also something that would move me deeper in this moment of feeling God calling me to risk more and engage in my calling more. Even though I've experienced it many times it still never ceases to amaze me how beautifully God puts things together!

This opportunity relates back to something I've been working on since last month when a "random" stranger placed his hands on me and gave me some wise words to ponder.

Rather than write tonight I thought let my actual notes be the body of my blog. My notes are some of my thoughts and contemplation over the verse that was given to me by that "random" stranger after telling me something about myself.

...OK, I don't know how to put an image in a post yet so for now I'll just type the verse here and work on my analysis note photos another time.

...Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble...

- 2 Peter 1:10,  TNIV

a moment of Humility...

I learned yesterday that I failed a friend, just after feeling really good about my spiritual progress. I truly felt this failure in my heart. Interestingly I have lately been drawn to the idea of time - I've been all over the map with this in ways to crazy to get into right now but some words I stumbled across in Hebrews last week kept resonating in my head (and heart) as I was made aware of my shortcomings.

...today, please listen, don't turn a deaf ear...

- Hebrews 4:7,  The Message

While this statement can't help be a call to be present in the moment, we sometimes forget to do so (or are afraid to do so, or frankly are to selfish to do so). I am currently feeling this, feeling challenged to do this, to be this, to be more present in the moment to not turn a deaf ear on God or others He has put in front of me. 

I don't think it's any accident that I just now am starting this blog, that I am feeling called to act, that I am feeling called to engage people more, the time is now, when we hear God calling. So as we try not to turn a deaf ear we can also gain motivation and hope in God's words  just before the above passage:

...God keeps renewing the promise and keeps setting the date as today...

- Hebrews 4:7,  The Message

I now, with more intention, look forward to the chance God puts before me today!

A voice from the past

So this week I reconnected with an old acquaintance in Christ named Amalio. Only I don't think I was "in Christ" when we first met. You see, at the time we met I was just returning to faith in God after being an atheist for about 18 years. 

I had a particularly difficult event happen in my life and through God's love and a series of "coincidental miracles" I experienced God reveal Himself to me in a way that was so strong that I would walk with Him the rest of my days - more on that part of my story later.

So, this guy Amalio...this crazy Christian guy came into my life back then, which was about three years ago. He was the contractor on one of my projects. (I'm a partner in a small architecture firm) On this job I had to go out to the jobsite 5 or 6 times to answer questions and help the guys with some of the drawings. I think it was the third or fourth time out that Amalio shared his faith with me by telling me some of the other things he was doing for God. At that time he was helping out on a ranch that acted as a retreat for underprivileged kids to go learn about God, learn to ride horses and, I even think I remember, something about bull riding. But one thing I'm certain I remember, was the fact that I wanted to see more of what God was doing through Amalio.  But as usual during that time (and as happens often now), life got busy and I let this thought and Amalio drift away. I never did go out to that ranch.

Well lately I've really felt God calling me to step out more. To put into practice what He has taught me through scripture, sermons, classes, small group studies and leadership retreats. Starting this blog is just one of the steps I am taking and I will share more on all this as time goes by. (By the way ask me about time sometime, it's a subject that has been on my mind lately and is also part of God's nudging me to step out.)

Anyway I'm getting off-track, but that's just because this is my first post and there's so much to tell and so little time - kidding. There's just a lot of background info that I always feel is not only relevant but required. I'll try to trust God here and just tell my daily stories and know that all the pertinent info will work it's way in, if not only in my writing, but in any comments and conversations this blog generates. So back to Amalio...

He called me up at a moment when I am in the middle of being called to do more. He tells me he is working on a church renovation and that he has been shut down by the city inspectors because he does not have a permit and now he needs an architect to draw up some plans to get the permit. So he remembered me from 3 years ago and gave me a call.

I couldn't help but feel God at work here as Amalio told me his situation. Only I thought I was just supposed to help with a church design. So I went out to the jobsite to see what was going to be involved. The project was a renovation of an old warehouse and of course nothing was up to code. Amalio and his pastor walked me around showing me what they were doing. Amalio had to translate to the pastor as he didn't speak English, only Spanish. When I started telling him what the city would likely make them do to bring this whole thing up to code, that crazy Christian I remembered came back out. (Please note I say "crazy" here out of love) Amalio told me, "Brian, we're doing this thing all on faith. We know God's going to show up and whatever He wants for us He will provide. It's been amazing what He's already done here." I must have looked puzzled as I gazed across the unfinished 2x4 walls.

Well this part wasn't so crazy but what he was about to share was. I honestly don't think I'd be calling Amalio crazy out of love if God hadn't changed my life and my own heart so, I'd just be calling him crazy. 

He went on to say that God's love had not only changed the members of this church in incredible ways but even the whistle-blower on the project was to become an integral part of this story. He told me a woman lived across the street and she would call in complaints to the police about the noise from the church services and events held there. Amalio told me this was crazy and that they weren't that loud, in fact he said once you got 10 feet away from the building you really couldn't hear anything. This woman who was complaining lived all the way across the street and back a few houses. So she calls the police again one night to complain and they arrive at her house. They think she's crazy because they can't hear a thing. "what are you talking about lady, you can't hear anything way over here" But the woman then asks them to follow her back into the house to her daughter's bedroom. Strangely once inside the bedroom you could hear perfectly what was happening in the church. Strange enough right?, well what I also heard was the fact that this woman's daughter who was 16 now, had some difficulties at birth and couldn't walk or speak. Due to her condition she wasn't able to communicate and was not open at all to having strangers in her room batting at them or crawling away. The police witnessed this as well as Amalio and members of the church.  Amalio told me they immediately began to pray for this girl and her mother and by the time they left that night the girl had for the first time smiled and held the hands of strangers. God's love was definitely at work here!

Amalio told me after that, that they plan to continue to visit this girl and her mother and to continue their prayers for them and with them. 

He told me, "Brian you see, even if we can't meet code and the city doesn't give us the permit it doesn't matter. God's already done so much here.  Even if this isn't THE building that we willend up in, we will keep working to build God's church and spread His love!"

He also asked me to come share my story and testimony to his church and he would translate for me as the church is entirely hispanic. I'm not sure where this is going, but I do know that God has a plan for me to share my experiences and to help others see Him, for He is definitely at work all around us. 

Thank you God for this opportunity, I am planning to sit in on one of their services next weekend!