Opening the Box (Proceed with Caution)

In a time where abortions are an everyday norm and aborted fetuses are picked through and sold for parts, this blog called, Opening the Box (Proceed with Caution) from a dear friend in Colorado is a refreshingly beautiful picture of the sanctity of life, the simple faith of the redeemed, and the loving grace of a God who is sovereign and good.

Read the beautiful words of a heart exposed, which reveals the faithfulness and glory of God in the sufferings and joys of this life.  I pray that you will read this blog and that it will warm, encourage, and remind your heart of steadfast truth.  If this blog blesses you, share it with others who may have experienced loss, need to be reminded of the beauty of life, even in the womb, or need assurances that God is indeed good and working throughout our sufferings and our greatest joys.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”  Jeremiah 1:5

Walking the Ivey Trail

Thank you so much for the many who have visited this site.  I hope to include new blogs here soon after a two year hiatus of life and new family dynamics.  For those new to this blog, check out: My First Blog to help you see the heart behind this blog.   This is a blog that my wife and I have been writing since the beginning of the year that journals the many changes in our life over the past 5 months.  You can read the blog at: Walking the Ivey Trial  Also, I have copied all of my blog posts from this blog to a wordpress blog that I am also attempting to get traffic with called: http://realchristianwalk.wordpress.com

Here Comes the Boom

Tonight, my wife and I watched the movie Here Comes the Boom.  Here Comes the Boom is about a teacher who decides to fight in MMA fighting to try and raise the money needed to save the music program and music teach at the school he teaches.  I personally am not a big fan of MMA and UFC fighting but in this movie I was moved in a way I didn't expect.  We live in a world today that does everything to strip the masculine from the man.

Within this movie, one of the MMA teachers quotes Genesis 32:24 while sitting down to dinner with other fighters.   He tells the story of how Jacob wrestled with God all night even to the point of receiving a dislocated hip and because of his tenacity, he received God's respect.  Through watching this movie, I was reminded that men are designed to be warriors.  I am not saying that all men should engage in MMA or even that you are not a man if you are unwilling to fight physically.  The fight men were created to be a part of is the fight for what is right.  In Here Comes the Boom, the main character has to do this through actual fighting.  

It does not matter if you consider yourself a fighter or not.  I am here to say that I believe all men are engaged in a battle everyday.  The enemy has done an excellent job providing distractions, diversions, and lies that keep us from realizing the fight we are in.  I contend though that all men are in a battle every minute of their lives.  Paul says in Ephesians 6:12, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."  No matter whether you are a Christian or not, every single man on this planet is engaged in a battle.  

We are in a battle for our souls and the souls of those around us.  Why do you think that movies like Gladiator, Braveheart, Remembering the Titans, Saving Private Ryan, Die Hard, Rambo, Here Comes the Boom, and so many others elicit such a strong emotion within almost every man's heart.  We were meant to fight.  We are meant to be engage in a battle for good.  Many of the most passionate men in this world have found a passion worth fighting for whether good or evil.  Living for Jesus Christ is not something that is supposed to signify only going to church each sunday, wearing a suit, saying a prayer before a meal, and trying to live with more integrity than the next guy.  Living for Christ demands that you give your whole life over to him and live such a passionate warrior life for sharing his gospel that you are even willing to give your own life if necessary.

Greater love has no man than this, that he would lay down his life for his friends John 15:13.  Many men today wouldn't lay down their life for Jesus, more less their friends, family, or anyone else.  Selfishness and pride may bring success in this world but it will most certainly bring death in the next.  WWI and WWII are wars that many men still love to learn about.  Why? Maybe because  it was about men who were willing to sacrifice everything for righteousness, for justice, for freedom.  Isn't that what America used to stand for?  Isn't that why we used to be the best country in the world?  Our values used to be centered on God on Christ.  

Men I encourage you to take an honest look at your life and ask yourself who you have been living for.  Having you been ignoring the assault on your soul and the loved ones around you or having you been waging war with the enemy and your own sinful heart to bring truth and the gospel into this lost and dying world?  Have you been hiding behind the tv, video games, pornography, sports, job, music, cars, and more as an escape from having to truly live as a man of integrity that can bring change to the world around you?  Are you seeking the easy money, easy job, easy life, and easy choices over doing the hard things that set a man a part for Christ?  

I personally struggle with all these things each day.  There are many days that I feel as though the warrior has been all but beat out of me.  I feel weak.  I feel tired.  I struggle for purpose.  During these times I reach out to Christ and His scripture.  He gives me strength.  He reminds me who I am.  Like Peter, he reminds me that I can be the rock on which He is building the church.  Like Paul, He shows me that I am never too far gone for Him to transform me into a warrior for his kingdom.  Like Jacob, he wrestles with me to remind me who I really am and why I was created so I can rekindle the fight He instilled in my soul.  

We need to rekindle our warrior souls.  We need to revive our fight for righteousness in Christ.  There are so many things in this world worth us standing up and fighting for.  Men we need to fight for our sons.  We need to fight for the purity of our daughters.  We need to fight for the lost souls around us.  We need to fight for those locked in slavery with no voice or way to freedom.  We need to fight for the orphans who have never known what it feels like to be loved.  We need to fight for little girls, young ladies, and women who have been sold into sexual slavery and prostitution.  We need to fight for the billions starving and dying due to lack of food and medicine.  Yes, men there is many things in this world worth fighting for, even dying for.    

The tagline in the movie poster says, "No one will fight for his students like Mr. Voss."  No will fight for all these aforementioned people like you.  WIll you allow Christ to show you the man he created you to be.  I hope this blog inspires you and compels you to get out of your seat and get into a cause.  Here Comes the Boom for Christ!

In Christ,

Greg Ivey

New Year's Resolution

I became a father this past year. As I watch my boy change, grow, and face this world with wonder and curiosity each day, I am compelled to become the father and man of God he needs me to be. This year I hope to turn a new page in my walk with Christ. The four words I want to mark my Christian walk this year are: purity, love, discipline, and integrity. I have struggled in these areas the most in my time as a Christian and it has showed in my walk. How can I truly affect others for Christ when my own walk is the antithesis of who Jesus is?

This year I want to walk in purity. I want the guarding of my eyes and my heart from the lusts of this world to be my priority. As men, there are so many temptations surrounding us daily, beckoning us to sin, and yet I believe that in Christ we have all the strength we could ever need to stand strong. Our purity, not only affects our body but our families, our friends, our admirers, and most of all the Holy Spirit, who resides in our heart. We must become men of purity and rise above the jokes and stories in our workplaces, protect ourselves from those who believe men are programmed for infidelity, and fight against the lie that pornography doesn't damage our souls.

This year I want my life to be marked by love. As you read about Jesus in the Gospels, one thing I notice is how so many people are drawn to Him. I believe this is because Jesus lived a love that most people had never encountered before. His life was marked by compassion, healing, and truth. Whenever he convicted a heart, I believe he did it in love. Most people realized this and opened their hearts to this genuine Man of God. I want to live this kind of love. To not live in judgment, prejudice, and narrow perspectives but rather to open my heart to seeing each person as a child of God, worthy of love and compassion.

I have always struggled with being disciplined. I am a jack of all trades and master of none because I did not have the discipline to see the hard things through. Though lack of discipline has marked my past, I do not want it to mark my future. I truly believe that I can do all things through Christ and yet He requires me to trust Him and allow His strength to be utilized in me. I worked very hard in the last few months of 2012 to maintain a nightly bible study and pray journal. I was able to stay mostly consistent and saw the fruits from being disciplined in that area. I hope in this new year I can continue this trend and grow that much closer in my relationship with Christ.

Finally, I hope to live a life of integrity in all I do. This is very much tied to the other three traits I hope to improve this year. One of the definitions that I read on integrity referred to it as the opposite of hypocrisy. Ask just about any non-Christian in America why they aren't a Christian and you will usually hear something about hypocrisy. I want my life to be marked by a genuine walk with Christ. Whether someone likes me or not, I hope they would at least be able to say that I have a genuine walk in my Christianity. I am portraying Christ to the world and there was no hypocrisy in Jesus or His ministry.

As I walk in this new year, I hope to relay all The Lord is teaching me in these areas. May each one of you be blessed and uplifted in your own relationship with Christ this year. In this time of resolutions, be careful not to get caught up in the resolutions of this world (losing weight, saving money, working less, etc.). Not that these things are bad, merely that I hope you will put more focus on eternal applications than worldly ones. My hunch is that all your worldly goals will work themselves out in the process of growing closer in your walk with Jesus. May you all have a blessed and happy new year."!

Blessing,
Greg

Striving to be a True Man

This past week I turned thirty years old and upon entering a new decade of my life, I took some time to survey the last decade.  As a man, husband, and now father, I have struggled with my role and responsibilities as a leader of my home.  I have not been the top money earner most of our marriage.  I feel like I have dropped the ball as spiritual head of the household more times that I would like to acknowledge.  I also have not always been the husband I should've been or even wanted to be.  To be honest, I have much room for improvement.

Tonight, we watched the movie Hope Springs and I was convicted by some of the marital issues dealt with in the movie.  Though I did not start my marriage well, I would like to get to the end of my life knowing that I loved my wife and children well.  Everyday truly feels like a battle.  There are so many distractions in life seeking to steal our time, love, and attention.  There are so many excuses of why not to lead well, love well, or work hard.  I don't want to be one of those men with a laundry list of excuses for why I was not the man I should've been.

I spent the last year of my life striving to live differently than I had before.  I have worked hard to be faithful in my job, faithful to love my wife well, faithful in preparing to become a dad, faithful in pursuing ministry, and faithful in writing this blog.  I can tell you that there have been many days that I failed at each one of these pursuits and yet there were many more days where I held true in being faithful.  Throughout this time of growing into the man I am suppose to be I learned that I cannot become that man without seeking the one who created me.

How can I truly understand who I am as a man if I never seek the God who created men?  How can I truly understand what it means to be a husband unless I learn from the one who created marriage?  How can I truly understand what it means to be faithful in accomplishing the task before me unless I understand what Jesus accomplished for me on the cross?  The answer is that I can't.  In order to become the man I want to be, I have to seek Christ.

Unfortunately, as men, many times our downfall is that culture tells us we have to become men on our own and we believe them.  The stereotype is that men never need to ask directions.  We also fall prey to the stereotype that we don't need anyone correcting or reproofing us.  Men are capable of overcoming any struggle, situation, or problem, on their own.  We are man hear us roar.  Sadly these lies are exactly why so many men have no idea what it means to be a man of Christ.

Contrary to popular belief, becoming a man requires the humbleness to be teachable.  Being a true man requires the willingness to submit and even fall to your knees in seeking direction from God.  Being a true man requires loving those around you in a way that breaks your own pride while healing the hearts of the ones you love.  Being a true man requires admitting your mistakes, asking for forgiveness, and turning from your area of folly.  Being a true man is hard.  Being a true man requires courage.  Being a true man, like Jesus, is probably the hardest challenge a man will ever face and yet being a true man is what we are all called to be.

As I enter this new decade of my life, I will strive to be a true man in Christ.  I love the movie Courageous and believe that all men should have to watch it.  I believe that the men in Courageous have figured out the path of being true men.  I have included the closing speech of Courageous because I believe it lays out so well what it means to be a true man in Christ.  I pray that if you are a man who is reading this blog tonight, that your heart would be stirred to be the man outlined in this speech.

Blessings,

Greg  

Praying the Prayer

I must admit that I have been very weak when it comes to the discipline of prayer.  Many times I have throw up little prayers to God each day in moments of need but I have been very bad about spending quality time with my Savior and Lord.  I also must admit that many is the time I told someone i would pray for them and I forgot to.  I don't intentionally miss spending time in prayer with the Lord each day and I believe that is the reason i have not been praying each day.  I have not been intentional in my prayer life.  This past few weeks I have been intentionally doing studies on the Bible and prayer.  I want this area of my walk to be transformed and I believe that my lack of consistent prayer life is one of the biggest detriments to my walk right now.

In the Bible, prayer is one of the main indicators of a close relationship with God.  The Old Testament prophets received the word of God directly from praying and seeking God's word for them.  The book of Psalm is essentially a large book of prayers mostly written by David, a man after God's heart.  You could always tell whether a king in the Old Testament was going to be Godly or not when you saw whether he allowed the high places of false god's stand or whether he destroyed the high places and proclaimed the kingdom only for the true God.  Jonah's life was literally spared due to prayer and many others also.  Jesus' ministry is marked by His moments of solitude in prayer, His followers desire to learn how to pray, and the prayers he gave on the cross.  The early church was known for their prayers and Paul's ministry was bathed in and ultimately guided by his answers to prayers through the Holy Spirit.

I think it is safe to say that the Bible puts a high priority on prayer.  Why is this?  Well for starters, prayer is the one way we are able to talk directly to God and receive word from Him.  Through our prayers we are able to both pray for our own provision and intercede for others.  The Bible is clear that many of us do not have because we do not ask.  Why is it that, even though we have direct access to God, and the Bible makes it clear that He wants to hear from us and to answer our heart cries, many of us choose not to pray?  Is it maybe true that most of us wrongly believe, though we would never admit it, that God is looking down on us from a distance (as the popular song written by Julie Gold in 1985 speaks about) and that He is not really able to answer our prayers?

I used to believe that praying was a gift.  Some people had the gift of intense desire to pray and communicate with Jesus and that most people did not have this gift.  The Bible is clear that prayer is not a gift but rather something every Christian should desire to do.  In fact, the Bible goes as far to say that those who don't have a desire to pray may need to check their hearts and make sure they know the Savior in the first place.

If you are like me and have struggled in your prayer life for many years, I hope you will change that today.  Maybe even let your first prayer be, "Lord, grow in my heart a great desire to come to you more in prayer.  Show me in your Word the importance of prayer and how I should pray to you.  Amen."  I highly recommend four points of help that have guided me in my pursuit of a more passionate prayer life.

First, I suggest you flip through the Psalms and when you find a psalm that you can identify with, pray it to the Lord.  Make the psalm your own prayer.  This is a quick a great way to begin praying consistently especially if you don't know what to pray.

Second, while you are praying through the Psalms, I recommend you camp out in Luke 11:1-13 where Jesus' followers ask Him to teach them about prayer.  Take the words of Jesus and apply them to your own prayer life.  Take the model prayer and break it down into what Jesus is saying in each part and then take each part (like glorifying God, Asking for provision, asking for forgiveness, etc) and pray it in your own words.

Third, I highly suggest taking the time to study what the Bible in general has to say about prayer.  There are many devotions, books, and resources on prayer in the Bible.  Also you could use something like www.openbible.info to find scriptures that speak directly to prayer.

Last but not least, I highly suggest you start a prayer journal.  By using a journal, you will be able to see what you have prayed and see how God has answered it.  Also, it is great for writing down all those prayer requests that you receive and then it serves to remind you of those prayer request so that you will never again tell someone you are going to pray for them and then not.

I hope through my own struggle with prayer and pursuit of a more passionate prayer life, your own prayer life might be ignited and/or enriched.  I thank each one of you who read this blog and pray for this ministry the Lord has given me.  I would love to hear and be able pray for any requests you have.  May the Lord bless you and may you gain a closer relationship with Jesus than you have ever had before.

Blessings,

Greg

Restorer of my Soul

I have to admit that I have been avoiding this blog for a while.  I honestly can't tell you why other than I have felt like I have been in a rut for a while.  I am still doing ministry, attending church, and leading chapel every once in a while at work but I have really been running on autopilot lately.  I have felt disconnected and disjointed.

Today was my week to lead chapel at work and I had really been wrestling with doing it.  To be honest, I really didn't want to do it.  I had not picked up my guitar in months and I had no idea what to do.  This morning I was really dragging half because of bad sleep and half because I did not want to face my responsibility.

As I sat in the shower, I mulled over what to do at chapel.  I finally came up with the idea of doing one of the videos from the book Beautiful Outlaw.  I decided to do the video on Trueness.  I decided to take my guitar and a few worships songs with my computer on the way out just to leave the option of doing worship available.  Then, probably for the first time since working at Selah, I decided to take the morning to prepare the chapel service.  I reread the chapter I was doing the video on, I watched the video, prepared questions, and put together a worship set that I even practiced before the service.

All of these things served to align my heart back on my Lord.  After finishing my preparations, I spent sometime in prayer.  It took me time to bring my heart back to where it needed to be fully focused on Jesus.  Once I reached this point, I had to take time to still my heart.  I sat on the porch when I went back up to the house.  The Lord fully calmed my heart through a gentle loving cat.  When the time came to for chapel to start, I was exactly where I needed to be.

Today showed me two things.  First, when you allow your heart to distance from the Lord, the road back takes time.  I had to take time to be prepared for the chapel.  I did not wake up on fire and ready.  It takes a lot longer to restart a fire from a cooling ember than to maintain the fire.  Second, that our Lord is gracious and good.  As soon as I brought my heart back to where it needed to be, He blessed me.  Truly He blessed me even more than I ever imagined He would today.  I could truly see Him moving and felt Him working both through the worship and the lesson in a way I had not seen up to this point in chapel.

I walked into doing this chapel with hesitation and the desire to take a break for a while after it to walking out of chapel filling recharged, reminded, and convicted of who I am and how ministry is part of who I am in Christ.  The Lord reignited my heart today because I open my heart and surrendered again to Him today.  Jesus said in each of the synoptic gospels deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him.  I submit that this must be done daily because each day we choose whether to follow Jesus or ourselves.

If you have felt distant from Jesus lately, I hope you will take this moment right now to reconnect with Him.  Jesus is good and loving and has been waiting for you to receive Him again.  I hope you will choose Jesus today.  Let Him convict you of your sins, restore you back to right paths, and recharge you in your walk.

Blessings,

Greg iVey