wow. A lot has changed.

I don't even know where to begin. Today is August the 11th 2011 and I'm writing this in my apartment in Nashville TN. SO MUCH of my life has changed. I packed up and left my incredible friends (aka my family) back in Arkadelphia, and I miss them so much. I think about our crazy adventures so often, but I know Jesus has a huge plan for me here. Being in this city and in this environment is giving me more and more of a taste of what the real world is like. What I see isn't that great. Growing up sucks. What's amazing  is even though the reality of what is out there in the world is slightly intimidating I'm seriously not afraid. I know Jesus is more real than anything I'll ever see or experience in this existence or the next one. Originally, when I was anticipating the move here I thought I was coming here to seek a glorious path that would lead to the worlds standard of success. Man oh man. God changed my heart FAST. I don't even desire that anymore. At all. My main goal here is for every person I come in contact with to know that they are truly and passionately loved by God. Everything else doesn't seem important in comparison to that. The reality of what this world is hasn't changed but.....it's kind of a beautiful thing....in the midst of the chaos we've created. God has blessed me, and us as believers, SO MUCH by sending us to dark places to be light for people. I'm holding His flame so His light can shine. People ask questions and I give answers. I listen to their stories. See life through their eyes if only for a moment just to lead their eyes to love...to a cross. If people won't come to a building labeled "Church" then we are blessed with the duty of taking the church (us) to them. Dang. How beautiful is that? We have the best job in the world. Everyday is like Christmas because we get to be messengers of good news to people. Bring them a gift that was first given to us. Hope. Then once that takes root in their heart it quickly turns to love which bears fruit of praise...so the cycle can start all over again with them. With every person who's life is touched (and if you've smiled at a stranger today you've touched a life) you have the kind of power to change that life, to send a pebble into a pond and make waves of change in the course of time for that particular person. We've been given an incredible responsibility. (if you're a believer). We are responsible for making waves of change in the name of Jesus for the Kingdom of God. The title sounds intense but the work is simple. Love the Lord. Love people. Pray for your enemies. Humble yourself before the cross. Be a servant. Make the goal of everyday to make Jesus smile, and walk by faith. So many times we over complicate things, but there it is in a nutshell. Hope you're blessed by this.I'll give more stories about life, love and Nashville soon. Until then Love and peace my friends. Love and Peace.

And ….this is our life.

*Wednesday night: Last night before finals. Stephanie and I had locked ourselves in my room to study for our last finals of the semester. Shortly after crawling into our cave of social depravity my roommates decided they wanted to watch “Phantom of the Opera”. Our walls being paper thin Steph and I decided to go outside on the front porch to study. While being on the front porch for about 5 minutes a man approached us. He explained to us that he was stranded and had no gas or money to get back home. I then called a friend who had a gas can. As we were waiting for the friend to arrive we were able to talk to this man about his life and his family. We found out that he has three kids and was in town for a job interview but sadly it fell through. When our friend Cole arrived with the gas can, the man asked if we could pray for him, so we did. Since we had left over beanie babies from our courage house excursion we were able to bless him with those as well as the gas, $14, and a blanket.

If we weren’t outside because of astronomy, and media law we would have never been able to talk to that dude and pray with him….God straight up used media law and astronomy to do those things….wow….Jesus you are so sneaky.

*Thursday was a great day. I passed Media Law…that was a miracle in itself, but also Kole and I got to start recording “untouched” I think it’s going to be great.

*Friday….Meg, Steph, and I were just sitting there…..and I was staring at a blanket and the thought came to my mind that some homeless person in Hot Springs needs that blanket…after voicing this thought the three of us piled into my car, prayed, and headed to Hot Springs. Once there I got this massive feeling that we needed to go to this church so we went there and looked all over the place for a homeless person possibly sleeping by a trash can or on the steps. We saw no one. As we were about to head out I said “God why did you have me come here.” Then Meg replied” Rhyan there is someone walking” I looked up and sure enough there was someone walking in front of the church on the road. We rolled down the windows of my car and asked him if he was cold. He stopped and looked very confused. Then he approached the car, and we asked again. “Sir are you cold?” He looked at us for a while and with a sad expression said “no”. We asked if there was anything we could do to help him, and again he said “no”. He turned and walked away, and not wanting to press the issue we left as well. I have no idea what God wanted to do with him, but it’s so cool how real God is and He lead us to that church and that town for a reason at that specific time. Dang God you are amazing.

Another cool thing God did that night was with my friend Meg. She was looking desperately for a gift to bless a friend of hers with. I can’t go into details but Meg was looking for a very specific gift that was hard to find. Along the way to look for Homeless people Steph and I had to pee VERY bad so we stopped at Wal-Mart. We mad a v-line for the bathroom and behold it was being cleaned out so we turned down this “random” isle to avoid awkward confrontation with the janitor and on that “random” isle lay the gift Meg was looking for…that’s right. It was the ONLY one in the store. God used pee, and a dirty bathroom to bless one of Meg’s friends….dang….so sneaky.

*Saturday: This was the day of the gig in Prescott, AR.  The youth minister at First Baptist Church Prescott, Ar asked me to come lead worship at his church this night, so with the help of my friend Jackson we did. It was so cool! I spent about 3 hours getting a set list, and power point put together, but once I got there I really felt God pushing me to toss both and just worship..So we did. Jackson and I got a few songs in order but really just winged the whole service, and it was amazing! We just worship and shared stories and the kids really got into it near the end. There was a time where they were asked to sit and just pray and do business with God, and you could just tell the Holy Spirit was moving. After it was all said and done we got to go socialize and play with them which was awesome. And Steph and I got to talk to some of the women serving food and found out the lady I had been talking to for the last 20 minutes is Doug Compton’s Aunt….WHAT?!?!?!?!?!? Turns out he is coming down in a few weeks to lead a d-now there and they invited me to come…wow. When Jesus opens doors He straight up Nucs those mugs. Wow. All in all amazing night.

*Sunday: Woke up this morning and had a fight with my parents…..not exactly what you want to hear right. I just go home. Really? It was over my life choices…of going to a school for worship leading…of going to where God has called me to….of dropping everything and following Jesus. My parents are amazing…don’t get me wrong…they just don’t understand how HUGE God truly is. Steph and I left for Church after telling my parents that I loved them. While walking to the car Steph asked me “I mean…are we crazy?’. Steph and I have a very similar outlook on life. We don’t want nice things…our dream is living out of a trailer and giving 80% of our income to others..even just straight up selling everything we have and do mission work. We want to be so crazy in love with Jesus Christ that nothing else in the world matters except for following Him. We arrive at church and after service was over we asked Preacher Paul (that’s what I call him) if we really are crazy. He assures us that we are not and God is going to use these experiences to teach us more about serving him. As we are talking to him 2 people came up and encouraged me about moving to TN, and Preacher Paul mentioned God might even call us to do something crazier like be a missionary in Asia (which He has already called Steph to do). The entire conversation was dripping with conformation that we are on the right path and radicalism is something that won’t ever make sense to the world, but it’s something Jesus has called us to. No turning back now.

The rest of the day went on like usual…creeping out a lady on the road whom I thought was my mother…(she wasn’t), biting a hole in my pantyhose while I slept…still don’t know how I managed that, and rolling around on the floor. That night is where God again blew my mind.

Kohlton Roper…….Oh Kohlton Roper…..I simply love this guy with every ounce of my heart. Kohlton and I met about a year ago and my life will never be the same. This guy is seriously my music kindred spirit. Every time we get together…EVERY TIME God gives us an amazing song or 2. At this point in time Kohlton is unable to talk to me because of a program he is called MC, …long story / explanation…but even still we got together with Steph and Wes and just played music for about 2 hours, and God blessed us with 2 new AMAZING songs. They’re so awesome there is NO way we could get any of the credit for it. They are straight from the Holy Spirit, and I can’t wait to get in the studio and perfect them. I really feel like kids are going to be worshiping to those songs in about 5 years. Merry Christmas to us! Jesus…we so don’t deserve this. Why are You so awesome? I can’t wait to see how much fame is going to be put to YOUR name through all of this! Love you Jesus. You are the only reason that I sing.

WHAT?!?!?

Dang Jesus...You are so sneaky.
For a very long time I have been called to ministry. I didn't know what type of ministry, until within the past 3 years. I now know that God has called me into music ministry. That is such a broad term..music ministry. It's not just about making music..good rhythms...great lyrics...and it CERTAINLY does NOT have ANYTHING to do with getting famous. That's not even close to being the point. (even though God can use that to further His kingdom in massive ways which is super gnarly when that happens =]) Music Ministry ,in my opinion, is using the talents that God has given you to further His fame and His kingdom. That can mean so many different things as well, but here recently God has been showing that I can use all the concerts and coffee house gigs to raise money for charity. So far He's raised roughly $230 for the courage house and next I hope to raise money for my food for the hungry kid Hawa. My fellow adopters, and I hope to raise enough money to get her and her village a cow....ANYWAYS that's totally not the point of this post. Long story short I feel incredibly lead to move..I'm not totally sure why, but I'm going to go, and so far God has provided a place for me to live, a job, and an opportunity to work with a band there. Also I have an opportunity to help lead worship for a church there. I'M NOT EVEN THERE YET!!! SERIOUSLY GOD?!?!? It's so cool how He is paving the road there. and on top of that this New Years I'm going with Perfect Peace Band to help them lead worship in Florida and on one of the days we are there we have the amazing opportunity to open for Lincoln Brewster. I never asked for this, but I'm super stoked to see how massively He is going to move in Florida and how He is going to change lives that week. God is huge and can do anything He wants. Sometimes I think He just does things like this in our lives and sits back like " Yeah that's right...I am God...I'm awesome...sit and rapture." =] Dang....I can't wait to worship non-stop once we see those pearly gates!
Just a side note Perfect Peace Band is amazing! If you don't know who these guys are check them out at www.myspace.com/perfectpeaceband or at their official website at www.perfectpeaceband.com

hhhmmm...we shall see

On Friday Kole and I went to go do street ministry again.  We had a pretty productive day. Not as epic as last time, but still it was pretty cool. My last post was about the amazing things God did with the courage house through the movement outreach program. Well, a part of the ministry that day was about giving away some toys to the kids there, and we did, but we still have TONS left over so Kole and I brought some extra to the streets just in case we saw some kids to make their day a little brighter. Turns out we brought them for a reason, cause near the end of  our day we saw a family with four kids! Four….pretty close in age too.  I’m not going to lie I felt like a creeper as I approached their van with a bag full of Beanie babies. I told the family and the kids what we were doing and asked them if they wanted some beanie babies. They of course said yes. Who wouldn’t want babies full of beans? It made me smile to see them smile and they looked like they genuinely appreciated it. They were too cute. Also, while we were playing a lady who owns an art gallery in town asked Kole and I if we would like to come play. I think we are going to accept the offer and just go play worship music. God opened up that door for a reason..I’m kind of excited to see what He does with it. :)...hhmmm

I did not see this one coming..

Oh The Movement. ...The very .foundation on which you are built is incredible in itself, but the fact that God has perfectly interwoven each of our drastically different lives to do what He did today just blows my mind. The movement is a small "mission group" that is located in Arkadelphia, AR. With the calling of God, the heart He gave to Stephanie Watts, and a lot of help from Lake Point Church The Movement has turned into a life changing community and completely awesome molding experience. It's hard to explain, honestly, but the important thing is what God did today. Today was a day we planned on going out in the community and hand out candy canes, sing carols, and just spread some Christmas cheer. Well, we went to a few nursing homes and sang and that was awesome, but my favorite part was when we went to the courage house. We were so incredibly blessed to be able to decorate the inside for the kids. (We got them all the decor from a garage sale my parents were having. No one bought the Christmas stuff and I'm totally convinced that it was meant to be.) We put twinkle lights EVERYWHERE and gave away some beanie babies to them as well. It seriously blessed me I think more than it did them. After we got home we just sat on the porch and worshipped God for who He is. Then my best friend Stephanie and I just did dishes and talked about how awesome God is.
When i think of everything God is doing in and around my life I can't comprehend why in the world He chose me to be apart of this amazing adventure we call life with him. I am so blessed, beyond measure, to be surrounded by all these amazing people, all these amazing opportunities, and all these amazing plans God is slowly unveiling before my eyes. I can't wait to see what crazy awesome thing He does next. This post does this day no justice since I'm writing it at 2:45am, but you at least have a taste while it's still fresh. God bless you guys!

"when suffering hits that's when the party begins."

So I was reading out of Crazy Love today and Francis Chan brought up an amazing story in Acts. It goes a little something like this..

"They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. The apostles left the Sanhedrin, REJOICING because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ." -Acts 5: 40-42

DANG!! Talk about conviction! Joy has never been a  problem for me, but when it comes to suffering I tend to crawl into myself not wanting to talk to anyone.But I should be singing songs of praise! On top of that I should be thankful for my suffering. The fact that I am LUCKY enough or even counted worthy to suffer in the name of Jesus is the biggest compliment anyone could ever bestow on you and me. This scripture really gave me a new perspective on my attitude in the midst of suffering. My prayer is that, next time you and I face troubles we follow the example of the apostles, and Job and just worship like there is no tomorrow. This is my prayer for all of us today. What do ya think. You wanna join me?