Doug Van Pelt

You were tripping out...

Things are going well at GMA. Lots of friends in the music industry are here. There's so much going on, that it's a busy busy thing. But when you get a chance to sit down and really talk to friends, then it's fun. We had dinner with Pillar last night (Noah was all Ron Burgandy the whole time -- even when ordering from the waitress); and earlier in the day we had Disicple interview Andrew from Project 86. I gave them a bunch of questions so it wouldn't be hard for them, and they were able to take that and ad-lib some of their own thoughtful questions. It turned out good. We'll plan on running that in our Sep/Oct issue (and no magazine people that read this need to copy the idea and use it for their Jul/Aug issue..got that?!).
:?)

Okay, I was reading in Colossians this morning and was struck by the verse in the first chapter that describes our state prior to conversion.

"Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior."

That's the Bible truth right there. I know that I didn't always feel like I was God's enemy during my "prodigal" days. And I've talked to people that feel like "I'm cool with God," or "He's not mad at me. I'm basically a good person." But that nagging feeling of knowing that things weren't right between me and God -- that was the "alienated in your mind" thing going on. When I realized later that I was an enemy of God by being a friend of the world (and couldn't be both), then I knew I had to choose. God's made a peace treaty with us, but we have to acknowledge it and enter the covenant willingly. All is forgiven then. But up until that time, there is no reason not be be 100% evil and fulfill every lustful and greedy desire -- cuz we're not cool with God. The dead-on seriousness of that equation really spoke to me when I was on the other side of that. And since then it's been a lot of gratitude, because I didn't deserve any of this, but I get His mercy and grace. That is so cool that we are taken care of by God. He is a good Father. I'm confident He can be trusted. So, if I ever hear a command or word to do something out of my comfort zone or whatever, I know that it'll turn out good, because He's trustworthy.