thoughts on getting HIGH ((not a poem))

HAVE you ever been high?  Do you know people who do get high?  Do you hang out with them?  IF you've done any of these then you know that it's a crazy trip whether you ride or just watch.  They do things they normally wouldn't do.  They seem to jump out of their skin.  And sometimes if you don't join in, you start feeling curious wondering what you would've been like if you had.  You may wish you had tried it just once.  Now this whole time I bet you were thinking of getting high with some type of drug like marijuana or something.  That would be a good discussion but that's not what I was talking about.

OK, I just got back from a music festival called Creation Festival Northeast (2007) and it is a Christian music festival where around 100,000 christains gathered to enjoy God's Creation, worship, grow, and have a full God experience.  I can tell you that most of the people there felt something inside even if it was just planting a seed.  But for the rest, experiences like this is like being introduced to a new type of drug.  You feel the Holy Spirit filling you up with the words you've been hungering for.  You feel like going crazy because you've never felt this way before.  You start doing things you know you'd never do in front of your friends, but here it doesn't matter; and you know it.  You raise your hands to the sky, you jump, dance, clap like there's no tomorrow and you don't feel embarrassed in the least.  You unfold; before you know it you're out of your skin.  You may cry and be humbled, naked before the LORD and you know it's ok.  And some who don't clap, dance, or anything go home wishing they had.

NOW this is all good.  You feel renewed and filled.  All sadness is gone.  Well what happens when you go home and you know you're high?  You hide it.  Your parents can't find out and if you're successful, it works and if you're super careful, no one at school will know you were high either.  The high that people get from these experiences like Creation is exactly the same as the high from a drug.  If you're not true to all you breathe and the faith you claim at a seminar or at the shows then you will not stay high for long.  A lot of people return to the real world and still wallow in the wrongs they swore they would change as soon as they get home.  Because they weren't true before the LORD at the band's "main stage" then no one at home can see the change so absolutely no one is reached.

I'M not saying that I've never done any of this.  I think every true and untrue Christian has done this before.  Satan uses our old selves against us after such wonderful experiences.  He throws the things you said you'd give up right back at you in the face so you fall again, so you hate yourself again, so you go back to cutting, sex, porn or whatever just to make the "pain" go away.  He WANTS you to HATE yourself.  But if you come back after say Creation and you firmly tell yourself and God that you wish not to fall, then you can overthrow those stumbling blocks that Satan puts before you to push you off God's path.  Creation, retreats, seeing Christian bands, and mission trips do not have to be just a HIGH.  It can be a permanent ride.  Sure you may have downs like on a rollercoaster, no one but God is perfect so of course we're going to fall, but God is there to help you back up the next hill. 

NEXT time you return from a festival or mission trip and you feel completely energized with the Holy Spirit, don't let your battery run out.  Keep refueling and praying.  Don't let it be a fad for a week before you go back to following the ways of the world.  God chose us to be the ones to spread the good news of him, not for just one week after we fill up with gas at GetGo (cuz its cheaper with our fuelperks), but to spread it every day of our lives. 

"Pardon me while I throw up.
I guess some people never grow up.
What happened to the salvation you claimed?
It breaks my heart to see how much you've changed."
~~Relient K = "What have you been doing lately"

People are in fact watching you whether you see it or not and it's up to us to make the first move.