Spiritual thoughts from today

Oh, how I want to know God.  There have been plenty of times that I have allowed myself to be overpowered by other desires but I still want to know Him.  I lay in bed at night knowing that there is more to life than this; that there is more of this God-infused life to live than what others may believe or speak of.  I have been praying over the last several months for God to give me a passion for Him; to ignite my heart on fire for all that He is; to illumine me with His Holy Spirit and reveal Himself to me in all His glory in a way that will not leave me unchanged.  In the quietness of my own soul, I have to wonder how much of God I really know and how much is simply what I have been taught to believe.

I hunger for a true and pure relationship with the king of kings.  I think we all, to some extent, have these preconceived notions, thoughts, and biases when it comes to God.  We all tend to favor certain portions of Scripture over others and having grown up in the church and around Christianity I know at times I have allowed myself to read His Word with a ‘been there, done that’ kind of attitude denying God the opportunity to speak new truths to me through it once again.  We make God into who we want Him to be; a God that is convenient for us and doesn’t require more than we are willing to give.  This I am convinced is nothing short of idolatry and we are missing out on discovering the enormity and awesomeness of all that God is. 

I want my soul to not only be renewed and restored by Him but I want it to become a source of refreshment for others as I seek to share what He has given me.  I want to know God in a new and fresh way, to fall in love with Him all over again and deeper than ever before so that my heart dances at the very thought of Him.  I want a relationship that is real, authentic, and life giving even when it hurts.  I want to know God stripped of as many false perceptions as possible but I also know that this kind of journey, this kind of desire, this kind of seeking after God is a journey that risks exposure, total honesty, pain, sacrifice, and even a stripping of my own identity, the identity that I have built for myself, the false selves that I let others see, the identity I think they want me to have in hopes that I’ll be accepted and loved.  But I must learn to allow God to be the only source of my identity and this I believe, while it is no easy task will bring true joy and peace like never before experienced.  I pray that He will continue to make me hungry and desperate enough to go there trusting His Spirit to give me the strength.  

When you begin to look closely you notice that scrawled out on almost every page of Scripture and displayed throughout creation is an invitation to know the author and creator of it all.  If we allow ourselves to be still long enough, we can begin to hear His faint yet constant whisper for us to come, to know Him and be known by Him, to experience a love beyond our wildest imagination, to be lost in the wonder and beauty of all that He is and all that He has given us to enjoy!  God glows.  It says the very heavens are filled with the light of His glory and Jesus, being His Son, by His very nature is brilliance.  The One that is described as the light of the world does not contain one shadow of darkness and the Holy Spirit ushers the spiritual dawn into our own hearts dispersing the shadows that seek to hide and distract us from His radiance.   God is inviting us to embrace the fullness of the life we were meant to live.  The vastness, the beauty, the power, the splendor, the glory.  Oh, that I may find this life and never settle for anything less.  

Interesting Article

We Need Boring Christians
Check out the article in the link above!  I know I haven't been posting many of my own thoughts on here recently but I feel like the video's and articles I've been putting up have done such a good job of stating just a few of the things that have been working their way through my mind lately.  Please leave your comments as I love to know what the rest of you think about these different things as we discover this life together and how it's all supposed to work.  I'll try to post some more personal thoughts on things soon.

What if?

Thoughts?!

Examine Yourself

This is an amazing sermon.  I wish more pastors in more churches would preach like this.  These are the things we need to hear and be challenged by, encouraged by, broken by and surrendered to.  I encourage you to take the time to listen but before you do, grab your Bible, a journal, and spend some time in prayer asking the Lord to open your heart, your mind, and your ears to what truth He has to speak into your life and may we all be found, through the strength of His Spirit striving to live lives of faithfulness to the fullness of the person of Jesus Christ!  It is a journey and it is one full of struggle but we must let the struggle drive us to persevere in His ways out of love for Him because He first loved us.

On Love and Obedience

“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me.  And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to Him” (John 14:21).  Our love to God will always manifest itself in obedience to Him and a desire to please Him in all things, not from some self-serving motive but an obedience conceived in the heart that arises from love.  So a couple questions emerge:  If I find it difficult to obey the Lord, do I truly love Him?  If I say that I love Him, why do I continue to do those things that are displeasing to Him?  And how can I develop this love for God and grow in love so that obedience becomes a natural result and one that I delight in?

“We love Him because He first loved us” (I John 4:19).  My love for God can only be a response to His love for me.  If I do not believe that God loves me, I cannot love Him.  Charles Hodge says, “The great difficulty with many Christians is that they cannot persuade themselves that Christ (or God) loves them; and the reason why they cannot feel confident of the love of God, is, that they know they do not deserve His love, on the contrary, that they are in the highest degree unlovely.  How can the infinitely pure God love those who are defiled with sin, who are proud, selfish, discontented, ungrateful, disobedient?  This, indeed, is hard to believe.”

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:4).  “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).  “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). 

I must continually preach the gospel to myself and daily take those sins that my conscience accuses me of to the cross and allow the cleansing blood of Jesus to wash over me and purify me.  It is only the blood of Christ that cleanses our consciences so that we may no longer feel guilty (Heb. 9:14; 10:2).  When my sense of guilt or shame is taken away because of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, I am freed up to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Not only am I free to love Him but I am motivated in a positive way so that my love becomes a spontaneous outpouring of gratitude to Him and a fervent desire to obey and please Him. 

“He who has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:47).  To the extent that I realize and acknowledge my own sinfulness and the extent to which I realize the total forgiveness of those sins and the unconditional love of my Savior, will determine the measure of my love to Him.  Heb. 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God.  My love for God must arise out of my heart as I, in faith, lay hold of the great truths of the gospel.  This faith in His great unfathomable love for me will in turn express itself in loving obedience to Him as I abide in and feed my soul on all that He is and it is this faith that acts as the very weapon used to battle against the deceitfulness and power of sin.  I may not understand God’s perfect love for me but my lack of understanding does not make His love any less real or true.  It is and will always be.  He wants me to embrace His love, to enjoy it, and delight in Him knowing that no matter what I’ve done or what’s to come, His love remains and makes me worthy of love.

No Angels

What I'm listening to: No Angels, by The Ineloquent speaking on how nothing can separate us from the love of God!  I share it hoping it will speak to your heart as it does to mine.

Romans 8:28-39

We are, we are more, 

we are more than conquerors

Who can be against me if you are with me?

No one can condemn me because you died for me

And came to life for me

No angels, no demons

No thing I've done, no thing to come

No powers, no rulers

No height, no depth, no life or death

Can separate me from your love

My soul is shaking from these wars I'm waging

When the battle is raging

I will stand, I will stand in you, your love will see me through

We are, we are more

We are more than conquerors.

One of those silly (but true) posts

So I am beginning to believe that some of the insects around here have a kind of conspiracy against me.  I usually go out for a jog in the mornings and then try to get in another little stroll in the evenings and I swear, every night, it never fails either a massive bee or an unnaturally large fly is out for blood!  I think it waits for me or at least almost always finds me and then begins some sort of suicide mission and kamikazes straight into my head!!  And not just once….numerous times, what the heck?!  And if its not dive-bombing me, its flying in circles around me making an obnoxiously loud and somewhat intimidating buzzing sound in my ears so that I’m ducking and bobbing my head about trying to dodge its attacks but it never gives up until I go running down the road swinging my pony-tail and waving my hands to shoo it away.  I am sure that to any onlookers, I look like a lunatic running down the lane back and forth seemingly for no reason but so far I have managed to escape every time but it has not been without a fight.  Tomorrow is my last night here and I hope the vile creature is ready because this time I will be prepared, and should it choose to attack once again, it will meet its demise! 

I am what I am

“For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.  On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”  (1 Cor. 15:9-10)

“By the grace of God I am what I am.”  I like this statement.  It stood out to me in my quiet time this morning and I love that Paul says this right after he says he is unworthy to be called an apostle.  Paul had been a Pharisee and had persecuted many of God’s people but Paul was created exactly the way God wanted him to be and after Jesus appears to Paul on the road to Damascus his life is forever changed.  Paul gives his life to the one true Lord and the Lord uses Paul’s zealousness for His kingdom purposes and calls Paul a ‘chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.’  When submitted to the Lord, Paul ends up doing many great things and instead of persecuting believers; he becomes an advocate for the gospel.  I find this very encouraging.

A friend once told me that we don’t need to apologize for who we are because we are exactly as God wants us to be and it is all for His glory, though we may not understand it all now, one day it will be made clear.  Yes there is plenty of refining that needs to take place and praise the Lord that He is continually working in us to form us into more of His image.  But we should be confident in who He has made us to be and embrace it rather than trying to be someone or something we’re not. 

I think of my desire for fun, excitement, adventure and passion in my life and of my longings to know and feel love, acceptance, understanding, and intimacy (just to name a few) and how outside of my life with God those things are quite a dangerous combination and can get me into a lot of trouble and lead me far away from how God intends for those characteristics and desires to be used.  But when I see these things in myself and realize that God put them within me for a reason, I am sure I cannot even begin to imagine what God could do if I would yield myself completely to Him and learn to allow Him only to meet each of my needs and desires; what amazing adventures we could go on, what perfect love I find in His presence, and what excitement there is when through His grace and by His power I see others come to know Him too!

I want to do great things for God but I feel I am so often held back by fear.  I want to be able to release all my fears to Him knowing that there is something far more important than the fear and to remember that I belong to Him and am therefore never alone.  Lord, help me to place full confidence in You knowing that You do not make mistakes and help me to know who I am in You and by Your grace to lose all consciousness of anything of self so that Your glory may be seen through me and in me.  Help me abandon myself to You realizing that you are enough and that by Your grace I am what I am.  I have tried many times to manage myself and to make myself who I think I ought to be or who I think others want or expect me to be but I continue to fail and am left feeling dissatisfied.  I want to give myself up to You – to allow You to work in me all the good pleasure of Your will, according to your promise and make me into a vessel for Your own honor, sanctified and useful for You my Master and prepared for every good work (I Tim. 2:21). Help me rest and to trust in You and Your work continually and absolutely.  I want to be a reflection of You my Savior in the unique way You have created me to show forth Your image.  

Passage of the Day

If in reading through the following Scripture you have any interesting thoughts, comments, questions, or insights that come to your mind, please feel free to share!!

Working together, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.  For he says: "In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you." Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.  We cause no one to stumble in anything, in order that no fault may be found with our ministry; on the contrary, in everything we commend ourselves as ministers of God, through much endurance, in afflictions, hardships, constraints, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, vigils, fasts; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, in a holy spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech, in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness at the right and at the left; through glory and dishonor, insult and praise. We are treated as deceivers and yet are truthful; as unrecognized and yet acknowledged; as dying and behold we live; as chastised and yet not put to death; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing; as poor yet enriching many; as having nothing and yet possessing all things.

(2 Corinthians 6:1-10)

Meditation and a Vision

“But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night” (Ps. 1:2).

To meditate:  To be attentive to God in order to see Him as He is and in turn, see ourselves in light of God’s revealed word.  We meditate to give God’s Word the opportunity to penetrate not just our minds, but our hearts, our emotions – the places where we hurt, and our will – the place where we make choices and decisions. 

“Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).

How desperately I need to find myself lost in God’s presence every day and to allow His love to surround me as He reveals Himself to me afresh.  There are times that life is downright confusing and I seriously question if everything is going to turn out all right and God assures me it will if I follow Him.  I tell Him that I need His help and He knows; that’s why He meets with me and asks me just to sit with Him for a while and to remember that He is God. I hear Him ask me if I trust Him.  I tell Him I want to and He says I have to let Him work and that it will require my cooperation; that He will give me the strength, but I have to be willing to set my own will aside.  I ask Him how I do this, for this is not an easy task.  “Come to Me everyday and lay everything at My feet.  Leave your every thought and concern with Me and I will care for you.”  He reminds me through a song that I don’t understand the fullness of His love and how He died upon the cross for my sin; that I don’t realize how much He gives me and how He would do it all again just to be with me.  He has done everything.  There is no price He did not pay; He gave His life away just to be with me.  Why at times do I feel so numb to that breathtaking truth?  Is my heart that calloused?  Have we as believers heard the story so many times that it has lost its depth of meaning?  I am ashamed by my lack of emotion at times when I think about His death and resurrection and feel that if I really grasped its awesome truth, my life would look so very different.

I want to see Him - I mean really see Him.  I want all that His is to penetrate my heart to its core and not leave me unchanged.  Nothing in life should matter as long as I am with Him.  I want Him to be my hearts one and only desire.  I ask Him to teach me how to live and walk with Him - He gives me a picture – a vision of sorts.  We are walking on a road together and I do not know where we are going but I don’t need to because He is there; we are together and that is all I want – all that matters.  But then I see things I want to bring along; things I feel I need on my journey - things I’ve been searching for all my life.  He tells me no – that I need to trust Him to provide; that I am not meant to take these things for myself but I am convinced this is it so I take what I want and it seems so perfect but what I thought I desperately needed soon becomes heavy and slows me down.  I have to work extra hard to try and keep up with my Lord but I find myself quickly falling behind.  I stumble and I fall; I’m so weary but I don’t want to let go - I need these things.  I hear the Lord calling for me - He’s calling my name – He sounds so excited and tells me to come quickly, you must see this; leave everything behind and hurry before you miss it.  I pause and in that moment of hesitation I see a multitude of creatures approaching me from all directions whispering enticing lies vying for my attention and devotion.  They begin grabbing at me and the load I’m carrying.  I try to fight them off but by this time I have little strength left.  Is it too late to escape, I wonder?  I cry out for the Lords help.  I yell out His name telling Him I need courage and strength to let go of what I’m holding onto.  I tell Him that I want Him; that I just want to enjoy His presence again and the freedom that comes from walking in His ways but I’m so weak – I can’t do it on my own.  I see Him come running down the path for me as I continue calling out for His help.  He speaks something I do not understand and shackles of heavy chains fall off my wrists and ankles; the creatures disperse and run for cover and my Lord picks me up in His arms - His eyes filled with both pain and love and asks me in a gentle voice if I’m ready to come with Him – if I’m ready to trust Him.  All I can do is shake my head in agreement as I lay my head against His chest.  As I hear the beating of His heart I feel peace once again – I know that I am where I belong – I am home.

Now to make it more than just a vision...

“Teach me, O LORD, the way of Your statutes, And I shall keep it to the end.  Give me understanding and I shall keep Your law; Indeed I shall observe it with my whole heart.  Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, For I delight in it.  Incline my heart to Your testimonies, And not to covetousness.  Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, And revive me in Your way.  Establish Your word to Your servant.  Who is devoted to fearing You.  Turn away my reproach which I dread, For Your judgments are good.  Behold I long for Your precepts; Revive me in Your righteousness.  Let Your mercies come also to me, O LORD” (Ps. 119:33-41).

Special moments

When the weather is cooperating, I enjoy going down to the river for my quiet times.  For the most part, I do the majority of my bible reading and studying in the comfort of my room but I find that my moments of deep solitude and prayer with the Father take on more meaning when I am out in His creation.  There is just something about being in the fresh air and wide-open spaces that make me feel nearer to Him and more focused as opposed to being surrounded by four solid plain walls.  I know He is there too in the confines of my room and I have had some wonderful times with Him there as well but I enjoy His presence when in His creation as opposed to mans.   This morning as I headed out, I found myself slightly disappointed to find that the river has submerged my beautiful bench with its rapidly moving current.  No quiet time on the river today but as I watched the flood waters rushing by trying to think of another place to go I was reminded of the summer in my apartment when the creek flooded and buried the bike trail with its depths.  After a little coercion, I talked my roommate into ‘playing’ in the floodwaters with me.  Oh my goodness!  We had so much fun that day.  I can not tell you how happy I felt in that moment frolicking about in the water like a little kid.  In those moments of traipsing through the flood waters it was as if the rest of the world had disappeared and we had somehow managed to transport ourselves to a whole new world and we were on some crazy expedition through the jungles and the swamps.  My roommate may have laughed at me a little but I know she enjoyed our little adventure J  Makes me smile and laugh just thinking about it.  But the cool thing is that I think it made God smile too.  I think He likes to watch us ‘play’ and use our imaginations and just be silly sometimes no matter how old we may be.  He created life to be enjoyed and He wants to enjoy it with us, for He is the source of joy.  You know, the other day I was painting the bathroom ceiling and I had put on some music and just asked the Lord to join me in painting….and He did.  Having finished painting the ceiling and moving on to do the walls; I stood up on the counter to reach the top of the wall and managed to knock my head on the ceiling and not only was it painful but I ended up with white paint all over my hair and as I stood there murmuring about my pain and the mess I had made of myself, I felt like I heard the Lord chuckle at me and in the midst of His chuckling, ask me if I was ok and then I couldn’t help but laugh too.  Had someone come walking in at that moment, I am sure they would have thought me crazy for standing alone in the bathroom on top of the counter with paint in my hair and holding my head seemingly laughing at myself and my pain but it was a random and unexpected special moment shared with the Lord and I have not forgotten it!  It’s an amazing thing to know that the Lord shows up when we invite Him and that He cares enough and loves us enough to want to share in every moment of our life no matter how insignificant it may seem.

This Day

We each need to discover for ourselves how to live ‘this day’ in faithful surrender to God as we continue to ‘work out our salvation with fear and trembling’ (Phil. 2:12).  "One day at a time," that’s what I keep telling myself.  I am in a place in my life where I really feel that God is asking me for my time.  It’s a very difficult thing for me to ‘be still’ for so long.  I have been home from the mission field for about four months now and still have no job or real direction for the future and yet I feel God telling me to be patient and wait on Him.  I know He is teaching me so much and that I desperately need this time with Him and I hope to continue to take inventory of what He's been saying, to process it, to study it carefully, and to allow it to transform me, but this takes time and effort and focused attention and is not accomplished without a battle.  I still feel the need to be ‘doing’ something.  I’ve done some exploring and have looked into various job possibilities and ministry opportunities and have asked the Lord for His direction each step of the way.  Some things He says no to right away while there have been other opportunities that He has let me explore further and take steps to getting involved and yet it always seems to come to an end.  This last opportunity I was exploring, I was very excited about and yet I did not have peace to pursue it further so I started asking God why and I heard Him whispering, "you’re not ready, there is more I want to do in you."  But I have so many people asking, "what are you going to do?"  "What comes next?"  "What's your plan?"  And the truth is...I simply don't know.   I don't have a plan but I find myself wanting to give them an answer, not just to satisfy their curiosity but more to make myself feel important again - to make it appear that I'm needed and wanted somewhere - that I have something to offer and then I am reminded of how easy it is, especially in this culture to establish and look for my identity and value on the basis of some defined function rather than in the God who created me for nothing less than Himself.  This world is so full of noise that claws at a person's soul seeking their attention and devotion.  I believe we are all in desperate need to hear more of His divine voice, to hear His comforting whisper that restores our sense of balance and guidance, that reaffirms our personal value in heavenly terms so that we don't need to seek value from any other source.  If God is asking me for my time and devotion and I am indeed hearing Him speak in ways that I often don’t hear when my life is busy, why would I ever want to fill my life with something that I know will begin to drown Him out?  Some may view that as being irresponsible, some may think its just plain lazy but I want to learn how to better rest in His presence, trusting Him to guide me in ‘this day,’ knowing that my life is in His hands.  My first priority in life needs to be pursuing Christ and this requires deliberate pursuit and attentiveness.  There is nothing else that really matters.  “He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked” (1 Jn. 2:6).  This is the question I am asking of the Lord, "show me what it means to walk as You walked, not according to my culture, not according to my church, not according to my upbringing or even the other believers around me, but may I learn to look only to You and Your Word, to hear Your voice as You speak directly to my heart, and to allow You by the power of Your Holy Spirit to work out Your life through me as I learn to surrender daily to You, trusting that Your grace is perfected in my weakness and though I will still fail, You continue to be God and Your calling on my life remains the same."  More on this idea later…

Celebration of Life

Today is my birthday and I thought, what better day to write my first blog post.  Twenty eight years….crazy!  What a journey I have been on.  My life thus far has been one full of adventure, beauty, intrigue, betrayal, deceptions, joys, sorrows, victories, failures, and the faint whispering in the midst of it all; an often unidentified ache within my soul, something I was born desiring and which beneath the rise and fall of all other desires, passionate moments, and times of silence; night and day, year by year, I have looked for, watched for, and listened for.  I have never had it but I continue to yearn for its complete unveiling.  All of the things that have ever possessed my soul have been but hints of it, echo’s that seem to die away as soon as they reach my ear but if it was ever to fully manifest itself, I would know in my heart, that here at last is the thing I was made for.  I am discovering that this seemingly unattainable desire, this life I so desperately long for, this deep craving that is harbored in my soul, can only be experienced as I step outside of myself; it requires a continual act of self-abandonment.  My soul has a shape like no other soul; it was created with a particularly shaped void and only the Lord Himself can fill its intricate contours.   As I give Him access to those secret chambers of my heart, that unidentified ache begins to be filled as He lifts my head to meet His gaze.  He reminds me of the promise that one day all will be restored and in Him alone will I find myself fulfilled; it was Him that I was created for and He alone gives true life.  Oh, how many times I have searched for that life elsewhere.  I stand back in wonder and humility at His unfathomable grace that continues to draw me back to Himself, His total forgiveness of all my sin, and the strength from His Holy Spirit to get back up and finish the race as His presence encompasses me.  Thank you for this life Lord, thank you for Your life.  Come back soon so we can experience perfect life!