Tuesday, November 4, 2008

November 4th

So it just doesn't seem right, when I look at this whole thing that God did and how he made everything to work, it just doesn't seem right. I've been letting the Lord speak his happiness and approval and love over me this past few weeks and there is still so much of me that keeps wondering if he's really this good. Because if he is who he says he is then I'm so wounded with love, I will seriously have no other. But there are so many times when I try to step out in faith and walk with that confidence that he's smiling at me with love and the more I do it the easier it gets however my heart is still doubting that he's this good. I just want to cling on to this fact that when I'm bad I'm apart from him, that he's not with me when I'm thinking those thoughts or letting my heart run away with anger or self pitty. But he's not afraid of me, he's with me down here in my dirt and he's in my face the whole time. I just have the hardest time accepting that but his love offers me something I can't refuse so I can't turn away from it at all. I know I'm still loving him out of my selfish eros love too, but the thing is he's ok with that. Knowing that he's unlike everyone else just makes me want to know him more. He's such a mystery to me, I don't understand why someone would come and choose me when I clearly didn't choose him from the beginning. He knew how bent and out of shape I was from the very beginning, he knew there wasn't anything in my heart that had good in it, he knew how my nature would be to stray away from him but he wanted me still. I don't understand this but I'll take it because there isn't anything else in the world that offers this to me. I just can't seem to get away from the beauty of this picture of love, I want to stand overwhelmed constantly, I don't care if I seem so redundant or repetitive or if I seem like I don't understand or whatever, this love is too great to quit staring at and gazing upon. I was nothing and he chose me. Ezekiel 16 is a picture of what God did for Israel but can be compared to what he did for us.

Ezekiel 16: 5 No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.
Verse 8 Later I passed by you and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine. I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry, i put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. So you were adorned with gold and silver, your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was fine flour, honey and olive oil. You became very beautifl and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord.

I just think this is such a beautiful picture of what the Lord has done for us. Then I think of Hosea and how he had to persistently keep going after Gomer and that is exactly what the Lord has been doing in me, just persistently telling me that I am beautiful, that he is pleased with me, that he loves me.
It's such a beautiful mystery that the Lord chooses us as humans to enter into covenant with him to become one with him, it's truly amazing! His kingdom is truly the upside down one, because he goes after the broken and needy and poor and naked and chooses to attach himself to them and to glorify himself through them! Wow, I stand amazed.

Monday, October 6, 2008

October 6th

Hello all you wonderful people who like to keep up with me!!! So I want to give a quick praise to the Lord for blessing me with $15oo a few weeks ago!! I was in a pinch for my tuition and I was basically going to have to cut classes in order to stay in FMA however the Lord was just so awesome in the way he came through for me in the nick of time. I just wanted to share with all of you the goodness of the Lord and how he is mighty to save, I want him to receive glory and honor for this, it is truly him keeping me here and it's by things like this that proves he wants me here!
Ok so now for my heart's journey over the last few weeks or I guess it's been a month! I feel like a totally new person in the Lord, um there's so much to explain and say so I am going to nab something I read along time ago that I saw in Nicole's notes on facebook. She is reading a book called Deep Unto Deep which I was required to read last year for school and now I want to go back and read it again because she posted something that explained exactly what is going on here in my little heart! So Nicole if you read this sorry for stealing kinda haha!


Oh Jesus, my Jesus,
True Friend of my heart, true Lover of my soul,
My heart is hurting. My soul is aching.
All that I have ever been,
All of my “beauties” falling, falling to the ground.
The goodness, the righteousness,
The good intentions and “right” motives,
Dropping layer by layer…
Leaving behind one that I do not even know or recognize…
The Lover of my love strips me
And as the hidden things are uncovered
And the exterior beauties taken,
I am not what I thought I was.
I know it is by Your hand that I am stripped.
Though it hurts immensely,
I recognize it as a Love deeper than my heart has ever known
Taking away what will not stand
That He might crown me with His true beauty
And clothe me in His robes.
Truly, I am not the one that I thought myself to be.
They ask me “then who is the one who comes?”
I look only to Your eyes and say,
“She is nothing but what He alone speaks her into being.
His words alone hold within the essence of who she is. She is His.
Please see only Him. He is the beautiful. He is the pure.”

Ok if I try to expound on this, I won't be able to stop typing. So I just want to say one thing only. I am astounded, blown away, shocked, at the way the Lord loves me. The more he shows me his love the more I say, "What the heck is this???" Jesus is Holy, he is completely other than, there is NO other lover like him. Ok that's where I'm stopping! Can I just say that I love him so much! Your all in my prayers!!!

Friday, September 5, 2008

September 5th

Hey everyone! I'm really happy to be back in Kansas City, it was really hard leaving family and friends to come back but the Lord is good and gave me grace to choose to be here again! So the Lord quickly beckoned me to more time in the secret place once I got here and it's been a few weeks now and I've pretty much done nothing but fail at answering this call. So yesterday a girl on my team sang a passage, I tried to remember which one it was however the Lord used her to sing that to me so I was a little preoccupied! What she sang boiled down do how the Lord doesn't expect us to bring him anything more than our brokenness, and how he delights giving us beauty for ashes. It was such a breaking down point for me because I was trying so hard, I had just heard a message on the ten virgins in Matthew 25 and was so challenged to get oil (intimacy) and in my mind and heart I made a decision to go deeper and give more of myself to that place of intimacy with the Lord. However I keep failing at this and each time I try to pick myself back up and make myself presentable before the Lord and the whole time he just wants me to realize that I'm not perfect and he doesn't expect anything more and that he wants me to come to him in my imperfections and my brokenness. I do this little run through in my head where one day I'm like: "ok I'm gonna tackle this intimacy thing, I'm gonna dive in and go deep in the Lord and give my time to grow more in love with him" and then I forget, or grow lazy, or let other things get in the way of that. So then I get so frustrated at the thought of my failure and when I get to this point of frustration thats when the Lord wants me to say "Yes I'm a failure, I'm broken and weak and I need you" but I don't do that, instead I kick myself when I'm down and then when I feel like I've kicked myself enough I pull myself back up and try to convince myself that I can set out to do this intimacy thing again and then the process just goes on and on. So this happened for the first few weeks until yesterday when the Lord showed through his loving kindness that he wants me to come to him when I'm broken, not when I'm fixed up and have it together. It's such a prideful thing to think that I can choose to be such a good devoted Christian and that I can say that I do A,B, and C. No, what makes me desirable in the eyes of God is when I know I'm weak and broken and when I lean on him and his mercy through every single step of my walk with him. Oh my gosh, just even as I am writing this I struggle with pride in my heart wanting to think that I can walk it out on my own, that is not at all how it is supposed to be with him and I'm so glad too because I would be a mess and so would all of us! So I wanted to get this out there because I know it's just our nature as humans to want to try and look good for everyone else but I want to say that I'm broken, I fail at what the Lord is calling me to do here on a daily basis and that's ok because he can't bring me to completion when I'm trying to do that on my own. I hate that the enemy lies to us and tells us that were the only ones that are failing at things in our walk, and so I just wanted to use my blog as an opportunity to tear down that lie and lay bear before the eyes of God and others and be ok with doing that because He is the one that will cover me up and make bring me to completion and at the end of the day I will look like him and not myself because I was able to do that! Whew ok, that was fun! Love you all, hope the Lord blesses you through this!

Sunday, April 13, 2008

April 11th

Hello everyone! So life here in Kansas City is going great! This last month has flown by but I feel like a lot has happened. After spring break I started working at Pier 1 about 20 hours a week and then getting full swing back into things after a two week break was kind of rough. We just finished our second to last GBF week of the semester and the last 3 weeks of classes were the toughest I've been through yet. I have 12 classes that I'm juggling on top of practicing 6 hours a week for voice and going to the prayer room 18 hours a week, oh ya and working 20 hours a week! So there was a while were I was just really overwhelmed and really going through a dry season, going to the prayer room was basically a time to do homework for me and I was getting really discouraged. I felt like I was being given all this information and teaching and I didn't have anytime to take it in and that was even more discouraging because I want to get all I can out of my education and this environment. During that time, I actually had the first desire to go home. My plan was to stay here this summer and do summer classes (which I just found out that isn't an option for me anymore) however, I started to feel a shift in my heart to want to pour myself out. The more and more I thought about it and prayed about it, I just began to see this inner desire to serve my church this summer in whatever way I can. So after about a few weeks of praying about this we had a prophesy lab in one of my classes one day at school. We basically just broke up into groups of 4 and each took turns praying and prophesying over each other. A quick side note with that : It is an awesome thing when the Holy Spirit just quiets all your feelings of inadequacy and decides to use you anyway, it's awesome because you know it's Him and not you! So when it became my turn for my group to pray and prophesy for me, there was a particular word given to me that just really confirmed my going home. The word was about how God has a wealth of treasure stored up in me and He wants to start using it and drawing from it to bless and edify others. To make a long story short that night in my small groups meeting, I basically got the same exact word again! So after that day I just knew in my heart that God wants to use me this summer to do exactly what he said, to bless and edify. Now my plans are to come home for the summer and just be a servant in anyway I can to my church. And throughout all of this, God has totally brought me out of that dry discouraging season my spirit is so much more alive, I now have a drive to finish these last few weeks of school with perseverance and strength! I have about a month of school left and I want to give it my best, please pray that God gives me grace to run hard and be diligent! Thank you all for your prayers for me and I am continuing to stand in faith and prayer for all of you too!

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

March 4

God has been doing alot of things in my heart lately, just revealing the deep rooted ugliness that is in my heart that he wants to expose and gut out. A lot of it stems from pride and there have been numerous times over these past few months that God pin points a thought and traces it back to a prideful attitude in my heart. I want to share with you something that happened a few weeks ago. For one of my classes we were required to interview a prophetic singer here on the base. A friend a I interviewed this guy who has been singing here for a few years and had a lot of great advice towards becoming a prophetic singer. At the end of our time with him, he was talking about how he is a verbal processor and asked my friend and I if we were the same and almost before I could even answer him, he turned to me and said, "I can tell your not a verbal processor, you think things through on the inside, you piece together your thoughts before you come out and say them!" With that he was encouraging me to take process things out loud, and how it is key in prophetic singing, that if I sit and think too much then I will miss the opportunity to bless the Lord and lead people into his presence. Well when I was done being all exposed and out in the open because he had just read my mail, I began to realize how much I play things safe. I let fear of failure cripple me into growing and learning. God is really challenging me to step out and let people see me grow, this has a lot to do with me singing here. While I really do want to develop that muscle of being alone before God with my talent, I also can't let that limit me to my growth process. It's like I wanted to hide during my awkward time and only come out when I knew I was good enough. Which again directly relates to pride, I don't anyone to see me fail because I am too prideful, but God longs for humility to take place in my life, that is how he is going to grow me up and it' s also the only way he can be glorified through my life. So a big inward battle and struggle is pinpionting thoughts of pride and renewing my mind to go low and live in humility before him and man. It's all apart of dying to my flesh, which I am learning more and more is something that is so hard to do. However I know that the more I keep on going low that the more he can be glorified and it also enables me to walk in righteousness with him! So I just thought I would be real and let people see my struggle, I know sometimes it can do good for more than just me. I'm praying that you all are getting full to the fullest measure of wisdom and revelation of him!

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Feb 9th

Hello all!!I know it's been a while since I've shared in my blog however, I had a very long break and then it took a while for me to get back into the swing of things here in Kansas City. This past week was Global Bridegroom Fast, it was a nice break from classes and a good reminder that I rely on the grace of God and not on my human flesh.
This semester looks very different for me compared to my first. I have 10 different classes this semester but all of them are only once a week so it's not as big of a load as it sounds. I have 5 classes that are strictly music and then 5 that are biblical. I have a class that is called Communing Prayer and the basics of it are building up a secret place in our walk with the Lord. It seems as though the first 3 weeks of school the Lord has been pressing in my heart that who I am in the secret needs to be who I am everywhere else. My hearts desire for this semester is to build up a time in the secret place where I am ministering to the Lord's heart by singing His word, by praying the word and from that place my outward walk will be established. I want who I am in the secret, when I'm with the Lord waiting on His presence to be the very same person who will be on a stage singing to the Lord and waiting on Him in front of people. What happens in m secret place will be the foundation of who I am in Him. All the teaching, all the preaching, all of the worship sets will only be built on top of what has been established in my secret place. I have set this as an important goal for this semester and have even pushed out any thoughts of joining a team until this is completely and habitually established in my life. A lot of this revelation has come by reading Secrets of the Secret Place by Bob Sorge. I encourage you to read this book, I'm not even through all of it yet but it has amazing truths that have really opened up my eyes to a lot of things about spending time in the secret place with the Lord.
I am continually praying for you all! Please let me know if there is anything I can come in agreement with you about! The Lord is good and his mercy endures forever, I want to see that truth be so present in all of your lives!