So, it's four in the morning and my heart won't let me sleep. There are two very real realities going on simultaneously that I feel a complete lack of words to describe...but I will try. I have heard it said (though I can't remember where) that if you find yourself thinking more about the past than dreaming of the future, you have already begun to die. Tonight I find myself in a strange state where scenes from my past keep popping into my mind. Things that I once had and have lost; things that I never had and have since found. Memories that make me laugh, and more that make me cry. Love that I thought I knew only to find out it wasn't what I had thought. Pain I knew all to well that has shaped me into who I am today. As I recount the various chapters of my life I wonder...how did I end up here?? I am so far from the girl I once was. I have the most amazing opportunity to be amongst the most passionate people I have ever met who are literally going to change the world...and I can't believe God got me here. I used to wake up everyday and think "I know there is more to life than what I'm experiencing...there has to be more than this." Now I wake up and think, "This is exactly where I am meant to be, this is what I was created for." One of my favorite verses is Romans 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." I look back at some of the things in my past, and I know they were not a part of God's original design for my life. Love is a choice, and God loves us enough to give us freewill. With that comes the risk that we will choose things that God never intended to be a part of our lives. But his Grace is so amazing, that at any point we can turn our hearts to him, and in His mercy and Grace he will take every hurt, every pain, every lost thing we thought we might never recover and use it for the good. It completely amazes me, and tonight it has my head spinning with awe and gratitude at what God has done in my life. As equally as my heart is pained for the way it once was, it is filled with overwhelming joy with the thought of the beauty that God is going to make from the ashes. So as I lay in bed with my heart pounding and my wheels spinning I thought I would take the time to write out some of my thoughts. The word testimony comes from the hebrew word "do again"...meaning what he has done for me he can do for another. He uses everything. He wastes nothing. The second we position our hearts towards God there will be no struggle that was in vain. There will be no mistake that won't be used to teach another. There will be no experience that he wont use to change the world. And he will bring us to places we cannot even imagine, to do things we cannot even fathom. If we could only see what God sees. It is time to dream...and to dream big.
Psalm 126
"When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dreamed.
Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
Restore our fortunes, LORD,
like streams in the Negev.
Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them. "
Friday, September 9, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
The Journey's Only Just Begun.
One year ago I faced the biggest decision of my life. I heard God say, "Trust me; you're whole life is about to change." Before a belief can become an integral part of who you are, it must be tested. I trust God. I believe he provides for all my needs and always has the best in store for me. Those beliefs were tested and tried when he asked me to leave everything and follow Him into the unknown. Leaving all my comfort, all my security, all I have ever known and loved, I embarked on the scariest most exhilarating journey of my life; full abandonment to the call of God.
When I arrived in Redding California, I had no friends, no money, no connections, no car (long story)...all I had was a promise from God that he would take care of me. If I had to sum up this year in just a few words, it would go something like..."Everything I have always needed and wanted that I never even knew existed." I have been given the most amazing opportunity anyone could ever ask for; an opportunity to change the world and live a life without limitations or impossibilities.
I have learned so much this year that words could never express. I have experienced things I never even knew were possible. I have come to know God as Father. He cares about my every desire and he takes care of my every need. He can be trusted and he knows what I need better than I ever could. I am not ready for this year to end. I am not ready to say goodbye to some of the most amazing, beautiful, passionate people I have ever met in my entire life. On the other hand, my heart longs for home. I miss my family and friends more and more each day. I am happier than I have ever been, but I cry more than I ever have. It's a season of moving on from a past that shaped who I was. Its a season of new beginnings and stepping into who I was called to be all along. As much as I want to go back home to my family and friends for the summer, I feel like what God's doing in me here isn't over just yet. He is asking me once again to trust Him and stay in California. I can't see what's in store next, but I trust He can. He has a target in sight that I can not see. It's a season of being bent and stretched like a bow and arrow until I am perfectly aligned and God releases me to fly.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." -Isaiah 55:8
When I arrived in Redding California, I had no friends, no money, no connections, no car (long story)...all I had was a promise from God that he would take care of me. If I had to sum up this year in just a few words, it would go something like..."Everything I have always needed and wanted that I never even knew existed." I have been given the most amazing opportunity anyone could ever ask for; an opportunity to change the world and live a life without limitations or impossibilities.
I have learned so much this year that words could never express. I have experienced things I never even knew were possible. I have come to know God as Father. He cares about my every desire and he takes care of my every need. He can be trusted and he knows what I need better than I ever could. I am not ready for this year to end. I am not ready to say goodbye to some of the most amazing, beautiful, passionate people I have ever met in my entire life. On the other hand, my heart longs for home. I miss my family and friends more and more each day. I am happier than I have ever been, but I cry more than I ever have. It's a season of moving on from a past that shaped who I was. Its a season of new beginnings and stepping into who I was called to be all along. As much as I want to go back home to my family and friends for the summer, I feel like what God's doing in me here isn't over just yet. He is asking me once again to trust Him and stay in California. I can't see what's in store next, but I trust He can. He has a target in sight that I can not see. It's a season of being bent and stretched like a bow and arrow until I am perfectly aligned and God releases me to fly.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." -Isaiah 55:8
Thursday, January 20, 2011
The World Doesn't Need More Religion; It Needs an Encounter with the Living God.
It's been awhile since I've had the motivation to sit down and put words to all that I am learning and experiencing. Sometimes I get frustrated with my lack of discipline, but I also know that there is a divine timing to all things. Sometimes a word spoken prematurely can't bare the fruit for which that word was intended to produce. I believe there are words inside of me waiting to be released, and when the timing is right they will go out and transform hearts. I trust that God is preparing hearts to receive those words which he is maturing inside my spirit during these months away from home. I will say this; my whole life I had this deep longing in my heart for something which I had never experienced, but somehow my spirit knew existed. I knew there had to be more to life than simply going through the motions. I was always a deeply analytical/philosophical person; but all my analysis came up empty. It was out of this place of reaching the end of my ability to produce the answers I so earnestly desired that I encountered God, and my life was never the same.
Often times I will talk about God, and I get this response, “Wow…you’re really religious, huh?” It’s in this moment that my heart and brain want to explode with such a fervent desire to express the inexpressible. For centuries, people who truly love God have gone around trying to undo the stigma that is attached to “religion.” But religion was not God’s idea…it was man’s. Religion is what happens when you take something so far beyond your comprehension and you try to minimize it into something you can control, a thing us humans are infamous for. When we think of religion, we think of restrictions, limitations, and conformity. It breaks my heart, because this is the exact opposite of what a relationship with God actually looks like. In reality, it looks like watching the deepest desires of your heart being realized and fulfilled. It’s overwhelming peace amidst a world full of chaos and suffering. It’s empowerment to do the things you always dreamed of doing and never thought possible. It’s complete freedom to be who you were created to be without caring what the world thinks. It’s like the feeling of being in love without the fear of being hurt. It’s not some sort of spiritual mind trick…it’s the most real thing you will ever experience. It’s not something you can grasp by human reasoning or logic alone…it’s something you need to experience firsthand to understand. And it’s something that is possible to anybody who is curious enough to ask for it. We pick up our cell phones and communicate with people on the other side of the world without questioning how that even works, we simply believe because the person on the other end picks up. What if God picked up the phone? What if it was so real that you could not deny it happened?
I get overwhelmed when I think about writing because I know I don’t have the words to do God justice. I can tell you about the blind man who was baptized and came out of the water with his sight restored, people who had terminal cancer and were radically healed, the paralyzed woman who stood up out of her wheelchair on the street and walked for the first time in eight years after being hit by a car, or the countless times God has spoken to me in dreams and visions and then come through, doing exactly what he promised, bringing me to exactly where he wanted me. But my words alone aren’t enough. At the same time I know that what is living inside of me is so powerful and it’s just crying to be released upon a generation that so desperately needs it. We have such a high value for freedom in this country, yet so many people are walking around in bondage to things that they don’t have the ability to change in their own strength. In bondage to lies that the world masquerades as the truth. In bondage to their circumstances, their illnesses, their limited perspectives. I am just trusting that these aren’t just words, but the spirit of the living God would actually breathe life into my words and he would draw you into an encounter with him. For those that don’t know whether they believe or not, I pray God would touch you personally; that it wouldn’t be something you take my word for, but that you would experience His goodness and His love for yourself. If you made it this far…you didn’t read this by accident :) I pray that you experience everything I have experienced and THEN some.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” –Matthew 7:7-8
Often times I will talk about God, and I get this response, “Wow…you’re really religious, huh?” It’s in this moment that my heart and brain want to explode with such a fervent desire to express the inexpressible. For centuries, people who truly love God have gone around trying to undo the stigma that is attached to “religion.” But religion was not God’s idea…it was man’s. Religion is what happens when you take something so far beyond your comprehension and you try to minimize it into something you can control, a thing us humans are infamous for. When we think of religion, we think of restrictions, limitations, and conformity. It breaks my heart, because this is the exact opposite of what a relationship with God actually looks like. In reality, it looks like watching the deepest desires of your heart being realized and fulfilled. It’s overwhelming peace amidst a world full of chaos and suffering. It’s empowerment to do the things you always dreamed of doing and never thought possible. It’s complete freedom to be who you were created to be without caring what the world thinks. It’s like the feeling of being in love without the fear of being hurt. It’s not some sort of spiritual mind trick…it’s the most real thing you will ever experience. It’s not something you can grasp by human reasoning or logic alone…it’s something you need to experience firsthand to understand. And it’s something that is possible to anybody who is curious enough to ask for it. We pick up our cell phones and communicate with people on the other side of the world without questioning how that even works, we simply believe because the person on the other end picks up. What if God picked up the phone? What if it was so real that you could not deny it happened?
I get overwhelmed when I think about writing because I know I don’t have the words to do God justice. I can tell you about the blind man who was baptized and came out of the water with his sight restored, people who had terminal cancer and were radically healed, the paralyzed woman who stood up out of her wheelchair on the street and walked for the first time in eight years after being hit by a car, or the countless times God has spoken to me in dreams and visions and then come through, doing exactly what he promised, bringing me to exactly where he wanted me. But my words alone aren’t enough. At the same time I know that what is living inside of me is so powerful and it’s just crying to be released upon a generation that so desperately needs it. We have such a high value for freedom in this country, yet so many people are walking around in bondage to things that they don’t have the ability to change in their own strength. In bondage to lies that the world masquerades as the truth. In bondage to their circumstances, their illnesses, their limited perspectives. I am just trusting that these aren’t just words, but the spirit of the living God would actually breathe life into my words and he would draw you into an encounter with him. For those that don’t know whether they believe or not, I pray God would touch you personally; that it wouldn’t be something you take my word for, but that you would experience His goodness and His love for yourself. If you made it this far…you didn’t read this by accident :) I pray that you experience everything I have experienced and THEN some.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” –Matthew 7:7-8
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)