My trip home was a phenomenal vacation. I always love being with my family and I got to see some high school friends too. Spending time with my sister though, always makes me want to be in the same place as her 100% of the time. So it was quite the tease to only spend 36 hours with my best friend in the world. Overall, let me conclude that it was GREAT to be in the Lone Star state for the weekend. I am still a Texan at heart :)
That being said, home brought back a lot of junk that I hadn’t seen in a while. At YWAM, for the most part I am safe…well, to an extent. My struggles just look differently when I am living in a missional bubble of believers who provide constant gospel community. I don’t know what it was about being comfortable at home that just made it seem okay to revert back to the same old stuff that I have finally been walking in some sort of freedom from for the past 8 weeks. I hate my sin. But the question is: how much do I hate it? That is a good question, but this weekend I realized that I really do want freedom from it---for good - even though the stripping of my sinful nature is very painful. There’s a big part of my flesh that kind of FREAKS out when the Spirit-led part of me decides its time to put sin to death once and for all. This death is usually accomplished in my life through bringing sin into the light. That’s when I know that I actually want freedom, that I actually want to heal.
So I am practicing this new idea of vulnerability. I think it might be the most re-occurring and LOUDEST revelation in my life lately--that Christ requires it from me. I think that the fear of being fully known is pretty valid for me since I am such a wack-job. My life has just been a joke in a lot of ways. And God knows I have screwed up. Its not the things that have happened to me that I don’t want everybody knowing. The things that were not my fault hardly cause any grief when brought into the light. It’s the things that WERE my fault that suck. My mistakes, my shortcomings, my sinful thoughts. Those are the things that I would rather keep in the closet that nobody opens. You know that creepy closet in every house that usually holds the hot-water heater? I would rather hide the gross mistakes of my past and present in there with that. This is my innate performance based mindset rearing its ugly head. The truth I have come to realize is that our sins are always an instinctive attempt to make ourselves god, which will always end in tragic failure, and God knows I hate failing.
I don’t know what it is about me that causes me to think I need to appear perfect. I don’t know why I feel like I have to pretend that I never struggle. This is such a contrary idea to what is expressed in the Bible. 2 Corinthians says that as Christians, we should boast all the more gladly about our weakness, since Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore Christ’s power can dwell in us when we take hold of the idea that we CANNOT do it on our own. I am a mess without Jesus. Lucky for me though, the gospel doxologically declares that my relationship to God is not based on my radical struggle for Jesus, but Jesus’ radical struggle for me.
The exhausted idea of trying to save ourselves through either legalism or license never works and while self-reliance is the natural tendency of every human heart, we still do not hold right-standing with God through any other means than His grace. I too often though try to take back control and find myself failing and disappointed with myself yet again. But oh how precious it is to rest in the idea that Christ is in relentless pursuit of rebels. I am so relieved to revel in the idea that God’s acceptance of me is not based on what I can do or have done, but what CHRIST has done. THANK GOD. Oh how far I have fallen from the glory of God, and yet no matter how bad I fail, God always responds to great sin with great mercy. No matter how far I run trying to save myself, His grace and mercy go farther still. Our loving father allows us to run (via our free will), but he arrives at our place of flight before we get there and stands ready to again welcome us (even when broken and drenched with rebellion) with open arms and direct our steps back to Himself. All of us need to be continually rescued by God.
The idea that I need to fix myself in order to present myself to God is a really screwed up notion. The whole point of the cross is that I could not accomplish this feat. But IN the cross, the blood of Christ covers me that I might be presented as holy and blameless in God’s sight. Well that just evokes worship. Especially knowing the depravity that I know all too well as my own reality.
I think that the one thing that I need saving from the most is myself. And God is even faithful to save me from me. Pastor Tullian says that we can experience true life and freedom only when we come to realize that God is God and we are not. The deepest slavery is self-dependence, self-reliance. When I live my life believing that everything depends primarily on me, I am enslaved to my own strengths and weaknesses. This is me trying to be my own Savior. But freedom comes when I start trusting in God’s abilities and wisdom instead of my own. WELL THANK GOD. I am learning to transfer my trust from my own efforts to the efforts of Christ. I too often find myself trying SO HARD to beat my sin. To fix myself. To defeat the struggles that I know all too well, when God seems to be screaming through the gospel that He has already defeated this on my behalf. Well shoot. That is just too much. I’m tearing up in the airport.
I am now like 10,000ft in the air or something watching the sunset. From this view, its pretty easy to forget all the mess that is waiting for me back on the ground, in the midst of life. Up here I can just revel in how much BIGGER God is than any of my accomplishments or failures. It gives me a peace to see the orange and yellow splashed across the soft blue violet background, knowing that my God painted it for me. I look out my window and God is so beautiful. God is currently painting the sky, holding the world together by the word of his mouth, and yet he cares INTIMATELY about my tears. He cares about the desires of my heart. I fail to see this in the sweat of every day life. But God stands ready to take over the control of our lives — providing the most exciting adventure packed with fulfillment — the second we relinquish control to Him. Surely we are the most favored of all creation. (AW Tozer)
I am learning SLOWLY how much God loves me. Its like every time I think I know how much, He is faithful to completely rock my world. I am praying for a hatred of my sin…even if my sin is me trying to be good. One expression of God’s amazing grace is that he pursues our rescue even though we cannot do one thing for him. In and of himself he is already of infinite value and worth. The reason he seeks, saves, and sends sinners is because GOD LOVES SINNERS. No other object of worship loves sinners like God does.
So by the grace of God I am setting my eyes on the cross, and again accepting God’s infinite love, mercy, and grace through Jesus Christ to walk in the freedom that is offered to me. God help me. And with this relational God that LOVES ME leading me, I will gladly serve Him in whatever way possible. He is constantly reminding me that He wants to partner with me and walk through life with me using the passions that He has given me. He is constantly reminding me to look at Him, not to the left or right or around at anything else. He is lovingly coaxing me, at a pace that I am comfortable with, to put one foot in front of the other and take steps towards my Creator and Savior who is madly in love with EXACTLY who he created me to be. Sins and failures and everything, God is all-knowing and LOVES the heck out of me, regardless. So yet again I will take his hand, let Him brush my dirty bleeding knees off and take another step. Yes I will inevitably fall again, but I will run, crying, back to the Father who wants to comfort me in all of my troubles.
And as I am wobbly and uncoordinated, I am so blessed to have a handful of friends here on earth who know the depths of my iniquity and promise to love me anyways. I am so lucky that I can look around and see girls standing next to me as we brave the dark together. This group is boldfaced marching into hell, and bringing heaven with us. "On earth as it is in heaven..." We are taking wobbly steps alongside one another, and oh I so appreciate the GOODNESS of God for blessing me with such a supportive team. I am eternally grateful to the God that knew I would need some help, and while He is the ultimate Savior, I will never be able to thank Him for providing the friends that I call mine.
And with that, we are landing in Denver.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
I'm Learning
I have never had so much trouble posting a blog. For some reason words would just not come. Anyways, this is a jumbled mess of all of my failed attempts at blogging in the last week and a half. Enjoy my random thoughts from the week. It does not flow at all.
I write to you as an exhausted YWAMer. In case no one told you, YWAM runs you 90 to nothing, and leaves very few gaps of time to sit down and blog.
Last week was Holy Spirit week and I really don’t have enough words to explain everything that happened. We got to experience first hand a lot of the work of the Holy Spirit and the gifts that come from Him. Prophesy, being slain in the Spirit, speaking and interpreting tongues, and the laying on of hands to name a few. Contrary to popular belief, (ahem) the Holy Spirit is not about magical powers like in Harry Potter, but sometimes He does work through miraculous powers that defy the rules of nature. Did you know that stuff is still happening around the world? People are still being healed; miracles are still being seen everywhere where faith resides and the Holy Spirit is given His due recognition.
A lot of that stuff is controversial but guess what, its in the bible. So I am trying to come to terms with that.
This week we are learning about the Fear of the Lord. Mark Davies is our speaker and I already LOVE HIM. Actually I loved him on Monday morning when sarcasm was the first thing out of his mouth. He uses the word “dirtbag” a lot and I think I am going to implement that into my daily vocabulary. He talks on my level, doesn’t use any religious jargon, but just tells it how it is. LOVE IT. He is only 27 and admitted that he wanted to murder his 2 year old twins this morning and just needed some prayer. So naturally, I am obsessed with him.
So we are talking about Fear of the Lord, which is ironic because I just finished reading “Intimate Friendship with God” by Joy Dawson, and the subtitle was “Through the Fear of the Lord”. Needless to say, it seems like this topic has been pretty loud and clear lately from the big guy upstairs. The book says that if we really fear God, that we will HATE our sin and HATE evil, like God HATES it. Ouch. Mind bomb. I don’t hate my sin like God hates it. The evidence of that is that I run back to it in times of weakness, and yet the bible COMMANDS that we FLEE sin and fear the Lord.
We learned that Satan can come and tempt us at any time with any sin. Just when you say that you will never struggle with (fill in the blank), you will be in it and not sure how you got there. And it always starts with the mind. It does not matter what it is: unbelief, pride, lust, criticism, disobedience to God, or anything. We will find that there is no attraction to that temptation to sin to the degree that we have the fear of God. When we have Jesus’ attitude towards sin, instantly we will hate Satan’s suggestion to sin. James 4:7 says “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” And don’t just sit there after that, load up on truth so that you will not be tempted again. Philippians 4:8 lists the things we should dwell on. It says “FIX your eyes on these things.” That represents a deliberate, determined, and disciplined act of your will. Because whatever you dwell on will determine your actions.
Out of the fear of the Lord we see that HE is just, and has every right to our whole-hearted surrender and obedience. The nearest thing to heaven that we will find on this earth is being at the center of the will of God, in a loving relationship with the one who created us. When we are delighting to do His will and delighting ourselves in Him that’s real freedom. That is fulfillment. The privileges and rewards from God when we truly place Him first in undivided devotion far outweigh the price, no matter how high.
To gain a greater and healthy fear of the Lord we must make a choice with our will. We must confess our lack of the fear of the Lord before God and cry out that He might have mercy on us. We should continually seek God for it and study the Word of God through which He speaks.
And lucky for us, we never need to be in despair that we will not attain to intimate friendship with God. Being obedient to the next thing God tells us to do will get us there. He has promised to clearly communicate to us everything we will ever need to know in order to obey Him---provided that we want to obey. Psalm 32:8 says “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go”. God always rewards diligent seekers. With the simplicity of a child, we can come to our loving heavenly Father and trust Him to lead us one step at a time along the pathway of obedience that leads to intimate friendship with Him. He is longing to take our hand and do just that. And if there comes a time where we turn our back on sin and decide to indulge in our flesh/sin and mess up royally; we can be sure that God is the ULTIMATE TAILGATER, and is always closer to us than our thoughts. Even when he seems far away because of our disobedience, we know that He never leaves us, He just simply rams us in the bumper until we decide to turn around and tearfully return to His loving arms. Our God is so merciful.
On a lighter note, I have a lot of new really good music lately mostly thanks to Leacox and Matt Watson. Does anyone know me well enough to know how much this excites me?! I love getting new music, I think it’s one of my love languages.
This weekend we are going to the Royal Gorge. We leave Friday and will camp Friday night and then wake up and GO EXPLORE! Then we get the opportunity to do the Royal Gorge Skycoaster. Let me explain: You know the skycoaster at 6flags? Where you pull the rip cord, free fall and then swing back and forth? Well this is the same concept, except they have built it where you swing over the massive gorge, 1200ft from the ground. HOW GREAT IS THAT? Yep, and then on Sunday the PLAN is to go wakeboarding in Pueblo, but we are still praying that that works out. I would give anything to strap a wakeboard onto my feet. Just thinking about it makes me almost giddy.
So today I am happy. The sun is shining. I want to make sure you know that I say this just for today as I could wake up tomorrow and feel stale and stressed and numb and maybe even a little pissed off and not even sure who I am pissed at or what about…I have no guarantees for tomorrow where my unreliable and fickle emotions are concerned. I am learning though, not to worry about tomorrow so TODAY, I can thank God with all my heart that THIS PRESENT DAY I feel love toward the One who loves me first.
I write to you as an exhausted YWAMer. In case no one told you, YWAM runs you 90 to nothing, and leaves very few gaps of time to sit down and blog.
Last week was Holy Spirit week and I really don’t have enough words to explain everything that happened. We got to experience first hand a lot of the work of the Holy Spirit and the gifts that come from Him. Prophesy, being slain in the Spirit, speaking and interpreting tongues, and the laying on of hands to name a few. Contrary to popular belief, (ahem) the Holy Spirit is not about magical powers like in Harry Potter, but sometimes He does work through miraculous powers that defy the rules of nature. Did you know that stuff is still happening around the world? People are still being healed; miracles are still being seen everywhere where faith resides and the Holy Spirit is given His due recognition.
A lot of that stuff is controversial but guess what, its in the bible. So I am trying to come to terms with that.
This week we are learning about the Fear of the Lord. Mark Davies is our speaker and I already LOVE HIM. Actually I loved him on Monday morning when sarcasm was the first thing out of his mouth. He uses the word “dirtbag” a lot and I think I am going to implement that into my daily vocabulary. He talks on my level, doesn’t use any religious jargon, but just tells it how it is. LOVE IT. He is only 27 and admitted that he wanted to murder his 2 year old twins this morning and just needed some prayer. So naturally, I am obsessed with him.
So we are talking about Fear of the Lord, which is ironic because I just finished reading “Intimate Friendship with God” by Joy Dawson, and the subtitle was “Through the Fear of the Lord”. Needless to say, it seems like this topic has been pretty loud and clear lately from the big guy upstairs. The book says that if we really fear God, that we will HATE our sin and HATE evil, like God HATES it. Ouch. Mind bomb. I don’t hate my sin like God hates it. The evidence of that is that I run back to it in times of weakness, and yet the bible COMMANDS that we FLEE sin and fear the Lord.
We learned that Satan can come and tempt us at any time with any sin. Just when you say that you will never struggle with (fill in the blank), you will be in it and not sure how you got there. And it always starts with the mind. It does not matter what it is: unbelief, pride, lust, criticism, disobedience to God, or anything. We will find that there is no attraction to that temptation to sin to the degree that we have the fear of God. When we have Jesus’ attitude towards sin, instantly we will hate Satan’s suggestion to sin. James 4:7 says “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” And don’t just sit there after that, load up on truth so that you will not be tempted again. Philippians 4:8 lists the things we should dwell on. It says “FIX your eyes on these things.” That represents a deliberate, determined, and disciplined act of your will. Because whatever you dwell on will determine your actions.
Out of the fear of the Lord we see that HE is just, and has every right to our whole-hearted surrender and obedience. The nearest thing to heaven that we will find on this earth is being at the center of the will of God, in a loving relationship with the one who created us. When we are delighting to do His will and delighting ourselves in Him that’s real freedom. That is fulfillment. The privileges and rewards from God when we truly place Him first in undivided devotion far outweigh the price, no matter how high.
To gain a greater and healthy fear of the Lord we must make a choice with our will. We must confess our lack of the fear of the Lord before God and cry out that He might have mercy on us. We should continually seek God for it and study the Word of God through which He speaks.
And lucky for us, we never need to be in despair that we will not attain to intimate friendship with God. Being obedient to the next thing God tells us to do will get us there. He has promised to clearly communicate to us everything we will ever need to know in order to obey Him---provided that we want to obey. Psalm 32:8 says “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go”. God always rewards diligent seekers. With the simplicity of a child, we can come to our loving heavenly Father and trust Him to lead us one step at a time along the pathway of obedience that leads to intimate friendship with Him. He is longing to take our hand and do just that. And if there comes a time where we turn our back on sin and decide to indulge in our flesh/sin and mess up royally; we can be sure that God is the ULTIMATE TAILGATER, and is always closer to us than our thoughts. Even when he seems far away because of our disobedience, we know that He never leaves us, He just simply rams us in the bumper until we decide to turn around and tearfully return to His loving arms. Our God is so merciful.
On a lighter note, I have a lot of new really good music lately mostly thanks to Leacox and Matt Watson. Does anyone know me well enough to know how much this excites me?! I love getting new music, I think it’s one of my love languages.
This weekend we are going to the Royal Gorge. We leave Friday and will camp Friday night and then wake up and GO EXPLORE! Then we get the opportunity to do the Royal Gorge Skycoaster. Let me explain: You know the skycoaster at 6flags? Where you pull the rip cord, free fall and then swing back and forth? Well this is the same concept, except they have built it where you swing over the massive gorge, 1200ft from the ground. HOW GREAT IS THAT? Yep, and then on Sunday the PLAN is to go wakeboarding in Pueblo, but we are still praying that that works out. I would give anything to strap a wakeboard onto my feet. Just thinking about it makes me almost giddy.
So today I am happy. The sun is shining. I want to make sure you know that I say this just for today as I could wake up tomorrow and feel stale and stressed and numb and maybe even a little pissed off and not even sure who I am pissed at or what about…I have no guarantees for tomorrow where my unreliable and fickle emotions are concerned. I am learning though, not to worry about tomorrow so TODAY, I can thank God with all my heart that THIS PRESENT DAY I feel love toward the One who loves me first.
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