and i wanna be like a tree...

planted by the streams of living water...

and filled with the Holy Spirit! =)

"And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope. May he be given glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever through endless ages. Amen!"
-ephesians 3:18-21

You are good.

...and You are good enough.

thank you, Daddy.

let's try this again.

I'm afraid the end of last semester got swallowed up by my senior honors project, and then the majority of Christmas break got eaten alive by getting Tristan ready for Ghana. Now that's he's safely there and I'm back in Greenville...there's been a little more time to reflect.

With Tristan in a country five time zones ahead, I haven't had him around to talk to at night, and so, I've been journaling this week...just like before I met Tristan. It was years ago, but I remember praying about him and praying for him, and wondering if the timing was right yet, and then knowing that it was. Of course I remember praying about other things too. It is such an amazing thing that we can open up our lips or minds or notebooks and just communicate. The Life You've Always Wanted calls it 'interrupting heaven." Speaking to the Lord and hearing him speak back...and gosh it has been a long time since I've allowed myself the luxury of journaling regularly. God has already answered so many prayers this week!

"Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land" (isaiah 1:18-19).

I think I've been a little scared of it...scared of God...scared of being vulnerable and naked in front of him. Scared I was wasting opportunities and scared he wasn't proud of me. But how can I know what he feels toward me if I won't look at him? I can't sit around being afraid anymore...it's true that I probably have let opportunities to love people pass by. I probably have missed conversations that could have been turned toward him...but I can't pay for that or change it. I have to keep moving forward. I have to start looking for the opportunites tomorrow, and let God's mercies be new again then.

"I do not mean that I am already as God wants me to be. I have not yet reached that goal, but I continue trying to reach it and to make it mine. Christ wants me to do that, which is the reason he made me his.... I know that I have not yet reached that goal, but there is one thing I always do. Forgetting the past and straining toward what is ahead, I keep trying to reach the goal and get the prize for which God called me through Christ to the life above" (philippians 3:12-14).

Daddy, please continue to speak in my life this week. Please open my ears to what you're saying. Help my heart to be soft. Help my mind to be clear. Make my hands willing. I love you.

when the curtain falls...

i am so judgmental sometimes. and i am not enough of a machine to make myself meet the deadlines i fill my life with. that's the honest truth. = /

absence makes the heart grow colder

Whoever decided to get people to start saying "absence makes the heart grow fonder" was a liar. While this adage may prove true during a short period of absence...I highly doubt it would work over a long period of absence. And one thing is certain: Absence is not the best way to have a relationship with someone.

It is definitely not the best way to have a relationship with Jesus.

As I let Jesus back into my life, I'm becoming more and more aware of how little I've been hearing his voice lately. This doesn't mean that he hasn't been speaking to me, it's that my ears have been too stopped up to hear him. If I want him back in my life, I'm going to have to stop starving myself.

It reminds me of a line in the Caedmon's Call song entitled "Sacred":

could it be that everything is sacred?
and all this time
everything I've dreamed of
has been right before my eyes

when I forget to drink from You
I can feel the banks harden
Lord, make me like a stream
to feed the garden

We hear so often the passage from Jeremiah 17:7-8 about being like a tree planted by the waters, but this line takes it a step further and is about being the waters. It is true that God needs to be the "water" in our lives, but aren't we called to "water" others? To encourage them in their faith and to nourish their hearts? The writer is saying that when the living water isn't coming from God, our "banks" harden. Our hearts, which are where we experience revelation from God and compassion for others are no longer able to experience. We become like the dry bones in Ezekiel (ezekiel 37:1-14). How wonderful it is, then, that God is able to bring life even where there is death! For "breath entered [the bones]; they came to life and stood up on their feet--a vast army" (ezekiel 37:10).

Lauren and I were talking about this at the CCF Fall Retreat: that we have to be spending time with God so that our spirits are soft enough to encounter God in worship.

Hosea 12 talks about the people of Israel "feeding on the wind" and "chasing after the wind" instead of God. In chapter 13 God says to them:

"I have been the Lord your God ever since I brought you out of Egypt. You must acknowledge no God but me, for there is no other savior. I took care of you in the wilderness, in that dry and thirsty land. But when you had eaten and were satisfied, you became proud and forgot me. So now I will attack you like a lion, like a leopard that lurks along the road. Like a bear whose cubs have been taken away, I will tear out your heart. I will devour you like a hungry lioness and mangle you like a wild animal" (hosea 13:4-8).

This may sound crazy to some people, but this speaks life to me. I need my heart to be torn out because it is filthy! Praise be to God, who chooses to attack me instead of letting me wander away from him!

Praise to the God who refuses to let my heart grow cold through absence. =)

bind my wand'ring heart to Thee...

if there's anything I've been reminded of this week, it's that love is tough. love is so much work--loving hurts. it's so much about giving and it takes so much strength to love a person. the energy it takes even to choose to love another person...gosh.


Ephesians says we need to be given power in order to grasp God's love, too:

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (ephesians 3:17-19).

2 Timothy reminds us that God has indeed put a spirit of power and of love in in our hearts:

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 timothy 1:7).


i have been made painfully aware of my inability to love people apart from Jesus. the silliest things fill my heart and my tongue with such rage, such hostility...my flesh is vicious.

on the other hand, i have also been amazed this week at the difference in my ability to love when i am spending time with Jesus every day. =)


and i am been longing for something tangible
some kind of proof
that there’s been change in me
feels like i have been waking up
only to fight with the same old stuff
change is slow and it fills me with such doubt
come on New Man where've you been
help me wriggle from this self i’m in
and leave it like a skin upon the ground
--"like a skin" by Sara Groves

i am not in a bad place.

i'm not, but i've been living like i am. yes, i'm in a place of transition, and yes, i'm not quite in the land of milk and honey, but i'm not in prison. i'm not being tortured for my faith. i'm not following a religion with a god who is indifferent toward me, or angry with me...I am following a God who wants to spend intimate time with me, and only wants good for me.

it's something that he told me at the boiler room friday night...i have lived for many years believing that God only lets us see a glimpse of himself a few times a year, times when i would consider i've had a "revelation" from him. looking back over this blog i can see these times so clearly, but he has now challenged all that. friday night i asked him for something new again, something to hold on to, and i'm not saying that he does not give us those things, but what he told me was that the times i've received such revelations were the times in which i stuck one of my toes into the ocean of his spirit. he is a continual revelation. he is always the same, always new, always magnificent. he always knows what i need to hear. he always knows how to challenge me. he isn't just that way sometimes.

i have been quite a harlot in my thought life lately. i have spent huge amounts of time worrying over this season of my life, being frustrated with everyone i know, deluding myself that i'm doing everything right, withholding my love from others, tearing Tristan down because his beautiful faith makes me feel small and helpless. has anyone else ever accused God of prostituting himself with loving other people? it sounds so sick when you say it out loud, but i've been running from him because of it.

i've got to start filling my head with "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable..." (philippians 4:8). funny that the verses right before this one say:

• rejoice in the Lord always
• let your gentleness be evident to all
• the Lord is near
• do not be anxious about anything
• with thanksgiving (not accusation) present your requests to God
• the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus
  

That's what I need...the peace of God to guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

we sang "Be Thou my Vision" this morning and I was so impacted by the words...

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

this is so true--thoughts about Jesus are the best thoughts I can have, and I have been starving to death without them.

there's a verse in Psalm 119 that I love and that I've been remembering as I look back over my old blog posts:

"Your decrees have been the theme of my songs wherever I have lived" (psalm 119:54).

i use a lot of song lyrics in my writing, because God uses a lot of song lyrics to speak to me. they are where i go when i don't know what else to do...where else to turn. i process things through music, because i'm a worshiper at heart (Tristan is learning to be an evangelist). =) i love being able to say that instead of sex and drugs and making money, that God has been the theme of my songs both at home and in Greenville and in Arapahoe, and hopefully in Charlotte one day. i do want that...i have to start letting him back into the song of my heart.

along with all of the reminiscing i've been doing about my spiritual past, i am reminded to
"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland...because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise" (isaiah 43:18-21).

i have felt like Joseph in prison, waiting for God to bring about the visions he had in his youth. i have been spending my time waiting for promises to be fulfilled, but i have been waiting anxiously, not peacefully. i was reminded today of the Israelites in captivity in Egypt, slaving away as they waited for their God. their God, my God, delivered them. i remembered today, however, that immediately after delivering them from slavery, he brought them into a desert. it must have been hot, and they probably got sunburned, and it must have been smelly--can you imagine living for 40 years without a shower?

i have to surrender to this place in my life. this city, this college, this degree program, this campus ministry, this church, these friends. it is okay if i am living in the desert if that means i am on the road to the promised land, to the place that he is sending me. it is okay to not have all my desires met, and to not be as comfortable as i would like to be, because all of my needs are met. You are all I need, Lord. He did not take them to the desert to abandon them, to separate himself from them, to decrease their faith, or to watch them suffer. He took them to the desert because it was on the way to where they were going.

please take me where You're going....