Reminding me that I want a real man, not an imaginary figure. And I get to choose him!
And that God doesn't have one "perfect" person picked out for me. God's will for me is not a bullseye on a target that is almost impossible to hit.
He gives me guidance and instruction for how to live in His Kingdom, and He wants me to choose a man who I can do that with!
He said to care for the orphan and the widow, heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead, be Love to every person, be filled with His Spirit, and to be closely intimate with Him. This is God's will!
So if I want, I can choose a companion to do God's will with me!
It reminds me of something I heard one time: "Love God and do what you want."
And when you actually understand what it means to love God and what that entails, you have incredible freedom to do what you want while always remaining in His will.
On my way home from work this evening I turned on the radio, and heard a song that put the biggest smile on my face! It was Matthew West's "Hello My Name Is" and it was the first time I had ever heard it. Listen to it here:)
I have had so many regrets. I've made so many mistakes, mistakes that hurt me and ones that hurt people I love. And it is so easy for me to get lost in the memories of them, soaking in the feelings of pain and disappointment and failure. And its easy to begin to think that these events are what define me.
We all can think like this some times. We mull over the thoughts of the disappointment we might feel in ourselves for our pasts or of the disappointment that we imagine others feel about us. We dwell on hurt we have felt or inflicted. And it pushes us into a pit of sadness and shame and hopelessness because there is nothing that we can ever do to change the past. Its dark and bleak and seemingly unredeemable.
But we are no longer defined by what we've done. We are defined by the God who claims us as His own.
I am not weighed down any longer by my past, no matter what it contains. I am changed. I am set free. I am a new creation. We are a new creation! Every day, every moment, we are new. Every time we are convicted about something that we've done, every moment that we take another step with Jesus and recognize that He is greater and has so much more for us than we imagine, we are different from who we once were.
I've noticed that sometimes I can fall into the trap of believing that when I began believing in Jesus I became a new creation but ever since then I've been failing, that He says that I was once a new creation but ever since I became new I've been becoming "old" again, that I'm not very good at living as one who was once made new. What lies! The truth is that, it was not one moment that we were made new. We are made new constantly. Even when I fall or stumble or fail, as soon as I realize it and say "Jesus, forgive me, redeem me." I am a new creation. The person who accepted that sin within that stumble is dead, and a new person is rising in strength. I am not who I once was.
The person who sinned dies when a person repents, they are a new creation!
We are each a new creation every day, the old has gone and the new has come! And every day, we grow in strength and in love. We are different, we are new.
And in that new-ness, we are set free! Set free from that pit of defeat, of regret. Because our God has done what we thought was impossible: He has redeemed us! He has redeemed our mistakes and our past. We are not defined by them.
We are not sinners any longer. You are not a sinner. (Although, unfortunately, you might still sin sometimes:p) You are the child of God, the beloved of Jesus, and the vessel of Holy Spirit.
Sometimes, in church, we can feel like we need to sit in dust and ashes and proclaim our fallen nature and wail out our pathetic state as "sinners!!" out of humility. But honestly, that may be biblical to do sometimes by Old Testament standards, but guess what? By Jesus' standards, that gets us absolutely nowhere.
Because by New Testament standards, we are no longer sinners! And thinking that you are only gets you to sin more (because you think that you are defined by it and enslaved to it, doomed to a life of fighting it and failing often) and it keeps you immobilized in self-loathing and despair, all cloaked in well-meaning religiosity. (Another reason why I don't think Jesus liked religion too much. Truth can get muddled in well-meaning, but confused, tradition and ritual when not guided by the clarity found in intimate relationship.) A sinner is defined as (wait for it, this is mind blowing): someone who sins. A sinner is defined by sin. Makes sense. But a believer is not one that lives in bondage chained to sin. Our chains are broken. We are no longer defined by sin. We are defined by Jesus. Therefore, we're not sinners, we're Christ-like ones.
You know whats empowering? Not sitting in our depressed state of focusing on how bad we have been, thats for sure. What is empowering is resting in the knowledge that Jesus has made us into something different entirely and and acting in the fact that we are now ambassadors of His love.
Our calling is not to sit and reflect on our "natural" state of sin and be ashamed of ourselves. We don't have anything to be ashamed of anymore! Our calling is to claim freedom from those chains and run headlong into the overwhelming and overflowing love of Jesus. You are a child of the King, and that is something is be incredibly proud of.
I wasn't expecting to write that whole ramble, my original purpose was to just share the song:p haha Walk in love and freedom you guys:)
Now I won't deny The worst you could say about me But I'm not defined By mistakes that I've made Because God says of me
I am not who I was I am being remade I am new I am chosen and holy And I'm dearly loved I am new
Who I thought I was And who I thought I had to be I had to give them both up Cause neither were willing To ever believe
I am not who I was I am being remade I am new I am chosen and holy And I'm dearly loved I am new
Too long I have lived In the shadows of shame Believing that there Was no way I could change But the one who is making everything new Doesn't see me the way that I do He doesn't see me the way that I do
I am not who I was I am being remade I am new I am chosen and holy And I'm dearly loved I am new
I am not who I was I am being remade I am new Dead to the old man,I'm coming alive I am new
Forgiven beloved Hidden in Christ Made in the image of the Giver of Life Righteous and holy Reborn and remade Accepted and worthy, this is our new name
This is who we are now...
This song gives me shivers. Because this is who we are NOW. We are seen as holy and righteous NOW, not when we go to heaven to be with God, but right now because he is already with us. It is so hard to let this just sink in. I am not seen as a sinner any longer. I am clean and beautiful and precious and perfect to Jesus. He doesn't look on me in shame, so I should not look on myself in shame any longer either. He sees me as his perfect one, his holy one. Jesus was often called the Holy One of God. But now, thats me too. I am his holy one. You are his holy one! How magnificent is that! When that truth hits you, everything changes. WE ARE NO LONGER DEFINED BY SIN. That has passed away, and anyone who says differently or that we are still defined by sin until we reach heaven must believe that death is the savior, not Jesus. Jesus is the healer, not death. He is the resurrection and the life! And he has ALREADY given us new life. It is ours! We simply have to claim it. We don't need to be always wishing for heaven after death, because heaven has been given to us in life. And our purpose isn't to get to heaven later, it is to bring heaven to earth. To bring more of the Kingdom here. To prepare the earth for the King until he fully returns. THIS is who we are. Ambassadors, not sinners. Trusted, loved, cleansed, righteous, perfected in Christ. From feeling and knowing this is how we have the power to be the ambassadors of Jesus. Only by knowing WHO we are, that we are the children and beloved and ambassadors of God can we actually BE who we are. You have to have the awareness of your identity to be able to work from it. We have an incredible, powerful identity. I AM is in me. hah! That is amazing!
I am learning who I am, and how to simply walk in who I am.
Take a few seconds or minutes often throughout the day to just focus on the fact that you are the holy one of God, that you are his ambassador in every moment, that you are loved. And refocus in the power that you are given by Holy Spirit who is with you. You are never alone. The Living God is walking with you. He is reading this with you, and he will be present with you in every moment of your day. Let that sink in.
And then live in power. We have Holy Spirit living with us, and we have his power as OUR power. Wow, I know I waste that so often. We have the Living Lion of Judah walking with us RIGHT NOW. He is HERE. He is present. NOW. Let it sink in again. Wow. It is not just some dry theology or a mental theory or a metaphor. God is present with you right now. You are sitting in the presence of the Almighty. And you are his child.
Ahhhhh:D Just soak in that.
There is no striving to be something else here in the presence of God, there is only freedom to be who you are: the child who is soaking in the presence of their Father.
First, read this. CTK Blog - 3 Things I'd Do if I Were Satan Ok, here we go. Dearest Church, We need to WAKE UP to the Spirit and remember our roots, and remember that Jesus didn't preach legalism and judgement and rules and self-righteousness. He preached adoration and love for the broken. He preached the power given to us by the strength of his Spirit's supernatural work and the fact that our identity is being a Son and Daughter of the Almighty God. We have so much power that we don't use, and we have so many people that we don't love. Wake up church. We were told that we would be able to do even greater things than Jesus did, in his name. Do you get how huge that is? Jesus healed the blind, the sick, the lame. He rose the dead. He loved like none other. And he did all of this with grace and ease because he KNEW his identity, and he knew the identity of each person he met: each of them was covered in the love and longing of God. So then why has the work of the Spirit seemed to slow down? Why is the church known for their judgement and self-righteousness? We have forgotten our roots. Imagine a church where the Spirit is welcomed living and active and expected. We have the Living God inside our souls and all around us, and yet the American church seems to have been largely diminished to a place where people idly stand, sing a stale song, hear a message and then go back to their careers, their homes, their friends and don't really do much there either. But imagine a place where people encounter and see the love of Jesus. Where our service to other people comes from the overflow of our hearts. Where the ashamed, the unworthy, the sinners, the broken are healed by the love of God and the love shown by his sons and daughters. But this place is not a place it all. No, it is a people. A people who are fully aware of their identity and of the identity of those around them. We are the body of God, are we not? Are we not the hands and feet of Jesus, the one who told us to go out and heal in his name and cast out demons in his name, who told us love our neighbor and our enemy in his name? That's us right?...or am I missing something? Because most of the time, that doesn't really look like us, church. When did the overwhelming love of God and the incredible power given by his Spirit become something that we are so complacent in, that we think that we can just idly sit in? When did it become something that we sing "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah" about but do not LIVE? I think this happened when we stopped realizing that we are the children of a real, and living, and present God. Our God does not just live on through us by the stories. Yes, the Bible is a record book of the action of God and a record book of his solid teaching that we live by. But, OUR LIVES are the daily newspaper of the action of God now, we are the current stories of the work of God because he has never stopped working and he has never left us. When will this become real again to us? Because it is REAL. His love, his presence, his work. His hand is moving, and he calls his people to mobilize. He has been for the last 2 millennia. We are called to love and to act, and we are called to intimacy with God. And I think that this is another reason why the church is struggling. Often we become people who serve in the church, lead worship, host events, maybe reach out some, but we have lost the secret place. The quiet place, the hidden place, the place where it it just you and God together, talking and listening, being convicted and being strengthened and encouraged. From this place does the overflow of love and strength and encouragement and truth come from. And it is this place that needs to be recovered in the church. It is within the souls of men that the battle must be waged. And in our culture, this is the most difficult place to reach, because day after day, we are told that we don't have souls. Our culture says, "You are just a body, a mass of cells formed by a cosmic accident. You are temporal. There is nothing more to you." And this speaks directly against our very make up, our design, and our Designer. No wonder our souls are in crisis! We must learn to fight against this lie, to awaken our souls to the desire of the Divine. Society tells us we don't have souls because Satan knows that our souls are meant for eternity, and he wants as many people as possible to lose that knowledge and that hope. By the cutting out of the soul, Satan removes more and more threats to himself. And this is why the battle must begin there. By feeding the soul in the secret place with God, we gather more strength than Satan could ever even have knowledge of. And by this, we become fierce and strong Warriors and Lovers who know who we are and by whose name and power we live. Church,all of us, including myself, need to be continuously woken up. We need revival within the church so that we can have revival outside of it. We were never meant to be a stagnant people, who learned and experienced but never moved. It is from the overflow that action comes. This has been quite a blistering critique of us, church. But know that it was written as much to myself as to everyone else. You may not agree with me, and thats ok, I have much to learn. But be blessed and go with God today, because He is with us! Much love, A fellow sister
I came this first year of university hoping for a good dorm, filled with sweet girls who could become a family. And I have been so blessed.
My dorm, 4W, has become my home, and the girls have become my sisters. At the beginning of the year, I was scared of what the transition would be like and how I would learn to function living with so many new girls. But now, with only two days left living in my dorm, I am almost scared to leave. This place is my safety zone, my resting place. Just like leaving home to come here felt like a leap of faith for me, so does leaving here to go back. What will be back home? What will it be like? How will I spend my days, without my Rachel to laugh with, my Maya to call me "Cookie", my Alex to tease, my Brittany to love on? What will happen without the late night talking sessions of the Fab Four?
I could never have imagined at the beginning of this year that these are the type of questions and concerns I would have now. While I am still SO ready for summer and for the end of school, I don't feel ready to leave this place. Because I know that when I come back, it will all be different again. This is hard for me because I've realized that here, I am comfortable, I feel accepted and loved, I am safe, I can rest, I can have adventures and make hilarious memories, I can speak deeply with the people around me, I can be challenged by new ideas. Unbeknownst to me, over the year, 4W became my place to belong.
Over the years, these types of places have varied. Sometimes they have place places of deep belonging, other times a quiet comfortableness. There has been my middle school youth group, ZLO, my community college, and my high school youth group. There has been my friend groups and close relationships that have been and are places to belong. And now, I have had the unexpected privilege to call this university, and this dorm full of amazing women, another one of those places.
God is so good, and I have been so overwhelmingly blessed. And I know that no matter where each of my girls go and what we all do, 4W is a place in our hearts where we will always have a place to belong.
This is a post written by my friend, Keturah, an amazing woman who is captivated by the heart of God, and in whom the heart of God delights. What amazing words of freedom! When beauty is protected, encouraged and cherished, women can breathe again. They can dance without shame, they can dress lovely without rivalry or conceit. Why do women spend so much time trying to compare ourselves? Because we've spent our lives wondering if we're worth being picked for the garden.
Is our beauty good enough for a masterpiece, are we worth adorning? Behind the desire for jewels, shoes and designer clothes is a root much deeper than competition, it's a question. Am I worth pursuit without a selfish motive? Am I beautiful enough to adorn? Do you want beauty, or is beauty too much for you? Am I lovely?
Will you protect my beauty, or would you rather I hide my beauty so you don't have to put out the effort?
Would you hide my beauty and then complement a woman who is not encouraged to hide it? Would you look at a woman free to be herself and think that's a beauty worth appreciating, when I'm here, feeling unworthy of protection, unworthy of adornment?
Men, you were meant to protect beauty, not control the amount of beauty so that you don't have to put out the effort. Tell us were beautiful! Don't worry what we'll think of you. I don't need to be in your garden for you to appreciate my beauty. But those of you who have a woman in your care, why don't you show her that she is worth having a man at her side and not a boy that sits at the dinner table wondering why it's late. Not a picky man who would rather she dress down so she doesn't draw too much attention. Is she worth a fight? Is she worth being bold for? Is she worth making sure that the other men know she came with you? Not to their shame or for your fame, not over the top for your pride, but for her to know that you would protect her from the creepers conversation and the life threat alike! That you would see that her heart needs protection too.
If you wait till our lives are threatened it may be too late. Don't let your flowers droop in shame. Water them with truth about what you see that is beautiful about them. They may not believe your words at first, but in time they will believe your actions. When you do small things out of sacrificial love, not just something she would appreciate that's easy for your brownie points. Do something that's hard. Something no one else will see. Just for her benefit. And don't expect a thank you, just keep doing it, if she's worth it.
The DNA of the woman came from the heart of a King. Just like woman, He wants to know we appreciate Him. If He's worth sacrificing your comfort for. Her heart shows something of His. A longing to be desired, for the beauty that came from much pain, to be appreciated and not mocked.
We women have caused fatal wounds to many boys and men. But please know that some of us repent. We felt unprotected so we tried to prove we didn't need your protection anyway, but we went our question answered by a man and not a boy.
We want men again.
I believe in you men and boys, you were made with a heart to fight, to protect beauty, to long for an adventure. We have told you for centuries that you couldn't be what you were made to be. That you'd never be men. What a disturbing thing to do.
Men, we need you. We need you to be what you were made to be. I for one, let go of control over men. Be a man, protect beauty, have an adventure. Don't seek it for only us or for your good, but for the King, for the good of His family, His Kingdom.
Seek Him first, though your father may never have been proud, He will be, though your father may have avoided you, He won't, though you were broken by your fathers, He will heal and restore. He's not like your father! He will make you men who can fight in the midst of bloody war or as a checker at the grocery store. He is more than able to raise you as a man.
Earthly fathers tend to raise boys, but the King I know trains men (even from infancy).
Beauty and strength are eternal attributes of the Kingdom to come. We get to be a visual aid if we choose to walk in our commissions. What a glorious honor.
Women lets stop stifling men and mocking their desire to be strong and able, start appreciating the way they love you. Stop trying to be stronger to shame the men, be strong as you ought and encourage your men to be stronger, without shaming them.
Men please stop being afraid of us, we need you now, stop mocking our beauty and tell us what you see as lovely, start fighting for us, for more than your image. What you see on movies, the men women tend to dote over, they're not just impossible heroes, they're men who let go of selfish pride. We don't expect a man that's perfect, but a man who is willing to be seen as imperfect without hiding, a man who will protect beauty without shame. A man who would risk his good, not only so he can have the beauty he longs to rescue, but so that the beauty herself is rescued, even if she will never be his.
"Quiet me with your love." This has become my consistent prayer. In an era, a culture, and a situation that encourages and demands constant busyness, one of the hardest things I find to do is to still my thoughts and truly listen to God speak. My mind seems to be constantly full of thoughts, of plans, of anxieties. I often turn to writing my prayers because it helps my mind to not wander. But I want so desperately to be able to just be quiet before God, with God. To just say, "Father, communicate with me and help me hear you. Help my thoughts calm down and my head stop spinning!"
These past couple days have been insane. With two major finals tomorrow, I've been studying like a madman. Today, a couple of my friends and I stayed in the same spot studying from 9:00am to 10:30pm. My brain has been overwhelmed. In my constant rush, my thoughts get jumbled and scattered, and I usually end up saying stupid and unnecessary things. But being the over-analyzer that I am, these careless acts become another part of the jumbled mess of thoughts that continue to race through my head. "What should I do? How can I fix what I've said? Ahhh I can't believe I did that. What was I thinking? Was it really that bad? ...yeah it was. darn it. Should I say something? Should I let it go? Will they let it go? Are they still thinking about it? I probably just ruined everything. Crap...why did you have to speak??" This is small picture of my mind sometimes, but especially today. And trust me, there is no peace, there is no quiet, only my own mind grasping at straws for answers that never seem to be settled, and speculation that is enough to drive someone insane.
But in the middle of all of this craziness, I realize something. When things are the craziest, when I am anxious, when I am panicking about finals or about my stupid blunder, when I am insecure about things that are going on in my life, when I feel like I am thinking so much and I can barely even hear myself, this is the time that I need to simply be quiet. Be quiet in His love. His love is overwhelming and overcoming. It overwhelms my heart and it overcomes my problems, my anxieties, my insecurities, and even my mistakes. His love is the healer of all hurts, and He makes right everything that had been done wrong. He hears, and he speaks. He holds all of His children in his hand, he is the comforter of all, the speaker of all truth. Being still in not easy for me, but sometimes, there is no other place I would rather be than quiet in the love of the Spirit. And there are no other thoughts I would rather have fill my mind than those of the Father. I want to be still in order to hear Him fill me with his thoughts, with his desires, with his plans.
There is only anxiety found in trying to fix things or to plan things on my own. I suck at those kinds of things and my plans never work out the way I intend. But the plans of the Lord are perfect. They require no analyzing, no correcting, no evaluating , no anxiety, and no regrets when they are carried out. The desires of God are good, and in thoughts of Jesus, peace is found. As Paul wrote, "Whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable,...think on these things." In quietness before Jesus, he fills us up with the thoughts that are worthy to be considered. I don't need to be filled with worry, with anxiety, with guilt and shame, with constant planning and trying to control my life and the the affects of the past on my current life. He gives peace, and guidance, and quietness within his perfect love.
Rest in His love, and walk in the knowledge that He is always with you, always communicating with you. He is the life. He alone is the truth. And from Him alone comes the thoughts worth dwelling on!
