Here to Stay

I mentioned in my last post on rest that I have a brain that is very active even when trying to sleep. As annoying as it is, it has proved to be a blessing as well. 
Sleep is truly a wonderful thing! I love it. Especially since I have asked Jesus to meet me in my sleep and He does. Not only do I have dreams where He tells me I am loved, several times when I have awakened in the middle of the night my first thoughts have been to pray for whatever thought woke me up and to surrender it to the Lord. It's funny because most often my first thoughts in the morning are really incomplete and don't even make sense. But when I think on Jesus..He makes sense. 

A couple days ago I decided to reflect on what the Lord has been working in my life lately and I started by reading my blogs from 2011. I went through a brief valley in January of that year and it was interesting to see how I have grown in knowing the Lord since then. After reading through blogposts, I read through my prayer journal. Let me tell you, not only is my God loving.. He is faithful as well. 
He is consistent and He is faithful. 

My discipleship group is starting to examine the fruits of the Spirit. This may sound funny, and maybe even ridiculous, but I never really stopped to consider that all these things were characteristics of God. Of course "fruits of the Spirit" mean they come from God, but I think I've more considered them as things that grow in us if we abide in Christ. That's true. But it's characteristics of God that we get to experience by drawing near to Christ. Those fruits are the choice morsels of life we harvest in order to share with a hungry, starving world that has never tasted how good God is. 
In John 15 we see that Christ asks us to remain in Him, remain in His love and bear much fruit. While we get the benefit of partaking in the fruit ourselves, we were meant to share it. Share it with other believers, share it with non-believers. Share it with people who don't know what love tastes like. Who don't know what joy tastes like. Who don't know what peace tastes like. 

I've tasted it. I've tasted and seen that the Lord is good. And you know what? It's satisfying. I could partake of all the different junk foods of this world and while it might taste good in the moment, it will only leave me feeling bloated and gross and craving it more. 
So Paul tells us, as Christians, we are to train like athletes, like olympians pushing hard for the gold medal at the end of the competition. And when you think truly on what an athletes diet consists of, it probably has a lot more fruit than it does french fries. 

Okay, enough with the food tangent, I was just eating supper with my roommate and we're both being health conscious of what we eat for the sake of our intestinal health and so eating healthy is kind of on my mind. God's faithfulness is really what is causing my heart to flutter at this moment. 

Yesterday, Saturday, my day was filled to the brim. It started with me picking up a needed car part a little after 8:30am. Once I was home my friend, Reed, came over and installed it for me and then we discovered my car had died and so shortly after he left my friend, Deven, came over and jumped my car and mounted the part Reed installed and then Deven stuck around to make sure my car was safe to drive which included him installing a chain to keep the hood down and then me feeding him lunch and by the time he left it was about 2:30. And I was only alone long enough to gather what was needed for a Valentine making party and head off to my friend, Amanda's, apartment where I spent several hours with some other girls from connection group and I got home a little after 8pm and was only alone long enough to make a few plans, wash some wine glasses and then rush off to a sister evening with Grace and Pearl and by the time I was home around midnight, I was tired enough to fall asleep right away. 
So, basically, I don't like to be alone. Even those couple 5 or 10 minutes of having the house to myself before I rushed off to my next thing, I just felt uncomfortable with it. 

It's funny, cuz I could have the house to myself when I'm doing quiet time and I wouldn't feel alone. Christ spoke such beautiful words when he was physically on earth. "I am with you always, even to the end of the age."Some times I think He spoke them just for me and they were written down so that however many thousand years later I would read them and come to put my stake in the ground on that promise and pitch my tent there. I like Him being with me. I like knowing that He will never leave me. I like knowing that no matter what I put Him through, how He feels about me will never change and His affections will never die. I like how secure I am in His faithfulness. I like how no matter what, He thinks I'm precious. I like how He has faithfully and relentlessly pursued my heart even when my feelings for Him were not strong and even though He has captured my heart, He doesn't stop showing off. He doesn't stop. He is faithful. You know why? Because He thinks I'm worth it. 
How better to affirm that than stick to His guns and consistently pursue a heart that doesn't consistently love or honor or demonstrate that same passion in return? That speaks to my heart. That gets me. That's one of my love languages. I know there's really only 5 that people talk about, but I have a couple extra.

Speaking of love, I've gotten such positive responses from my, "Holy and Dearly Loved" post. I feel loved in how people have responded. (I think that's another love language I have). I decided to take what I learned from this last dark season and apply it to every dark season I can remember going through. What I found was, that throughout my life, God has consistently been teaching me how to love. And not just love, but love well. When I think of what I was like before I knew Jesus I rather chuckle because I was not a loving person. At all. God is so funny. Of course He was gonna take the most unloving, selfish, mean-spirited, rebellious heart and teach it to love. Me...of all people, love. 

More than that, He's put me in women's ministry. *That* is what's really funny. If there was ever a girl who didn't know the first thing on relating to their own sex and loving them well, I win.
You wanna know what it took to get me to that place? A relentless, loving, faithful God. You wanna know how long it's taken so far? 21 years. He's been after me for 21 years and He still promises He's gonna be around for however many years I have left. And after those years, I'm gonna be with Him for eternity. Forever. And He doesn't get sick of me. That's a whole lotta faithfulness right there. 

I hope I'm faithful. I can learn to love, but if I can't do that consistently or faithfully, that's not going to be worth a whole lot. You can't water a flower once and hope it will keep from wilting. You can't water a seed once and hope it will grow to a point of bearing fruit. You can't stick  your neck out and love that difficult person one time and hope that it changes their entire countenance or attitude. 

This afternoon, I took one of the most glorious naps I've had in a long time. It was a rainy sunday afternoon and after having reflected on how God's faithfulness has been another display of His love I found myself crawling under my covers to thaw out my toes a little. With the rain pattering on the skylight above my bed, I soon fell fast asleep where my loving Jesus met me in my dreams. I love that. I love waking up and feeling loved because I was reminded of it while I was asleep. I love that God can use an active sleeping brain to display His glory and character. He pursues me in my sleep. 

There was a point last semester when I found myself having a difficult and painful conversation with someone and all throughout I was praying the Lord would be near to my heart. As I kept my team of prayer warriors updated, one of them had texted me with the lines to a song we sing in Salt that goes, "Yahweh, Yahweh. Faithful God, you're here to stay. Yahweh, Yahweh forever and always the same."
And in that moment, I felt God with me. I knew He wasn't gonna leave. No matter what, He was in it for the long haul. And I have come to know Him better since then. 

After all that I've gone through up to this point, more than anything in the world, no matter what life takes me through in the future, no matter what Satan tells me about God causing the pain in my world, no matter what trial, what sorrow, what mountain or valley, I want *my* response to be, "Faithful God, I'm here to stay."You know why? I wanna be like that. I want to be known as a faithful person. I want people to get a taste of who God is. And if that is not a fruit that I'm displaying in my life, than people who interact with me aren't going to know. I want them to know. 

They need to know that my faithful Father is here to stay.  

Rest

I love Fridays!! Fridays are my sabbath. I don't have class and so I've made it my day to sleep in and spend my first hour with my Jesus. I think I look forward to Friday a little more each week when my alarm goes off at 5:50am Monday morning. 

One of the reasons I love Fridays so much is because I actually sleep on Thursday nights. I'm actually a really light sleeper and any sound, light, or drop in temperature wakes me up pretty easily. Throw in a brain that never really shuts off and I'm averaging about 6 hours of sleep a night. I go to bed at a decent hour, but starting Sunday nights all the way to Thursday, I wake up to see my alarm clock telling my the time at 1am, 3am, 4am, 5am, and 6am. I get so stressed about waking up on time that I don't really rest when I sleep and I wake up constantly. About a week ago I went to sleep on a wednesday night and dreamed it was Thursday. I woke up with a start at 4:15am and actually thought that I had fallen asleep taking a Thursday afternoon nap and that I needed to get up and get ready for class at 6:30. I went so far as to turn on my bedside lamp and put my feet on the floor before I realized it was actually early morning. I sleep well on Thursday nights simply because I don't have a specific time that I need to wake up on Fridays and so I sleep through the whole night. The Lord wakes me up around 8 and I always feel so refreshed after a full night's rest. 

So what does my poor sleep pattern have to do with anything? Well, let me tell you. The Lord invites us to rest. I think I take it literally on Thursday nights because I know when I wake up, I'm going to have coffee with Jesus and we're going to spend a couple hours together. 
This morning, my quiet time was about rest. Isn't that funny? I've read the passage where He invites us weary and heavy burdened souls to come to Him and rest and take His yoke upon us. I love it, and it makes me feel loved, but I've never really thought in detail just what a loving thing that is that He invites us to that. 

This morning I came across Mark 6:31 where Jesus says to His disciples, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest." Isn't that beautiful? He literally tells them, "seriously, take a break. Leave all that's weighing you down behind you, drop it for a moment, and rest." 
My quiet place is in a comfy white chair that was my great grandfather's that is  not only next to my coffee pot, but is also conveniently close to the only heat vent in my room in case heat ever actually comes out of it. 

One of my biggest struggles in life is not being able to say "no" along with thinking that I can manage everything. I have this thought that if I don't step up, then who will? I'm coming to realize that it could be a pride thing. I like people to think I'm wonderful when I do lots of things. But I heard this great quote this morning from Beth Moore and she said, "We cannot do a thousand things to the glory of God. Our attempt to do so is ridding us of an expensive thing called 'excellence.'"
It's quite humbling to hear that, actually. I was reading over some of my blogs from last fall and in one of my september ones I had mentioned that I was doing a billion things and feeling overwhelmed but loving it all. It's funny when you look back and see disregarded warning signs and you think, "ughh.. why didn't I see that? Why didn't I slow down and stop then?" But at the same time, I became so tired and exhausted and wounded in an emotional battle that by the time my winter break from school came, not only did I allow myself to rest physically, I came to know a spiritual rest that I had never "needed" before. 

You know what? I think God likes to be needed. I think we experience that wanting as a taste of what God experiences. I love people. I love interacting with people. I love serving people. I love loving people. I love being needed because I love to demonstrate my passion and love for people who need it. The greater people need me, the more broken, run down, exhausted, belittled, rejected they are, the more I feel needed, the more room there is for me to pour into them, the more affirmed I feel. Perhaps God is the same way. And that is why He invites us to rest in Him. Because when we become exhausted, there's room for Him to give us life. The more loss we experience, the more room there is for His comfort. 

You know why He tells us to wait sometimes? Because He loves us. I think that by telling us to wait, He gets to spend more time with us before we rush off to the next thing. We're so eager to jump up and be busy with something, some "calling" we have and He holds us back by putting His hand out in front of us and is like, "Wait just a second. Wait and spend some time with me. Wait and rest. Wait and allow yourself to be in my presence for more than the few seconds that you made that request. Just wait, I want to be with you." 

When I grew up, and I've still heard this recently, I was told that there are 3 ways God answers our prayers: "Yes" "No" and "Not right now." I don't know if I really agree with that. I don't think there's ever a time when God says, "Not right now." When I was growing up, "not right now" meant that the person I was asking of was busy. God is never too busy. God rests. In the last 4 months I have requested of God to take a certain pain from my heart so many times that I don't even have a number for it. That pain stayed a long time. It stayed until I got in the habit of spending genuine time resting in the Lord. I don't think His answer was "Yes," "No," or even "Not right now" even though the pain eventually left. I think His answer was, "Rest." And there were countless times along the way that I thought there was something I was failing to surrender that was causing the pain to stay but I came to realize that wasn't it. I think God let me keep experiencing it so I would need Him. Of course I always need Him, but I really really needed him. 

There's a song that I hear often that I absolutely love. It's Redeemed by Big Daddy Weave and the opening lines are, "

Seems like all I could see was the struggle
Haunted by ghosts that lived in my past
Bound up in shackles of all my failures
Wondering how long is this gonna last
Then You look at this prisoner and say to me "son
Stop fighting a fight it's already been won"

Mmmm. Isn't that good? Especially the last bit. You know what happens when you stop fighting a fight that's already been won? You rest. You don't have to fight anymore.  I think that's what God is calling us to now. Stop fighting. Put down the sword, put down everything, step away, enter into His tent and rest. And seriously, a little advice from someone who has been there, if you don't drop things and step away when He says so, He might just take them out of your hands for you. He wants your surrender and if you're not able to put your hands up, it's probably because they are too full of stuff. Stuff He'd rather carry for you. Sometimes He kinda has to take us through a lot to get us to a willing point of accepting rest. Trust me, you heal faster if you don't let yourself get maimed in battle  first. 

So here's how I see it, rest is one of the most beautiful commandments God ever made. Because He loves us. Because He cares about when we get run down. He cares about when we can't do it all. He cares about us feeling overwhelmed. He cares about when stress prevents us from sleeping. He cares. 
So rest. Carve out some time to be with Jesus if you have to. But He is inviting you to be with Him by yourselves in a quiet place. I strongly encourage you to accept it. 

Holy and Dearly Loved

I'm so overwhelmed with the goodness of God right now that I don't even know if there is a starting point for it all. 
I know I keep referring to last semester when I went through a dark time, but it was such a monumental time in my walk with God and I am still every day learning from it and realizing just how incredibly big and wonderful my Father is and how he plans so carefully the details of my life. 
So last semester when I was going through my valley of darkness, I hated going to sleep. I hated the night time because I no longer had something to fill my time or occupy my thoughts and distract me from the pain that overwhelmed my heart. I would lay in my bed trying to fall asleep but mostly I would just cry and think on the pain I was experiencing. People would tell me that God was in control of all things and that He had all this planned and all I could think of as a response was, "No.. God is not cruel. I don't want to believe that this was God's design." And it wasn't just relationships, it was school and my character and even my faith in God that seemed to be victim to the storm in which I had found myself to be drowning. I felt that there was no way that God, in His loving, compassionate self, could have wanted my heart to experience that gutting that it did and that it was simply caused by the world being a cruel place to live. It was my belief that while God didn't want me to be in the pain that I was, He was going to rescue me from it eventually.  

I think I was wrong. If I truly believe that God is in control of all things, than I would have to believe that God caused all of that. But, my God is not cruel. The explanation for all of that continues to be revealed to me day by day. The closer I have come to God in all of this, the more I have come to seeing how beautiful His ways are. At one point during that time, a family member whom I greatly admire sent me an email containing Colossians 3:12-17 encouraging me to clothe myself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. She encouraged me to put on love and receive Christ's love for me, to be thankful, to let the peace of Christ rule in my heart. I've thought about this often since I first read it. I had read it before, probably multiple times, but the timing of receiving this Word again was  captivating to me. Why now? I mean, we are always called to do those things, but what was so significant about doing it right at that moment?

I love going to sleep now. As I let my body rest, I talk to Jesus and ask Him to be near to me and take me into His presence. He does. As my eyes are shut He shows be beautiful visions of what He is doing and I have often heard His voice whispering His words of love and healing into the deepest places of my heart.Last night I had a class that starts and 6:30 and doesn't end til 9pm. There was a cold advisory for temperatures that dropped well below zero and a wind advisory that brought the temp down to -29. That's not exactly safe for walking a mile 1/2, especially after dark. My mom gave me this ridiculously big coat that's so big that I can't even get my backpack on over it and I feel like a walking marshmallow when I wear it. I've been refusing to wear it for the last several months because I don't like to look silly. 
Last night, it was too cold and so on went the coat. I did feel a little silly, but I felt it was worth it. The coat was so glorious that I didn't even feel the temperature change when I stepped outside apart from my legs. 

As I was falling asleep I asked Jesus to take me to His garden again, as that is the place we often go together when He tells me of the plans He has for me life. We had a lovely conversation. He was showing me the green grass and the plants that thrive and a beautiful pool where one cools off when it seems too hot. I asked Him if there was a fireplace for warming up after getting cold. He told me it doesn't get cold there. I told Him it is cold where I live now, quite miserable in fact. He said He knew. I asked Him why. Why must we experience the cold? That's when He told me that hard things we go through are like the cold. But we must dress for it and be prepared. That is why we clothe ourselves with compassion and kindness, gentleness and patience. That is why we put on Christ's love. Because when the trials come, we are not affected by them. Just like that big coat didn't let any cold in, that's what those things are for us. When we put on all those things, we are protected from any bitter seeds growing in our hearts. If we don't, may catch a cold or a sinus infection that makes it so our ministry needs a sick leave. 

Is that not beautiful? God is so clever. Because even SNOW works in that picture. God blankets everything with Him, his purity, His love, and He preserves it for us when we come out of our trials into a beautiful Springtime. 

This morning I was listening to Beth Moore's talk on getting out of the pit. She described "The Pit" as being anything negative that we cannot get ourselves out of. She said there are three ways of getting in, 1) You can get thrown in. 2) You can slip in. 3) You can jump in. 
It was the one about slipping that really got to me. She talked about struggling with sin that we never ever expected to. Like being hit by a curveball and all the sudden finding yourself in a place that you never ever planned to be. That was me. Shortly before things "fell apart" completely, I had found myself fighting against temptations that I never thought would have been my struggle. I even had told several of my accountability partners, "I never expected this to be me." But as I listened to this, the verse that said, "But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold"(Ps 73:2) played through my head. And then the Holy Spirit promptly reminded me, "But you didn't! I saved you! See? If things hadn't "fallen apart" than maybe you would have been in that pit. But I held your hand. I kept you from falling in. It's because I love you. That is my great plan. I loved you too much to let you fall in. And not only that, but when you experienced pain, you clung to me. You wanted to know me better and that is how I drew you in. Don't you see it? It's because I love you."

My God is not cruel. How abounding in love He is!! He withholds no good things from those He loves! Even if that good thing must be found when digging through the rubble of something lost. Even if that good thing comes through some form of pain. Even if that good thing is seeing how He heals a broken heart, He doesn't hold back. I've come to realize that that "good thing" is Him. He doesn't withhold any part of His goodness from us. We get to experience all of His love, all of His compassions, all of His grace, all of His joy, all of His courage, all of His comfort, all of His strength. 
But how then shall we experience it if we do not need it? How will we experience comfort if we have not experienced loss? How will we experience grace if we have not fallen? How will we experience joy if we have not hurt? How will He demonstrate His good things for us if He doesn't have our attention? 

No, He loves us too much. He will do incredible things to demonstrate that. He will pull us out of pits, carry us through fires, take us through deep waters, hold our hands in dark places, and take us in His arms and love us with an incredible passion that we will never fully comprehend. And that is why He says in scripture, "Holy and Dearly Loved." That is what He calls us. That is what we are. 

Worth It

Phew! This one's a doozy. Lately I've been contemplating 'worth.' One Dictionary defines it as "good or important enough to justify (what is specified)." And that word "enough" is the one that often defeats me. I've had this discussion with many of my friends and, most often, the first question that pops into our heads, being the women that we are, when we experience some form of rejection is, "Am I not worth   ______" And then of course we begin to think about what "enoughs" that we aren't and how we fall short and all of our faults seem to smack us in the face and kick us in the ribs. 

"Am I not worth pursuing?" 

"Am I not worth a 5 second response?"

"Am I not worth a 10 cent Rose?" 

"Am I not worth the time?"

"Am I not worth a text/email/phone call"

"Am I not worth it?"

Those questions, and many very similar to those, have not only gone through my own head a billion times during the course of my life, from the other women I've heard from and talked to, the same questionings of their worth have gone through theirs. If only they were a simple passing thought as forgettable as the 2 minute meet-n-greets we do at Salt every week. These questions might start as a thought, but they quickly become knives and daggers and arrows that pierce through the precious hearts  and souls of us girls. I know it drives guys nuts. One forgotten thing of importance seems to turn into a big deal and the poor fellows are lost trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with this girl that she's all the sudden crying over something that didn't seem like such a big deal. 

So, let me break this down for you...not that I think that terribly many male units out there will read this..but if they do, they need to know this. Try to picture a girls heart as a vase and the true her is the flowers. When the vase has water, the flowers thrive and open up and look beautiful. If you think of love as being the water, you know that when a girls heart is fully loved, the girl will fully be herself as beautiful as the flower God made her to be. Pursuing her is like watering her vase. Granted, we do need to keep in mind that God is the ultimate gardener and only His living water will truly satisfy this flower.

So, when you neglect your precious flower, it wilts, it's not as pretty, and it wonders what it is about it that it wasn't worth maintaining. Maybe it didn't smell as nice, maybe it was a daisy and not as pretty as a rose, maybe it was just too much work. What ever reason, I don't think there was ever an explanation that made it hurt any less. 

Last night our connection group kicked off our first meeting for this Spring Semester. I co-lead with my two closest friends but on account I had all the notes on last night's lesson/the discussion questions, I was the head-leader. although there were 5 girls not present, there were still over a dozen young women there. I don't think I was worried about it til we were half-way through and it was hard to get discussion going. Some seemed bored, not all of them knew my story or what I'm like on a regular basis, and it seemed like one thing after another told me that I was doing a terrible job and that I was just making a fool of myself and everyone was feeling uncomfortable. As I told my co-leaders/friends this on our drive home, they both seemed a little shock. They were both like, "What?? Where is that coming from?? You did great! I thought it went really well!" 

So where did it come from? Let me tell you. In Genesis 3, way back at the beginning of all things, we see how Satan began to whisper those thoughts of self-doubt into the mind of the most perfectly made woman of all times. When he told Eve that by eating the fruit her eyes would be opened and that she would be like God in knowing good and evil, he made her question if she was "good enough" with out knowing the things God knew. Was she good enough just as she was? When she questioned this, she doubted it and her worth and then she fell into sin. And then, of course, the rest of us women get to experience the same thing on top of this wonderful curse to desire a husband. That curse is part of who we are now. We want a man to love us and care for us and provide for us. We want someone to think we are "worth it." 

While Satan stands to accuse us all day long and tries to defeat us in everyway possible by destroying the core of our very being, Christ is at the right hand of God interceding on our behalf. I picture it being much like the scene from one of my favorite Dr. Who episodes where The Doctor and Rory have a little encounter after Rory's girlfriend, Amy, has been killed.

Rory: Can you help her, is there anything you can do?

The Doctor: Yeah, probably, if I had the time.

Rory: The time?!?

The Doctor: All of Creation has just been wiped from the sky. Do you now know how many lives now never happened? All the people who never lived. Your girlfriend isn't more important than the whole Universe.

Rory: SHE IS TO ME!!! {he hits him}

And that is how we come to catch a glimpse of our heavenly father. It is how we know we were made in His likeness. Because, while we carry this emptiness in our hearts and a longing to be "good enough" to be pursued and chased after, He stands there with His arms out spread asking, "What about me? Am I worth it?" Whilst we run around with our vases trying to find a sink deep enough to fit it under a working faucet, He's standing there with a garden hose wishing we'd ask Him to fill us up.

And when we trust someone to fill our vase and then they don't and we're left with wilting flowers and dead leaves and stems that don't seem to absorb water they way they used to, he patiently and lovingly clips away the things that died, trims the stems to the healthy parts and replaces the flowers that lost their petals. But we look at our wilted, failed, unwanted, and discarded selves and Satan stands there to tells us we are not worth pursuing, we are not worth a conversation, we are not worth the time, or what ever else it is, and Christ in all his heroic anger punches Satan in the jaw and yells, "SHE IS TO ME!"

So what about Christ? Is He worth it? Is He worth pursuing? Is he worth a 5 second response or 10 cents dropped in the offering plate? Is He worth a whole conversation or the 5 minutes it takes to read a passage? Is He worth your life? Your surrender?

He fights so much for us, but do we fight for Him? Do we chase after Him? Do we love Him and admire His beauty? 

Last night as I was last minute trying to find more Bible verses on why we should pursue Christ, I found myself reading over the list of verses that I've been clinging to lately. I pursue Christ because when I am afflicted in every way, I'm not crushed, not abandoned, not destroyed. 

I pursue Him because he renews my heart day by day. 

I pursue Him because He says He is my helper and I need not fear anything. 

I pursue Him because He wipes the tears from my eyes. He gives me joy in all circumstances. He heals my heart when I experience sorrow. He gives life to my heart when I've had the wind knocked out of me. 

I pursue Him because for all the times that I have strayed away, been stuck in sin, grown distant, come to a point of brokenness, He was there and He faithfully whispered to my heart that I was worth it when I couldn't see how that could be. Never once has he left me or forsaken me. Never once have I cried to Him and He didn't come rescue me. He has never left me in a pit or dropped me in a fire. Not only does He bind up my broken heart, He uses pieces of His own heart to patch of the places that are no longer intact. 

So when the accuser comes and tells me that God is not worth being the weirdo in class or sleeping on an old mattress in an other country that has a thriving mosquito population for the sake of sharing the gospel, or when he says Christ is not worth losing a friend over or sacrificing a good grade, when he says Christ is not worth saying "no" to the pleasures of this world when it could be the only chance I'll ever get, my answer is, "He's worth it to me!"

That I May Truly Live

This morning as I sat down with my Jesus I found myself confessing a fear that I didn't really know I had... love. Love heals and love hurts, it is such a strange thing. I have often prayed that God would fill me with love for His people and that my heart would be overcome with compassion. 
I think God has so blessed me with having a heart similar to His that I have caught the slightest, tiniest glimpse of the sorrow He experiences when He loves unsparingly and is often rejected. 
Not that I claim to have a heart as unselfish or near as loving as Christ's, but I've experienced a taste. 

As I sat and contemplated this wonderful aspect of God, a phrase from a song began to play in my head, "Did e'er such love and sorrow meet." At the same moment, "Beloved" by Tenth Avenue North was playing from my Time Alone with God playlist and the words "You're My beloved, Lover I'm yours. Death shall not part us It's you I died for" seemed to come at just the right moment. 

The song about love and sorrow coming together is from a hymn that I've sung a million times but never realized just how beautiful the words are. 

See from His head His hands His feet
Sorrow and love flow mingled down
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet
Or thorns compose so rich a crown

Oh the wonderful cross 
Bids me come and die and find
That I may truly live

Isn't that beautiful? It reminds of Home Alone 2 when Kevin is telling the weird bird lady, "What's the point in having a heart so guarded if you never use it to love others?" You see, I'm quite certain that I've come out of my valley of darkness that lasted almost the entirety of last semester, but I have not yet come to a place where I am on fire or overflowing with joy. I was talking to God about that last night and asking Him when I would come back to that point again. He told me when I let myself get close enough to Him. It's funny, you'd think that wouldn't be a problem for me. But I think I've quite developed a fear of being super close to God because I don't know what He wants to do with me. But I remember my pastor once saying, "When you keep God at a safe distance, you will be safe..and distant." And that is where I am now. I'm not so far from Him that I can't see or hear Him or experience the goodness of His presence, but I'm hesitant to fall in love with Him again because I know  that would I  drink of the same cup. (If that makes sense.)

Christ did not promise it would be easy to love and follow Him. If anything, He promised that it would be hard and painful and difficult. But He also promised to be close and to carry us through the waters and that He would guard and protect. I think, too often, I've believed that when He says He is my protector that I think that means He will protect me from experiencing pain. That's not true. He promised to protect me from getting crushed when I am pressed. He promised to protect me from being abandoned when I am rejected. He promised to protect me from a normal, boring life. But when we say "yes" to going on an adventure with Jesus, we say "yes" to pain. We say "yes" to love and sorrow. We say "yes" to joy in the midst of trials. We say "yes" to much of the same anguish that the Lord already knows. And in the same incredible instant, we say "yes" to a love more deep and more glorious than we can ever comprehend. We say "yes" to a joy so unmoving and a peace so incomprendable that we could never in a million years wrap our minds around. 

We say "yes" to life. To live is Christ and to die is gain. Christ is love. To live is to love. 

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. And so I have come to a place in my life, for the umpteenth time of course, where I have to make a choice, a choice much like deciding to throw myself out of an airplane. Yes, I can keep on going and be at a safe distance and accept being safe and distant, but my heart will never be satisfied with that.  Love... it's a choice. Not an emotion or feeling. Love is Jesus. So with some crazy leap of faith and total recklessness that is what I choose. I think my brother said it best just before he jumped 364ft off of a bridge over Victoria Falls, "I'm ready to live."

At Rest

Tomorrow starts the Spring semester. While past years it has seemed like break was way too long and I was bored and more than ready to jump into a routine again, I dread classes starting again. 
In the mean time, I rest. I have so enjoyed these past 5 weeks of rest. I have felt so incredibly loved by God in how He has carried me through hurricanes of pain and trials of darkness. 

I think the darkness is gone now. For a time anyways, I don't think the darkness will ever truly leave until I come face to face with my precious savior. I look forward to that day very much. Even more I have to realize that this world is not my home. My heart was not made for this place..it's far too broken and painful for it to be a place of permanence. Much like the places I've lived with poor management and landlords who were slow to fix with the problems and I looked forward to moving to the next place, I'm quite excited for the place in heaven that my Jesus has gone to prepare for me. 

He says there is no more pain there. No more weeping, or brokenness, or darkness. He waits for me there and I am anxious to run into His arms and hear the words, "Welcome home, Fern."
Not that I wish I was dead. I don't. I'm not suicidal or depressed, but I'm done with pain. I'm sure I have years and years more of it ahead of me, but I'm not excited for it. 
Some days trusting Jesus with my heart is so difficult because His heart is my heart and His heart is broken more often than mine. I'm sure He looks forward to the day when the pain ends as well. 

Whilst sitting in the presence of the Lord earlier my heart began to hurt and as I prayed for God to hold me up I saw a picture of him holding my heart in his hand and my heart was clay. He began to take pieces of His heart (as if it, too, were clay) and place them over the broken places of my heart to patch it up and make it whole again. How loved I am that He sacrifices himself and takes on brokenness for my wholeness. 

I recently came across a verse in 1 John that says, "This is how we know we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence," (1 John 3:19). I like that. I am, indeed, most at rest in His presence. I am most whole in His presence. 

Blessed Assurance

1. "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
   Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
   Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
   Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood."

I was blessed to have been raised in a church that sang hymns. Whilst now they are not as commonly known, there is so much truth in the lyrics that were written however many hundreds of years ago. 

I'll be honest, one of my greatest weaknesses as a believer is struggling with what I am worth to others which often translates to me questioning my worth to Christ. Not necessarily my worth IN Christ.. I mean I know that God went through great lengths to rescue me and call me His. But my worth TO others, like, how much of a difference I'm making, how much am I needed, how successful I am at seeing other's needs met?
I mean, I LOVE serving. It's one of my top love languages. But I have often come to a place of feeling like I am not needed and that my efforts are failing to make a difference and that my life isn't really all that impactful either. These thoughts seemed to be justified every time I have experienced rejection and have sent me into some pretty fantastic questionings of what on earth God was thinking when He chose to give me a passion for serving and loving others when people don't always receive that well. 
Of course He is always quick to catch me mid-question and remind me that He made me and has plans for me and that He loves me more than I could possible imagine. 

1. Perfect submission, perfect delight,
2. Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
3. Angels, descending, bring from above
4. Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
5. 
   
6. Occasionally, my precious Savior gives me a small glimpse of what He is doing in my life and WITH my life. As a Senior in college, you'd think I'd have a semi-solid plan for my future in mind... I don't. I have no clue what I'm going to do with myself..or what God wants me to do with myself or what God wants to do WITH me. You see, I want to be used. I don't really want to settle into some comfy life of luxury where I go to work everyday, attend church on Sundays and what ever else not that comes with that. I want to serve. I want to be used in some way. I want to be needed and depended on. I want my life to bless others. I want to be a blessing.  
7. The funny thing about that is, as a believer, you have to learn to not care about what other's think about you and care only what your heavenly Father thinks. I struggle with that because words of affirmation are my top love language and so I much like to hear people tell me good things about me. And thus, when I hear people tell me not good things about me, I perceive it as unlove. Dislike. Indifference. Hate.Etc.  I have often felt that even if 99 out of 100 people liked me, but one person hated me, that I had failed.  Of course the first question is, "What is wrong with me?" That's probably my most asked question of myself. 
8. But here's what I'm learning, it doesn't matter. Jesus is often whispering into my little vein heart, "They hated me too. First, in fact." And while I might try to come up with some sort of clever argument that would show that my situation is more desperate, He always wins.. of course. Even his closest friends bailed on him when he needed them most. 
9. 
   
10. Perfect submission, all is at rest,
11. I in my Savior am happy and blest,
12. Watching and waiting, looking above,
13. Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.
14. So, last semester, I decided to try a little experiment in my classes. Be myself and let God be my life.I would be transparent in and out of class. I would be honest in how I felt and wouldn't pretend to have it all together if i didn't.  I was going to love Jesus with everything I had and I wasn't going to care if people found it offensive. More than that, I was going to make friends with everyone I sat by. Or at least.. I was going to reach out a friendly hand, introduce myself, and ask how their day was going. And above all, I wasn't going to care if they thought I was weird. Jesus was my life, so if they asked me a question and the answer was "Jesus" then that's what they were going to hear. Of course I seemed to always be sitting by someone new for the first several weeks in some of my classes. The responses I got varied, most were pleasant, some were cold. By the end of the semester, I had made 5 or 6 new friends, and I shared my testimony 3 or 4 times (even with one professor). While all that was going on, my life was falling apart around me. Of course, in my resolution to be transparent, all those closest to me had seen more tears and heard more of my heart's sorrows than I've ever dared to share before. But as a result I found myself surrounded by an army of prayer warriors, constant voices of encouragement, and people who pointed me to the Truth more often than I knew I needed. Even my classmate friends showed care and gentleness and offered encouragement when things weren't going well. 
15. This is my story, this is my song,
    Praising my Savior all the day long;
    This is my story, this is my song,
    Praising my Savior all the day long.
    
    
    I followed God. I did what He asked of me. And when I gladly drove home and put the past behind me, I wondered, "what was that for?" "What kind of example is that?" I didn't feel like I had much to show for the 4 months that I had been surrendering to Christ other than the works he had done in my own heart. Let me explain, I like to feel needed. I like to BE needed. I like to serve and help and...fix things. I like to build up those who have been torn down, I like to be a friend to those who need friends. But, it seemed that for 4 months, I had been dependent on everyone I had met. I coveted prayer from anyone who would offer, I sought Truth from anyone who seemed to know it, I asked advice from anyone who seemed to have some...I needed people. So in my own little mind whilst driving home i thought, "Well gee, how will anyone ever know to ask me for anything when alls they saw was me asking for things from others?" 
    
    
    Last night as I was falling asleep, I found this little message in my inbox from one of my non-believing classmates:
    
    
    "Hey Lady! I hope you are having a great break! I could use a bit of help and knew you were just the person to ask. I was wondering if you knew any verses or chapters to help keep a person strong when they are scared...
    I seem to have hit a bit of of a bump in the road of life; and while I feel confident that it will all work out, a little encouragement might do a girl good.
     Could use a little extra prayer once in a while and a good word if you know what I mean. "
    
    
    
    
    Well praise the Lord! If nothing else, at least people can come to me and ask what verses to cling to when the valleys are so deep the sun can hardly peak over the next mountain to climb. 
    
    
    I like telling stories. I love captivating an audience and hearing them laugh at some ridiculous something that happened to me somehow. I like stories of heroic rescues and adventures and happy endings. I follow Jesus and that is an adventure. There are a fountain of stories that come from knowing him. He is my story. 
    
    
    "Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
    Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.