Changes with God

I am certainly glad that I initially entitled this blog “The Lamp Life: Changes with God” because changes are exactly what this year have been about.  I have not written since this past summer and so I do not even know where to start.

On July 30th 2009, I got ENGAGED! David and I had been dating for a little over a year and he proposed at one of our favorite places.  I knew I wanted to marry him from the first day I ever saw him (seriously) so this has been an amazing adventure for me!  We set our date for March of 2010 and started the countdown.  By the end of the summer we knew there was no way we could wait that long and given some other outside circumstances we decided to move it up to November 21st.  As I started ANOTHER countdown the wedding planning began.  To make an extremely long story short, we got married, had an amazing honeymoon in Jamaica, and have now been happily married for 1 month and 2 days!

Somehow I managed to endure 2 jobs, 18 hours of school, and a wedding!  However, it was totally worth it!  Now I have an incredible husband and 1 semester left of college!  God is Good!

“The Church”

This morning I woke up with a heavy conviction on my heart. In my Staff Meeting yesterday we came across the topic of those that are homeless which is a topic that has always burdened my heart. I found myself very critically saying “why doesn’t the Church do something about this?” And while homelessness was the topic yesterday, it seems that every other day of my life I find myself asking that same question about other situations in this world. Yet however legitimate that may seem in my mind, how dare I refer to THE Church as though I am not a part of it!  What I should be doing is asking myself “why haven’t I done something about this?” The Body of Believers, or The Church, will never be complete until I use the tools that God has equipped me with to take action. The Church in action is not about what I receive but rather what I can give.

A Wonderful Mom

Monday morning I woke up with my throat hurting so badly I could hardly swallow, a low grade fever, and a pounding headache.  For an extremely long set of frustrating reasons that I will not even attempt to explain, I do not have health insurance.  By Tuesday night I knew that this was something Tylenol Cold and Sinus was not going to fix.  Because my mother is so wonderful she told me to just go on to the Doctor anyway and she would pay whatever bill she needed to for me to get well!  This is not the only time my Mom has provided for me this summer.  The Lord has used her to provide in so many incredible ways this summer!  She is always there to provide her emotional support whenever I need her!   She provides me with wonderful words of encouragement through sound wisdom and advice.  She is basically the only person who can make me realize that a situation is not nearly as big of a deal as I am making it out to be and definitely the only person who can just tell me to “get over it” and I actually get over it.

Mom, I know you are going to read this so thank you for all of the ways that you have been there for me this summer.  I am so blessed to have you a part of my daily life.  And for the record, no one will ever be able to tell me that I talk to you entirely too many times in one day, even though they will OBVIOUSLY try!

My new favorite worship song:

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us so.

We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
So Heaven meets earth like a wonderful kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

He loves us,
Oh how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh yeah how He loves.

Help My Unbelief

As I am growing every day in the Lord I have come to realize my unbelief. And however much that sounds like a paradox, it’s the truth.  Although, God typically doesn’t reveal things to me unless and until I am being completely real and vulnerable with Him.  My problem is not that I don’t believe IN God, often times I just don’t believe Him.

So why do I doubt such a mighty and powerful God?  Because for so long I have relied solely upon myself.  Even when I have not doubted Him with my words, I have doubted Him with my actions by continually putting myself first.  This only furthers my pride in temporary moments of success and enhances my defeat in permanent moments of weakness.

Matthew 7:8 says-”For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”  Those very words are the words of Jesus!  How could I not believe Him when he speaks them?  When I ask for God’s help I have to believe that He will rescue me.  However, I do not think that it is God’s plan to equip me to handle things on my own.  If this were the case I would result to worshiping myself for my great deeds and therefore enhance my pride even more.  I think His plan is to prepare my heart to be a very large vessel for the Spirit to work through me.  So it is my job to not only believe that He can do the things He says he can, but that he also desires to.  One of the ways that He can display his beautiful love for me is not doing things for me because He can but because He wants to!  Today I’m choosing to believe, will you?

“If you can do anything take pity on us and help us.” “If you can?” replied Jesus.  ”Everything is possible for him who believes.”  Immediately the boy’s father excliamed, “I do belive; help me overcome my unbelief!”–Mark 9:22-24

He Must Increase:I Must Decrease

I am so glad that I entitled this blog ‘The Lamp Life’-Changes with God-because changes are exactly what I have encountered this summer.  I just got back from Texas and I learned more about myself and my relationship with God than I have all summer long.

I learned how great God is and how not great I am.  Through learning about the greatness of God I learned of my issue of pride.  I also learned that it is because of my pride that I continually live in bondage.  I have issues overcoming my strong holds because I try to fix them myself using my own “will-power.”  I have been shown time and time again that will-power can not stand but my pride refused me of seeing it.  God does NOT want this for me.  God wants me to tap into a true power..the power of the Spirit.  In order to have power from the Spirit I must commune with it daily,minute to minute. When choosing to ignore it’s call to commune I choose to rely upon myself.  I wish I had understood a long time ago that I am worshiping God by not giving in to these fleshly indulgences of a false sense of power.

“God will never allow us continued success through our pure fleshly determination to touch not, taste not, handle not.  He knows we would end up worshiping our own wills and mehods.  Through the might of His Spirit relased through His Word we are empowered to say no to the things we should and yes to freedom, moderation, and better health.”-Beth Moore

The Great Escape ’09: Where The Magic Happens

God’s magic truly does happen on The Great Escape.  As we made the 3 day bus trip out to Colorado, God began showing up from the very beginning.  But it wasn’t until today that God truly revealed himself to me through these students.  While we had an amazing time white water rafting down the Taylor River, our family time after the evening session was just something that goes beyond words.

I have always been drawn to the simple things in life and simplicity is something that I miss terribly now that I am in the “grown up world.”  One of many reasons why I love being with middle school students is that they know how to keep it simple.  I see so much of Jesus in them because His message was a simple one.  ”Follow Me.”  In our session tonight, the speaker, Jeffrey Dean, spoke on trusting God.  Let the simple words of these amazing middle schoolers speak for themselves:

“I need to trust Jesus the way I trust my Mom and Dad.”

“Whenever I hear that song it just makes me breakdown and it shows me that He loves me.”

“I would not open up to anyone, then I came on The Great Escape last year and I felt like I could be me.”

“I need to be more thankful to God.”

“I just need to find the courage to tell my friends about Christ because I don’t want them to go to Hell.”

“The speaker inspired me tonight to not be embarassed to share the Gospel.”

“It hit me that I need to trust and put my life in His hands.”

“It’s an awesome feeling to know that He’s there for me.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m slipping away from God, then my canoe tipped over in the Okefenokee Swamp, then a motorboat came and took me to get dried off so I wouldn’t get hypothermia and the whole way there I asked God to forgive me from slipping away from Him.”–(Due to the train of thought seen in this quote, it did make me laugh a little.)

“That speaker really encouraged me to be fearless and take risks because I know Jesus will be there to catch me if I fall.”–(I definitely shouted out an “Amen” to that one!)

“Rafting was really cool because we got to see what God made.”