"Salvation is easy because it cost God so much, but the manifestation of it in my life is difficult. God saves a man and endues him with the Holy Spirit, and then says in effect - 'Now work it out, be loyal to Me, whilst the nature of things round about you would make you disloyal.' 'I have called you friends.'"

--Oswald Chambers

Anymore

January 8, 2010

I waited
I set my alarm to five am
To say goodbye
Every Wednesday
discovering the deep blue
The sky had to offer

I’m not that girl anymore
Crying on the stairs
Asking why

Skip five years
And thousands of miles
And I’m still okay

New town, new faces,
different air
broken promises
I waited in long lines
Would never expect
What I was signing my name to


Vulnerability
and crushed hearts
unbelief
at it’s utmost
and silence

So this is what is means to live in a broken world

time stretched so thin

Consistency
never stays consistent for too long
or you’d get bored and settle
You wouldn’t
learn how to let go
and get a hold of something
outside your reach
You wouldn’t look outside
that’s what you did
and I remember his words today,
“don’t worry,
things will only get better for you as you
move along”
I believe that


Flashback five years
I’m not that girl
anymore
who needs to be told that
she’s beautiful
I didn’t know
But now I know what beauty is


I’m not that girl anymore
Who needs a hand to hold
To walk across every broken bridge
Because when I
Wanted that

You burnt my bridges
And told me to walk on
You told me to reminisces
And then to never look back

I’ve learned to jump over the splintered pieces

To test before I stand
And even then,
Never for too long

And thus far I’ve learned
Goodbyes don’t get any easier
They just come more frequent

so don’t hold on to anything like
it’s yours

I’m not the girl
Who is afraid of what the future has to hold

Anymore

Back Here Again

God's led me through valleys in the last 6 months. I've come face to face with the desires of my heart, the idols of my heart and soul. To say that my faith has been tested is a big understatement. I have much more to say about all this, but for now I'm looking back at my old writings. I'm reflecting on what the Spirit has taught me and what he's teaching me again. I'm asking myself how do I walk in these truths and not just look away...


June 6, 2009
We’re so apt to think that sorrow and pain are not of God. We run, medicate, ignore and avoid the deep obscured things hurting us on the inside. The message at the Village really spoke to me yesterday. I finally understood the last part of John where Jesus tells Peter,
“I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “follow me!” John 21:18-19

Surrendering to God may mean that it feels like crucifixion as he leads us down paths and sacrifices we rather not walk or give. How vividly I remember the examples of Brother Randle and Ms. Joyce. I remember the last day we had in the Philippines together as we took communion as a group. If there is anything I will walk away from this trip possessing, it is a spiritual awareness of what it means to be humble. It was lived out before me for 21 days by Miss Joyce and Brother Randle. When I heard them talk about their daughter Hannah, I mused and my heart broke.

His words were, “the night before, I was praying and God told me to lay Hannah on the altar. The next day, She died.” (In a tragic car accident the day before her wedding)
The average person would question, would cry out in rage against God, “How could you do this to me?!” “What a selfish God.” But her life rooted and established a church in the Philippines that otherwise would have not existed. Her life, her death, saved souls. Her testimony and the faith of her parents continues to bear kingdom and seeds.

And I had a sense of peace that only comes through the Spirit. Its’ all about Jesus. It’s all about his kingdom. And if the little that I ‘have,’ that he gave me to begin with—if my suffering can produce an abundant of souls saved until God, then so be it? (is it even worthy, how can my suffering be worthy of kingdom cause?) Blessed am I. May His will be done and not mine. In the great span of things, it was never about me, about what I could gather and heap under a roof for my own. Hold everything with a loose grip, he’s told me.
While the flesh, the very real hurting, mournful side of us suffers and hurts, our Spirit somehow gives us peace—as we lay down our lives, all possessions, all positions without regard, without having to be twisted of or wrung loose. This is the beautiful picture, the beauty of surrender.

If my pain and confusion
Can somehow show the world the peace that
Passes all understanding
Let it be done

If a death can bring many the light of life, of glory,
Then I count it worthy to follow directly in my Savior’s
Own footsteps
Sacrifice, death
And certain resurrection