Heel Clicks And Circles

Today, we had quite a JV service if I do say so myself. God started working in praise and worship and kept on until way after. I was still dancing in Wal-Mart… 

But during the end service I got this idea. In a way it relates to the circle I mentioned in my last post. The circle of God’s love and holiness. So I’m not sure what to call this thing but here it is;

The holier You are, the dirtier I am.

The dirtier I am, the deeper I recognize Your grace.

The deeper Your grace, the the greater Your love.

The greater Your love, the more I want to return it.

The more I want to return it, the purer I yearn to become.

The purer I yearn to become, the harder it is for me to accomplish.

The harder it is to accomplish, the more in need You.

The more I need You the more I spend time with You.

The more I spend time with You, the more I am satisfied, fulfilled, guided and once again, I see how holy You are.

And that, to me, is the circle of life they do not teach in science class.

The Delicate Balance

I have so many thoughts running through my head right now, I’m not sure how to start.

I’ve been thinking about having a balance of the fear of the Lord and the love of the Lord. But mostly about the fear of the Lord. It’s been on my heart  mostly during my church’s JV service. I look around during worship, as we sing a song about God’s holiness, and I have to wonder if some understand what they’re singing. Do we truly understand the words we’re lifting, or do we just pay lip service like my pastor would say? ‘Cause your worship life explodes when you gain a healthy fear of the Lord.

The fear of God baffled me for a very long time. See, when I begun my personal relationship with God, it was based on His love. His love overwhelmed me, captivated me, and completely delighted me. It was, and is, what satisfies me. The God I knew was the God of love. But I didn’t get the fear of the Lord. I couldn’t seem to grasp it.

I remember in the beginning of this year, things just kept coming up that talked about the fear of God and it challenge me to understand it. I kept praying that God would teach me about the fear of Him.

Finally one night I ended up reading Isaiah 6:1-8 for some reason. I’d read it before, and I’d always liked the scripture. Just didn’t understand it. Or at least, not as deeply as I did that night. Suddenly I got a glimpse of how holy God is, how unclean I am, and why I should fear Him. As I wrote in my journal, once you get a little look at why you should fear Him, all you want to do is worship and fear Him. And I’ll quote this straight from my journal,

“When you finally grasp the true beauty and awe of the only pure and holy One, the effect is life changing. When you truly grasp how unworthy we are, it opens doors to a deeper walk with God. It breaks and humbles you to such a desperation to get all of God you can, because without Him we are nothing.

The understanding of this also leads to a deeper feeling for the unsaved and lost. Its all a big circle.”

Another part of that circle is taking all I’d learned about God’s love, and all I knew now about fearing God, and tying them together. God is love, and God is holy. If I wasn’t amazed enough with just knowing God loved me, now I realized how dirty I was, and knew He still loved me. Then I was really amazed. As holy as He is, He still loves us. Such a beautiful circle. Love, fear. Fear, love.

I like the way the senior pastor of my church put it. He used the illustration of one of the water plane things(I don’t know what they’re really called.). I think they have pontoon things they land with? Something like that. But my Pastor explain that if the pontoons didn’t touch down at the same time- if they weren’t balanced with one another- the plane could go out of control(or something dangerous like that.). He said he viewed those two pontoons as the fear and love for God, its important we have the right balance of both.

Fear of the Lord. Love of the Lord. I wish I could pack it into a boxes and give it to people.

Lessons From the Itsy-Bitsy Spider

Earlier tonight a friend and I were sitting on my front porch, singing and playing guitar. We were practicing a little worship to do on an up coming missions trip. In the beginning we weren’t being very productive, not really sure why. Finally we got into a groove and had a sweet little jam session sittin’ there.

Then dowwwwwwwwn came the spider. He was hanging from the porch roof, dangling dangerously close. We moved out of his way and left him alone since he wasn’t trying to eat us. After awhile we realized he was building a web as we played our music. (I think we inspired him.)

My friend and I paused a moment to admire his work. He was was swinging back and forth, shooting web left and right. “What if that’s his way of worshipping God?” My friend questioned.

Well, what if? It’s hard work but if that’s all the little guy can do, all he can give, and he did it for the Lord, how beautiful is that? But that’s not completely what I’m getting at.

Fast forwarding to sometime later, once my friend had left, I was texting her. (I do admit I like texting ;) Comes in handy.) I was was saying how I felt better than when we’d first started, yet I wasn’t even sure what we accomplished. I was sure we did something, I just couldn’t see what right now.

Then I thought of the web.

Maybe our work tonight, our work in general, for the Lord whether physically, spiritually or anything, is a little like that web. Each little thing we do is weaving a thread. But its almost an invisible web, very hard to see. It takes time and hard work to make a web.

Sometimes its hard and discouraging  because we can’t see what we’re weaving. But have you ever noticed you need the right lighting to see a web? It seems the best time is sunrise. In the light of the morning sun, spider webs are so beautiful.

Its interesting, I almost wrote a blog about how God and the sun relate, I never finished it, but part of it was how the sunrise is faith, as God is faithful. He also has perfect timing. The sunrise is never late, never early, but its always faithful.

In just the right time, God is faithful to rise and shine His glorious light on our web. All the hard work we’ve done that hasn’t been seen. By us or by others. And in the morning sun it glistens and stands out. All the hard work of a spider is finally showcased in the light of the Creator.

Reminds me of  where in Matthew 6 Jesus’ teaches to give, pray, and basically do things in private and your heavenly Father will reward you. We can’t always see the thread we spin, and others don’t need to, because the God can see them. And He will cause the sun to rise on them in the right time if need be. For some things, you might have to wait for heaven, for other things, just wait for tomorrow.

Two Important Words

Many times during Jesus’ time on earth he used a certain two words. He still whispers them to us today.

Follow me.

Those two words are such a great call, such an honor.

Matthew 4:19 - "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men."

What an honor to be called by Jesus, to be fishers of men. But these words were also said with great cost.

Mark 8:34 - "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Follow me. Two powerful words, really. “Leave everything and follow me,” was Christ’s basic call. The call of Christianity. To be Christ followers. Follow is a verb meaning to come after in sequence.

So you get the idea of following Christ now, right? Now this is my main thought here – If you are following Christ you don’t have to see where you’re going.

That amazed me the other day! It relieved me. I mean, think about it. Do you get it? If your following Christ, spiritually walking behind Him, that means He’s in front of you. He goes before you. You don’t have to see where your going because He’s the one in front of you, He’s forging the way.

All you and I have to do is keep Him in our line of vision. See, I also realized that when your following someone, the closer you are the better. When you leave space, things can pass in front of you. So we have to keep ourselves close.

So in the times you can’t see in front of you, remember we are followers of Christ. Concern yourself with simply staying close, and just following His lead. You don’t have to see, you have to trust.

The Vine and His Branches

I’ve been wanting to do something for the blog for awhile.  Particularly write but I’m just not doing that right now.  But still, I really wanted to do something.  So tonight I got a little inspiration to do something I haven’t in awhile- an image.  So I just threw this together real quick.  Nothing special, I just saw the colors somewhere and wanted to make something, then the verse popped in my head.  Maybe I’ll write something on it, who knows?

Anyhow, figured I’d throw it on a post, soooo… enjoy?

And just so ya know, you can click the image to view it full size.

(I might have out done myself with the green…)

Starbucks Shake-up and the Sleepers

A few weeks ago I had quiet a rude awakening at Starbucks. I could tell you the whole, dramatic story but I’m going to shorten it.

Basically, I was with a friend at Starbucks, just chillin’, when a once-in-a-lifetime, God-given, divine moment, passed by. The rude part? I didn’t even notice until afterwards. Until I was lying in bed, trying to sleep. It hit me so hard, I was up half the night praying the girls blood wouldn’t be on my hands, that God would send someone else to teach her His love. No joke. That one, single missed moment kept me up late a few nights.

The pain of seeing a moment after its passed is, in my opinion, harder than seeing the moment and not seizing it due to fear. But it was the awakening I needed. It made the message of Romans 13:11 real to me. In Romans it basically says to love, knowing that now is the time to awake out of slumber, for our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.

Oh, how true.

That day was only the wake-up call for me. It shocked me into a realization that I hardly need prayer for moments to minister; I’m in bad need of prayer to have sight. To have ears. To have a sensitivity to the moments that are flying by. Since that night in Starbucks, I can name several more times I missed chances to use my voice. In fact, there were several chances that night alone.

That was the night God said “Hey, hey you…

Wake UP!”

Revelation 3:1-2 says, “I know all the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive- but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is almost dead.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, after that push-start, I’m dragging myself out of the bed of spiritual slumber and asking God to wipe the sleepiness from my eyes. More and more often, I’m remember to look for those moments. See, in spur-of-the-moment things, I don’t usually have or take the time to let fear set in, so if I’d just been awake at that Starbucks moment, I most likely would have said something.

My point? I did not, and do not, need more moments to minister. I need more awareness to see and seize the chances already before me. I highly doubt fear is our biggest problem. I mean really, have you looked at this generation?! We’re a bunch of loud-mouth dare-devils. Counting adrenaline, and spurred by the Holy Spirit, we’re invincible. Think before you speak, yes; but when the Holy Spirit tells you something- do it!

Again, I highly doubt fear is our biggest problem. Our slumber is. Oh, we the sleeping. We are not fully dead, but we slumber day in and day out.

Shane Claiborne said, “Jesus did not come simply to make bad people good. Jesus came to bring dead people to life.” Get this, before a person comes to Christ, they are dead. In Christ, we are given life. Jesus said they that believe will do even greater works than He. So we are called to spiritually, as well as psychically, wake the dead. Yet how can a sleeping person raise the dead?!

In the church, we have the resources to the Gift of Life. We should hardly be dead when we have so many Pastors, services, and books feeding us the Word. Yet we’re so close to slipping into death, because we’re sleeping. A sleeping body needs to wake up and eat, than exercise; exercise your faith. Breathe in God, breathe out godliness.

I honestly just encourage you to start looking for opportunities to reach out. Learn to become aware. From being a little more gracious to the waitress that brings your food, picking things up for people when they need help, to when you get the small chance just saying, '”Hey, Jesus love you.” Even tiny, tiny stuff like adding ‘God’ to ‘bless you’. (That makes it 'God bless you’, in case you didn’t know.)

I’m no expert, I still miss a lot. Right now I’m trying to train myself into the habit of saying ‘God bless you’, I’ve gotten into the lazy habit of shortening it to ‘bless you’. I guess sleeping people are lazy. But I had a earthquake moment at Starbucks that scared me out of bed and gave me fear of people not receiving Christ because of me. A stronger fear than the fear of them thinking I’m a nut.

So hopefully all that made sense, and didn’t run circles. Hopefully it meant something. I hope it gives someone the wake-up call they need without the pain of missing a chance to show God’s love.

Wake up, become aware.

(Oh, and here’s one more extra tid-bit of something I learned. You might have notice its been a long while since the last post. Problem- I was trying to hard. I was looking for something to write, a dinner to feed my readers. But only when I dropped that search, and just sought God, I found He had dinner prepared for you already. And for me. It was something He’d shown me weeks ago, and had been sitting in front of me the whole time. Just so you know, God’s a much better cook than me.)

Sunlight, Daybreak

I just found this music video through another blog and wanted to share it.  The band is called Reilly and this is their song Sunlight.  Not really sure what to say, there's just something about it that's good.  I wanted to post the lyrics but I wasn't able to find them, though I did take the time to write part of a verse that stood out to me.

"You resurrect me, You rearrange me,
You make me heart beat to another symphony
And You pursued me, like You think I’m worthy
Oh Savior, now I know that I do not deserve this."

Enjoy!