the "right" one

I posted this on facebook a while back but always like to bring it back out for a good reminder...

I don't know who wrote it but its good...:-)

Before you enter into a romantic relationship this has to happen first or things will crumble..

Everyone longs to give him / herself to someone, to have a deep soul relationship with another, to be loved throughly and exclusively.

But God, to a Christian says:

No, NOT UNTIL you are satisfied, fulfilled, and content with being loved by Me ALONE, until you give yourself TOTALLY to me, to have an intensely personal and unique relationship with Me alone, discovering that only in Me is your satisfaction to be found, will you be able to have the PERFECT human relationship that i have planned for you.You will never be united with another until you are united with Me, exclusive of any other desires or longings. I want you to stop planning, stop wishing, and allow Me to give you the most thrilling plan existing - the one that you cannot imagine. I want you to have the BEST. Please allow Me to bring it to you. You just keep watching Me, expecting the greatest things, keep experiencing the satisfaction that I AM.
Keep listening and learning the things I tell you. You just WAIT, thats all. Dont be Anxious. Dont look at the things you want. you just keep looking off and up to Me or you'll miss what I want to show you.And when you are READY, I'll surprise you with a love FAR more wonderful than you could dream of. You see, until you are ready ( I am working even at this moment to have the both of you ready at the same time), UNTIL you are both satisfied exclusively with ME, and the life I have prepared for you, you will not be able to experience that love that exemplifies your relationship with Me, and to enjoy materially and concretely the EVERLASTING union of beauty, perfection, and love that I offer you Myself,
Know that I LOVE YOU utterly, and that I am your God!

Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass, Psalm 37:4-5

Need I say more..

This is the Lords heart for us!!

This is my pursuit!!

The Journey

Even growing up in a Christian home, I often find myself pondering the "real" meaning of life. If its true meaning were to merely was to be born, just to have Jesus save our souls, well that's spectacular, but wouldn't you think then that God would just rapture us the moment we got "saved". I guess because of this I can't help but think that there is so much more here to our existence on earth. More than God just displaying His splendor (although it is amazing), more than just a reason for Christ to die. I think that God planted in each and every person a passion to search for their very "purpose". Maybe that purpose is something bigger than crawling up the ladder in your company, or having the nicest house on your block. Maybe this greatness in purpose that God calls each of us to is the humility and joy in serving one another, in meeting the needs around us, is displaying His love and His compassion, and to pouring our hearts into something greater than the insignificant and temporary things of this world. This dilemma continually plays out in my head.

 I look around and see so much hurt and so much brokenness; I look around and see so much need. And then I look at myself and see so much lacking, so little time, so little skills, but mainly so little faith that I am actually capable of making a difference in all the hurt and need. So instead, I shrink, I cower, and I tell myself "the hurt is too much, the need is too big" and in doing this, not only do I sell society short, but I sell myself short of being a part of something bigger than myself.

 
 Gary Haugen puts our role in this hurt and suffering into an awesome perspective:

 "Having seen much of this suffering in the world first hand, I believe one of the greatest insights was articulated by Edmund Burke about 200 years ago. He said "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." If this is true, then why do good men and women do nothing?

As I examine myself on this question, I find three deep sources of poverty that conspire to keep me and my good neighbors on the sidelines in the great struggle against evil in the world; a poverty of compassion, a poverty of purpose and a poverty of hope.

I am frequently amazed at my own shrunken circle of compassion, especially when I come from a faith tradition which teaches again and again of God's great compassion for the world. For me, it is so easy for all my passion, energy and effort to become consumed with this shriveled world of me and mine.

Secondly, I think that I and other people do nothing in the face of the great moral struggles of our era out of a poverty of purpose. I marvel at the way forces conspire to bend the purpose of my life toward increasingly small and petty things and away from the grander purposes outside myself for which I sense I was truly fashioned by my Maker.

Thirdly, it would seem that good men and women often do nothing in their time of history's testing out of a poverty of hope. In the face of overwhelming evil and injustice in the world, we feel so very powerless. Many times we are paralyzed in a poverty of hopelessness because we underestimate the value of what God has given us to transform lives. God has given us resources that, for others around the world, literally have the power over death, and slavery and oppression. Perhaps the saddest part of this story for us as leaders, or parents, or teachers is not our own poverty of compassion, our own poverty of purpose, and our own poverty of hope, but in the way we end up leading others in our poverty.

On the other hand, what would it mean for communities, our nation and the world if we lead with Riches of compassion, Grandness of purpose, and an Abundance of hope?

Indeed, I think that the God of history takes attendance. And He convenes a tribunal of our grandchildren who will someday ask us "Where were you?"

Likewise, when our grandchildren ask us where we were when the weak and the voiceless and the vulnerable of our era needed leaders of compassion and purpose and hope, I hope we can say that we showed up, and that we showed up on time. And that the very God of history might say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

 Now doesn't that just inspire you to think bigger than yourself?
Well, if it doesn't I hope that you can spend time to reconsider your priorities and your purpose here on earth….
Life's short…so short…lets be knows as the generation who showed up during a time of need.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Falling for the first time...

I heard this song today and it really made me miss falling in love for the first time...

It's the first time that I've been here
Since I was here with him
I remember all the wild flowers
Waving in the wind
Life was an undiscovered river
I was jumping in
Head first

It was sink or swim, do or die
Sneaking out on summer nights
Stealing wine from my Pa
The thrill of not getting caught
And now and then I miss those days
But coming back to this place
I realize it ain't him I miss
It's that young girl, wide-eyed, first love
One time innocence
Yeah

We ran off to the corn field
Just outside the county fair
There were butterflies in my stomach
And fireflies in the air
He tried hard not to show it
Oh, but he was just as scared
as me

And it was sink or swim, do or die
Sneaking out on summer nights
Stealing wine from my Pa
The thrill of not getting caught
And now and then I miss those days
But coming back to this place
I realize it ain't him I miss
It's that young girl, wide-eyed, first love
One time innocence
Yeah

And coming here has made me come to this
The one thing I can't get back
Is the one thing I miss
Yeah

And it was breaking rules, flying blind
What you see through younger eyes
It wasn't what I thought it was
Man, I swore he was the one
And now and then I miss those days
But coming back to this place
I realize it ain't him I miss
It's that young girl, wide-eyed, first love
One time innocence
Yeah
It's that young girl, wide-eyed, first love
One time innocence
Yeah, it's that innocence

...You never really get that feeling back do you?

...Bummer....:-/

Love...you crazy thing...

So, I survived Valentines day yet another year. Bitter? haha, no, I'm really not.



As I looked around at all the cute couples doing cute things I actually felt relief. There may have even been a "thank you" set up to the Big guy....and I'm not really sure I could explain why, but I'll give it a shot.



You see, I'm no expert on love, in fact, quite the contrary. Don't get me wrong, I know how to love. I 'love' peanut butter for example, but I also 'love' my family. Why is love a word we feel so free to throw around? The same word we use to describe Christ's Sacrifice for our lives (John 3:16) we also use to describe the new shirt we bought at Target. What's wrong here? Isn't that Cliche? Somewhere along the line we lose sight of the true love that was bestowed upon us, the love that turned our heart of stone into a heart of flesh, the love that took our wretchedness and made precious gold out of it. This love...this amazing gift... and we have the nerve to compare it to our new favorite movie?



Oswald Chambers does a really good job of describing Christ's love and how we are called to love PEOPLE (not things) in the very same way.



"Love is an indefinite thing to most of us; we don't know what we mean when we talk about love. Love is the loftiest preference of one person for another, and spiritually Jesus demands that this sovereign preference be for Himself... The first thing God does is forcibly remove any insincerity, pride, and vanity from my life. And the Holy Spirit reveals to me that God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. Now he commands me to show the same love to others by saying"...love one another as I have loved you" (john 15:12). He is saying "I will bring a number of people around you whom you cannot respect, but you must exhibit My love to them, just as I have exhibited it to you." This kind of love is not a patronizing love for the unloveable - it is His love..."



He goes on to say " I should look within and remember how wonderfully He has dealt with me. The knowledge that God has loved me beyond all limits will compel me to go into the world to love others in the same way...Am I prepared to be identified so closely with the Lord Jesus Christ that His life and His sweetness will be continually poured out through me?"



That is my prayer this morning... that my life may be so closely aligned with Christ's, that people who I "love" will not be able to tell the difference between the natural love I give and the love that comes from our Savior Jesus Christ.




Now here's another question?




Shouldn't we treat every day like Valentines day? ;-) Love makes me excited! I don't even need a boyfriend to make me feel loved on Valentines day!!!



Oh and the picture was taken from a mountain top when I was on missions in Fiji... Isn't God pretty amazing and creative?? Anyone want to go back there with me?

Keep A Quiet Heart

One thing that the Lord has been teaching me about lately is keeping a quiet heart and having an inner peace that surpasses all stressful and trying situations. It's very easy to say "my heart is at peace", but am I living that out on a daily basis? Do I really believe that the God who created the universe and take cares of the littlest needs will in fact take care of my needs too? I think sometimes I get so caught up with the fact that my needs are unimportant compared to the needs of the world. But who am I to judge the importance of my needs? Shouldn't I leave that up to God? Instead of seeing His everlasting love, tenderly bending down to my humanness, longing over me with a father's speechless longing; I sometimes think of God as indifferent, inaccessible, or just plain unfair. Don't we do that though? Don't we sometimes question the God who holds every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year in His hands? UNTHINKABLE! A quiet heart?? What does that mean? A quiet heart is content with whatever God gives it, whatever situation is placed in front of it. Satan is overjoyed whenever our hearts aren't quiet, he loves to make us unsatisfied with what God has placed in front of us, that is his goal. On the contrary, our God delights in quieting our spirits, in calming our hearts, in letting us know that its all going to be alright in the end, it may not be perfect, it may not be what we expected, but it will be alright. Because the same God that placed the stars in the sky holds us in His hands, and cares more for us than we could ever imagine. God isn't ignorant with where He has placed us. He has us where we are for a reason, always. "Bloom where you're planted," that's what the quote says. So what are we waiting for? What are we complaining about? Let's bloom! It isn't until we are willing to see God in every situations, to receive anything from His hands as a gift and a blessing, to accept with gratitude the cup that He has offered us, it isn't until then that we can have a truly quieted heart as we live in adoration of our Savior, what he has done for us, and the plan that he has for our lives.

 

 

 

 

Thank you Jesus for your overwhelming peace. Thank you that we don't have to "worry" about anything. Thank you for meeting our needs.