An Army Unashamed pt. 3

Last week I wrote about how shame from our past destroys and holds us back from being effective. When I think of shame, that tends to be the type of think of but this past week God revealed to me another form of shame I struggle with.

It really started last Saturday. I was hanging out with a friend telling him about how I struggle with telling people about things I am currently going through. I can tell you about absolutely everything that has happened in my past but when it comes to stuff I am currently dealing with and processing, forget it. As I was telling him this he said, "Yeah, I kinda got that. Like how you won't talk about the medical stuff you're dealing with right now."

An Army Unashamed Pt. 2

Last night I had the opportunity to speak at my church's youth group. I had been given about three weeks to prepare which is more notice than I usually have. I began to pray and ask God what He wanted me to share with these kids.

Right away I got one word. Shame. So I began to work on fleshing that out into a message. I looked up scripture verse after scripture verse on shame. I did word studies and read articles and portions of books I have sitting in my book case. I knew this message was going to come together and it was going to be great.

An Army Unashamed Pt. 1

As much as I love writing, I don't write just to write here. I save that for my journals where I can express every single thought and emotion as it comes to me without concern to validity and accuracy. When I sit down at my computer and open a new post document, it is because I feel I have something to communicate that is worth being heard.

The last few years I have been learning so much about humility and giftedness and personal identity and I have come to realize that true humility makes no apologies for the gifts/talents/abilities one has. I don't have to play them down to be humble. In fact, if I were to minimize these things, that would not be true humility at all but rather false humility that is actually an insidious form of pride.

Thoughts on Revival and Church

The topic if revival has been on my mind quite a bit for the past few months. Revival is something that is often talked about in church circles, but not something we actually see. I grew up hearing the stories of the great revivals that have happened in the past.

I loved hearing about Smith Wigglesworth and Jonathan Edwards. I was in awe of the stories that told of men of God like them going into a public place and simply their presence there (or rather the presence of God in them) caused people to fall on their faces and begin weeping and repenting.

When I was 14, I began hearing the stories of the Brownsville revival in Florida and the Toronto Blessing in Canada. I was in awe. I had this realization that revival was not a thing of the past. I knew then that God desired to pour out His spirit in fresh and new ways on the Church here in the U.S.

Dirt, Weeds, Sin and my Heart

Upon discovering that the previous renters in my parents house had put in a garden in the large backyard, I decided that this would be the year that I tried my hand at gardening. It was cemented when  my brother's moved in. For the past few months we've been talking about the garden and what we will plant. We've been dreaming of how we will transform both the front and back yards into a landscape that will not only be visually appealing but will also provide us with most of the vegetable we will need for the year.

None of us have really gardened. Ever. As a young girl I would sometimes help my grandma pull weeds in her flower beds. I learned then that you must pull them out at the root and often times the roots go much deeper than you would ever guess simply by looking at the top of the plant. This was, until now, the extent of my gardening experience. 

Last week my brothers and I made a trip to the store to buy the things we would need to begin. We spent a few hundred dollars on seeds, bulbs, soil conditioners, shovels, gloves, rakes and hoses for watering. I was getting quite excited for this endeavor. 

Today, I decided to get out in the garden and continue the process my brother's had started yesterday of pulling out weeds and tilling up the soil. As I was kneeling in the dirt, hacking at hardened soil and thick roots, I began thinking of more than just that literal act of gardening.