Thoughts on Singleness. Part 1

When I was 19 I became aware of what I feel is a huge problem in our Western Christian Church culture. I saw it, I talked about it, but it didn't really affect me personally. Every now and then it would come up but I was able to dismiss it quickly and tell myself that I was above being affected by it. I told myself that I was too secure in my identity to be influenced by it. I continually brushed it off and moved on, not taking time to sincerely look inside my own heart and see if the seeds were planted, and therefor have the ability to dig them out.

In the past few weeks I have begun to realize that the seeds were planted and I am now seeing the fruits of those seeds. I have been greatly affected by this and have begun to accept it as truth even though I have known from the beginning that is a lie.

Further to Go

In my last post I wrote about how I had been feeling after my surgeries and hospital stay last month. I wish I could say that things are better, that I have turned a corner and now things are looking much better. This, however, is not the case.

I am still in very much the same place emotionally but now I feel I have a better understanding as to why I am experiencing the emotions that I am.

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. 

..... But He is Good

The past few weeks my mind has been wandering back to Turkey. It was almost exactly two years ago that I boarded a plane in Calgary Alberta headed for Turkey. I had no idea what to expect. None of us on my team did. We went with the intent of putting into practice all that we had learned in the past three months during the lecture phase of our YWAM discipleship training school and seeing the Kingdom of God come in a foreign country. Our purpose was to be Christ in this predominately Muslim nation. We didn't know how we were going to do this, and even more so, we had no idea what God was going to do in us.

He Is Not Safe..... (pt2)

I have discovered over the past few years that journeying with God is never boring and sometimes painful. We tend to have this idea that God never causes us pain but I know this is not true. He most definitely brings pain into our lives but it is not without purpose and beauty of it's own.

I remember asking my mom when I was about four or five why God made pain. I wondered why things hurt. The way she explained it me has forever becoming cemented in my memory. She asked me to imagine walking barefoot on a sandy beach. In the sand there are shards of glass. As you walk your feet are being continually cut open by the glass. If we did not feel pain, we would have no idea that we are being cut and could end up bleeding to death. Because of pain, we know that something is wrong. I love what C.S. Lewis has to say about pain in his book The Problem of Pain. He says, "We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

He's Not Safe......

(Part one of my musings on the Goodness of God)

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you. - from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis.

This is one of my absolute favorite quotes. For those of you reading this who many not know, C.S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia books as an allegory about Jesus. Aslan represents Jesus. (Random fact, aslan means lion in Turkish).  What a beautiful and true thing to say about Jesus/God. Of course He isn't safe. But He is good!!! 

When Heaven Doesn't Answer

The past few months have been intensely difficult for me. I've been sick and in quite a lot of pain a large majority of the time. I have been feeling very disconnected from people and unable to build any real significant relationships. Rumors and lies have gone around my church about me and the situation was not dealt with well and left me feeling quite hurt and confused. But the most difficult thing about the past few months is not the situations I have been dealing with but rather the fact that God has been completely silent in the midst of all this.

What a Crazy Life!

These past weeks few weeks have been nothing short of eventful! I would love to tell you the long story, but for the sake of time (mine and yours) I'm simply going to share with you all the changes that have happened and where this is taking me.

Tomorrow at 12:45 pm I will leave Kona Hawaii and fly to Honolulu. I will be there for four days, spending time with my aunt and uncle, resting, relaxing and being spoiled (oh how I'm looking forward to that)! :)  When I leave  Honolulu I will head to Great Falls, MT aka Home. I will be spending close to a week in MT. One crazy, busy, hectic week full of family, friends, coffee and general merry-making.