Rest or Hit the Wall

People pleasing. A habit that has left me on the floor more times than I would like to admit. I know Paul talks about being all things to all people, but I know he sure wasn't a people pleaser.

In God, I am finding my Hiding Place when the world around me is demanding every last bit of strength. My friends, E, L, and K (I laughed when I realized their initials spell ELK) are like a People Pleasing Anonymous group. Together we are learning to rest in God and not in our performances. When one person feels like they are going down, a text or a phone call goes out and the rest of us hit our knees and fight.

All of us long for relationships where we can be vulnerable and still feel safe. K. mentioned that only when we can first be absolutely vulnerable and laid bare before God can we begin to be that kind of vulerable and real with people.

I praise God that I have these three women with whom I can be honest and know that they fight for my heart before God. More than that I praise God that I can come before Him, a perfect, Holy God, with my scarred and sinful self and find unconditional love. Praise Jesus!

Terrified

I am not bold. I am not courageous. I am quite frankly a wimp.

I have lived with a motto: "Let your actions speak louder than your words." Okay what do I do when I sense God is urging me to speak more. How are people supposed to understand why I do things, if I never tell them?

Why? Why am I so afraid to identify myself with Jesus?

Please Move

I have hesitated to reveal my location to the world on my blog, but I'm sending out a major prayer request and I want people to be able to pray specifically for South Dakota State University. I love my campus and have been joining with a few of my fellow students to pray for God to be glorified here since last summer.

It has been an amazing journey to watch God at work in the lives of so many. We have seen people come to know Jesus, we have seen a revival in the hearts and lives of believers, we have seen various campus ministries come together to serve one another and the community, and we have also seen opposition from the Enemy.

Now I sit here in the first full week of the new semester, praying and seeking what is next. I never intended on still being here this year. I earned my BS in December 2007. I thought I would be out with a full-time teaching job. God had other plans.

He kept asking me to pray for SDSU and to seek His heart. I was student teaching but I still attended Navs functions. I met and started to get to know some amazing freshmen and sophomore women. I began to think that God was not done with me yet at SDSU. Shortly after, my advisor came to supervise me in the field and she offered me a graduate assistantship with her starting in January 2008 and the opportunity to stay and pursue my master's degree.

Now here I am a year later. He's still asking me to pray. In this part of the country, like some others, we have people that believe in God and go to Church, but they don't know God. More than that, there is brokeness and darkness. It shows up as driveness, depression, partying, indifference, and anger.

God continues to plant me here. My plans have changed so that I am staying a semester longer than I planned. The blessing is that, this forces me to spread out some of my coursework. I am still on campus, still have a stable job, and mostly this gives me more discretionary time. Yes, time to pray, time to meet and encourage young women, and time to build relationships with my co-workers and students.

I'm asking you to pray for SDSU, but if there is a college or university in your own community, pray for them. College is a strategic time in sharing the gospel. Young people are figuring out what they want their lives to be about on their own for the first, there is an openess that doesn't exist in K-12 schools, and we are truely in desperate times with people looking for hope. Pray for those who lead campus ministries, pray for believing students as they grow in knowledge and trust, and as they interact with non-believers, pray for believing faculty and staff, pray for the lost, pray for God to be glorified.

MC

Absolute Zero

It was -29 this morning when I headed to campus this morning. Can you say frozen tundra? Thank God my car started this morning. I gave my roommate a ride to work cause her car wouldn't start, and then gave a friend a ride to campus from the coffeeshop because her car wouldn't start either.

I have a love/hate relationship with having to make decisions. I will be delaying graduating until May 2010. Part of me wants to get on with life, but the reality is there is less likelihood of finding a permanent job in January and I get the sense that God is not done with me on campus yet. I feel a burden lifted in making the decision, and am trusting God with the unknowns that have caused me to hesitate.

Had

I don't want to go here, because I am afraid. I don't really know who or if anyone reads my blog. But I will put this out there with the prayer that the person who needs it, may stumble upon it. The basis for this post is from Beth Moore's book, "When Godly People Do Ungodly Things."

Hi, my name is HAD. I can tell that some of you know how I got that name. Some of you may also feel a little nervous. "She isn't going to go there is she? I have been trying to stay in hiding. Why the heck is she bringing this up."

For me, I got the name before I ever came to know Jesus. The thing is, it has stuck with me. Ones who were closest to me, whom I was supposed to be able to trust, pointed me down a road that looked good and like freedom. It was all an illusion. The shackles were locked on. I was HAD.

Jesus came into the picture a few years later. He said,"Follow Me." I knew enough to know that I was going no where. So I agreed. But then He started asking me to do things and go places that I downright thought would kill me. You see, He wanted to take me back to where I was HAD.

I thought that if I followed Him, He would lead me away from those things. Out of sight, out of mind. Just help me be good. He knew I was HAD and HAD needed to go back with HIM, to find HEALING. Without healing, I was still just HAD.

Don't get me wrong, I messed up big time. I was not innocent. I liked my own way, but He showed me it didn't wo rk. His way is the way of love and restoration. To walk down that way, He first, needed to take me back to show the difference between the truth and lies, between trust in myself and trust in HIM.

So what is left after the journey back. Forward momentum. No pride in myself to make things work, and the first steps of walking away from the other name HAD acquired: VICTIM. That is the healing. Just as He took away the guilt and stain of my mistakes in forgiving me, I am learning to walk away from blaming others. Even those who hurt me the most.

I was HAD. Now I am HIS, BELOVED.

Going back into our worst mistakes is hard. I will not deny that in anyway, but it brings so much freedom and joy. God asks us to be real with Him. Not to cover up our guilt and shame with good works, but to let Him take us to His heart of love and forgiveness. (2 Corinthians 5:14-21) We cannot justify ourselves. In accepting Jesus' sacrifice for our sins, our mistakes,we are justified. And just as the Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son comes running, so our Heavenly Father comes running for us, to embrace us and to celebrate that we have come back to Him. (Luke 15:11-32)

MC

Not Me! Monday

This week with travel did not allow for blogging, but I will deny doing any of the following things

• While on the road options are limited when traveling with 45 people on a bus for eating. Lots of fast food. So you did not see me heading into Taco Johns on Sunday after we got back. I love to cook and was in my kitchen.

• We found out that we had a roommate from another school. We did not all laugh and debate who would sleep with our mystery roommate. Especially, since the name on the door was Ryan. We were not relieved to find out that Ryan is a wonderful young woman.

• I did not think about purposely kicking my friend K, when she started snoring, while sleeping next to me. I also did not giggle alittle when another night she turned over and laughed in her sleep. I totally did not just share that. I would never embarrass my friends.

So I Took a Bus to Colorado...

I spent this week in Colorado at Glen Eyrie for a conference with the Navigators. 47 students from colleges in my region joined together to charter a bus to make it a very affordable trip. Here are the 8 of us from my school during a pit stop.
I had never been to the Glen before. The Navigators purchased the property for their headquarters in the 1950's. The scenery was breath taking. We didn't get much free time to explore, but the beauty plus unseasonably warm weather made for an amazing time with God on Thursday afternoon.

The purpose of the conference was to do two things: share about EDGE Corps and other ministry opportunities with the Navs, but mostly to cast a vision for living out the Great Commission in all of life. I have wrestled alot with what God is calling me to do once I graduate in December. I love teaching and want to be a Godly influence in public schools, and I have a passion to see the gospel shared and lived on college campuses. What God is speaking to my heart is that He will bless me as I pour my life out for Him no matter what arena I end up in. In all reality, I know there is a possibility of teaching and volunteering with a college ministry.

These signs were up all over the grounds at the Glen. This one in particular spoke volumes to me. The staff challenged us to write out an "Impossible" list of things that we thought to be impossible. That scared me. It scares me to hope that God could do those things, but in His sovereignty He could choose not to. It is easier not to hope. As I was walking up to the first meeting Thursday morning, I asked God if He was protecting my heart as He asked me to hope. He simply said yes. Then in the meeting we were studying some passages on trusting God and in Mark 4: 35-41, the disciples found themselves asking Jesus the same question I had, "Do you care?"

They are on a boat when a storm comes up. Jesus is asleep after a long day of teaching. They come to Him in desperation because they are taking on water. After reading and talking, we started to see these fisherman might have been trying to prove they could handle the storm on their own and instead of asking Jesus before things looked dire, they waited until they questioned if He even cared.

I am searching out scripture that reveals God's heart. A heart that I can trust.

One of the craziest things about the trip is that the conference was held in a CASTLE! It was like a fairy tale.
Oh, and it was snowing as we loaded up to leave.

Not Me! Monday

Well here are all the things I may have actually done in the last couple of weeks, but I well I'm claiming temporary insanity. Join the rest of us in therapy at www.mycharmingkids.net.

• I did not drive 130 miles through blowing snow and a no travel advisory. Once again, I know better than to risk my life for the sake of making it home for Christmas.
• I am not the type of person who sleeps grief. Therefore I did not purposely sleep the whole way up and back from my great-grandma's funeral.
• I have not gone alittle over the top in the kitchen this week (Considering the fact I am single and my roommate was gone) and cook soup for 16, make french toast, and bake brownies and a pie (It certainly was not pumpkin pie).
• New Years Day was not spent until 4 pm in pajamas. My friend and I did not work on a puzzle for 4 hours, watch TV, and laugh at her dog Jack's strange antics.
• I was not totally impressed that my brother kept his feelings to himself about my school beating his alma mater in basketball until after he went to go hang out with his girlfriend after the game.
• I did not contemplate how I could steal my brother's Wii. After all, I have much better things to do than to play video games.

A Little Bit of Cynicism and a Prayer

It didn't take long. The new wave of horror films are on their way. As soon as 2009 has hit, the trailers for these movies hit the airwaves. Why am I mentioning this? I hate scary movies. I figure reality is bad enough, why add any more fuel to my anxious mind.

"The Dark Knight" in particular struck a chord with me. I went with my roommate and I sat in shock. I don't get how people can make evil funny. But this is what I took away from this movie. I hate to say this but, I wonder if Heath Ledger's death was not accidental. He may have entered too deeply into the evil and hopelessness of his character as the Joker.

So some of this comes because I have been stuck inside once again for most of the day. I can only take so much before I start going stir crazy.

I have been praying alot the last couple of days. I have also been reading people's blogs and Facebook profiles about resolutions for 2009. So many have mentioned, being in the Word and growing closer with Jesus. I am with them. I have a friend who is spending hours (yes, hours) with God and still is so hungry for Him. It is my desire, no my need, to have that kind of relationship with my Savior. This friend is also one of the busiest people I know. She has her priorities better set than I do. I pray that not only will God grant my prayer for time with Him, but also for even more hunger. I am so thankful that source I am feeding on never runs dry.

My prayer is not only for me but for my brothers and sisters in Christ. May the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation that you may know Him better (Ephesians 1:17).

I want to thank K for inspiring and encouraging me with her faith. We would all be better off for seeking His face more.

Love and prayers,

MC