My Joy

Five minute Friday at GypsyMama.  This week in honor of a women I've never met in the flesh but who has spurred me and others on.  To GitzenGirl.

JOY!

I ran.  No shoes.  Hands still flecked with paint.  Down the granite stairs, trying not to slide in socks.

I stood jumping up and down in front of an office door.  I had to tell someone!

"I got the job!  I'm going to Korea!"

While in that moment, I was elated beyond words, it wasn't that moment that overwhelmed me.  It was all the moments of pain in the previous 10 months, when this seemed like an impossibility for multiple reasons.   Money, family support, timing, health, paperwork.  Each one, God stayed steady and I kept walking forward.  Tears that streamed my face seemed such a distance memory.

I chose to trust.  I chose to believe.  I chose joy.

Whether I had ever made it here or not, I knew the joy that went beyond my circumstances or understanding. Even, if I was still deeper in debt and without a job, accused, out of sync, or barely able to walk:

There is always joy.

It was God.  My joy.  The joy that never left or faded.  Constant.  Faithful.

Set My Heart

This God I am encountering is magnificent.

Far to often He is met with my indifference.  I want to want more of Him.  I want to experience who He is.  Yet, I hold back.  Where life is continually intense in one way or another, I make my excuses and I shrink back.

This is my wrestling in a season where honestly, I think I realize the desperate nature of the situation but I'm still trying to breathe with my head underwater.

I get pieces of what God is doing.  Tokens, words, breadcrumbs leading me forward.  I'm stubborn so I keep up the trail.  But I go back to the word a friend gave that, it is like I am riding a bike uphill through mud. Jesus is calling for me to stop.  There isn't endless work for just breadcrumbs,  not when God calls me to come to Him with those pieces.

I'm working out my salvation.  I want sanctification by the grace of Jesus.  I'm doing what I know to do to cultivate desire for Jesus.

The very first words the Holy Spirit spoke to me were: "Come follow me"

There were no holes for me to slip away into.  Only to follow Him.  Not religion.  Follow Him.  Not a great pastor or teacher.  Follow Him.  Not my own constructions of what it means to follow God.  But to be weak, listen in desperation and Follow Him.

In following Him, becoming one with God as Jesus and the Father, and the Spirit are one.

Yes, He's got to come closer no matter how much I flinch as His glory and holiness, and righteousness touch my life.

The musings of my heart in prayer:

Lord what do all these examples of gates and walls mean?

Keep looking at Israel coming back to Jerusalem.

I had studied Nehemiah before which was about the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem.  But now I am  into Zechariah, which is before Nehemiah and at the time that they are preparing to rebuild the temple.  Through the visions that God gives to Zechariah, He is promising the rebuilding and restoration, but there is also a call to set their hearts on worshiping God.  Not just in the restoration of the temple and the practices there, but to humble their hearts and live out the first commandment.

Rebuilding and restoration comes first at the heart.  I truly believe, God has restored and rebuilt my heart in  His glory and grace.  But I can tell from my actions and inactions that there are hindrances to living out the first commandment to love the Lord with all of myself.  I need God to rebuild the wall.  To reset the gates. Because there are breaches where the Enemy moves freely in and out.  Compromises and attachments that have turned into idolatry.

God I want to fast, and maybe try a Daniel fast.

A few hours later I turn on the International House of Prayer webstream for their weekend service.  They are preparing for a 21 day Daniel fast.  So, I'm setting myself to join them.  Lord prepare my heart for that one.

Just Write: Sweet

The sweetest things in my day.

The little fuzzball I am watching for a friend for the weekend.

Ella, the student, whose smile and joy are matchless; and a perfect greeting before my last class of the day.

The lady at the restaurant offering us forks even though, chopsticks are the best utensil ever.

Crossing one HUGE thing off my to-do list.

The scripture that hits my spirit like a ton of bricks, but settles me where I had been anxious.

The moments when I quiet myself, and God wraps me up in His presence, like the best hug ever.

Sweet...

Not Today

I know there are profound things stirring under the surface in me.  They are profound simply because God is profound and revealing more of Himself...  That is His kindness.

It is also His kindness to let these things be just out of my understanding, that I would seek and desire Him more.  Jesus is drawing me closer.   It is good.

I want to share these things.  I want to speak of the joy that is growing, the beauty coming from the ashes, and the dreams He's given me...

Not today...

Rest

Five minute Friday with The Gypsy Mama and others for 5 minutes of unedited writing.

Rest.  Stop.  Pause.  Break.  Breath.  Still.

The frenetic pace has worn me thin.  Some days it takes all I am just to stay on my feet.  But for all the days where it seems like stopping seems impossible without crashing, there is a simple and neglected command.

Rest.

Don't pick up that stack of papers to grade.  Don't head to the bus stop to travel here or there on errands.  Don't even study.

Set against the ever grinding flow.  Find that place where Shalom peace in the presence of God is reality and not a ever present wish not come true.

Where being is far more important than doing.   And there is actually trust that everything that needs to get done will get done, even if it can't be done today.

Love Came Down

Whether good days or bad days, I am Yours.

In the bad, it is the moments of worship, knowing that You conquered death.  You came to rescue me from sin and its wages of death.  That in the silence, You are everything.  You are the I AM even when I am shaking in sin or hardship.

In the good, it is the moments of worship, knowing that I deserve nothing, but You give Your riches of grace anyway.  The humility it takes to know that You are enough even when worldly abundance may blind me.  That even in the joy of seeing promises fulfilled, there is no way to ever separate the blessing from Creator.  You are where I hide, celebrating every bit of joy with You.

I am Yours, I'm Yours, forever.

Yours.  Forever.

Because Love came down.



This is a new favorite song and I really love this slowed down acoustic version.

No One Wins

I shifted uneasily, as words continued to fly.  As an observer of two people demanding their way.  What both of them want are good things.  But with no love, no one gives an inch except to save themselves the strain of the current argument.

A phone call breaks up the exchange and one person leaves the room.  I can feel the strain.  My own head trying to understand why I have both empathy and anger for both parties.  One deserves the promise filled, but also needs to give respect.  The other deserves a measure of empathy for the weight they carry, but also needs to give what was promised without manipulation.

At the end of the day, I retreat to my own abode and ask, "WHY?"

Seeing both sides, means despite the pull, I don't get to pick sides.  And...

No one wins, when you compete in relationships.

Because you're not just pushing a body around in a sporting competition, you're pushing and manipulating a human heart and human spirit.  One that is likely already broken, injured.  Physical wounds heal way faster, then the slashes of words or emotions ever will.

And the wounds don't just come from the person you're competing with; If I am going to compete for power in a relationship, I am most likely to harden a part of my heart to do it.  I close off part of myself that is actually meant to offer life.

To hold oneself open to wounds and say, "I will honor your need above mine."  doesn't mean you become a doormat, your needs invisible.  You can still ask, but put away the weapons.  Words creatively formed to knock the other person down, become questions that ask the questions that unlock the defensiveness of oneself and the other.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

For God sought to restore the relationship with man, that man had torn.  He gave all of Himself, He gave His Son, so that their is reconciliation and restoration.