Get me out!

I haven't been this ready for an escape in a long time. Spring Break is agonizingly close. I can feel my body waiting for spring to be permanent, for the sunshine to be the normal, and for blue skies to be my everyday again. I need to get in my boat and paddle. I need to stop studying. And I need to escape.

As blasphemous as those needs may sound, they feel true. I am ready for spring break to be here. Two more days and two more tests to go, and then we can drive. The water awaits me and the Smokies are calling my name. I am just ready for time with my God and the friends He has so graciously provided me. No more books and emails or classes to go to. Just for a little while. Oh! how I am ready.

In Preparation

I am to live in waiting for the return of my Christ. My Savior. My wrath bearing Redeemer. He is returning, and I am to prepare for that day with great joy in longing for His arrival. His promises are real. To Him who was, and is, and is to come.

Warmth to my Soul

Its hard to pinpoint where I'm at in life right now. My world is still new and weird. This Ohio State life still doesn't feel real. I'm in between, on the verge, just about to, leaving, entering, starting and finishing so many things. There's nothing settled in my head, nothing known or normal. New friends, new places to live, and feeling like nothing about my year has been permanent makes everything seem shallow sometimes. I don't know how to fix the anxiety it brings me in any other way than to cast it upon the Lord. Every time I begin something new or put an end to something that didn't seem to have enough time to run its course I am reminded that friendship with the world is enmity with God. I cannot put down roots, I can't store up treasures, and I cannot settle down in this world.

Anxieties.

-I have signed the lease to live in the Baby Brick. I have already left my home to live in a dorm with a roommate, and I will soon leave that, too. Is that where I should be? Have I jumped the gun in making that choice for my home next year?

-I am going to lead Young Life. Is this the ministry the Lord has been preparing me for? Is it really what will bring the Lord most glory? Or is it just the only ministry I've ever seen done?

-I am dating this boy. Is this something I should be committed to here and now? Am I really getting more of Christ in this?

-Have I given these things over to the Lord in prayer often enough? When do I know when I have committed to any of these things to quickly? When do I know that they are right? How do I change them if they are wrong? Where is my hope?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I honestly don't. I will try to remember to put my confidence in the will of God, knowing that as I pursue His glory He will close doors to things that lead me to destruction.

Truths.

-"Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent." Revelation 3:19 I am being disciplined to follow. He is the way.

-"Therefore the Lord declares, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: 'Ah, I will get relief from my enemies and avenge myself on my foes. I will turn my hand against you and smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy. And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.' " -Isaiah 1:24-26 It is the Lord who makes me into His faithful.

-"I say to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you." -Psalm 16:2 He will not abandon my soul.

These Truths are peace to my soul, and nullify the need for answers to my questions. My anxieties are ripped away and I am brought to remember my Heavenly citizenship. This position of submission under devine authority is a safe place to lay and warmth to my soul.

To know my God

It is an unbelievable beauty to see the Lord's work. In my own heart, in the hearts of my friends, and in the hearts of my parents. Our God is insatiable for the spirit He has put in us (James 4:5) and it is so evident to me in the way I can see myself being transformed. I am undoubtedly a new creation in Christ Jesus.

"And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." - 2 Corinthians 3:18

I read in an old journal some notations of mine on pieces of text I was fumbling through and can, in my head, see the wisdom the Lord has given me over their meanings. The foolishness of the gospel is being transformed into my saving hope, the glory of Christ. I now press on in hopes to see the same peace in the Word that I am currently fumbling through. I press on to know my God.

I read in an old journal of specific idols that I was blind to. In prayer I longed for them! In prayer I hoped for them! How blind! How foolish to ask my God to enslave my heart elsewhere! But I have a God who loves. I can now look back, see my idolatry and repent. I am no longer blind. Oh how good He is. I now press on in hopes to see and cast off all other works of darkness and put on the armor of light. I press on to know my God.

I read in an old journal of my prayer for the ones I love. My God has been faithful. I see prayers answered that I cannot even remember praying for. They are miraculous, yet I forget! Our God calls us to communion in prayer with Him through the death and resurrection of His Son. To be allowed to come before the Lord in this manner is gift in itself! But that He would be faithful in hearing us! To God be all glory! I now press on in prayer in hopes that I would see more and more of the work of Christ being done, and can be incapable of ignorance to his majesty. I press on to know my God.

I read in an old journal descriptions of the world I live in. This world is only temporary. I am called an elect exile according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood (1 Peter 1:1-2). To this Truth I hold fast that this world is not my home. My citizenship is Heavenly and my hope is eternal. Thanks be to God that I am called to be estranged. I press on in hopes to be the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing (2 Corinthians 2:15). I press on to know my God.

"Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

O what a foretaste of glory devine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

Born of His Spirit, washed in his blood.

This is my story, this is my song

Praising my Savior, all the day long;

This is my story, this is my song

Praising my Savior, all the day long."

It's Not August

Its not August anymore. That's for sure. In August my life looked different. So very different. My friends, my living situation, my view of the Lord, my need for the cross, and the authority in my life are all so different then before. My life looks nothing like August.

I am finding that the next step is always better. Not that I should be discontent with the step I am in now, or that I should not live where I'm at, its just a longing for more of what I know the Lord holds in store for me. I have seen how much the Lord has grown me up since leaving my August world. That is why I know the next step is better. And I long to be there. "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another."- 2Corinthians 3:18. This is a promise I am seeing. I am watching Him transform the world around me and I am watching Him sanctify my head and heart. I cannot wait to see the nest degree of glory that he has prepared. He is supplying every need of mine according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. How lucky I am to serve a God who is faithful. How blessed I am that He allows me to be a part of the congregation that will praise His name for eternity. It is November.

It's August

Falling short. I Am Redeemed.
Feeling weight. I Am Redeemed.
Forgetting Redemption. I Am Redeemed.

Corduroy Coat

My friend Hannah did something like this on her blog last january that I absolutely loved. She took lyrics from counting crows songs and smashed them together into one giant poem. Its nast - (check it out if you know her). These are lyrics from different songs on my newest summer mix...the rhythms stuck in my head on the daily...

Lately life's been the same I find this comfortable place
with all my friends
And this old corduroy coat is not keeping me dry
But I don't know what else to try
When there really ain't nothing wrong
But I still can't do most of the things I should
And I got no excuse
And is that alright?
I just want to be okay today
I just want to know something today
And we are so fragile
I got secrets from you
You got secrets from me
Because you're so worried about what I'm gonna think
Baby, I'm worried, too
And I'd try to help you walk along but I'd probably end up pushing you over
And I'll make you feel like I never wanted to make you feel
Our treachery is love, dear
We got attracted like bees coming to the hive
So why do I get so lonely?
Cause there's too many things
It's a pale parade of passing clouds
I'm a gallery of broken hearts
I put a trash can by the road
And filled it up just to lighten my load
I just want to feel something today
I just want to know something today

This is a brand new day
I found a pearl in the snow
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
I found the sunshine at the end of the day
Tall glass of milk and cookies
There you were in a black dress
You threw flowers in the air this night
I'll spend the rest of my days bringing victory in
If you want me to
O Love that wilt not let me go
I rest my weary soul in Thee
I give Thee back the life I owe
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer fuller be.

Overwhelm Me.

I have been laying on my deck contemplating my idols. Its a conversation I have with myself that frustrates me beyond belief. I hate recognizing my own sin. I understand that it is by God's love and His desire to lavish His perfection all over me that He calls out my sin from darkness into light, but I hate it. I feel dumb and foolish. It is a battle in which I hate to know loss. Yes, yes, Christ did not lose that battle and sin is no longer His master, but sometimes I fear that it is still mine. I obsess, I have secrets, I am starved for love. I am currently enslaved to these things and feel incapable of letting my freedom be my freedom instead of the nagging guilt it has become. I know that this is a temporary suffering, (temporary as in something I will struggle with until I leave this world that I am not a part of), of my heart that will show me my soul's need for the person of God and the redemptive powers of the gospel, but I still feel this way - aching pain. I still feel restless in my need to satisfy the stomach's of these idols and am exhausted from trying to keep up with their requirements.

I pray to be reminded of Your worth quickly. Continue to make a fool of me so that all I've got is mercy to lean on. Let me not be like the Pharisee in the temple, but like the tax collector who rests solely on the gift that is given and the grace and mercy that saves. Help me to know that I will always lose the battle but am saved by the One who paid my debt and fought and conquered in my place. Continue to frustrate me with my dissatisfaction until I come to know Your fullness. Call out my sin, refine my heart, and set my mind on the things of the Spirit - which is an obsession with the person of Christ.

A mixture i can't figure out

I can't help but know that the cross is big enough for my sin on days like today. Days where I feel defeat. Days where I am knowingly overcome by my sin and am enslaved to it. I rest in the fact that a life of obedience is a crawl. I am bound to failure and defeat. There will be days where I can see sanctification at work in myself as I am refined, and those days will be great. But there will be even more days like today where I see the cross covering me and shielding me. Today I have felt helpless and weak. Feelings I should embrace more often. I am angry that I am so incapable of doing anything righteous or good on my own. But how thankful I am to have no hope in myself. Its a confusing mix of helplessness and hope, of frustration and thankfulness. Its days like today that my head hurts because it doesn't know what to feel. To be overcome by my sin and my salvation all at once is exhausting.

big changes happening soon =]

Fresh.

Tonight feels fresh. I am tired from work and am in need of sleep, but, regardless, I can't help but feeling new. I feel clean and fresh and new. Those are the only words I have.

I want to be about Romans 6.

killing sin equals sanctification, yeah?

The idea of waring against sin by the Spirit has infiltrated my life lately. I've heard it, read it, and seen it. It has become what I want to do. I want to kill my sin. The god of the flesh, the god of this world, a world of which I am not a part of, hates me. He is millions of times stronger than me and hates me. And you would think that I would run from something like this. But I run to it. Why do I run to that? Why do I run to something that kills my soul and hates me?
I go there because it is easy. I am weak. I am selfish. I am dumb. And I am so quickly satisfied. I feel like an idiot when I think of how crazy I must look to the Lord. Because even I can I watch myself. Even I can see my own foolishness.

When I am not feeling cared for in a friendship I rekindle an old one. Personally, I always love to hear from old friends. So when I call someone up I am looking for someone to be excited to hear from me. I don't seek their time because I just really love maintaining hard long distance friendships, but because I have selfishly not been satisfied by a current friendship and I feel freaking let down. Sometimes I sit back and analyze one of those moments and think, "What the hell? How did I not see myself running to my own vomit?" How can I be so consistently blind? I can cover it up by saying that I just wanted to reconnect, or that it was really great to talk with that person again. But I am just trying to make up for the fact that I had my hope in a current relationship and I feel like crap because that person was incapable of making me feel loved. This is my current sin. This constant fueling of my own need to feel cared for by the people around me. That is my sin. That is my enemy.

I want to kill it. But I am no where near as strong as the god of this world. I don't even come close. I don't even think I am capable of hating him as much as he hates me. So thank God for the Spirit. Thank God for the Word, which is a sword he cannot combat. I constantly forget the weapons I have been granted. It is BY THE SPIRIT that sin is put to death. That is the only way there is hope. Because if it is not the Word, then what am I hitting him with? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Weak little eleven-year-old-boy punches that do nothing.

SO THEN, BROTHERS, WE ARE DEBTORS, NOT TO THE FLESH, TO LIVE ACCORDING TO THE FLESH. FOR IF YOU LIVE ACCORDING TO THE FLESH YOU MUST DIE, BUT IF BY THE SPIRIT YOU PUT TO DEATH THE DEEDS OF THE BODY, YOU WILL LIVE. FOR ALL WHO ARE LED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD ARE SONS OF GOD. FOR YOU DID NOT RECEIVE THE SPIRIT OF SLAVERY TO FALL BACK INTO FEAR, BUT YOU HAVE RECEIVED THE SPIRIT OF ADOPTIONS AS SONS, BY WHOM WE CRY,"ABBA! FATHER!" THE SPIRIT HIMSELF BEARS WITNESS WITH OUR SPIRIT THAT WE ARE CHILDREN OF GOD, AND IF CHILDREN, THEN HEIRS - HEIRS OF GOD AND FELLOW HEIRS WITH CHRIST, PROVIDED WE SUFFER WITH HIM IN ORDER THAT WE MAY ALSO BE GLORIFIED WITH HIM. [Romans 8:12-17]

Have mercy on me, O God

The sacrifices of our God
Are broken in a contrite heart
Against you and you alone
Have I sinned
(I love hearing this song sung in community at Veritas)

The other day Hannah pointed out how she wished that we knew this all the time. That we cannot sin against anyone else other than God himself. We don't sin against our friends when we mess up, we don't sin against our parents when we make mistakes, and we don't sin against ourselves when we fail. Against YOU AND YOU ALONE have I sinned. I am sinful for thinking any other way. I pray to be like David in Psalm 51. Because if I knew that and remembered it every time I sinned, I would be broken so often that I would never be able to forget my need for the cross.

Taking care of Faithy

I don't know that broken-hearted is the correct way to describe the way I am feeling. I think it is the way I should be feeling right now, but it isn't. I feel overwhelmed by the Love of a just and mighty God. I asked some friends to preach the gospel to me tonight, because I knew it was what I needed to hear. A few were confused and asked questions, but a few others knew what I meant. They gave me straight Truth without the questions to preface it. Straight Biblical Love that can only come from the words of a God who "wants to fix me more than I want to be fixed." That's a quote from Sara Galbraith, who told me that Truth because she knows the Lord and because the Lord has given her the ability to care for me. For some reason, God has shown her how to care for me better than most will ever be able to. I don't know how to explain it; she just has a way of caring for me that comes from nowhere else other than the Lord.

I am thankful for friends who show me the Love of a big, real God who took the time to love us first.

^{1 JOHN 4: 16-19
16}And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. ¹⁷In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. ¹⁸There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

¹⁹We love because he first loved us.

Can't Get it Out of my Head

Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
TEACH ME some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.

Here I raise mine Ebenezer; 
hither by thy help I'm come; 
and I hope, by THY GOOD PLEASURE,
safely to arrive at home. 
Jesus sought me when a stranger, 
wandering from the fold of God; 
he, to rescue me from danger, 
interposed his precious blood. 

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

---

Get it out

It is crazy to me how we can throw all of our hope and emotion onto a single person for a short period of time. It is never intentional. But it happens. A lot. Its something that I struggle with daily, something that brings me to tears, and something that I wish I knew how to direct. I wish I could just do it; just put my emotions and hope into the person of Jesus Christ. But most times that is seemingly impossible; Because once I've noticed that my emotions have strayed, I have already been let down. How crazy? If we think we have control of anything, you'd think it'd be our own hearts. But I find myself here again and again brokenhearted by the idols that bind me.

Get it out
Not just the ghost
The crap and garbage, too
The stuff that hurts
The feelings I hate
And the things that let me down
I don't want any part of them

Leave them in
Use them all
Use them all for Your Glory
Love me with them
Direct my eyes
Uplift my soul
Yes, leave them in.

Don't Get it Twisted

Eric Mason is my dude. He just says it. He tears apart his congregation and hits them in the face with Truth. And they love it. And I love it. I am hesitant to look up his picture because I like the image of this tall, God-fearing black man that I have when I listen to him speak. It makes me want to listen to him. You can tell that God has given him real wisdom. And you can tell that he loves to share it because his sermons are looong. But they are well worth my time to hear what the Lord is using him to say. And he calls his congregation "family". And he makes sure that the people listening to him on podcast know that he is not calling them family, but that his congregation, right there listening in front of him, that is his "family". I don't even care that I get left out, that's beautiful. Eric Mason is my dude.

gah.

It is hard to want what I want. I don't think I have any better words to explain it. It is just so hard to want what I want.

I am struggling with the person of Christ and His ability to relate to man. Yes, He was a man. But He was God in the flesh, too. I am struggling to know that He ever experienced a time where He was not in communication with God the Father. The Trinity is confusing and hard for me to begin wrapping my mind around. I know that He was on Earth and that He experienced many things that we feel the weight of every day. But did He ever know separation? Did he ever FEEL how it is to not know the depths of the Lord. Mark 15:34 might have answers, but I don't have the wisdom to dig them out.

I don't know that my questions are being answered, or if they are supposed to be. I'm pretty sure they're not. But I thank Kevin Cauley for publishing his questions so that I don't feel so crazy for asking them, too.

I pray that my heart can rest in the fact that because of Christ I never have to experience separation either.

http://www.the-churchofchrist.com/jesus_christ/did_god_turn_his_back_on_jesus.htm

Enough

I seem to be crying a lot lately. I started to write about the condition of my heart and how its in a good place right now. I feel generally loved and cared for. But I am still crying. My heart can't be well. My crap is heavy and my burdens are weighing me down. Why did it take me writing this to realize that? That sucks.