“Never let the cost of obedience keep you from the path of obedience”

 

^ that’s some Bill Jones for ya.  Courtesy of my dear big Sis. 

I was really going to just do that cop-out post and leave it at that (not that it wasn’t a real and true reflection of my heart), but I decided, as my 3rd entry of the month at the end of the month, I could say a little more.

This is what Jesus has been teaching me.

I know nothing.  He knows everything.
The end.

Just kidding.  He does know everything, and in comparison to His infinite knowledge… I don’t compare.  But that’s not the end. 

Because,
He is still teaching me.  This unworthy and ignorant pupil.  I come before Him with my pad and pen, and He speaks slowly even as I scramble to jot down what I can.  I love Him, my God.  But I’m still learning what that means as well.  [Clearly in Scripture, Jesus says that those who love Him, keep His commandments; we obey the deep aching in our souls to disregard our pride and our flesh as we dive into the Truth that is unknown and unwanted by the World, the Love that is undefiled and uncorrupted by the World, the Life that is unending and uncontained by the World.]  As my heart grows heavy with the desire to be the kind of Love that He is, I still have selfishness.  And there is no selfishness in love.

I’d been so discouraged this past month.  Feeling alone and useless for being alone (which is just silly; I’m not alone, not even here).  But as I’ve been spending time with Him this past week, He’s just been opening my eyes to the things He’s doing, revealing Himself to me and His purpose, piece by piece.  And in Him solely, I’ve been able to find my comfort.  In Him only, I’ve been able to find peace and rest, and courage to keep taking those steps toward everything I am afraid is not comfortable, but sure is only Him.  The more that I take on His Spirit, and the more that I lose myself in His Life, the less I am able to explain my actions, the less I am able to make sense of “why’s”, the less I find myself asking “what if”, and just doing.  It is entirely unknown, and entirely terrifying, and immensely free.  And that is exactly what He desires for us.  That we be free.  Free to love, and die, and Live like only He has showed us. 

So I’m just set on this idea that though it is being made quite apparent that the cost of obedience is sometimes great, its path is still something to be sought after.  Because it is the echo of my love for the Lord of my life.

Ah. Amen.

Though none go with me, Still I will follow

 

I’m like a disease,
A spreading sea of insecurity
To those with closed ears
With eyes that were
too comfortable asleep.
But I think that I’m alright with that
Jesus was a homeless man.
He was skilled and He was brave
He had a voice and He had a name
And it was Love,
And Love was rich, but He was poor;
He was the man on the street
we find our own ways to ignore.
But my heart churns in my chest,
Outside of Him, I find no other rest;
I cannot walk past Him anymore.
When He draws in my eyes,
He draws me to life,
He paints and creates and portrays
how to die
more to myself to be more alive.
I want to bring
Him honor and praise
and the glory of His name
to those that haven’t heard it,
But to those that have, too.
I want to be gentle and wise,
unable to shut my eyes
to the brokenhearted and the pain.
I, the overbearing stain
of these iniquities,
We, Christians--
These blemishes on the face of Christ.
We, Christians--
Ambassadors
of the One who paid too high a price
for us to pay; We wouldn’t even try.
Everyday
I grow deep into His love,
Everyday
I ask Him to empty my cup.
I want to walk in love
And talk in love
And be in Love.
Everyday.
And most days,
it’s not easy to love;
All I can decipher is the desire to run.
But I call to Him,
and slowly, I see my heart coming undone.
And He’s says the fight I’m in
has already been won.
So I wait for Him to tell me where to move,
with a false notion
that I’ve got something left to prove.
But it’s all still new-
not knowing what I should do,
and still doing it.
I want to be alive,
so these thoughts won’t be mine,
So the glory and pride
of my own name dies,
So I can walk in His will,
the one He intended for my life.
I want to delight in Him,
to fight for Him
To shed light on His story,
the one He wrote for me
and for you--
The Love He pours out
while we cling to our doubts
that keep us without
understanding.
I want to live in that love
And give with that love
And learn and forgive and forget
with that love.
I ask Him to align my heart with His
to erase the former ways my mind has been,
To rid my soul of all its sin,
against only Him, the transgression
that I commit.
Even as it draws me to my knees in surrender
Even if I’m like a disease or a leper,
eternally healed,
“To You alone,
May my spirit yield”
I want to be the love that can’t be concealed.

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God… – Psalm 42:1-2

Trust in the Lord, and do good;
dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the Lord,
and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord,
trust in Him and He will act… - Psalm 37:3-5

I want to delight myself in the Lord so He will give me the desires of my heart, when all my heart knows how to desire is Him. 

Rooted and Established. In LOVE.

  This is Chico Bango.

Back at the Zou.  We debunked the beds last night (thanks friends for all of your help, and not help).

When I woke up this morning, I realized I had absolutely nothing I had to do today.  This is rare in my life.  So I took a shower and read, for a long time.  I am still in the middle of Crazy Love, but even with my tendency to start 4 books at a time and finish none, I think I might actually get to the end of this one.  I then wrote a letter to a friend that I really needed to write a letter to.  And God blessed it, and my time with Him, and I sat back and thought, “Wow.”
God is so… good.  That word is one of the adjectives my English teachers hated us to use to describe anything.  It was too large a cliché.  But God is good.  He is every derivation of it.  He is every synonym of it.  He is more of it than everything we use it to describe anyway.  I am overwhelmed by how good He is. 

I finished my application to Africa last night (now I’m waiting to come up with the fee, and it will be on it’s way).  I’ve had a lot go through my head concerning Africa… concerning everything really.  It seems I don’t know how to trust our God that is so GOOD properly.    I’ve taken everything I learned at DCC, all the truths that were uncovered and revealed to me by God, and warped it all into less honorable and glorifying tasks given by God.  I’ve viewed them as burdens as opposed to opportunities to serve the God of the Universe, blessings in which I will be able to run toward Jesus and away from who I’ve ever been without Him.  Opportunities to love deeply, and share genuinely, and serve selflessly, thus making me richer than I’ve ever been.  And I still won’t have any money.

I’ve had to remind myself what I have learned, but also that there is much still to be learned. 

I want to go to Africa.  For all of the reasons I stated in the post before this one.  I want to serve where He’ll have me.

I’m at Mizzou not to get my degree, but to live in the dorms, and to eat in the dining halls, and to thrust myself into the dysfunctional Body He’s set in front of me.  I am here to Love on everyone I come into contact with.  There is no part of my so-called faith that means anything if I haven’t love.  I don’t trust God if I don’t surrender to it.  Even if it’s scary, even if I don’t know the outcome.  That’s why it’s surrender based on trust.  It’d be real easy if I knew how everything would turn out, if I could see the bottom. 

Over the past week, I’ve read Ephesians 3 a few times.  I really like Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians for their spiritual strength, and I pray the same one for any part of the Body I’ve found myself in, and for me as well.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Amen.

Get up and Go.

I began writing about DCC in great detail, making sure to have everything sound … reasonable.  Trying my hardest to make everything make sense.  Tearing things apart and putting into explanation the only way my logic would have it.  And then I deleted the document, and started this.

Maybe it’s entirely illogical, slightly unreasonable, or terribly ridiculous to acknowledge the following [but the Truth of the cross looks crazy to the world, and love is many things, none of them logical- especially the perfect and undefiled love that is God’s]:

My Father; my Creator, that knit me together and planned every detail in my brain and heart that’d make me…me, is the King of the Universe—That makes me a Princess.

He also has set aside an adventure for me to pursue.

with having knit me together, He is intricately and intimately intertwined in every area of my life. Every area.

that King, MY King, my Creator who has intimately and intricately intertwined Himself in all aspects of my heart and mind and soul, my God who calls me to adventure, came here for me. To bare my iniquity, my shame.  He came to conquer death.  He came that I might have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10).  Experience real LIFE, and experience it to the FULL.

And with that Life, comes death- to sin and to bondage, and to this life.  This fake life.  With Him giving me Life, nothing here looks the same.  From one day to the next.  My mind is renewed and my eyes are fixed on Jesus.  Because He’s God and He can do that.  He breathed the stars into the sky, He created man from the dirt, He designed the story of heaven and earth from start to finish and understands the capacity of its glory.  Because He MADE it.

One of the biggest things I took from DCC was this: IF GOD IS WHO HE SAYS HE IS.

That “if” isn’t a legitimate if.  I know God is who He says He is.  Confidently.  The point is to finish the statement.  If God is who He says He is…

I am a Princess.
I have an adventure I must wildly pursue that is waiting for me.
I am intricately and intimately known by my Maker, and He is concerned for every detail in my life.
My shame was carried on Jesus’ shoulders; I am restored, and God has come that I could have life, and have it abundantly.

So SINCE God is who He says He is, all of the above are Truth. 

The adventure the Lord made apparent I should run after was this:

Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gospel of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of His power.  To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places. 
                                  - Ephesians 3:7-10

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without someone preaching?  And how are they to preach unless they are sent?  As it is, written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
                                 – Romans 10:13-15

And now the Lord says, He who formed me from the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob back to Him; and that Israel might be gathered to Him—for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength—He says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
                           - Isaiah 49:5-6

The only way He could have made it any more apparent would have been His audible voice.  It was crazy the way He laid this on my heart over the course of the ENTIRE conference, even when it was the last thing I wanted to receive into my stubborn and comfortable ears.  So I began my application to go to the Ivory Coast this summer for 8 weeks.  It seems He is calling me to Africa.

I want to engage in the lost and broken, the fatherless and the oppressed.  I want to trust in His faithfulness to me, to protect me from being corrupted as I dive into the hurt of the world.  I want to find the least of these so I can know that I clothed Jesus when He was naked, and fed Him when He was hungry, and gave Him drink when He was thirsty, and visited Him when He was lonely in prison.  I want to look Jesus in the face; I want to love on Him.  And I want to say that I submitted to His will when He called me to be a light before the nations, spreading the story of redemption and His salvation to the ends of the earth. 

I want to say that when God called me, like Abraham,

                                                                 I got up and went.