You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'life' tag.
I promise I will finish the Briefing posts! Right now, however, I have a few thoughts to share from two Matt Chandler sermons I’ve listened to yesterday and today.
Matt Chandler- Village Core Values: What is Truth?
- What stirs up your affections for Jesus? What robs you of that affection? Pursue that which adds to your affection and run from that which robs you of it.
I just had to stop the podcast right there when Matt said that (the luxury of recordings: you don’t have to miss anything!). I got out my journal and began to answer the questions for myself. I came up with two lists that I’d like to share with you.
Stirs up my affection for Jesus:
- The Word
- Prayer <—– These 3 apply to all Christians
- The cross
- Music- instruments, vocals, lyrics, all of it.
- Beauty coming from ashes
- Creation
- Romantic love
- Fellowship- simple hanging out & spiritual discussions
- Theology
- Forgiveness/grace/mercy being experienced (by me or someone else)
- Systems in life that are metaphors for spiritual things- marriage, sex, family, adoption, redemption from prostitution, etc.
- Remembering my “history” with God
- Motherhood
- Poetry & pretty words
- Color
- Helping to bring the kingdom of God to earth
Robs me of my affection for Jesus:
- Habitual sin
- Apathy & selfishness
- Fear, doubt, worry, lack of surrender
- Ignoring God’s calls to action
- Imagining what I would be like if I didn’t love God or care about Him (i.e. what sins would I want to indulge in)
- Dreaming of self-centered life plans (think fame & wealth)
- Self-absorbtion
- Not reading the Word and praying
- Materialism
- Clinging to temporal things
- Unforgiveness, anger, bitterness
- Judging strangers based on appearances
- Dwelling on loneliness
- Stubbornness, pride
When I finished these lists, I realized something huge: if who you are, the essence of your heart & soul, what makes you “you,” could be put into a list format, it would be these two lists. These lists show the spirit and the flesh side by side, warring against each other. God wants us to pursue the first list and flee the second. That idea helped me answer, for the millionth time, the question of “what is God calling me to do with my life?” Funny how we seem to need to answer that one over and over again.
My calling entails:
- Making music
- Encouraging and building up broken & struggling people
- Encountering God in creation
- Getting married
- Surrounding myself with a God-loving community of friends
- Soaking up as much theology as possible
- Reminiscing with Jesus
- Having kids
- Writing poetry and prose
- Staring at pretty colors & filling my world with them
- Working for the furtherance of the kingdom
Nice and simple.
What would your lists look like?
Of course, it is the middle of the night. My heart is so awake now, and my thoughts are zooming along on a path I wish to document. At night, or in the “wee” hours of the morning, life feels so epic- almost like a movie. I get these inexplicable feelings of adventure and grandness, of true love and an awesome, yet-to-be-unlocked potential. It is in these times I feel I can see everything clearly; I understand the gravity of all the elements of my life, and of God’s story for humanity. I wish I could capture this feeling and re-experience it at will, but alas, that will never be. I will wake up tomorrow feeling as normal as ever.
At this particular moment in time, I feel as though I’ve been given a glimpse into the “possible” future. Anything and everything is possible with God (Luke 18:27). If we simply trust Him with all that is within us, yield ourselves to His will, and put in whatever effort He asks of us, there is no reason why we should not have an incredible, adventurous life. So many people, it seems, get stuck at the very first step. They act as though trusting God too much will cause Him to fail them, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
There have been plenty of times I’ve had to tell God I wasn’t ready to trust Him for something. Usually, I’m too afraid to let it go, give up control, and depend on Him to bring about the outcome He chooses. What if it’s different from the outcome I want? What will I do then?
In most of these times, I fight Him for ten to fifteen minutes, realize resistance is futile, and let Him have His way. They’re rather comical moments for us.
~*~
There is someone on my mind at this midnight hour. This someone is quite an amazing person, in my humble opinion. I feel that they could be an incredibly powerful vessel for Christ, that they could make such a huge impact in His name if they reached their full potential. At the moment, I can see one hinderance in their way: lack of direction. There is so little one can do without direction from God, except to wait.
Brian Kiley, our soon-to-be-former college pastor, gave a message on hope last year for Advent that really stuck with me. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he made the point that the words “hope” and “wait” were essentially the same in the original language of the passage we were studying. Suddenly, I clearly saw the nature of waiting on the Lord for what it is: an attitude of expectancy, that at any moment, God is going to show up.
In March 2008, I was lamenting the fact that God was asking me to “wait” for something. It’s been one year and three months, and I’m still waiting. Since then, however, I have learned how to wait in hope, with the expectation of a fulfilled promise. I’m anything but an expert at waiting patiently, but I have definitely learned to wait in a much different and more productive way than that of the selfish fretting in which I used to engage.
I’ve been praying for this person on my mind, that God would direct them and guide them, giving them a vision for the ministry of their life. I greatly desire to see them used by God; I feel they have a fantastic journey ahead of them.
~*~
There is nothing more I want than to sit at Jesus’ feet and just be, and then to let my life simply tumble out as He would have it as a result of that. I want to start each day with fire in my heart, overflowing with passion and love that will propel me through the monotony of everyday and into the kingdom of God. I want to give up everything, even if it hurts, just so I can watch God move in mighty ways. I want to receive a vision for the work that He has prepared for me, and then stop at nothing to do it to the best of my ability, including Him every step of the way. I want to pray for people who will never know I did so, and sing songs to Jesus that no one else will ever hear. I want Him to break me down so that I can see my heart for what it truly is, and then tell me that He loves me ridiculously in spite of that.
In short, I want God. I want the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, unbridled and out of the box. And the best part about that is that He wants it too. No matter how weak I am, no matter how short I come up, He will fill in the gaps with His grace and give me His heart if I give Him mine. What a beautiful marriage that is! I truly can think of nothing better.
It seems that every year around this time I feel like reviewing the past year of my life. I still see life in the cycle of school years (though less so now that I haven’t finished a semester since last summer), and so around June 7-15th seems to be the time frame in which I get extra sentimental and want to draw things to a close.
It is June 15th, and I don’t really feel like going over all the major events of the past year. I’m simply marveling at these facts:
June 15, 2006: graduated from high school (age 16).
June 10, 2007: flew home from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada for the last time.
June 15, 2008: experienced one of the most personally meaningful Seven24 services yet.
June 15, 2009 (today): working the front desk of New Song Community Church and programming services for Celebrate Recovery & my worship internship.
It’s amazing what God can do with one life in three years.
What will He do in the next three years? I really don’t know. I hope that by then (2012) I will be graduating with my BA in Music and preparing for seminary in the fall. I hope I’ll be paid staff at a church (which I hope would be New Song). I hope I’ll at least be in a serious relationship if not engaged or newly married. I hope I’ll be regularly leading worship and mentoring a couple of high school or early-college age girls. Or who knows; maybe I’ll be done with all He had for me here and it’ll be time to go Home (and by that I mean heaven, of course).
There are many things for which to hope, but all we know is what today holds. I’m not going to plan for anything more than what God would have for me here and now.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. James 4:13-15
~*~
Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly! [...] For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He adorns the humble with salvation. Psalm 149:1 & 4
