Painful Growth

Grow. Equally synonyms with growth in my mind is pain. I’ve never grown without pain. It’s either a painful circumstance that humbles me and I grow from it, or it’s the pain of dying to self as I grow closer into the likeness of Christ. I have a lot of pain left to experience! The thing with painful growth lessons is you remember them. The clique “No pain, no gain” is even more true in the spiritual realm than it is the physical.

A close girlfriend once told me she thought I was addicted to pain. I laughed but since have realized it’s true. I’m addicted to pain, to growth. Why? Because that is where Christ is! Katie Davis sums it up well:

"I realize that the hard places are good because it is there that I gained more wisdom, & though with wisdom comes sorrow on the other side of sorrow is joy. And a funny thing happens when I realize this: I want to go to the hard place again. Again and again and again."

 Growth. Pain. Joy.

Do you shy from the hard places? From the pain that comes with growth? An other friend joked that he wished he could invent spiritual growth painkillers. Again I laughed, but then – should we take them? Wouldn’t we miss the growth that comes only through the pain?

I don’t like pain, but at the same time is missing out on the blessing of the intense fellowship with Christ that comes through the pain worth the temporary fix of the ‘pain killers’ we like to use?
Lewis writes on through the tough painful growth things in the Last Battle and says

“I almost wish–no I don’t, though,” said Jill. “What were you going to say?” “I was going to say I wished we’d never come. But I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. Even if we are killed, I’d rather be killed fighting for Narnia than grow old and stupid at home... and then die in the end just the same.”

Is growth worth the pain? Worth the risk? Do you, do I, like the way I am enough now to stay this way? To miss the adventure? I’ve come to realize it’s worth the pain to grow. Embrace pain for He is there in it – I’ve found Him– in a way that is more real than you can imagine. Grow.

5 Minute Friday Prompt. Word – Grow. 5 minutes of unedited writing simply for the joy of it! Come join the fun and link up your blog at The Gypsy Momma.

No Expectations

We all plan against it. Fear it. The unexpected, unknown, and most often the unwelcome. But yet isn’t that life? The most meticulous planner can’t control the unexpected in life as much as they try. If they could it wouldn’t be unexpected.

What if we embraced the unexpected instead of fearing it? Embraced a philosophy of no expectations? I’m not saying no standards to hold people too – God knows where our society is because of that, but no expectations on the Lord, and the ones we love and how we love? No one can meet all of our expectations and so we constantly battle a little disappointment and frustration even if it is subconscious. We want what we want, when we want it, and we want to control it. We want the Lord to move, but we want it our way.

How much more joy and gratitude would we have for the Lord and life if we just let the Lord work? Expect the unexpected with God. Expect Him to move, but not how He should move? Let go of the futile control and embrace adventure. We’re on this ride of life whether or not we want to be, so stop fighting and start enjoying!

Loving with no expectations is what Christ did and it’s there in that love that the unexpected happens. Instead we love people with preconceived biases of how they are going to act and we try to tell the Lord how to move in our lives.

Lets live a day with no expectations and see what freedom the unexpected brings!

5 Minute Friday Prompt. Word – Unexpected. 5 minutes of unedited writing simply for the joy of it! Come join the fun and link up your blog at The Gypsy Momma.
Thanks to Jolyn for teaching me about the unexpected. :)

Identity Lost

It's not often I'm asked what I'm passionate about or that I get the chance to write on it. But this month I was asked to write on what makes me personally passionate - not just on how to define your passions. It is strangely freeing, yet with a sense of deep vulnerability, that I shared my passion with the readers over at YLCF. The Lord has gifted and called each of us to live out what He has put in us and sometimes it's reading about others passions that stir or awaken our own. For that reason I want to share mine with you! (It may also help you to see some of the heart behind Not Unredeemed.)

"Wrestling within herself, she turned away from my arms and the prayer on my lips. Her face now in shadow, she uttered a plea and prayer of her own that broke my heart. “God! Why am I worth fighting for?” At 16, Amy is a beautiful Christian girl who has already experienced enough of life’s ugliness to make her question her worth to the very God who gave it to her." To continue reading please visit Identity Lost.

Signature of the Divine

“Sorry, I know I sound whimpy…”

“Haha, sorry, just got a little excited…”

“Sorry, I’m sorry that song makes me cry every time…”

“I’m sorry, I keep talking about him, he’s on my heart…”

Ever make excuses for the way you are? What you feel and how you look? Apologize for yourself to other people for doing nothing wrong? It’s like in your mind you aren’t reaching a standard – a standard that no one has actually set. If people were really sorry for the things they said, felt, or how behaved around other people they wouldn’t actually do those things. So they aren’t sorry necessarily, what they are really asking for is permission from the other person to act or feel a certain way. Acceptance.  A casual phrase you hear in everyday conversation stems from a much deeper context: we are afraid to be who we were made to be.

What “I’m sorry…” is really saying is “Wait! Let me pause the conversation, make an excuse for the way God created me, cause I don’t want to offend anyone by walking in confidence of the way He made me to be.” Perhaps confidence should offend, or more accurately challenge those around us? Who are the leaders among us? Who are the people making a difference?  They are the ones who are confident and unapologetic of who they are and what they stand for. 

“I’m sorry…” puts the focus on us and takes it AWAY from God. Perhaps HE is the one most offended by us? He has saved us and is sanctifying us to be perfect as He is perfect – that it the redemptive process! Perfect means complete. Continually apologizing for ourselves and putting ourselves down is not humility – it is arrogance.

The way we continually talk about our own inabilities is an insult to our Creator. To complain over our incompetence is to accuse God falsely of having overlooked us. …how unbelievably inappropriate and disrespectful they [our words/perspectives] are to Him. We say things such as, “Oh, I shouldn’t claim to be sanctified; I’m not a saint.” But to say that before God means, “No, Lord, it is impossible for You to save and sanctify me; there are opportunities I have not had and so many imperfections in my brain and body; no, Lord, it isn’t possible.” That may sound wonderfully humble to others, but before God it is an attitude of defiance.
                                                                                                    – Oswald Chambers

 Humility is instead an accurate picture of how God sees us.

We are created in the image of God. Think that through for a minute! As with any beautiful painting or work of art you are signed by the Divine (Jesus Christ) – He has left His imprint on you. Made to be His witnesses and ambassadors, you are His signature here on earth. Wow. We are being transformed into His likeness. The more we know Him, the more we will reflect His glory, His divine signature.

It’s not prideful to be confident in bearing this signature. C.S. Lewis says “Humility is not thinking less of yourself – it’s thinking of yourself less.” It’s ok – right – even for us to know and understand who we are – who He is making us. There is even such a thing as a healthy pride: a stewardship responsibility that we are to have, not in what we have done – but as a reflection of what He has done in us.   Isak Dinesen says,

Pride is faith in the idea that God had when he made us. A proud man is conscious of the idea, and aspires to realize it. He does not strive towards a happiness or a comfort, which may be irrelevant to God’s idea of him. His success is the idea of God, successfully carried through, and he is in love with his destiny.

That is what a holy confidence looks like.

We apologize and make excuses for who we are or what we feel all the time because we don’t see ourselves as God sees us. (Even in jest.) The self-apologies are really arrogance  and insecurity hiding behind false humility.

So how do we stop apologizing for ourselves? The first step is to listen to yourself and those around you. I think you’ll be shocked how often you’ll hear those phrases. (I have been at myself!) When you hear yourself making an apology out of this false humility, repent of the wrong view of yourself and remember God’s view of you – the imperfect being made perfect.  Ask Him to show you who He says you are.  The KEY to walking in confidence is knowing the One whose image you are supposed to reflecting. 

Why then is it so mandatory for us to know God now? The reason is that man is made in God’s image; therefore, no person can love God, or walk with God until He knows God. To the degree that we know Him will be determined everything about us. God has made Himself knowable, but only in certain areas. His purpose in doing that was for our own good. When those few revelations of God’s incomprehensible character are grasped, man’s own character will begin to be altered. We are what we worship. It’s God’s life that we want, not human life trying to be godly.”
                                        –Dan Dehann, The God You Can KNOW. [A must read!]

We are changed through knowing Him.

How well do you know Him? Not know about Him, but KNOW Him? Christians are most often the worst self-apologists. Brothers and Sisters this shouldn’t be so! Let’s know Him more and change that!

Passion - Beyond the "What" to the "Why".

The purpose of our passions is to honor the One who created them in us, but we can’t worship Him with what we don’t know we have. I firmly believe everyone has a passion. Sometimes we just have to search a little bit for them. So I challenge you, do you know what your passion is? What steps do you need to take to either identify your passions or cultivate the ones you already know you have?


Be it art, music,or service we all have passions, both heart passions and physical passions. To continue reading about Identifying Your Passions please join me over at YLCF. 

Created in His imagine there is no room for us not to spend time seeking Him for, and honoring Him through, our passions. Go past the “what” in your life to the “why”!


Photo Compliments of The Notes on My Desk

Spoken Identity

Do you ever realize that our WORDS create things? That they create an identity for ourselves and those we speak them too?

This month I wrote an article for Young Ladies Christian Fellowship about the impact of our words and how they relate to a person's identity. Like a coat, words cover us. But do we always wear the coat the way the designer (or speaker!) intended us too?

You can design the most beautiful masterpiece in the world and if it is misused, under-valued or incorrectly worn, it completely changes the purpose for which it was created. For instance, stockings can be worn as hats, but when they are, they send a completely different message than what they were created for – like robbery!

To keep reading please visit YLCF !

Ashes

Ashes - the gray between death and new life, fire and new growth. The pause between the living sacrifice, and a purified beauty.

“Therefore I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.” Rom 12:1-2

An old friend and fellow youth worker always said, “The problem with living sacrifices, is that they crawl off the altar”. How many times have I surrendered something to the Lord, to later take it back? Or to have Him ask me to surrender in a deeper way or on a new level than before? Countless times!

Recently though I’ve encountered a new level of being a living sacrifice that has left me in something of a conundrum. What am I to do with the ashes after I’ve surrendered something completely to His will?

I echo Jim Elliot early in his relationship with Elisabeth as the Lord lead him to not pursue a relationship with her, so he (Jim) could go to Africa unattached. Despite his passionate feelings for her, he says

“'So I put you [Elisabeth] on the alter’ . . . and as the silence grew heavy . . . ‘And what is to be done with the ashes?’” – Passion and Purity

Jim and Elisabeth still had to see each other and be in each other’s lives for years before the Lord eventually brought them together. They lived with the gray ashes of their desires and dreams in front of their faces - daily  - as they choose to be living sacrifices.

In all cases and in all types of surrender, the Lord brings beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3) – that’s what He is in the business of doing . Be it in physical nature when a forest fire rips through and a new healthy forest springs up, or spiritual sacrifice – He brings health and goodness from it. I know that, yet it’s the day in and day out living in the reality of the ashes before the beauty comes, that is the struggle.

I’m learning two major things through this season though!  The first is that when there is nothing left but ashes - He is there! The I Am. That is beauty already! That is peace, joy and purpose!  Strangely (and not!) on the heals of that, comes the desire to breathe life back into the ashes so I can crawl off again. I don’t like this pause and want to interpret what I think could possibly be God’s beauty coming on the horizon and force it into my timetable.

I certainly don’t want to go back to the way I was– I learned my lesson and that part is dead and sacrificed. But I don’t like living with the ashes either. It’s like wanting to pick the bud rather than letting the rose bloom. So many, many, pretty things to distract before the real beauty comes.

Here’s the thing. The devil knows he can’t tempt ashes with the sin or desires of the past - they are still on the altar of Christ’s sacrifice – but he can and will tempt with the almost good enough. Tempt with the counterfeit, surface, pretty things instead of the deep, lasting, beauty. If we’ve been through the pain of the living sacrifice, why in the world would we want to give up half way? Give up just before the sunrise?

 I don’t like waiting as “we’re waiting but our eyes are wandering to all this world hold’s dear”. The waiting in the ashes is as much of a fight as the original altar was! Pretty Things by Tenth Ave North continues

“We are, we are, we’re caught in the in between. Of who we already are and who we are yet to be. And we’re looking for love but finding we’re still in need. It’s only what we have lost, will we be allowed to keep . . . Look at all the pretty things that steal my heart away. I can feel I’m fading. ‘Cause Lord I love so many things, that keep me from your face. Come and save me.”

So what is to be done with the ashes?

I don’t know. I don’t know if anything is to be done with them really. They have to remain so the beauty can rise up from them. Perhaps the ashes are a pause to give us a chance to live and walk out what we have sacrificed. It would be easy if the beauty came immediately – and then I wouldn’t need Him as much.

So if you’re in a time of ashes, remain faithful as He is faithful. The beauty will come in His time. Say no to the pretty things – know they will tempt you! 1 John 2 says that if 'we know Him we will keep His commandments'.  Knowing Him leads to being a living sacrifice, to laying down the sinful desires, as well as ones we think are healthy. So don’t let go of that knowledge in the in-between of the ashes. He who promised is faithful.

*Special thanks to my Papa, who faithfully worked through his own time of ashes. 
** Photo Complimets of Christine Britten - Yellowstone National Park - Volcanic Ash - for all of our adventures together! :) 

New

Never used, brand new, tags still on, new life, new birth, newness, new again – re new. There is something so beautifully innocent about newness, youthful exuberance, a hesitant uncertainty, a blissfully unaware, a purity, a simplicity, a long lasting impression or memory – a first.  Precious and of great value – but newness doesn’t last for long – ever. Perhaps there is more treasure and beauty in maturity, in knowledge of the old, or the complicated, the dirty or shameful. Perhaps to fully appreciate newness, or re –newness we must first glimpse the old to grasp the beauty of re new. Perhaps newness is grace, a situation redeemed, a second chance. For those are the times we really appreciate the lasting newness only found in Him.

5 Minute Friday Prompt: New. Join us for 5 minute Friday's at the Gypsy Momma's blog where we write simply for the sheer joy of it!

Out of a Far Country

Next on my list to review from Blogging for Books is Out of a Far Country by Christopher Yuan and Angela Yaun. (I get free books to review from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group - feeds my reading habit!) It's a true story of a mother and son and their journey through homosexuality. An unusual non-fiction story that reads like fiction - Out of a Far Country is a smooth but gripping read.

I personally loved this book as it balances the homosexual issue and Christian faith very well. It has a strong presentation of biblical truth while bringing it to a personal level as the mother struggles to accept a homosexual son and that son wrestles between an orientation and a faith he doesn't understand.

This book was very helpful in opening my eyes to better understand the homosexual/faith debate. The biggest thing the book shows is that the balance for heterosexual and homosexual orientation is not one or the other but a call to holiness for both. As in the opposite of homosexuality is not heterosexuality but holiness.

Out of a Far Country is a great, balanced book - a real testimony dealing with faith, homosexuality, and AIDS in modern day America. Check it out.

Snapshots of Summer 2011

Hello Blogging World! Hello Friends!

I have missed ya'll this summer! This past weekend ended a 3-month stretch for me of being on the road and going from one event and festival to the next. Most of the traveling was for my job but some was for pleasure!  The end result was I was only home on average for a week each month and taking a class on top of it left no time for blogging! Something I hope to remedy as soon as I catch my breath!
Here a few snap shots from the summer :)

The summer started first week of June with a last minute, unexpected, business trip to Oklahoma and a teen leadership camp there.  A co-worker and I had the privilege of shadowing and learning from this group as we plan to kick off our own teen leadership camp next summer in NY and PA.

Super Summer OK

Flying into Dallas for the camp in OK lent me the incredible opportunity to see my roommate from CO last fall. :)

Using up vacation time - road trip down the east coast to see many old friends!

Coordinated my first themed vintage wedding!

Mini Focus Alumni reunion at a classmate's wedding - singing Holy Holy Holy with tears in our eyes - beauty in community!

FLI Alum in a bookstore is like alcoholics in a bar! Our favorite or not so favorite books from the semester!

"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.' "

Summer wouldn't be complete without all the car repairs - trying to patch my muffler till I could get it to the shop!

First fruits on my garden

 

Hattie Village Youth Overnight - Hope to be involved more next year!

Kid's Camp - My Counselor's in Training :)

 Best part of Camp - time to connect and work with my siblings that came to help for the week!

Going for the world record of the the Largest Game of Twister at camp!

Bible Study/Small Group cook out

First Summer Festival with Co-worker and friend

Another pic from the first festival

Festival number 2 - Flash Mob! (First time ever coordinating one of those!)

Escape for time with the Lord - in a nearby state park

Teen Camping Trip and a few little ones to add to the fun!

Last event of the summer - reffing the Tug of War contest

And some how through it all the Lord provided the means to take an 5 week English class so I could keep up with college over the summer - first time I ever wrote a final paper tenting and camping!

As the summer winds to a close I hope to have more time to blog again! I've also been asked to start contributing to Young Ladies Christian Fellowship so look for blogs over there as well!