“…His voice was like the roar of many waters…When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I alive forever more…’” Revelation 1:15-18

I love the mountains.  Driving back to school yesterday afternoon I was struck for the thousandth time by the magnificence of those smoky mountains.  I see them every day, and every day I am awestruck by their beauty.  I have hiked all over those mountains, and even if I take a trail I’ve been on before, I always notice something new and the scenery never gets old. 

Something about the mountains makes me think about God.  I can’t drive through a mountain range or even get a glimpse of them on the horizon without worshiping Him.  I love the beauty and complexity and splendor of the mountains.  But how much more beautiful and complex and splendid is their Maker?  Just as I marvel at their size and my own seeming insignificance, I see myself compared with God’s infinite greatness.  Just as I can walk all over them and never know every hidden corner or every bend, I can and will spend the rest of my earthly life knowing God more and more but never even coming close to comprehending all there is to know. 

Most days, as soon as I leave my room and walk to class I notice the mountains.  But sometimes, though not often, I completely miss them.  They are still there, and I know they are, but I am too busy or stressed or distracted to look their way.  How often do we do this with God? God, who is immeasurably more vast and magnificent and wonderful than a simple mountain range.  God, who, in spite of our weakness and insignificance and destitution, loves us and pursues us.  We still know He is there, but we fail to cast even a glance in His direction, much less invest in our relationship with Him.  Oh, but we must!  He is everything already, but we need to be intentional about focusing our hearts and minds to make Him everything in our lives.  I pray I don’t miss the glory of God today because I am enraptured with myself.

I seem to have misplaced my lovely and dear friend irregular221b.  Does anyone know where I could find her? :)

                I have been desperately searching for a job the past two weeks without any success.  It goes without saying that it’s been discouraging.  Combined with the fact that I am in a new state with a new home without knowing a soul besides my parents, I have often slipped into feeling sorry for myself.  Often while moping over my “difficulties” God would bring to my mind Matthew 6:33 “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” with “these things” referring to material necessities.  Rather than heeding His instruction I focused on myself and my apparent inability to grasp stability and financial security.  When I should have been running to His word, I chose to be inconsistent in the time I spent with Him.  Because that’s always helped SO WELL in the past.  I have to laugh at myself sometimes, I really do.  But anyhow, this morning in spending time in the Word I picked up Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest.  The entry for today, May 16^th, was so poignant and applicable that I feel it is imperative to include it.  The title is “The Habit of Wealth” and it is a reflection on 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 4 which calls us “partakers of the divine nature.”

We are made partakers of the Divine nature through the promises; then we have to “manipulate” the Divine nature in our human nature by habits, and the first habit to form is the habit of realizing the provision God has made. “Oh, I can’t afford it,” we say—one of the worst lies is tucked up in that phrase.  It is ungovernably bad taste to talk about money in the natural domain, and so it is spiritually, and yet we talk as if our Heavenly Father had cut us off without a shilling!  We think it is a sign of real modesty to say at the end of a day—“Oh, well, I have just got through, but it has been a severe tussle.”  And all the Almighty God is ours in the Lord Jesus!  And He will tax the last grain of sand and the remotest star to bless us if we will obey Him.  What does it matter if external circumstances are hard?  Why should they not be!  If we give way to self-pity and indulge in the luxury of misery, we banish God’s riches from our own lives and hinder others from entering into His provision.  No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity, because it obliterates God and puts self-interest upon the throne.  It opens our mouths to spit out murmurings and our lives become craving spiritual sponges. 
                When God is beginning to be satisfies with us He will impoverish everything in the nature of fictitious wealth, until we learn that all our fresh springs are in Him.  If the majesty and grace and power of God are not being manifested in us, God holds us responsible.  “God is able to make all grace abound”; then learn to lavish the grace of God on others.  Be stamped with God’s nature, and His blessing will come through you all the time.

How proud and arrogant I am to think that I am in control over my life and what I do and the money I make.  I love God’s personality, it is so amazing, He just forces me to rely on Him alone which is of course the best thing for me.  Then, when I am finally, totally trusting Him, He gives me the things of immensely less value that I need on this earth.  As frustrated as I get with it sometimes, when I stop looking at myself and lift my eyes to see the big picture, His plan and timing have always turned out to be best.  So here I am waiting.  And I am content with it because somehow, someway, my God will supply all my needs.  I will just seek Him first above all else.

I changed my major today—officially.  Afterward I felt more relieved than I thought I would, which is just more confirmation for me that I am following God on this one.  My advisor who tried to talk me out of it told me today she could tell I was doing the right thing because I was “bubbly” when I talked about it; pretty priceless I must say. 

What is more priceless is being full to the brim of God’s grace and God-given faith to do something I don’t understand totally with an end that I cannot see right now.  But it feels awesome, which is pretty remarkable coming from someone who relishes planning every minute of her day out.  Having tried out both sides of the equation, I would rather live blindfolded walking hand in hand with God than have all my steps laid out for me but be distant from Him. 

A dear friend told me a story about a man who spent a day with Mother Teresa.  At the end of the day, he asked her to pray for him.  “Anything,” she replied, and he asked her to pray that God would give him clarity about the direction he was to take in life and what he should do with his future.  “I cannot pray that prayer for you” was her response, and at his confused look she said “Clarity is sight, faith is what is unseen, and the righteous shall live by faith.”  This changed my perspective on clarity forever.  I am not sure I want it.  Let me rephrase that…I want clarity, but I’m not sure that is God’s best for me.  So I’ll take my chances with faith instead. 

Lock in with me for two seconds—God will ask us to do things that do not make sense at the time.  We can and often do say no.  I did.  God, because He is so ridiculously gracious, will often try and get our attention again and again, even as we ignore Him again and again.  But He can also just give us up to our passions and let our calloused hearts do our own will.  DO NOT get to that place.  It is better to live for Him, in Him, because of Him, than any other way.  Nothing else will satisfy: “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.  Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” –Psalm 95:7-8

It takes an absolute freight train to get my attention.  I kid you not.  For the past semester and definitely the past two months, God has been wrestling with me on changing my major.  I’m sorry, did I say the past semester? It actually started before I declared my major.  But since going into some form of ministry is vague and rather illogical, I had the brilliant idea of making my own rational plans, fitting it into the “ministry mold,” and advertising my great creativity to God so He would get on board.  Am I really that stupid? Prideful? Fearful? Apparently.  So, after letting me go off on my merry way for about a year and a half, God struck me over the head (graciously) with a break-up, two deaths in the family, one of my best friends going to Spain, and my family deciding to move four hours away to another state.  Needless to say, I’m listening now.

But it wasn’t until chapel a week ago today that God laid down the final word.  Yes, I knew He wanted me to start following His plan.  But, I couldn’t see where that was leading me and for someone who loves to plan that is super freaky.  Chapel is a little weird sometimes.  Don’t get me wrong, we have some really awesome speakers, but every once in a while they find a real crazy.  Not today—home boy brought the WORD.  He told us to open up to Jonah and immediately I was like, oh no, I know exactly where this is going and this guy is gonna be talking straight to me.  You bet he was.  See, Jonah was a prophet living in a comfortable little Jewish village being a, well, prophet.  Then God was like, go to this wicked city of Nineveh and tell them about how much they desperately need me.  But because of Jonah’s pride in trusting himself instead of God and because of his fear and uncertainty regarding the daunting task, Jonah got up and immediately fled to Tarshish, a city 2500 miles away from Nineveh and a journey that would have taken him about a year to complete.  But on the way, God sent a terrible storm onto the waters, and the boat threatened to break apart.  Jonah knew it was because of his disobedience that God had sent the storm, so he made the drastic decision to be thrown overboard into the surging sea.  He finally surrendered and jumped into an extreme unknown, totally at the mercy of God’s will and grace.  You want to talk about some oppressively strong conviction from the Holy Spirit, my chest felt tight breathing by the time the dude finally prayed and dismissed us.

When we turn away from what God directs us to do, in His grace He will often send a storm to realign us with Himself.  And once we get to that place, it takes a drastic, bold, courageous leap of faith to get back to where God wanted us in the first place.

I’m listening now.  And I’m changing my major.  And I can’t see two feet in front of me and I’m scared to death.  But I am at peace for the first time in months, and I am just going to trust Him and let go.  James 1:2-4 “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.  And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” 

It’s Valentine’s Day…again.  Not only does it serve as a 24 hour reminder to those who are single that they are, in fact, single; but it also gives perspective as to how unloving the other 364 days of the year can be.  Why don’t we profess undying love every day of the year?  We say it is love, but is it really? What is love and what is worth loving?

This morning I was reading 1John 4 (as a small aside, both John letters would be great to read today, since pretty much all he writes about is love it seems like) and I loved verses 9-11

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we light live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

This reminded me of the chapter we went over in D-groups last night, Ephesians 2, which talks about how “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” and goes on to discuss how He raised us up just so He could show us His immeasurable kindness for all of eternity, and that it is by grace through faith we have been saved—both of which are gifts from Him.  Recap:  while we were still rebelling against God and hating Him, He sent Jesus to die because He loved us so much and wanted to show us His love for the rest of eternity.  We receive this gift by grace through faith—oh and by the way God goes ahead and gives us those because He knows we are too broken in ourselves to do so.  This BLOWS MY MIND…what on earth?? Who would do that? It seems so ridiculous, and yet obviously I am so ridiculously thankful for it.  What magnificent, glorious love. 

So how do I respond to that? Often I ignore Him.  I push Him to the back burner and love myself over Him.  And what does He do? Keeps loving me and draws me back to Him.  I don’t care what kind of boyfriend you’ve got, there is no way he will ever be able to love you like that.  So how should I respond to that? Jesus talks about it in Matthew 22, saying “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  Love God with all my emotions, all my motivations, and all my thoughts.  Okay, that maybe could be doable, especially since He loved me so much.  But it gets better.  Right after that, Jesus continues the thought with “love your neighbor as yourself.” Mhmm.  That tends to be a bit more tricky.  I have enough trouble loving God the way I should, much less people who can wrong me and hurt me.  But I kinda feel like these two commandments work off of each other.  If we are in a right, close, intimate relationship with God, then the love He loves us with will start to work in us and through us to love those around us.  So when I am not loving people, it is probably a direct result of me not loving God. 

So what is ultimate love? How can I define it? I am inadequate to do so, honestly, but Paul does a pretty awesome job in I Corinthians 13:4-8

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.  Love never ends. 

I, in my own strength, cannot love people like this.  But God can.  And God does.  And God can and will work through us to show others His great love if we will just be available and willing.  So Happy Valentine’s Day.  Use every opportunity to be a picture of this kind of love to those around you.

Why am I so terrible at keeping up with my blog?? I am currently coining the excuse that I’m too busy with my academics, which is pretty much true.  Fortunately, I took a break from my bondage for the day and enjoyed a lovely day at the Biltmore this past Saturday because a fabulous friend of mine so graciously offered for me to go with her.  There are many phenomena in Asheville, such as a pretend waterfall, old-school sketchy gas stations, and disappearing shuttles to name a few.  But perhaps the most remarkable of such phenomena is the uncanny GPS meltdowns that are bound to occur once you enter Asheville’s jurisdiction.  It’s like North Carolina’s version of the Bermuda Triangle.  If it weren’t for all the commercials, I might possibly be convinced the Biltmore estate in fact does not exist.  The closest my GPS could get us to it was some building downtown that had no semblance to said estate.  Did I really pay money for this thing? I should get a refund for the gas it requires to take such a laborious “shortcut”.  In Gary’s defense (the name I have so fondly bestowed on the Australian voice as a tactic to keep me from chucking him out the window) he never fails to figure out how to get home.  How redeeming. 

But while I am in the mood to criticize a mindless electronic device, I should probably turn my attention to myself and admit my own contribution to Gary’s failures.  You see, even if Gary brings me into the near vicinity of my destination, yes, even within sight of it, but then tells me to turn away and go down another dark alley, I instinctively follow his omniscience.  Perhaps you now notice that he’s not the one with the problem after all.  Even if I can SEE the Biltmore entrance to my right, I decide it would be best to turn left according the Gary, deaf to my passenger’s cries of dismay at my evident stupidity.  It’s hilarious, truthfully, and it makes for some good laughs because let’s be honest, I am NOT the only poor soul who does this.  We are told on the back of his cardboard box that Gary can get you wherever you need to go, if only you will just do everything he tells you to.  So even when we can actually see the right way to go, we follow the majority rule of a computer that is supposedly smarter. 

This underlying elementary principle can be applied in a couple of ways—we can stop blindly following the majority labeled as “smarter,” regardless of where they lead us, or we can stop blindly following our GPSs down dark alleys. 

brilliantlens:

“For this is the will of God,your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God” [1 Thessalonians 4:3-5]

(Source: solideogloriaa)