Give thanks

July 19 2012
Over and over i have read about giving thanks. This is all over Psalms. While noticing this trend, i am lately discontent with my discontentment. I want to take a opportunity to give thanks daily for something new, while posting scripture and research that relates to this.

I want to be thankful and content with what I have, and what I am given. This has to do with everything: the way i look, my posessions, my relationships...
My prayer is that I am able to see all I do have and Jesus holds all of my focus, to where my attention never turns to what i do not have.

Today im thankful for the way the LORD communicates with me. I get very extreme convictions and He communicates with me very loudly and through this I am (usually) very comforted!

Today, july 20th, im thankful for the peace i find in rocking a sleeping baby. Such a blessing to be surrounded by sweet spirits.

July 22nd, sorry i missed yesterday! I was thankful all day bv i was in amarillo with my sisters and nieces and nephews! Today i am thankful that Ben is able to talk to me :-) hes so amazing and I love when he opens up and lets me in! Im thankful for those moments!

July 23, today i am thankful for my relationships with my dad and Mike. I am thankful to have both of their influences in my life and their ability to h3elp me feel so loved!

July 24, i am thankful for my accesability to water. As much as i could ever need. To bathe to drink to wash everything! I set a goal tocdrink a gallon of water/day and have all the resources to do so! Today, I cant help but think of those that dont.

Missed the 25th but for today, July 26th, I am thankful for Gods prevision for me. He contantly provides more than I need and more than I think I can get. Hes so incredible. I know I dont have to worry!

July 27
The book of Psalms is why I wanted to begin an intentionality of giving thanks. Often times it will say "so give thanks", like that should be our natural response to Him. But I like this also and it reminded me of the give thanks verses. Psalm 66:3, 20 GWT
Say to God,“How awe-inspiring are your deeds!Your power is so great that your enemies will cringe in front of you. Thanks be to God,who has not rejected my prayeror taken away his mercy from me.
I want to spend my days glorifying His works!
This morning, from reading psalms, I am in awe, and thankful for the way my God takes care of His land and His creation. He provides rain for the streams and crops. Sun light. Food for animals. And so much more for me!
Psalm 65:6-10, 12-13 GWT
the one who set the mountains in place with his strength,the one who is clothed with power, the one who calms the roar of the seas,their crashing waves,and the uproar of the nations. Those who live at the ends of the earth are in awe of your miraculous signs.The lands of the morning sunrise and evening sunset sing joyfully. You take care of the earth, and you water it.You make it much richer than it was.(The river of God is filled with water.)You provide grain for them.Indeed, you even prepare the ground. You drench plowed fields with rainand level their clumps of soil.You soften them with showersand bless what grows in them. The pastures in the desert overflow with richness.The hills are surrounded with joy. The pastures are covered with flocks.The valleys are carpeted with grain.All of them shout triumphantly. Indeed, they sing.

July 29th
So I guess I am only thankful every other day. I am thankful that the Lord hears my prayers and I am able to pray! Im thankful that I can talk to my king and know Him deeply. Im thankful that my comfort comes from prayer and my relationship with the God and Creator of heaven and earth!

homosexuality

So I write this short blog knowing that I can't understand all there is to understand.
My developing thoughts:
First a foremost, we are told/advised to be wise (it's all over Proverbs but specifically 5:1) and not sin in these ways to look more like Christ and to glorify Him. But secondly, it seems to me, that most sins listed are harmful to us or someone else. You shall not: murder, steal, covet, have orgies, get drunk, sexually immoral, quarrel, jealousy...  (Romans 13:9&13)
All of those sins listed are sins that we can see and count and measure the harm that comes from them. I have experiences the destruction of being lied to, or stolen from. I have seen the pain of adultery. I have walked with several people that have been burned by sex before (outside of) marriage.

**So today I had this question: What harm does homosexuality bring to people?
I have tried to read about God's motive behind making this a sin among this list of hurtful sins. Worldly things are the only things that come to mind - aids, social outcast.... Well aids would be avoided if a homosexual person only had one partner each (which is the way God intended sex anyway). Additionally, I'm not sure they would be outcasted if it wasn't a sin.

So then, what if this is a sin SIMPLY because a heterosexual relationship is just MORE glorifying to God. What if God just shows himself in heterosexual relationships more. What if God simply wants to reveal something special to us that a homosexual relationship cannot reveal, something about who He is.

If this is true,
what an HONOR it would be to someone struggling with homosexuality
 -to be able to overcome it
in order to glorify God in a way
that is simply part of His plan
and simply something He wants to show us about himself.

How blessed we are that we have a God that has lined out PART of his will for us, so that we might know Him to the largest extent possible on earth.

1 Corinthians 7:17 - Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.
Reading that verse makes me want to scream it out to everyone. Why would we do anything except EXACTLY what he advises? He has given us wisdom and guidelines to live the absolutely best life possible on earth.

So cool.

Job

<sup>I wanted to reread Old Testament books and stories, because in my life the Psalms, Proverbs, and New Testament are all I rely on. I have seen a lot of Christians be changed, comforted, and more wise because of their knowledge of the old testament and the way God worked. 
I picked up my Message bible to try to read the stories in more of a story format. 
Thought I would just start with Job. So i started reading and dove in really quick, and now find that I can't get through it because these first couple chapters have ignited so many questions. So I thought I'd log them! 


Reading Job 1-2 will clear your mental box that God is all loving and loves only through blessings. It's easy to think of God as love love love and forget about the just part, or the selfish part. 
Job has an awesome life, and he is really close to God. Satan comes to God and says let me mess with Job, and God says: oh ok! Just don't kill him. 
- My first thought/prayer right when i read that was WHAT how about ok God if you're going to take me through that, how about you let me also just die! 


Job 5:8-11
8</sup> “But if I were you, I would appeal to God; 
   I would lay my cause before him. 
⁹ He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, 
   miracles that cannot be counted. 
¹⁰ He provides rain for the earth; 
   he sends water on the countryside. 
¹¹ The lowly he sets on high, 
   and those who mourn are lifted to safety. 
My only question here is: Who is the "I"? 
Reading this gave be such comfort. I love the idea of the rain taking care of the deepest root. It's a great picture of the way God brings lowly things to the top. God does this with me weekly. He has to constantly remind me of my value in Him, and that I am always enough. But I love that in this passage the person goes on to say that God loves those that mourn. We are supposed to cry out. We are supposed to recognize pain and discomfort, and we are supposed to tell God. We are to go straight to Him, the source, for our solution. 

I think, finally, I know what community looks like

I think I've found community. I think, finally, I know what community looks like.

It is actually really weird because I have not hung out with these people 1,000 times and they have not done anything over the top to change my life, but for the first time I sensed community.

First, what that looks like in my heart/life is a sense of equality. Ben and I were sharing last night that everyone in the groups thinks everyone is equally funny. There's not an awkward person that everyone wishes they would stop talking, before they start. It's easy to consider the interests of others (Phil 4:2) because we care for the interests of the other people.

Next, I felt a sense of community through our like-mindedness, and similar life experiences. Have you ever met those people that you just want to be like, but think you'll never be as perfect or as good as they are? ... I don't think those people are community, because they don't allow people to see their imperfections. The truth is, those people are not perfect, they just do a really great job at making you think they are. I got this feeling of "these people are real and really understand what I'm saying" last night during dinner at their house. They were telling a story about a girl who did not like birds, and I said "Oh yeah, that is this girl". I can't stand birds. I think they're disgusting disease carriers, and worse, I have been pooped on before. Gross! I asked if they had even been pooped on and two of them said yes! I was so relieved to hear that funny but gross/embarrassing things happen to other people besides me! Their stories were worse than mine too. They had been pooped on their face and other other in their hair, I was just got it on my leg. Hearing their story, I felt a strange, sinking comfortable feeling. That moment allowed me to sense and see that I can have real community.

Also, I have never felt more comfortable around people, in someone else's house, as I have in theirs. There is nothing that is off the table to talk about, no one around the table is there to judge or make fun, and best of all, they laugh all the time. Sometimes I have the problem of saying something or asking a question that is too personal for someone else. These people go straight there. They want to know about my life and my story, because it is important to them, and they know it is important to God. So they ask the questions that are hard to answer, and they listen to the answer when I can finally give it. They allow me to do the same when asking about their history or current decisions. That has helped me to not feel like I'm being too abrasive or confrontational, because they approach people and life in the same way I do.

Finally, I think my favorite part about this group is our differences. We are made up of two couples and 4 kids. Me, my boyfriend Ben, Shane, Sofie, Sydney, Sabrina, Travis, and Scarlett. Shane and Sofie have 4 kids, and a lot of years of experience in life. They are willingly and happily pouring into Ben and me. They are equally thankful for us and our friendship to them. The biggest and only difference I can see in us at this point, is Shane and Sofie's years of wisdom that they have to teach us.

I am excited to learn what God has for them to teach, and look forward to the next year of ups and downs. I am excited for something to happen that will make us closer. Hopefully that something is a good thing, but if it is not, I know they will be there for us, or we will be there for them.

Thank you God for amazing, incredible friends. Thank you God for answering prayers. I have been praying for community to be obvious and accountability in a rare form to show up, and you didn't take long before you gave us people that we wouldn't want to miss! Thank you for providing people I can be honest and vulnerable with, without being rejected. God you are so so good. I am so so glad.

Seek My Face

"Seek my face and you will find fulfillment of your deepest longings. My world is filled with beautiful things  they are meant to be pointers to Me, reminders of My abiding Presence. The earth still declares My Glory to those who have eyes that see and that hear. 


You had a darkened mind before you sought Me whole heartedly. I chose to pour My Light into you, so that you can be a beacon to others. There is no room for pride in this position. Your part is to reflect My Glory. I am the Lord! "


Psalm 105:4 - 

New International Version (©1984) Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always.New Living Translation (©2007) Search for the LORD and for his strength; continually seek him. English Standard Version (©2001) Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually! New American Standard Bible (©1995) Seek the LORD and His strength; Seek His face continually. Psalm 19: 1-2 The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. Isaiah 60:2 Darkness as black as night covers all the nations of the earth, but the glory of the LORD rises and appears over you.

romans 8

In my own words:

Jesus saved us from sin. No more fear. 

It's a big deal. The law doesn't compare. 

Accept the spirit and be free from the law. 

When your focus is on the law, your attention is on yourself and not on God. Straighten out your priorities. 

God will and wants to give you life, like he brought Jesus back to life. 

God is our father. We will get his inheritance. 

He's been there. He will be there through bad stuff, and also good stuff. 

This world can't compare to what's to come. 

We get tired waiting for what's to come. The Holy Spirit is there to keep us on track, to pray for us, and to help keep us consistent. 

It's obvious God is for us. Why not accept Him? 

Romans 8

The Solution Is Life on God's Terms

 ^1-2With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

 ^3-4God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

   The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

 ^5-8Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.

 ^9-11But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!

 ^12-14So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

 ^15-17This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!

 ^18-21That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

 ^22-25All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

 ^26-28Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

 ^29-30God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.

 ^31-39So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

   They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
   We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us

Accountability

At this point, it is safe to say that no one reads this. And if you do that's great! I want to begin to use this for accountability for reading, prayer, and seeking knowledge!

How cool is this: We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted  by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

like what if people talked about you like that? how amazing.
Thats 1 Thessalonians 1:3


Awesome song that has been stuck to me lately:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His Glory and Grace.

The thing I like about this song is that it doesn't say - MAKE the things of earth strangely dim and then youll be able to look in His face....
it says look in his face.. THEN the things of earth will grow dim.
I long for that. For things of this earth to actually be dim.

For me this does isn't money related, because I don't think I'm money minded... For me the things of earth mostly consist of worrying about what people think about me, how many friends i have, how many people want to hang out with me...
and material possessions. like the things of earth totally include designer make-up and nice clothes.

What a beautiful thought that we can be freed from caring about these things we cannot control... by looking at Jesus.

Things I'm praying:
That I am living sacrificially
That my relationships are modeled the way Jesus asks.
That the next year at IBC is all God wants it to be.
That I continue to hang out with women and seek wisdom.