His heart.

My daughter,
I am with you always. even to the end of this world.
Take heart, because I have overcome this world though you have many struggles.
When your flesh and your heart fail, I am your refuge and strength.
I sing over you. I delight you with my love
My strength is made perfect in all your weaknesses.
I have forgiven you. I have cleansed you.
I have given you a clean & pure heart.
I have a beautiful future for you, filled with hope.
I always have your best interest at heart.
I am jealous for you. I want you all to myself.
Ask and it will be given to you.
Seek and you will find.
Don't you know my thoughts are higher than yours thoughts and my ways are higher than your ways?
Bslieve in Me. Trust Me.
You will have eternal life.
I have come to give you life more abundantly
Find your rest in me.
Lay down your burdens, daughter.
I will heal you. I will bind your wounds.
I love you.
More than you can possibly understand.


Love,
Your Father

home for the weekend.

It's March 3, 2012 and I am in Central for the first time since the end of January.  I can remember when one month away from home seemed like an eternity. and unbearable.  Boy, has that changed. I also use to  not be able to bare the idea of sitting at home alone for an entire weekend. To me that was torture. But now I couldn't be more content in doing it.  I enjoy every second I get to spend with my family and the chance to get away in the peace and quietness of my bedroom and just enjoy the alone time with my Creator. Though it's merely the beginning of 2012 it's already been one of the most tremendous years of my life.  The reason for that is Christ alone.  I cannot give any other explanation; it is in Him, through Him, because of Him, and for Him. The journey from the beginning of my junior year until now just baffles me.  I cannot pinpoint when and where Christ started moving tremendously, but it's inevitable that He did.  My sophomore year at Louisiana College was full of living IN the world and satisfying my flesh.  I was under convictions and I would try to step away from the party scene and the people in it that I'd held on too so dearly, but I just couldn't let it go.  This mindset continued on into the summer approaching my junior year.  I had plans for my junior year to be wild.  It was going to be full of fun, satisfying myself, gaining favor from people I should've never desired favor from, and slapping God in the face. However, God had other plans (PRAISE HIM).  I'm utterly disgusted by the lack of respect I had for the Lord; now I look back and see how repulsive and selfish my ambitions were.  When I got back to LC in the fall, nothing went as planned.  Things with the guy I liked at the time ended up being a complete fail and never even began (PRAISE HIM).  The people I had conversed with over the summer acted like they didn't know me once we got back to school (PRAISE HIM). The party scene bored me and disgusted me and I was so discontent with where I was in life.  More than anything, I missed Jesus.  I missed the closeness I once shared with Him.  I missed being content and joyful in Him alone.  What had I done to myself?  I created all these idols and worshipped people, desiring their approval much more than the Father's approval.

I don't remember when it happened or where it happened, all I know is that the Lord pursued me. He fought hard for me.  I so often compared myself to Gomer in Hosea, a filthy prostitute so unworthy of love.  I felt dirty and ruined and because I couldn't love myself, how could I expect a Holy God to? I couldn't.  So I didn't.  But that didn't stop the Lord from fighting for me.  In the midst of depression, the Lord placed a beautiful group of Godly girls into my life. The Lord KNEW homecoming week was exactly what I needed to lift my spirits, and thus began the start of beautiful friendships.  At the time I had no idea the extent of it, or that God would use these people to help mold me and shape me into the woman He has planned for me to be. But the Lord in all of His goodness brought Laura Beth into my life and she invited me to Bible study.  As a result of Bible study, I started to see the girl I used to be in the hearts of the girls surrounding me.  I saw their love for Christ, their innocence, genuineness, and passion. I wanted that back.  Because of bible study I started distancing myself from certain people and situations that I knew where keeping me away from my First Love.  The beautiful part about it was I didn't have to endure much loneliness because God had already placed the friends He knew I needed in my life before I ever realized how much I needed them.

To make a ridiciously long story short, thanks to God's grace I was able to go to Passion 2012 with this group of friends.  At Passion the Lord strengthened these friendships and brought even closer bonds to Himself and others.  He placed a passion for Him in my heart.  He reminded me that I am clean.  He showed me what He sees when He looks at me.  He doesn't see a filthy sinner.  He sees His son.  He sees the blood that was shed for me instead of the disgust of who I am.  He has forgiven me,  now it's time to forgive myself.  This season is all a healing process, but it's been one of the best seasons of my life.  I see God's fingerprints in my life on a daily basis.  I long for Him.  I want to be near Him, I want to be His hands and His feet.  I want to be used for Him.  I want to pour out my life as a sacrifice for Him.  I want to be humbled, receiving no glory and receiving no satisfication in myself.  I want to be nameless, faceless.  I just want the GLORY OF GOD to be seen and I want Him to do whatever He has to do in my life in order for that to happen.  I will suffer.  I will make sacrifices.  I am willing to be lonely, broken, poor, or whatever it takes in order for Christ to be lifted high.  I know He's using me.  I know He's changing me.  I can feel Him moving in me and I'm overwhelmed by all I know He is going to do in the year of 2012.


 So thus begins the journey of denying myself daily and following after Him.

I seriously ended up writing NOTHING I planned on writing about.  This was not supposed to go where it did, but it happened. ha All i know is this: God picked me up out of a muddy, slimy pit, and set me on a mountain top. He never owed me that.  That was by His grace alone and it exemplifies His faithfulness to me in the times where I am most unfaithful.  He promised to bring good out of everything situation of those who love Him (romans 8:18) and He promises we can be confident that He WILL complete the work He began in us.  Thank You Jesus.

"I'm so unworthy, but still you love me. Forever my heart will sing of how great You are." -Phil Wickham

This morning I've been really encouraged by God's promise that "if we seek Him, we will find Him with all our hearts."

The God of the universe wants to reveal Himself to us.
Wow.

Today is just a Monday, nothing special.  But God gave us THIS DAY for a reason.  What are we going to do with it that brings glory to Him?

"I am unashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." -Romans 1:16

Am I really unashamed?  How many times today will we speak the name of the one who we claim to love?


Running After You- Gateway Worship

I hear the voice


The voice of the One I love

He's calling my name

I hear the voice

The voice of the One I love

He's calling my name

He's saying

Come up higher

And hear the angels sing

Come up higher My beloved

Come up higher

And leave this world behind

You'll find Me to be beautiful



Chorus

I am running

Running after You

You've become my soul's delight

I am running

Running after You

Here with You I find my life




One thing have I desired

This will I seek after

To dwell in Your house forevermore

Now I'm running after

The thing that really matters

You've become my joy and song

You've become my joy and song

You've become my joy and song

secret church

“Oh, it is joy to feel Jesus living you; to find your heart all taken up by Him; to be reminded of His love by His seeking communion with you at all times, not by your painful attempts to abide in Him. He is our life, our strength, our salvation… I am no longer anxious about anything… for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. This is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient. So if God should place me in great perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength. I have no fear that His resources will be unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine—for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me” – Hudson Taylor.


“Indeed, the more sanctified the person is, the more conformed he is to the image of his Savior, the more he must recoil against every lack of conformity to the holiness of God. The deeper his apprehension of the majesty of God, the greater the intensity of his love to God, the more persistent his yearning for the attainment of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, the more conscious will he be of the gravity of the sin that remains and the more poignant will be his detestation of it… Was this not the effect in all the people of God as they came into closer proximity to the revelation of God’s holiness?” –John Murray

“O Lord Jesus, you took the narrow way; the world despised You. Give me the grace to model my life after Your life, the life the world hated; for the servant cannot be greater than his lord, nor can the disciple be above his master. Instruct me in Your life, for there lies my salvation, there lies my true holiness.” –Thomas Kempis

“O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.”

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…” –Phil 3:8-9

blessings

We pray for blessings


We pray for peace

Comfort for family, protection while we sleep

We pray for healing, for prosperity

We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering

All the while, You hear each spoken need

Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things



Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise



We pray for wisdom

Your voice to hear

And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near

We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love

As if every promise from Your Word is not enough

All the while, You hear each desperate plea

And long that we'd have faith to believe



Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise



When friends betray us

When darkness seems to win

We know the pain reminds this heart

That this is not, this is not our home,

It's not our home



Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

And what if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

What if my greatest disappointments

Or the aching of this life

Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy

And what if trials of this life

The rain, the storms, the hardest nights

Are Your mercies in disguise
-laura story.

--love.

"Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys." (demon's perspective) -The Screwtape Letters; C.S. Lewis.

planning to write soon.

This is what the LORD says:
“Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
or the strong boast of their strength
or the rich boast of their riches,
but let the one who boasts boast about this:
that they have the understanding to know me,
that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,”
declares the LORD.
-jeremiah 9:23-24

Beginning of a new week! Goin to try to go into it with a positive attitude. I'm sure it'll fly by. Just finished my Christian Faith & Values test! About to head to Advanced Grammar then Espanol. :/  Still praying about which minor to declare... even though I THINK i know the answer. <3

<3<3 Have a greaaaat day.

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
-Psalm 92:1