A Time to Get Pissed (Oh, & Guard Your Words)

Sometimes I just get pissed at the devil! Sometimes at people, too, for their perpetuating of his schemes. I'm pissed at the lies he masks as logic, which parades as wisdom! I am angry at countless attempts to steal joy from myself and others, and end it. I'm angry, and I'm ready to fight it, but more often than not I feel like my fellow brothers and sisters are not beside me. Often they are the ones buying in and regurgitating the lies...things will never change, you're not worth it, you can't get free, God doesn't do that, it can't be fixed, you cannot hope, you may never feel happiness...they go on and on. They're told in different ways; sold in different packaging, same product.

Today I heard a statement that a pastor had made that completely dripped of the world's hopelessness, defeatism, and despair - and my blood downright boiled. To claim to know Christ and live to share and serve Him - words like his should never come from a believer's lips! Now I will be among the first to admit that I am not perfect, but if I were counseling another about a detrimental circumstance in their life, I would speak of what the Lord has to offer, or keep my worldly mouth shut. 

Do you not know that your words have weight?! Do you not know that when you talk only in terms of logic without engaging the Spirit in you, you may very well be lending to or furthering the Enemy's work?

I'm beyond frustrated that this happened, - livid is probably a better word - but also beyond that, that it is likely a regular occurrence. My heart pulses and aches at such a thought. That there is freedom, blessing, and healing, yet we dare to repeat the cursing words we have heard before we would call on the Lord. Proverbs is riddled with wisdom about choosing words wisely, and even further the whole Bible is packed full of God's might and love for His people - so why this epidemic?

If you're a believer and you read this, fight with me? Guard your words, and keep those around you accountable to guarding theirs. Speak the truth we know from the Word and by the confidence we have in Jesus. Call out the Enemy, and break down his plans in the name of Jesus! Because if God is not bigger than everything, we might as well quit; stop trying to sell the Kingdom of the Resurrection to if we don't even buy it! I can get pissed at the devil all I want by myself, but it does nothing if my community and the Church don't start talking like this thing we believe in is real. 

And if you're not sure that Christ's blood covers all, don't go becoming a pastor and handing out crap advice. The world doesn't need it.

[Intentionally for discretion's sake, I left out who the pastor is and the subject of his comment.]

This Takes Grace

Life takes a lot of grace, I've been realizing. I have found myself asking for an extra measure here and there. There are several different connotations and uses for the word 'grace', but the one I'm talking about is the one that affords peace and calmness beyond what circumstance may warrant. It's more than patience; patience is for the expected, for the anticipated and enduring the wait. Grace...grace is more.

I would say I'm decent at being content. While my truthfulness about my feelings toward any given circumstance may lead some to believe otherwise, I find it easy to be content. But I have a wandering heart and a wild imagination (thank God), so at times I struggle to look at what's in front of me, instead focusing my attention on what could be. Suddenly, seeing something that reminds my rabbit-trailing mind of another thing, I am spiraling down the rabbit hole of dreaming. I'm not opposed to dreaming (duh, I'm a dreamer, but stick with me), but I've learned that it can detract from being present where you are and hard to accept what comes - regardless of what you wanted to. Enter: grace. Lately, I've been beckoning a short-but-sweet prayer: "God, I need Your grace." Because when you want something to go a certain way but it doesn't look to go that way at all, it takes grace to handle what does come.

I haven't traveled significantly since my DTS in 2011, and for some reason travel is important to me; I can honestly say my heart yearns for it. The realist in me has learned to cut the pained-dreamer short in an effort to save from further tension. The reality of the present is that I'm at a job that God clearly placed me in and I'm wildly blessed to have; I can't up and travel even if I wanted to! Let alone affording it...

I flip-flop back and forth from being okay with being single to hating it...but never really loving it. Others want not to assume, but rather be nice by saying "If marriage is a part of the plan for you...", and to me the reality is: I know what I'm made for. I'm a people-person. I want to be a mom someday, and I'm definitely not good at life alone - not just romantically, but in the sense of total independence. Now, that's not to say that if I knew God was calling me into a life of singleness, I wouldn't just figure it out, but it would take all the more grace! All that rambling aside, just knowing it's a season of singleness, doesn't make it any easier. It's one of those things I do a lot of holding up to God, and asking for His input in my heart on it.

Being single when sometimes you just don't want to be, today - takes grace. Being stationary when you just want to go and see, takes grace. It requires something beyond patience, rather something to sustain me and comfort me in knowing that no matter what tomorrow holds, I'm headed there and following the Lord's leading. Even when it feels like I'm blind. Only by grace can I say You made my heart to crave these things, so I'll go where You take me, but need You to sustain me. It takes grace to say that right where I'm at is okay, even if I'm desiring more, and the more is big and is not easily come by.

My God is good, and He gives the grace...

Just Here, Waiting

just here, waiting, 
don't know exactly what for...
though i think nothing.
it's not that i'm thinking nothing -
no, i'm thinking a hundred things -
so many things i can't keep them straight
and at times they overwhelm me,
the things,
but what for
i don't know;
what i expect
i don't know.
except that it will show
and i'll have my answer
and know
what it's been all about
and the truth to my doubt,
or find pleasant surprise
in all my worries
found as lies.

Sitting with the Pardon

I love Good Friday. From what I gather, I'm in a small minority. I've received a lot of negative reactions for this sentiment. I've heard the arguments that if we've been saved, why should we reawaken guilt; doesn't being sad on Good Friday crucify Jesus all over again? My answer is no. It's different than that; it's more than that, and it's certainly not reapplying guilt.

Much of the last year and of the journey of my faith in general, God has been redefining what I think about some concepts I thought I well-understood. One of the many things it's led me to believe is that I will forever be learning, absorbing, and rediscovering all of what defines my faith and, if you will, God. For as much as I am a feelings person, I'm equal in needing to think. And in all honesty, I can go too long without really thinking about the cross. Then sometimes when I do, I feel like I don't really get it. After all, it is a thing fierce and confounding:
A God who spares Himself for the sake of the undeserved to be able to come close to Him, by taking on their due judgment and thus pardoning the unholiness that is their sin! An unearthly definition that is: Grace. Without God and this story, this concept of Grace doesn't exist. It's part of why the story is so unbelievable; Grace such as this seems out of the realm of possibility.

So there's something good for us in taking one day - if only one - to be somber and sit with the idea of the Great Pardon that was bestowed to us. To contemplate the weight of such a death, and to revel in the bearing of all the brokenness of this world on one man, who was also God. If there is only one day to just feel whatever the intentional musing on the cross makes you feel, there is immense importance in allowing that.

The resurrection can only have full meaning when you take into account the death that led to it. In that one moment, the sinless Christ took on the guilt of many, and as I've heard it preached, the devil was sure he won. And many others never thought Jesus was the Messiah, especially after death. It was the best plot twist. No one expected it, and it's unfathomable; that's the beauty.

So I'm done arguing the importance and the good grit of Good Friday, because the entire thing is bittersweet and I don't think as a Christian you can ever escape that - but it's not something I want to. Living in that tension compels me toward striving to know God more and show the incomprehensible grace I was so kindly shown.

"We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." 2 Corinthians 4:10

Good Gossip

So I have this thing about affirmation; God's highlighted to me that it is important and, especially in the culture in which we live, as an opposition to the norm of mocking criticism. (In YWAM, they obsessively refer to that as "going in the opposite spirit".)

In the last year or so opportunities to affirm have popped out at me, reminding me of the importance of intentional recognition of identity and gifts. A lot of people, I think, worry about coming off as kiss-butts or as not being genuine. Most of the time, that doesn't bother me, as I know I mean it and expect that to come through.

I also want to tout people to others, something I've coined (as far as I know), Good Gossip. This mainly consists of talking with someone about the good or great things about someone else, then often using that later to tell them you were talking about them...in only good ways.

This might already exist in your life but you don't know it yet. It did in mine as I was on the receiving end and it caught me off guard! It's happened a few times here and there, and by some strange effect, it always makes me feel better than if the person had come directly to me and said it. There's a different kind of something in knowing that people are out there talking good about you; it kind of breaks down that insecurity that, whether we admit it or not, we all face; wondering, what do people think of me? And you have to know it's not just flattery, if someone's saying those things about you to someone else.

It excites me to think about the positive effect of building this admittedly basic concept of Good Gossip into our culture, as Christians or well-meaning people of whatever religious stance. If nothing else, the world needs more positivity to break the cycle of brokenness and misunderstanding.

What would it mean for your life to speak well of people when they're not around?
(I usually don't insert videos, but it's too perfect)

Time & Again

In a strange way, I think I love you.
Surely, I must.
This the pattern of my thought
leads me to trust.
Truth
is that it stings,
but still I can't let go.
And daily I fear
that I'll never know.
I've done this to myself
time and again,
but never remember a time when,
the time and more went by,
and left me aching to know why,
What all the pieces of the puzzle mean,
or if there's a bigger picture to it,
maybe I'm meant to see through it,
- maybe time and again I blew it
And to you it - it seemed
it wasn't of you I dreamed,
Because I hid,
Silent,
From anxiety inside violent.
So I rest in knowing
that I no longer pine,
yet spend my days wishing
you were mine.

The Tired

I think it is full-fledged exhaustion that's set in. My first real day is tomorrow. I have to be back up in six hours, my shower is covered in bleach. My living room is half painted its cheery, lovely blue, while half repulsing me with its former peachy beige. I'm sleeping on a couch for the second night. My room seems to be wall-to-wall clothes; the space feeling mildly claustrophobic after my 500+ sq ft mustard haven. It took me a good half an hour to vacuum that haven once it was empty. My boxes of belongings riddle our new abode like grass in the forest. I'm pretty sure next time I'll just burn it all and start over; no moving. I do know I'm not allowed to buy any more books til I read all the ones I own.

My muscles may never be the same.

I do wonder what I'll eat for breakfast, and what I'll eat it off of...or with. Guess I'll finish cleaning the shower when I shower in the morning.

I don't recommend moving from one upstairs place to another right before starting a new job. The tired.