Up Late, Just To Talk

It's been a while since I've blogged but I have a free Saturday afternoon and have been inspired to share.
This week has been very busy, I started my new job (yey!) and had a different commitment every night, keeping me occupied. By the end of the week Chris and I were exhausted and last night we got into bed at 11. I laughed while pulling back the sheets, a Friday night and we barely made it till 11 o'clock. As I shut off the light I said "Well, some day we'll stay up late and just sit and talk till 3 in the morning like we did in college." He laughed and said "yeah, when we didn't have to wake up for jobs in the morning." Little did I know how much those comments would speak to my heart this morning.

Today was a women's group meeting at my church and the mentor group that I am in was supposed to share. We first had breakfast (waffles, from my wonderful Waring Pro) and we were to share after worship. Before worship I started I was thinking "I don't want to share what I've prepared to share." It just didn't seem right but I had felt that way all week so I decided I'd just have to share it anyways.

We began worship and on the last song "A little longer" by Brian and Jenn Johnson came on. I've heard this song before and it's always been powerful before but today the Lord spoke to me through it in a new way and I knew my topic for sharing was changed. He brought my conversation from last night, with Chris, back to my mind. "Some day we'll sit and talk until 3 in the morning like we used to" A dagger hit my heart, I had grasped a small taste of the Lord's longing to be with me like I did before I had so many THINGS to do. It was as if I heard him saying "remember when you used to just sit in my presence, when you weren't running to DO something". I can't put all he revealed in my Spirit into words but the Lord was opening my eyes to the pain He's felt as I've filled my life with all these things I have to do and left little room to just sit and talk with Him.

My sister-in-law, Darci, got up to share about how the Spirit of God LONGS for US!
James 4:5 (amplified) says "The Spirit whom He caused to dwell in us yearns over us and He yearns for the Spirit to be welcome with a jealous love.".

God placed the Spirit IN us and He YEARNS for us. HE yearns for US, like a drug addict yearns for drugs. Wow, that is so amazing and yet humbling. Darci, went on to share about not grieving the Spirit and how Jesus left the Spirit as a gift for us and we are to welcome Him and be sensitive to Him.

In Good Morning Holy Spirit, Benny Hinn talks of his first encounter with woman of God, Kathryn Koolman. During her service she stops everything and begins sobbing! She began to cry out "Please don't grieve the Holy Spirit. Don't wound Him, He's all I've got. Don't wound the one I love!".

It is not often that we stop to realized that we can wound the Holy Spirit. We wound the HS when we reject Him, when we don't have time for Him and when we don't follow his leading.

The Spirit is longing to sit and talk with you, He is yearning to be with you. There is no sweeter sound than the sound of Him calling your name. He's calling mine and He's calling yours. He YEARNS for you. The creator of the universe, who needs nothings but has everything longs for intimacy with me and you!

I need to prioritize my life, I cannot allow my business to grieve the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, I just want to be with You! I'd love to be with you a little longer- I'm in love with you! Give me your grace to let "those things go, cause THEY can wait!"

Day AND Night

It's Saturday afternoon and I couldn't have planned a more enjoyable and relazing one then I've had today, despite a few casualties while making breakfast, but we won't go there. :) With no where to rush off to I've enjoyed listening to worship music and digging into the word. My friend, Kaylin, bought me the Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible last year, as my going away present from college. It's a great resource to have and I used it this morning for some further studying.

If you haven't heard Chris Quilala's version of the song "Dance With Me" you've got to check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBp7pTXI7JQ . For those of you who know my "repeat" tendencies when I like a song it's no surprise to you that I've been listening to that song over and over all morning. It just makes something in me rise up. It's almost as if the depths of me are agreeing with the words saying "yes, yes!".

So, as this song has been replaying over and over (just hit play again actually) and stirring my heart for worship what better place to start reading then in Psalms. Look at David, the man after God's own heart was also the man who wasn't afraid to dance in the streets before the Lord, even when his wife Michal looked on scornfully. See 2 Samuel 6: 14-16.

The verses I want to share today are simple, yet challenging. They come from Psalm 1, verses 1-2.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of sinners nor siteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he mediate day and night.

After reading these verses I had a few questions. 1st, what does blessed mean in this context. Sometimes when I think of blessed I think of having a house, a family, a place to live etc. But when I went to the root word I discovered that for this verse it means happiness or how happy! We'll come back to that...

My next question was about the words delight and law, how can we delight in a law? Let's be honest, off hand that sounds sightly boring. I then read that the word delight means to incline towards something, to desire a valuable thing. What valuable thing are we to be desiring? The verse says God's law but the word actually means His instruction. It's the spoken word of God! Those words always have our best interest in mind!

My last question referred to meditating on that law day and night. What exactly are we being called to do? To meditate means to speak, study, and ponder.

Now is the use of day and night figurative to in the good times and bad times or literal to day and night? The word "night" gives both the literal and figurative definitions as possibilities but the word day is a literal translation. Therefore we can conclude the it's counter word, night, is also referring to the literal translation. Wow, so we are literally called to ponder his words even in the night!

All in all these verses say: How HAPPY is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the guilty and morally wrong or join in the life of or conversation of the sinful, nor dwell in the place of scorners and mockers. But how happy will the person be who is drawn and inclined towards the valuable instruction of God. But it doesn't stop there, we are to speak of, study, and ponder that instruction both in the day and in the night! If you read on further in verse 3 it actually talks of the prospering that will occur for those who mediate. "whatsoever he doeth shall prosper".

Chris has been challenging me to really renew my mind with God's words every day and I think these verses line up right with that. We can be surrounded by junk everywhere we go but we are not to take part in it. We will truly be happy when we focus on God's truths every day.

But what about the night? I think we often dismiss this as a figurative statement. How great of a job has the enemy done with flooding around thoughts with worries and fears as we lay in bed at night? How often do we make an effort to fall asleep meditating on His truths, connecting our spirit with His as we fall asleep. I can't tell you how many times I have dreamt about something that happened earlier in the day or something I was thinking about as I fell asleep. What if our thoughts were so consumed by Him that even our dreams were filled with Him. Talk about waking up refreshed!

It's a bit hard for me to articulate the challenge that rose in my spirit after reading these verses but I pray that the same stirring will arise in your spirit. I want to defeat the enemy by starting my day in His truth, continue my day in His truth, and even committing my night to it!

I don't want to be a snorkeler, I want to be a scubadiver!

I'm reading a book called Into the Depths of God by Calvin Miller. I actually have only read the Introduction, but that alone has inspired me to share some thoughts. Into the Depths of God, wow (if you didn't take time to ponder that phrase go back and read it again, slowly)! Putting true thought into that statement almost takes my breath away. In his book, Calvin Miller talked of his visit to the Great Barrier Reef. During his trip his son, who has years of experience and practice scuba diving, suited up and took the plunge into the darkness of the ocean water. Calvin on the other hand chose the more relaxing and safe view of the Reef -snorkeling. When returning home both could claim that they had visited the Great Barrier Reef but the truth is that the content of their experiences were completely different! The experience was amazing for both of them, the excitement and enthusiasm will be with them forever, but really only his son knows the Reef, only he understood the issue of depth. I believe that this concept is essential to true Christianity-the issue lies in going deep for deep reveals the reality of God. Yes, we can read about him and learn just as we can read and learn about the Great Barrier Reef. We can even choose to experience him a bit, like Calvin chose to experience the Great Barrier Reef, or we can take the plummet like the son and choose to be a scuba diver. It's time to stop being a group of snorkelers hypothesizing about the adventures of scuba divers. If conversations and study groups alone were enough to enter the body of Christ into the depths of God we'd be there! If that's not enough, how can we get there?
1 Corinthians 2:10 says

"But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God."

To me this is saying "if you want to be a Scuba diver and not a snorkeler you need The Spirit of God." It often feels like the Spirit of God is a touchy thing to talk about in Christian circles. I'm not entirely sure why this is, since the Bible calls God a Triune God. We seem to be pretty comfortable with God the Father and His son Jesus but palms sweat and hearts beat faster when the Spirit is mentioned. Sometimes I can almost feel the scepticism rise in the air. Then again, I suppose it's comparable to the thought of plunging underwater attempting to scuba dive for the first time. If you're not accustomed to it, it's bound to make you nervous and uncomfortable. We seem to have a fear of depth or maybe we're just indifferent because we don't know what we are missing. We're complacent and satisfied in the comfort of our snorkeling. Yet it's at that moment, when you're staring into the vast adventure below, that you must make a choice. Will you take the plunge- are you hungry for more? Will you overcome fear, unfamiliarity or even apathy in order to understand depth? When people ask me if I know God, I don't want to be a snorkeler -who says yes but knows there are scuba divers that know him so much more. If the deep things of God can only be revealed by His Spirit then my heart cries, COME!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YinijbeK7LY&feature=related

Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.

As I searched my brain for a title to name my blog I contemplated things such as "the thoughts inside my head" or the standard "my thoughts" along with several other similar ones. Then I started thinking more about the word "thought". Instantly the quote above came to mind. Isn't this so true? So much of what we say, what we do and who we are starts with the thoughts in our head. That being said, I have created this blog to share my thoughts in order to examine them. This blog is a challenge to myself as I share the thoughts of my day. What am I meditating on? The Bible says in Philippians 4:8

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

That's what I want my focus to be on! Today I read a great post by friend Justin Hackett that talked about the stresses of being a twenty something and wondering "what the heck am I supposed to do with my life?!" I totally agreed with his proposition.

"I think of all of us that are struggling with what's next, I propose we recognize and acknowledge the blessings God has bestowed on us in the present and ask how we can best serve in the here and now. Instead of focusing on ourselves, what if we were to focus on how to be more like Christ? I wonder how many of the things we worry about would no longer be issues if this was our main goal."

(Check out his blog at http://justin-hackett.blogspot.com/ )

A few weeks ago I shared these same thoughts with some friends in my cell group, asking them to keep me accountable for what my focus is on. My fiance, Chris, and I have had many discussions about this as we search for steady jobs while trying to plan a wedding and start our lives together. When we focus on our problem we are putting it as an idol before God and in a sense saying that it is too big for him to handle. I can say that I trust God but when I look at my thoughts (which lead to actions) I can see a clear representation of the extent I really do trust him. When I'm intentional about my thoughts, when I choose to praise him despite frustrations, I begin to see things from His view rather than my own. Overcoming the battle in our thought life isn't an easy thing. It is a daily struggle and I say struggle because I must continually fight. However, fighting in my own strength leads to failure...which could be a whole separate blog.

I'm excited about using this blog site as a way of picking at my own brain to challenge myself (and anyone who reads this)- what thoughts am I sowing?