Sunday, April 10, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Matthew 11:28-30
God works in crazy ways. I just came down to my room, turned on a repeat playlist between Madly In Love With You by Sean McConnell and I Will Wait For You There by Phil Wickham, then after journaling wasn't going as planned I decided to turn to any random page and the first verse my eyes went to, I would read it. This was the verse:
Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30
What a perfect verse to read tonight. I am feeling very weary and burdened. Jesus wants nothing but for me to come to Him and cast my heavy burden on Him. He says then that He will give me rest.
Why is this all so perfect for me right now? I have my heart in a box with thousands of nails around it, so guarded right now so that no one can get in. I will honestly say it wasn't feeling like that earlier, I was feeling so fresh, but as of tonight I have shut down. This was my last intention. All throughout the day today I told myself to just pray and to only let these hardships strengthen my faith, that God had a reason for all of this. No matter how hard I fight, my heart just wants to return to it's safe place of just hiding. Because when it isn't closed up, it seems to get hurt. Why am I so scared of that though? My last post talked about how I KNOW it is going to be broken to pieces and it was going to be soon. I didn't think it would be this soon. I didn't expect it to come out of nowhere. For this waterfall of emotions to just spill out of me. If you know me at all, I really try not to cry very often. Another part of me not enjoying being vulnerable. I am really good at keeping a "happy face" on all day and night until I am in my room and can give myself time to really catch up on my life. I like to focus on everyone else, to give them advice, or even most times tell them what they are doing wrong. I really need to sit back and tell myself what I am doing wrong. But what fun is that?
God really is with me tonight, He is feeling my hurt and trying to heal it. As if the verse wasn't perfect enough, a good friend of mine sent me a text with a picture saying:
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of-throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
I knew God was rebuilding me, or even just building me, as I have never known Him as I do now. I expected Him to break me, to challenge me, to love me. I didn't expect the abominable hurt, the confusion as to His plans. If I think I am part of his palace now, I will be pleasantly surprised after all of this. It only gets better. Every day, for the rest of our lives. We will never know why God loves us, why he challenges us, what his purposes are. But we do know that He will never stop loving us no matter our sins. No sin is greater or lesser than the other. We are all humans, created to sin and experience human error. We will never stop sinning, God will never stop forgiving us.
If I have learned anything today it is that I don't want to claim to have the desire to live my life as Jesus did, but instead to share the word and love of God every single day. To continue loving those around me, as Christ did, no matter their beliefs. The more they see my unconditional love and understand that is really the love of God, they will crave that, just as I do every day. That's want God wants of me; to show grace, forgiveness, compassion, and love, day in and day out.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Journal post from a few days ago:
My heart is hurting tonight as I am flying back from California with Dan. While we were taking off my mind wandered back to my flight home several summers ago from Florida with my family. For some reason I was sitting in a different row than them. Sadly, I can't emember who was sitting to my left, but there was this little boy to my right. He was going into 7th grade. For the first half of this flight he was staring out the window & kept rubbing his eyes. I was continuously wondering to myself if he was just sleepy or if he was crying. Eventually, very unlike me, but I started up conversation with him. I asked where his family was, and even though his English was a little hard to understand, I learned that his family lives in Guatemala and he was flying to Denver by himself to live with his uncle and go to middle school at Dunstan. My heart was so aching for this little boy. He cried while he shared his story with me. I kept myself pulled together and told him my mom was a teacher and gave him my cell phone number in case he ever needed help with school. I never heard from him again, but went home and prayed and cried for him to feel God's comfort in such a scary new world. That was the first time I had prayed in a long time.
So why does this little boy keep coming up in my mind? I am being broken right now by God and think he wants me to remember that feeling I had through this kid's story. The feeling that my heart was hurting not only for him, but with him. God wants to remind me that I am here to serve the helpless. That it is not only me in this world.
He is breaking some of my closest relationships to bring me closer to Him. He is taking the ones that led me to Him our of my life to break me and then fill me back up again with only His love.
I am not sure I am ready for that, but when will I ever be? Who is ever ready to have all the feelings and emotions emptied from them? To feel at an all time low somedays, just to be filled back up again with only His love and grace.
I think He is breaking me to pieces for my trip this July. So that I can go to Uganda with only His love to share. To love on the brokenhearted and hopeless. So while this may be one of the scariest, furthest out of my comfort zone experiences of my life, God wants that of me. He wants me far from all I've ever known, from the humanly push I have always had to seek Him, so that I may seek Him purely on my own.
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