Searching

I am beginning to understand the prayer "search me and know my heart" was first an invitation from God.

Questions

I think inquiry is one of the most beautiful gifts we have as human beings.  That's probably why I resonated so much with Curious George growing up

...even though on the inside I secretly hated him because he wouldn't just follow the rules.

Maybe this is the "J" side of my ENFJ coming out.  Or, perhaps this is a tension where I live and perhaps many other people live as well: In order for discovery to happen, you may have to break a few rules.

I guess no one demands that a person would have to like breaking these rules, that the consequences would always be helpful, or that the inquiry must lead to ground-breaking, news-worthy discovery.

But a life without inquiry is a self-stagnated insult.

Sinsides

Before I get too far--if you haven't seen this already, go check it out :)  I couldn't be more grateful and proud to be a part of this church family and worship team.  What an incredible blessing to be able to come home for a short little while (too short!! haha), and to be able to be with my "worshipping family" again :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KkSARsaaA

Today marks the third week of classes, and my first actual grade has been recorded.  (Granted, it was an 80 on my Old Testament Pentateuch quiz...oh that reading!  Reading a dictionary! Ugh...Thank God the instructor and my classmates are great fun).

However, Wednesdays have become a hard day for me because they deal with my Spiritual Formation class.  For those of you who know me, you know Spiritual Formation is a huge focus of my life.  I was the girl at 17 yrs. old who was reading books like: Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Authentic Relationships.  However, somewhere in these last five years (cue music--for those of you who get that reference), something about spiritual formation has been very painful and caustic to me.  I'm not sure what that is, but as I have been getting back into the swing of journal writing and taking my time with the Lord in the mornings (because so many of my classes want me to keep a journal...good grief!), this came out.  Not sure if it's complete yet, but something I wanted to share...part of the journey.  What does it make you think of?

Psalm 103:10-14

"Sinsides"

Somewhere in the dark deep inside

The place where yet truth revealed is hides

The place I'm lying and trying to find

Sinsides

John Calvin said that mirroring is creation

To mirror outward Creator in exultation

But a mirror turned inward is great devestation

Sinsides

Not just lost, but open eyes see

Open eyes in blidness to no longer blind be

To let these sinsides come outside of the inside of me

Released

Redeemed

Free.

 

Some of you wondered what life may be like up here...well, here's a short preview...

And so it begins...

Well, readers.  If you're just joining the program already in progress--let me update you.  I'm starting seminary in less than a week for my Masters of Divinity degree (I'm pretty sure I won't be able to master the Divine in 2 years, but that's the title at least).

Seems like yesterday (or perhaps 4 days ago) when Kyle, Kaly and I were packing up my new Nissan Rogue full of things as Niagara falls was rushing down my back from the 102°F weather.  I've always hated the humidity and muggy sweat I experience in Florida.  Yet, here I am sitting in the 71°F weather of Wayne, PA and I am missing my home state.  Not the weather, of course, but my family and friends, the water, and maybe even the Palm trees.

Thankfully, I have had wonderful company for these past few days.  My cousin Kaly, at the last minute, was able to join me for the road trip.  I got to see wonderful friends along the way who graciously welcomed us and showed us hospitality.  Then, I have been able to spend wonderful time with Missy & Jeff Hoagland since my arrival.  The encouragement their presence has been to me is immeasurable.

This morning, Missy and I attended a worship service and the passage of focus was Mark 6:7-13.  This is where Jesus sent out the disciples to preach and to heal.  What stuck out to me from the minister's sermon was that Jesus--instead of giving exact step-by-step instructions of how to follow--rather tells the disciples how to dress and what kind of houses to stay in.  He sent them out in power, and sent them out in prayer, and sent them out with an understanding that there was a time for study and then there would be a time for costly action.

Ben said to me before I left: "It costs something to follow Jesus, and you're living proof of that."  Yes, there is the literal cost of graduate school, or the cost of travel to get here, or the cost of leaving many things back in FL because they wouldn't fit in the car.  However, we both knew that the cost he was speaking of was stability, comfort, family, friends, familiarity...the cost of saying with all my heart and all my life "Where you go I'll go, what you say I'll say, and what you pray, I'll pray."  It's through no power of my own that I got here, through no provision of my own that I'll get through--but I pray I am found obedient in investing all my "talents" in advancing the Kingdom.  While this is a time where I have been sent to minister and learn, there will soon come a time to be sent again.

As the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Phillipi:   "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me...I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which god has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12; 14)

Stay tuned, for surely there will be more adventures to come... :)

Creeping things...

At the beginning of this year, I was challenged by John Piper in one of the leader sessions at Passion.  He said that he believers leaders in the church should approach teaching others scripture by following these four steps:

1. Memorize         2. Analyze           3. Believe            4. Teach

This was both encouraging and very convicting to me.  Encouraging because it gives way to the fact that I've felt in my Spirit that most of us go around teaching things that we don't believe ourselves.  If we started at step one, rather than step four--there would be a lot fewer confused teachers around.  However, it was also convicting because--to be completely honest--I don't know that I've really been intentional about memorizing scripture since I was in high school.  Perhaps a verse here or passage there accidentally because I would read it so much, or because I had to teach it to little ones during VBS.  Yet, my "life's work" right now is to teach...

So, a best friend of mine recently introduced me to a book called The History of Redemption
(http://www.historyofredemption.org).

This book combines incredible visual imagery with a weaving of just scripture to give an abbreviated--but no less powerful--overview of the story of humanity and God's grace.  What's also really wonderful about it in conjunction with my above conviction is that it has "memorization plans' in the back!  So, I've started on step one, and tried to work my way down to step three for each page.  To read and let it sink in deep.  To let the Spirit breathe light and life into me through meditation.  

As I started "in the beginning" I began to meditate on these words.  Hopefully, this is a conjecture that maybe you can resonate with. 

God casts a vision as humanity is created: 
"let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth" (just typed that from memory--BOOM..Genesis 1:26).  

Isn't it interesting here that "every creeping thing that creeps on the earth..." is the last piece mentioned of humanity's dominion?  

Have you ever thought about how much power you have over creeping things? Creepy things? Things that scurry, prowl, surprise and seem dangerous--but really aren't?  That nothing could truly creep up on you?

I wonder if Eve felt like the Serpent "crept up on her" when he tried to get her to shop a bondage-bearing kind of produce.  

It is like it was foreshadowing for Jesus and Satan: "and he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."  The Serpent may not have crept along on the earth before Eve was deceived, but the serpent now creeps on the earth--prowling around like a roaring lion looking to devour.  Yet, we see--woven into the order of design--there could appear death and dominion of evil but it would never be able to prevail.  Even back at the beginning we were given the title of "Victor."  

What if I faced every frustration, every evil, every situation with that title?  Not a victory that I've earned, but a victory I've been given.  Not a victory I've somehow fought for, but a victory that's been woven into the very fabric of my DNA.  Not a victory that I could somehow make manifest, but one that is made manifest in me.

What power we ignore when we ignore the beginning.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"
--2 Corinthians 5:17
"Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”"
--Matthew 19:26

Philippians 4:13.  Some of you know it because it's a "life verse"  Some of you know it because of Tim Tebow.  Maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about, and it looks like I'm ordering filipino food from a Chinese Take-out restaurant.

In any case it mostly goes like this: "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength..."

With every runner/athlete I've encountered who knows anything about Jesus (I refer again to Tim Tebow), I hear them refer to this as their favorite or "motivational" verse.

Sometimes, I read those verses above and Philippians 4:13 like I read the label on a cereal box.  It’s more of a mental exercise in proficiency while I keep on eating rather than taking a minute to process what I just read.  Maybe that's why it's not my race verse.  Let me explain.

This was me in 2005:

5'4" and over 200lbs (which is not healthy, for those of you who haven't gathered that).  My idea of exercise was holding the lounge chair down, and bowling with a desire to be active being minimal to nil.  Weight/image/self-worth…those have all been things that have been deep struggles in my life.  Some people can't go a day without a glass of alcohol, but I couldn't go a day actually liking myself for the longest time.  Why?  Well, we could be here all day with all the analyzation I've done over the past few years to figure that one out.  The long and the short of it is that I believed a lot of lies about myself and about those around me for a long time.

Sin is like that.  A friend put it this way:  sin is "any attitude which denies others' or our own identity or ability in Christ to be awesome."

I believed in my lack of awesomness for a long time, and I was pretty jealous of other people's awesomness for a long time too.  Even after experiencing redeeming Love and doing the hard work of going through replacing lies with Truth, I still occasionally catch myself playing comparison games.  Which leads me to the awesome part of the recent story.

From 2005 on, through various stages of growth with various guides in various aspects of my life, I found myself training for a Sprint Triathlon this year.  Crazy, I know.  This coming from the girl who 3 months ago couldn't run a mile and didn't know what pro-nating was (however you spell that, you crazy runners).  This coming from the girl who had a legitimate panic attack in the middle of the Indian River trying to swim to the end of the Eau Gallie Library dock.  This coming from the girl who had (until a few months back) never even known that those "skinny tire bikes" were one of the greatest inventions of all time.

And, so I'm training during the week of the race--finding myself tired and wondering "why in the world am I doing this?"  I'm in the pool at the gym by myself, but the good part was I was swimming laps like a champ.  Aside from my bathing suit, I had on my nose clip that goes around my head (to solve part of the problem for said panic attack in the river),  my larger-than-most goggles so I could see really well, and my snazzy swim cap (that I managed to get on like a pro that day, thank you).  I look like a real novice, but that's because I AM, so I was feeling pretty good about the situation.  Then, in comes a really proficient swimmer (who happens to be a really handsome young man).  And out of all the OPEN LANES, he gets into the lane next to mine.  Of course.  Immediately my mind goes to: "OH no!  He's going to think I'm such a noob, especially with my non-sexy nose clip.  And he's probably thinking 'what is she even doing in this pool?'" and a whole host of other self-depriciating thoughts.  However, somewhere in the mid-n00b-bash, (also, while I decide that I'm going to secretly race him--you know you've done this at the gym.  Secretly race other people...)  I started to think: "Wait a minute!  What am I doing?  Why am I entertaining these thoughts for even a second!  Who cares what he thinks?"

And these verses immediately hit me: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death."--Romans 8:1-2

If I am measuring myself by the law of the land, or even the Law of the Lord, I will never--in my own abilities--be able to be good enough.  I will never measure up.  However, those verses immediately gave me hope.   I didn't need to add condemnation to myself when there was no condemnation to be had.  I didn't need to worry about what that guy thought, or what I thought, or even what God thought about me in that moment.  I needed to know that this old way of life that I had lived in for so long was being internally and externally changed.  I needed to remember that this triathlon--a symbol of something basically impossible for me to imagine finishing only a few months ago--was now within my grasp of completion.  I was beginning to understand that the Spirit God gave me is not a timid spirit, but one that has set me free and is full of power, love and self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:8).  I am a new creation, as the verse at the top said.  You can even see the difference:

In one photo--a girl who was awesome, and had a lot of unrealized awesomeness.  And the next--a girl who is still awesome, with a zest for continuing to be secretly awesome and seeing others be awesome too.  

When do I stop believing Jesus still means what He said?  Probably at various increments of the day, depending on the day.  However, every day I need to be keenly reminded of how God is still at work in my life and the lives of the people around me.  I'm a forgetful person (even in my young age), but I want to put a stake in the ground on this promise that Love set me free, and there's much more Life (with an adventurous "capital L") in store.  

So, I leave you with this question:

Who's coming with me for the next race? :)