My heart and flesh cry out,
For You the living God

God is good, all the time; all the time, God is good

these past few weeks have been draining. i feel like i've been under the scalpel... heart surgery. i thought that i was healed of my past - boy, was i wrong. i started college with residuals of the past and now that my freshman year is almost over, i realize that God wants to completely free me from the various forms of bondage that i've been under. i'm resurfacing and God has been teaching me more about myself.. i don't want to go into too much detail, but He's shifting the way i perceive him. whenever i turn to this one thing, i am allowing myself to believe in the lies that Satan has planted in my head. for example, when people turn to alcohol, drugs, sex, what have you, they're allowing themselves to believe in the lie that these things will bring them security and comfort, etc. by turning to anything that is not God, we're saying that God is not big enough to sustain and provide for us. i've been under this so-called "orphan-mentality" for a while now, and God has been opening my eyes to it. no. get behind me Satan. God, i ask that you would continue breaking these lies. i want to solely depend on you; provide for me in the ways only you can. I ask for truth; your Word is truth. You are truth.

does my current situation align with your faithfulness?

Lord, you are faithful with both the little and big things. i know this because i've experienced your faithfulness so profoundly in my life. 

one thing i don't want to do is sit around passively waiting for these things to come to pass.

like Jacob, i will wrestle with God and hold on to Him.
God wants to break us in order to bless us. break my fear. break my pride. break my idols. break the areas in which i seek satisfaction. break me. 

i don't know what else to do but hold on to you Lord. 

hear my prayers. feel the anguish in my heart. see these tears. 

it's in your graciousness that you hear and listen. 

i will continue to lift these prayers up to you.
protect my sister from the evil one.
oh, Father, do not forget her.
your promise of restoration.

i have no words - it seems like the only thing i can do is cry out before God these days. 

The LORD reigns; let the earth be glad;

let the distant shores rejoice.

Clouds and thick darkness surround him;

righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.

Fire goes before him

and consumes his foes on every side.

His lightning lights up the world;

the earth sees and trembles.

The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,

before the LORD of all the earth. 

The heavens proclaim his righteousness,

and all peoples see his glory. 

psalm 97

today

Jenny:

My new bedroom

Me:

Congrats. It looks awesome.

Can't wait to see you - i'll be home May 4.

Me:

I'm going to jump on your bed!! :)

Jenny:

Haha. Me too!

My heart cries for you.

It's been too long, and as your sister, I yearn to meet with you.

every heartbeat for you.

Lord, you keep sending this verse to me:

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. [gal. 5:1]

i've been struggling with a certain sin for 6 years now. When You died on the cross, you came out victorious. In exchange for my sins, you gave me freedom. Freedom. What does that look like in my life? You tell me it's time to surrender; Lord, yes. i don't want to deal with it on my own anymore.

My heart is heavy because the people around me carry hidden sins and are yoked to slavery - whether they know it or not. Brothers and sisters, i tell you, Christ has set us free.

Community Work Day

when we try to deal with sin, we deal with it superficially. before you know it, it comes back bigger and nastier than before. the weeds i pulled out today were a reminder of how sin needs to be extracted by the root. at first, i felt victorious over the weeds i pulled out - only later did i realize that i had pulled them out surface-level. i was a bit aghast at how extensive roots can get; i guess sin works the same way. we think we can handle sin and take it out - but we can only get so far before we need God to point out hidden areas where sin is thriving and be the one to extract it from our hearts. just some stuff that the Lord was teaching me today.. i am so exhausted. today, i did yard work for 8 hours and was vastly dominated by the wild.

Picture taken by my friend, Audra Brady

My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the King; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe -Psalm 45:1

My heart delights in You, Father. Take this cup of worship.

Do surgery on my heart and extract the root of this sin. My sin is black - yes, Lord, you didn't die on the cross for trivial sins. You knew exactly how ugly, how detestable, how shameful my rags would be. This is my brokenness. This is my stumbling block. You came knowing just how deep this sin was, you died on the cross so that I would have freedom. the more i see my brokenness, the more I see how beautiful you are.

Thank you for tearing the veil.

Thank you for conquering death.

Holy to the Lamb who was slain - you rose on this day with glorious power and majesty.

I got to sit on the floor and do homework in front of this view at Buswell today.

Yesterday, I finished reading the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I don't think I've read a book (apart from the Bible) that has captivated me so much. I had to read it for Evangelism - i'm not really sure why Root wanted us to read this book for his class but it definitely has a ton of Christian symbolism packed into it. I know Root is a fan of C.S. Lewis so he probably just threw it into the curriculum just for the heck of it. I'll read it again this summer and give it to someone I meet in Europe.

Some other thoughts:

-I can't express how much I love the Old Testament. Sure, the New Testament is just as great as the OT but I've got a soft spot in my heart for the latter.

-This is random and out of the blue but last week I got to have lunch with my Old Testament professor. We somehow got on the topic of marriage and he gave me some good advice and told me that I should visit the guy's family for a week and see how he treats his mother and the rest of his family.

On another note, I hope that the person I end up marrying loves God more than he loves me. I will point-blank tell him this. "So-and-so, promise me you'll love God more than me".

living water

The King took the bucket in both hands, raised it to his lips, sipped, then drank deeply and raised his head. His face was changed. Not only his eyes but everything about him seemed to be brighter.

"Yes," he said, "it is sweet. That's real water, that. I'm not sure that it isn't going to kill me. But it is the death I would have chosen - if I'd known about it till now."

"What do you mean?" asked Edmund.

"It - it's like light more than anything else," said Caspian.

"That is what it is," said Reepicheep. "Drinkable light. We must be very near the end of the world now."

There was a moment's silence and then Lucy knelt down on the deck and drank from the bucket.

"It's the loveliest thing I have ever tasted," she said with a kind of gasp. "But oh - it's strong. We shan't need to eat anything now."

And one by one everybody on board drank. And for a long time they were all silent. They felt almost too well and strong to bear it; and presently they began to notice another result. As I have said before, there had been too much light ever since they left the island of Ramandu - the sun too large (though not too hot), the sea too bright, the air too shining. Now, the light grew no less -if anything, it increased- but they could bear it. They could look straight up at the sun without blinking. They could see more light than they had ever seen before. And the deck and the sail and their own faces and bodies became brighter and brighter and every rope shone. And next morning, when the sun rose, now five or six times its old size, they stared hard into it and could see the very feathers of the birds that came flying from it.

i was walking along and something fantastic caught my eye: an orange caught on a branch!

funny how it doesn't look so out of place up there.

For my evangelism class, I have to respond to at least one email through global mission outreach everyday. I opened my inbox, and lo and behold - someone responded back to me! His name is Alex and he lives in Kenya.

This is the email I just sent him:

Dear Alex,

It's so encouraging to hear back from you! Today I was walking with my friend and talking to her about how God continues the good work that He has started within us. We couldn't remember what verse in the BIble that it was from. Later in the day, I went to a prayer chapel to spend time with God. After I prayed, I grabbed a bible that happened to be nearby and opened it. When I opened the BIble, my eye went straight to Philippians 1:6, which says "And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ". After I read this, I started laughing with joy. Not only did I open the Bible to Philippians, but God drew my eye right to the verse.

Alex, the Lord will continue the good work he has started in you. Is there anything you are struggling with that I can be praying for you about? Hosanna to the Most Highest. Let us focus on our Savior this week.

In Christ alone, Grace

hurrah!!

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” -C.S. Lewis

because we were made for heavenly things..

we were made for a heavenly being.