its your turn to speak.

At this point in my life I have a lot of decisions to make.  I’m graduating from undergrad in May, and from that point on I am a free woman (in a way…) to do whatever I want.  I have so many paths available that I have literally worked my way into a paralyzed state, unable to make a move toward any of the possible routes. 
In attempts to try to figure out what path to take, I have dramatically increased the amount of prayer in my life.  I am asking, more like pleading, with God to tell me what to do and where to go. 

My mom gave me the best advice I could ever ask for without even asking for it.  After hearing my complaints and worries through sobbing tears of frustration and confusion, she turned to me and said, “now Laura, you have prayed like crazy about this, but have you just taken the time to listen?”

Best advice ever.

In the midst of my cries for help, my tears of confusion and pleas for direction, I forgot to listen. 

“Be still, and know that I am God!
      I will be honored by every nation.
      I will be honored throughout the world.”

Psalm 46:10

God will answer our prayers and He will tell us where to go. But we need to give Him the chance to tell us.  If we keep doing all of the talking, if we are the ones who are hogging all of the conversation, how will He ever be able to answer us?  We need to give God the opportunity to speak.  We need to simply stop talking, be still and listen to the one who is God.

heaven on earth.

Yesterday I was given the opportunity to speak at our youth service at the Hub.  I wanted to speak about something that wasn’t just “another Christian idea”.  I wanted it to be powerful and open people’s eyes.  So here’s a tidbit of what I talked about.

Lately, I feel like service has become a major part of our society.  Maybe its the whole Haiti disaster that has changed people, but in any case, we are focusing more and more on service.  I wanted to uncover the reason for serving. Most Christians say that the reason we serve is because Jesus served.  Although its a good reason, I wonder then what Jesus’ reason for serving was.  I can just see him in public, helping the poor, when someone asks him why is is serving and he responds “well, because I am Jesus!” I highly doubt that.  Or how we say “What Would Jesus Do?” in a certain situation.  Do you think Jesus looked down at his WWID bracelet everytime an opportunity presented itself to serve, and asked…”What Would I Do?”  That to me is laughable.

So I wanted to find Jesus’ reasons to serve. 

“Our Father in heaven,
      may your name be kept holy.
   May your Kingdom come soon.
   May your will be done on earth,
      as it is in heaven.
   Give us today the food we need,
and forgive us our sins,
      as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
  And don’t let us yield to temptation,
      but rescue us from the evil one.”

Matthew 6:9-13

(Now I must give credit here to Rob Bell because his book Velvet Elvis pointed out the answer here.)

The reason we are to serve is because we are supposed to bring Heaven to Earth.  In our everyday lives, we are to bring a piece of what Heaven to our here and now.  When we serve, we are allowing goodness, peace, joy, restoration, hope and love to enter into this world. 

The most wonderful part about this is that every single day God gives us Divine Opportunities to bring Heaven to Earth.  He wants us to serve His World and His people and He will give us the opportunity to do so. 

So many times Christians get caught up in the whole idea that the reason to be a Christian is that when we die we will go to heaven.  But as one who follows Christ, it shouldn’t be about the waiting till you die to experience heaven, but to live everyday that you are alive to bring heaven to you’re here and now.  It’s not 100% about the Heaven that we are waiting to enter, but also about the Heaven that we are bringing to this world.

Everyday, we need to pray for eyes to see the divine opportunities around us that can bring a lil piece of Heaven to Earth.

build me up.

“Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.  Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.”

Ephesians 4:11-13

I struggle daily with feeling unworthy.  As if what I have to offer isn’t good enough, or that what I have to offer somehow isn’t as important as what other people offer. 

My devotions today pointed me to this chapter in Ephesians.  I love how you can read the same verse over and over and over again, and yet each time God shows you something a little different.  I had always read this as…”there are great people leading the church and they’ll help you be a great person too.”  But this time I saw something new.  I realized that what Paul is saying here is that we all are given great spiritual gifts from God.  We are all blessed with the ability to do one thing in a way that other people can’t.  It is through the union of all of our spiritual gifts that we are able to fully reach the spiritual heights that God wants us to reach.  The great thing is, that we can’t do it on our own…we each hold the pieces that fit together to create the beautiful picture that God wants to create.  

I shouldn’t feel unworthy or not good enough or even unimportant.  What I am good at is essential to Christ’s Kingdom.  Without me, a major piece is missing.  Without you, a major piece is missing.  We are called to use our gifts to build each other up and to reach our full potential.

What are your spiritual gifts?  How are you using it to build up His Kingdom?

together.

“through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.”

-Ephesians 3:6

I often forget that we’re in this whole thing together. 

I forget that I don’t need to face life alone.

or my struggles alone.

or my joy alone.

We are to do it together. 

God knows that we can’t do it on our own, we can’t live alone.

I know I try all the time to be a strong independent person who doesn’t need anyone to help me get through the hard stuff.

But underneath, we all need people.  We need them to comfort us, love us, accept us, challenge us, rejoice with us, party with us and live with us.

God gave us the gift of togetherness.  Let’s embrace it.

 

 

my story.

I’m listening to the new Donald Miller book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Yes I said, listening.  I got the entire book on CD, so everytime I’m in the car I have the chance to brush up on some “reading”.

Click to go to Amazon.com to order the book!

 The entire idea of this book is finding our “story”.  By “story” Miller is talking about our accomplishments and big experiences.  The bigger the accomplishment or more thrilling the experience, the greater story you have.

    At one point Miller quotes a book by Steven Pressfield that he had read about the writing process.  Pressfield says that every person, “faces resistance when trying to create something good…The harder the resistance, the more important the task must be.”  In other words, the things that we MUST do, the things that God finds most important for us to accomplish are also the experiences that have the most opposition and trial.  He then elaborated to say that that resistance is from the evil forces in the world that want us to have a lame story, that don’t want us to accomplish the things that would make our story great. 

 I then started to think about my own life….and my own story.  What experiences do I have in my own life that add to having a great story?  I couldn’t think of any.  I also started to think about looming decisions in my life, like choosing a seminary and whether or not I’m moving to another state.  And thinking, I realized that I was facing so much opposition in these areas, and therefore, it needed to be done.  In order for me to make my story great I have to take a risk, break the resistance and trust that God’s got it all under control.

So what about you…how is your story looking?

 

and with a burning passion.

Passion. 

                It’s what ignites and sparks change.  It’s what spurs us to action.  It’s what makes us tick.

The greatest thing we can do in life is figure out what our passion is…and follow it.  Life is no good when you hide your passion within yourself.  When you don’t follow what you truly love, you will never be 100% fulfilled.

God gives us the passions that we have….

for His people

for His animals

for His world.

God wants us to follow our passions because He is the one that gave them to us.  When we don’t, it’s as if we aren’t being used for our true purpose, we are leaving part of ourselves unused. 

Find out what your passion is.  Find out what you wake up for everyday.  Find out what moves you into action.  Find out hat God created you to do……and do it.

 

A video clip from Extreme Home Makeover in Buffalo, NY.  Now these people have passion!  Let it inspire you!

REPULSIVE

I am taking a Hebrew Bible course this semester.  The professor showed this video as an introduction to the course. 

Watch it here.

The professor’s point in watching this video? 

This man is just proving the point about how people can take the Bible out of context; strip the words from their historical perspective and literary context, in order to simply prove their own opinion.  

It is absolutely REPULSIVE to me that anyone would use such ignorant statements to attack the Bible, when in fact they are not even looking at the scripture as a whole.  That is one things that truly irritates me; when people attack scripture and make statements against Christianity and yet do not fully know scripture itself or take it from its original meaning and simply place it in their own “fill in the blank” in order to make their point superior!  

I challenge you to fully know and understand what you believe.  Know scripture to your very core, because scripture is your most powerful defense against Satan.  The Word of God is perfect and eternal….so write it on your heart. 

small potatoes

I have to admit, I have been quite the slacker with blogging. Its not like I don’t have ideas to write about, I just find it hard to commit the time to doing it.  So, my brand new New Years Resolution will be to start blogging more.  I think it’ll be both therapeutic and enlightening!  Here’s the first of 2010:

“So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times,the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.” 

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Sidenote: I have never actually read The Message version of the Bible before, but after reading a few verses it I can say that I’m very sorry I never read it before!  It seems to speak to you in an “up in your face” kinda way…which is actually quite refreshing and I highly recommend it.

I love the words in this verse…small potatoes.  I have never actually read the words, small potatoes, in the Bible before, but here it makes so much sense.  We all have troubles in our lives that seem huge to us.  They seem to overwhelm us.  But those things are just small potatoes to God.  They are nothing in comparison to the blessings that we will experience when we follow God’s will in those struggles and fight through them with Him.  

It reminds me of a sermon I heard from Steven Furtick at Elevation Church.  He was explaining the “Dips” in our lives that we experience; the times when we are just simply down and out.  The greatest point he made was that the “Dips” in your life, are comparable to a Valley.  Yes the valley exists, but it exist between 2 mountain peaks.  Meaning, the “Dips” in our lives usually come after an outrageous high and will always be followed by an extreme high. We can be sure that although sometimes we will experience lows, God will always bring you out of it!

The worries in our lives are small potatoes in comparison to the wonderful blessings that God has in store for us later.  They are simply a valley that we must push through in order to reach another spectacular mountain top.  

Wanna check out “The Dip” sermon?

http://www.elevationchurch.org/sermons/thedip/part1

 

something borrowed.

 

I read a blog today from neue ministry that stood out to me and  really inspired change in my own life.  I thought I’d share the insights.

 

 

 

“You and every person on the planet desire the same things: love, peace, freedom, fulfillment, purpose, worth and contentment. You and every person on the planet are currently seeking these things in one way or another. Some people seek love through sex, freedom through financial independence, worth through physical appearance and peace through an endless number of ways of escape. Then there are those who seek these things by accomplishing some huge thing for God. Either way, you are depending on the wrong source for your foundational spiritual needs, and it will lead to suffering.

The underlying problem of all the above motivations is that they are tuning in to the wrong frequency to fulfill what you most deeply want in life. Jesus laid out all the essential truth when He said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” First, Jesus identified the only source for abundant life: the “Kingdom of God.” Then He showed us its location: “within.” Jesus’ point is not that spiritual reality is like a magic ball floating somewhere inside our human body. He’s saying that the frequency for love, peace, freedom and contentment is an immaterial and invisible transmission that exists in an eternal dimension. Jesus wanted people to be aware of this dimension, and to tap into it through an inner awareness, knowing or feeling.

Let’s break this down practically. What is the “Kingdom of God” within you? The “Kingdom of God” within you is the continuous flow of spiritual abundance—love, peace, contentment, freedom, life, worth, beauty, compassion, creativity and fulfillment. None of these attributes are dependent upon circumstances, accomplishments, things, people or anything else outside of you. The source of spiritual abundance is on another frequency—a frequency, by the way, you can tune in to if you choose to. We each have free will to participate in the present reality of the Kingdom of God.

You can be content even if your latest efforts as an innovative leader go nowhere, because your source of contentment is not dependent upon the outcomes of your ministry. You can be at peace if your team abandons you, because your source of peace is not tied to how other people respond. You can live in joyful freedom even if your impact is never recognized, because your source of worth and identity doesn’t fluctuate with the size of your results.

The Kingdom of God within you and you choosing that Kingdom makes “staying inspired” a way of life. An uninspired life or ministry is symptomatic of tuning in to the wrong frequency for the spiritual resources necessary to live and lead with love, wisdom, creativity, compassion and determination.”

-Jim Palmer

To read the whole blog on staying inspired in life and ministry; http://www.neueministry.com/2009/06/staying-inspired/

rain.

i love the rain.

there is something about it that is so calming.

for some reason on rainy days I can’t help but stop and realize that I need to take some time for myself.

maybe its the sound it makes, or the fact that the wet and cold make me want to lay around in a warm blanket and do absolutely nothing. 

the rain reminds me that no matter how busy I am and how many things are on my to do list somehow I need to slow down and pace myself.

the rain brings renewal, refreshment, rejuvenation and calm in the midst of chaos.

take the time on this rainy day to pause and reflect.

relax, recuperate and remember the refreshment the rain brings.