For years I have been convinced that I have to be perfect, or at least percieved as much, in order to hold on to friends. As I grew into the knowledge that this is a lie, I credited wounds from middle and high school that taught me to feel this way. Others' secrets and rejection make me feel unvalued, inimportant, and worthless...Like no one would want to keep me as a friend outside of some obligation.

Over the years in college, I have made significant friendship with people whom I love and am secure in the fact that love me in return. And yet, sometimes my identity still goes back to feeling valued by friendships. Even certain ones, perhaps, that hold a lot of weight in my worth. Maybe that is my problem.

I am learning in graduate school as I study theories of counseling and see how these theorists have identified human nature. Its wild that my pattern is actually a commone one with a definition: congruence is actually a resistance mechanism, or ego defense, that people innately have to use that makes them feel as if they have to be perfect in order to be whole.

Because I believe that Jesus is perfect already and has given me His perfect record, I no longer am expected by anyone who truly matters, to be perfect. To have it all...

Reality is that people do not want perfection. They hate those people. I hate those people. Why do I think I can be one?

People dont know what they want. And although I can try to do what I think people want me to, I will never please everyone. Especially myself. I just cant manipulate people into loving me.

Even when I think that I must have the right personality, sense of humor, servant heart, musical ability, perseverant drive, confidence, spiritual discipline, domestic superiotiry, all the fruits of the spirit, total dependablility, artistic and creativity, independence, intellegence, concious lifestyle, submissive attitude, flexibility, strength of an ox-emotionally, and all other things that I percieve to be valuable by others. others...who am I kidding? Men. Thats really who I aim to please if I am being honest, and still none of them want to pursue these things that I have built for myself.
Myself.
All of these things are aiming to satisfy my self.
So interesting that the Lord is showing me that I have to be giving Him all the rooms of my heart for Him to refine. And He will provide all other things. All things.

I cant build anything for myself. I have nothing to offer without His grace. My prayer is that He grow my identity in Him more. Just love Him more.

When my heart is strong- Like when my core is strong, therefore my limbs are strong- the areas for fruit in my life will be strong and productive.

Refining is tough.

Excited Life

OMG this is hilarious. Why do I relate to it so well?? Hahahaha




P.S. Kristen Bell is my only known Doppleganger....espeically when she is a brunette from that one show she was on.

  

what now

I have been struggling this week, obviously. Thinking about purpose, direction, hope, and the gospel.

And the Lord is working. He is disciplining me right now. I am not done. I still don't get it. And it is hard. But it will be sweet someday. Hopefully soon. But the alas, the Lord knows how much my heart can take.
 And it is up to Him how to refine it like gold.



When I am believing lies, what I can bank on are these:

1. Jesus is real.
2. He loves me enough to pay for my sin and give me His righteousness. I will never know why. Its a mystery.
3. He has used His position as Son and Heir to God to justify ME before the Father, Creator of the world, and Just King.
4. This Father King has thrown out my sin debt and miraculously I am no longer liable for this death that I owe.
5. I have the clean record of the perfect Son, and am also an Heiress of the King.
WHAT?!?!?!?!?!!!
6. As He gloriously reminds me of these things, I am being sanctified. Which means that I am being made more like Jesus.
7. I will never get this on my own, and will have to be reminded of these things every day for peace.
8. I am being disciplined in the Father's love... to love the things He loves and hate the things He hates- not to withhold good things from me, but to protect my heart from evil things.
9. Growth is hard.
10. I can never be snatched from His hands.

This is the gospel.

"When heart is breaking, Heaven stands. When my world is shaking, I'll never leave your hands..."

im sorry...what?

I guess I just use to think I was going somewhere. No destination set. But sure I was going. Anywhere really. But definitely headed somewhere. Now I just don't know. I can't figure out what I am waiting for.... I tell myself that it's Jesus, but I am acting like it is something or someone else that I am waiting on. I am trying to work for something. But my heart knows that I could never work enough. That is what the gospel tells me. Thats why I trust in Jesus. ok. got it. I have got to figure out what this is, though, and how to give it up. But I'm just feeling so directionless in this moment. Why dont I love grad school like I thought I would? Should I be in seminary? Should I revisit that...and all that correspondance form 1 and a half years ago? What am I thinking? Even though I know in my heart what my purpose is. How stupid is this... I have never felt more like Paul in Romans 7 than now. Where am I going and how the hell am I going to get there if Im as clueless as now. What am I hoping in? What is my Jesus plus? Is this my hormones? Is this a phase? How do I follow no one to nowhere. I am way too annoyed by all this...

Freedom

There are at least four kinds of freedom. And each one adds a crucial dimension of freedom to the last until we get to the full freedom—"free indeed." Let me try to sum up these four kinds of freedom in one definition of full and complete freedom: You are fully free—completely free, free indeed—when you have the desire, the ability, and the opportunity to do what will make you happy in a thousand years. Or we could say, You are fully free when you have the desire, the ability, and the opportunity to do what will leave you no regrets forever.

• If you don't have the desire to do a thing, you are not fully free to do it. Oh, you may muster the will power to do what you don't want to do, but nobody calls that full freedom. It's not the way we want to live. There is a constraint and pressure on us that we don't want.

• And if you have the desire to do something, but no ability to do it, you are not free to do it.

• And if you have the desire and the ability to do something, but no opportunity to do it, you are not free to do it.

• And if you have the desire to do something, and the ability to do it, and the opportunity to do it, but it destroys you in the end, you are not fully free—not free indeed.

To be fully free, we must have the desire, the ability, and the opportunity to do what will make us happy forever. No regrets. And only Jesus, the Son of God who died and rose for us, can make that possible. If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed. To be happy forever, our sins must be forgiven and God's wrath removed and Christ must become our supreme Treasure. Only Jesus can do that. In fact, he has already done it. He died for our sins. He absorbed God's wrath. And he rose from the dead and is today therefore supremely precious. And he offers us that now as a free gift.

John Piper, 2011

No more waiting...

I have had some interesting conversations lately about this "True Love Waits" thing lately, then read a blog that made me start to wonder and feel convicted...

What’s it “waiting” for, anyway?

I am working with the youth girls at my church now, and I want them to be waiting for marriage for true love and all that jazz but more than that I want to see them love Jesus.


I am afraid that there are a lot of girls out there who don’t know who God is anymore – the God of their youth group years just isn’t working out. I am seeing this with the college women that I am working with and have grown with. Back then, that God said to wait for sex until you are married, until He brings the right man along for a husband. I am beginning to be concerned with those of us who signed a card and put it on the altar and pledged to wait.

And wait we did.



And waited and waited and waited.

Some of them have prayed their whole lives for a husband, and he hasn’t shown up. We have heard it all, heard the advice to “be the woman God made you to be, focus on that, and then the husband will come.” They’ve read “Lady in Waiting,” gotten super involved in church and honed their domestic skills.

And still they wait.

They hold onto a poem written to them from “God” they received in Sunday School that said, “The reason you don’t have anyone yet is because you’re not fully satisfied in Me. You have to be satisfied with Me and then when you least expect it, I’ll bring you the person I meant for you.”

“You’re right, God,” they say. “We’re not satisfied in you yet. We will put you first and then you can bring us a husband in your timing.”

Its scary that this is actually wrecking our view of God.

If this is who God’s supposed to be, then He’s tragically late.

So some decide to chuck “Lady in Waiting” out the window … and possibly their virginity with it. What next? Church... God might go next, too. If He doesn’t answer these prayers after they’ve held up their end of the bargain, why would He answer any others?

Whether it was the fault of the leaders, the fault of us girls, or both, a tragedy has happened.

A lot of girls were sold on a deal and not on a Savior.



Who wrote that poem anyway?

Pretty sure it wasn’t God.

When Jesus was here on the earth, the crowds would follow Him because they saw He gave good things. But that’s not what He wanted. He wanted their hearts for Himself. So He would turn to them and say things like, “If you don’t love Me so much that every other relationship in your life looks like hate by comparison, you can’t follow Me.” (Matthew 10:34-39)

That sounds a lot different from the poem.

Christ is the source of everything we need and the giver of all good gifts … but in telling people about Him, it’s possible we’ve sold them on a solution for life’s problems and not life itself.

What if we as girls had learned early on that having Him was everything, not a means to the life we think He would want us to have.

If we had learned we don’t abstain from sex because we’re “waiting.” We abstain because we love Him.

If I’d learned, “Fall in love with Jesus.” That’s it. Bottom line. That’s everything you need to know, to work toward, to put your hope in.

If I’d learned who He is, what He wants, how to give Him everything, not “wait” so that one day I could give my everything to someone else.

If I’d learned that it’s not bad to pray for a husband, but that my greater prayer should be for Him to spend my life as He chooses for His glory.

If we as believers make that our message, things could be drastically different for a lot of girls wondering why the God they think they learned to follow doesn’t compute. It doesn’t necessarily stop the desire for a husband or end all feelings of loneliness, but it does show a God who provides, loves and gives infinite purpose even to our singleness rather than a God who categorically denies some who pray for husbands while seemingly giving freely to others.

It shows that while marriage is good, He is the greater goal.

I dont want to live like I am waiting for something... waiting on anyone to get here.

I already have Him … and He is everything.

Thirsty

My Church is awesome. I am learning so much from them. We have been studying Revelation over the last few months and this last one has stopped me in my tracks. I feel so incredibly real and loved while thinking through what the Lord has promised for His people.

We need a vision of Heaven. We have to be prepared for our future.

What we believe about the future determines how we live in the present. 
-because we can endure hard things and persevere through the present.

What is in Heaven?
1. A renewed creation
"I am making all things new" Things will be restored into what they were meant to be back in Eden, in Genesis 1 and 2.
-When Jesus comes back, we will have renewed bodies.
-New Jerusalem will come down to earth.
-Our future, our existence, it is so material > streets, walls, trees, leaves, fruit, feasts, people, nations, kings of all nations...
 -We will build houses and live in them
 -We will plant vineyards and eat from them
 -Animals will coexist

We will be surrounded by new things...without death, decay, sickness, violence, loss, disease, and the brokenness that defines this world.

We already know that there will be no tears from early in chapter 21. This is because He has restored all things so that there is no reason for tears. All things are restored to the state of being worthy of the presence of the Lord.

2. People Groups [will be in Heaven]
- God Himself will be with them and He will be their God
- great cultural creativity will be bringing their splendor of their culture to worship God...will architects build unimaginable buildings for us to experience, or will there be many more amazing Monet-artists and Motzart-musicians? What glories will the Lord command for us all to give and enjoy about Him?

Before sin and death entered the world, Adam and Eve walked with God. There was no brokenness.
We can see Him in the New Heaven and view Earth because we will have new bodies!
We will be restored. We will be changed.

A day is coming when the separation between us and God is not there. His name is written on our foreheads.
We will finally be who we were created to be.
We will be restored and made whole.
We shall be without sin, without brokenness, without shame.

Oh how I long for this day! When I see His face!

When we get to Heaven, we are going to be restored. We will be made whole. We will be free to walk, to run, to dance. Together. With Jesus, We will be made whole. This is a big deal.

Thats what we long for. We long to be made whole- to be redeemed. We long for this for ourselves, for our friends, for our family.

Am I thirsty fo the New Heaven and New Earth? Am I satisfied with Jesus? Do I long to be healed and be made whole more than I long for these fleeting pleasures of this broken earth?

Oh Father, make me thirsty. Make me long to be healed above all things. That I would have the courage and words to say come to Jesus...to the mirror and to my peers.