Thursday, February 27, 2014

Grace To Surrender



    I guess today was just meant to be a deep day. The depth I encountered made me aware of the persistent ache in me to find it. To find the deep that calls unto deep. To move further and further from shores of perceived safety and shallowness and take a step of faith further and further in. I am hungry yet I still cling to things that I should be sacrificing because I feel that they bring me some sense of a life I want to be living but have failed to obtain.
      When God calls someone He bids them come and die before He raises them to life. Honestly I feel like my life is on hold. I thought I told God, “Not my will but Yours be done, You can do whatever You want to do with my life.” I think if I’m honest though I still live with a certain amount of fear that God will ask me to do something I don’t want to. How do you know when you have really, really laid down all your dreams, all your ambitions, all your need for significance and every piece of yourself? God give us dreams then asks us to sacrifice them. I recount the story of Abraham in my head and feel sadness over the years he had to wait for the promise of God to be fulfilled in His life. I feel a stab of pain again as I walk with him up the mountain with his son, knife in hand, to surrender once again to what God was asking of him. He meant to kill his dream and sacrifice it before God. “But God, You were the one who gave me this dream.”
     I know God wants to use me but I also know in His love, God will not contend with an ounce of my own selfish ambition. We are required to trust Him and put our faith in Him. We are required to let go of pain, of dreams, hardship, passion, bitterness and anything we’ve held in your heart and tried in your own ability to fulfill. We have no power in and of ourselves to make the dreams God put in our heart come to pass. It is Him and Him alone that can breathe life into them. I have to trust that there is freedom in letting go. That there is hope for a new life while I kill what God is asking me to surrender.
     Fire falls on sacrifice. Oh that it would fall on me. I don’t want to live another day with mediocre passion. 



Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The Voice



My sister in law posted this as her new profile picture.



Pic quote courtesy this link


     I was kind of laughing at the non-coincidence. It seems like God is speaking the same thing to His people. He’s calling forth the purpose He put in each one of us. I’m calling it a non-coincidence because I have learned there are rarely coincidences when you are stretching your spiritual ear to hear what God is saying. Those who walk with Him (my sister in law does) will echo back to you what you already hear Him speaking. It never ceases to amaze me though. He is always loud and clear but the way He speaks to me, I can’t even describe sometimes. It’s too many coincidences to be a coincidence.
John 10:27 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.
     I love this verse. I know that voice. It speaks truth and calms chaos. It beckons and leads. It comforts and corrects. It disciplines and Father’s. It’s still and small and quiet. It breaks and creates. I can’t live without it. It’s life and breath to me.
     Because this is one of those things I feel like God has put in me…I’m posting these very poor quality recordings of me just sitting at the piano worshiping. Maybe a song will come out of this someday but there isn’t really a song yet…just pieces of what comes to my head and heart when I play.




When the darkness surrounds me and my faith is all but gone
I will rest in the promise that He is good so good
When the waves crash around me and I cannot reach the ground
I will trust in His promise that He is good so good

I will cherish You I will cherish You (2X)
Yes I will carry you I will carry you





Almighty holy God Your love reigns down on us
And I feel Your presence again
You wipe away our tears and You draw us near
And I feel Your presence again

Oh come come love