..knowing

I want to know so much. I want to know the answers to my questions and be sure beyond a shadow of a doubt. I think that the weight of knowing is so overlooked though. The moment I know is the moment I am held accountable for knowing. The Bible says that the people to whom much is given much is required. In my flesh I think I want to know but if I actually think about it, I don't want to know. Faith seems so much harder because the tomorrows of my life are so gray and vague. The converse of that reality, a clear understanding and full knowledge of what tomorrow hold would be way more terrifying. It would be impossible to need God. For me though, I don't know tomorrow but I know things today. I know that I am suppose to wait a year to apply to Antioch House, I know that I am suppose to apply to be an SMC, I know that my tomorrow will be okay if God is the one holding my hand through it. The knowing part is the hard part though. If I know I am held responsible to that knowledge and defending it. I have to defend it from people who do not know yet. My parents do not know. I know through Christ therefore I must lean only on that and not waiver because of other people's ignorance. Its just hard when the ignorant and complacent people are the ones that shaped your life and led you for so many years. I know but I am not strong enough yet. I am not strong enough to know and defend and that is fine when there are no forces coming against me. I don't really know what to do with my parents yet. My soul crumbles and breaks watching them at work. In every memory of the times when they once were alive in Christ my soul is pounded into a more bloody mess. It breaks me to watch them wallow in remembrance of the days of old when they know things that, if they were fleshed out in their lives, would look so different. The separation of me and my parents has been good. I need it to know more and be responsible for that knowing.

..dream

I don't really know where I got the notion that not dreaming was okay. Where it was fine to think inside the context of my finite brain and operate in a world that had boundaries and borders to existence. I can call upon the way I was raised. Having limited funds and limited faith, to a certain extent, resulted in living life within my limits. Grand things were not always possible because there was no money to propel them into existence. The faith of my parents also did not allow the fact that we had no money to be null and void. We lived within our means, which meant living within the walls we placed around our lives. In this mindset I have begun to live my life. Thinking too critically about the things that will happen tomorrow that I can predict because of my past. In Christ I can do all things, because he is my strength. When did I forget this? Or is it rather that I am just learning what it means in my life for the first time? The infinite nature of his power is not limited to the context of my brain or my own will for my life. It is far greater than that and it is my lack of faith that keeps me from seeing life through the eyes of Christ. With faith, as small as a mustard seed, I am able to move mountains. Maybe faith and dreaming are both equally important sides to the same coin... Give me faith to trust and through that faith let me dream in you.

..thirsty

I am thirsty for God.
There is nothing like him and I know that he is the only thing that will ever satisfy me.
I need him right now.
I need him to strengthen my faith when I don't see and assure me that he is here when I don't feel.
My body longs for him. He is the living water that will never leave me thirsty but I need him.
I want to die. Dyeing to myself and living through Christ is what I seek for myself.
Death of my feet and new feet in Christ.
Let me go where you want, not letting the too small shoes of my immaturity slow me down.
Death to my hands and the evil they do when I dwell in myself.
Give me the scars of Christ and the suffering he endured so I can know you.
Death to my lips. The things they speak that make you cringe. Death to the evil that flows out of my heart.
I want my life to scream Jesus. I want my lips to overflow the praise of you.
Death to my mind.
Give me your thoughts. Show me your ways that I can know that I know you.
Death to my heart and the meaningless yearning it feels towards the things of the earth.
Your heart is pure and your actions are upright. Kill me and let me live you.


You are too good to me. I do not deserve what you have given me. The hope that is rests in the nail scarred hands you cradle me with should not be mine. I accept it with humility and eternal gratefulness, knowing it was out of pure love and not obligation. I want to know you more. Be all that sustains me. Teach me what it means to love you and to live love through you. You are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My body longs for you. Without you I am nothing. I have nothing to give you. You desire no sacrifice from me. I just want to know you Jesus. I love you.



Psalm 13
..............
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Oh LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;
my enemies will say, "I have overcome him,"
and my foes will rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.

..change

The element of change has become an essential requirement for the Christian faith that I claim to have. The longer I flesh out my life in Christ the more I realize that my tomorrow will be absolutely nothing like my yesterday. This concept of consistent renewal is very exciting but also slightly terrifying at the same time. It changes the entire context of which I operate in this world, continually redefining that which I label as important and the relationships that mold me into who I am. The scary part is the unknown, the lost friendships because of Christ and the pain in my life that will result in living out a life of God worship. In this change is found the faith that I desire to possess. The only way I can make it through a change by God is through the power that he has put in my life. A constant, nagging uncontested with the place I am spiritually is a requirement for me in my love story with Abba. The closer I come to finding him the more of a mircale he becomes to me and the more my life will transition itself into his likeness. The simpler I become for Christ and the more I my flesh is killed for him the more dynamic and evident that change will become. The only hope that I have in myself is knowing that Christ has died for me, it is finished, and that through him I can become a new person everyday for the rest of my life.

..silence

The word and concept of solitude grew wings and flew out of my life the moment I stepped into my dorm room. The role of solitude in my life has slowly been demoted to a luxury rather than a spiritual discipline or a requirement for spiritual growth. Living with three women on a floor with twenty-five other girls on a campus with hundreds of undergraduates is forcing me to redefine the essential practice of solitude for my personal sanity and relationship with God.

In the first paragraph Paul Tournier makes the point that “[people] no longer lead their own lives; they are dragged along by events.” This statement has been fleshed out in my life and the results are starting to become heavy on my heart. I have allowed my passion for Jesus to be manifested in activities rather than in personal communion with him through simply being with him. As I continue to grow, I more clearly see the danger of an abundance of activities and events combined with a frazzled lifestyle, devoid of the peace of God that transcends my understanding. The converse absence of organized and structured God seeking allows God to work on me personally and demonstrates more precisely his intimate intensions within my life.

In the presence of my activities I commune with others who love Jesus and their fellowship is appreciated and much needed for my spiritual formation, but the other side of that coin is just as important. The hour I spend in the morning, reading my Bible and praying, brings me into the presence of Jesus and sets me by his side for the day. When my discipline falls victim to my busy lifestyle, I become lost in the waves of busyness and do not clearly realize that Jesus is standing next to me, waiting for me to recognize his existence. Because I am a Christian, I am a temple of God, a resting place for the Holy Spirit; therefore my life needs to be a temple in order to experience him. If there were televisions and math textbooks strewn around the church I worship in, focusing on the presence of God in that place would be infinitely more difficult. Silence clears my life of those distractions and leaves me alone with God to talk to him and be his child, in the pureness of surrounding and mind.

..ache

Today has been strange. It feels as though I have been on the edge of something that feels like tears but is not. The only way that it even begins to make sense to me is to call it a divine ache. I know that there is something profoundly wrong with me, I realize it about every twenty minutes of my existence but most of the time it is not as tangible as it was today. Tuesday I found myself lost in the love of Christ and what he had done for me and just hung out with him all day. But today was different, he was still there but we didn't talk as much and I saw the filth and unbandaged holes in my life more clearly. There is an ache in my soul and I can feel it physically that needs God. I need him to complete me and I am nothing without him. I can not live without him. I crapped out on my reading today and I felt it, yesterday wasn't much better either and my life felt empty then too. I find myself deeply troubled at the things in the world that are not how they should be and I think that the reason that it so greatly pains me to see them is because they are so evident in my own life. I not only feel pain for the broken things of this world and others but also an intense ache because they are so perfectly exemplified in my life. I don't really know what I need to do next. I need to love God and through that my life will fall into order. I need to seek [first] the kingdom of God then everything else I know that I need to do will fall into place. I kind of just want to cry right now and I can't even express why. I am not sad, but there is just an ache because I am so broken...

..love

Today is the American Day for love. I have received a fair amount of love today from the girls on my floor, from my parents, and from God. The thing that digitizes these loves from each other is their consistency and their scale. My parents love me infinitely more than my floor mates and they will love my deeper and longer than anyone I have met at SPU but God goes above my parents and loves me beyond words. I have been meditating on Romans 5:8 today, which in essence says, This is how God demonstrates his love for us- that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. The fact that I was making the world a worse place when Jesus decided to scoop me up and hug me is very humbling and comforting. If he loves me enough to save me when I am acting in outright opposition to him then how much more will I feel his love when I am doing what he wants me to do. A relationship cannot be merely based upon what I do for than other person. I can only do so much for someone else and if I don't love that person very intimately then my actions will transition from good deeds to a dead relationship. We understand this in marriage and in friendship so then why is it so hard to transfer that concept into my relationship with God? The things I do for him will flow naturally from me because I love him. They will be painless and effortless and will fill my heart with joy because they are simple expressions of what I feel. My mom has finally begun to understand this and it makes me so happy. She said to me today that she just wants to love God, not do good things for him because that is what she is suppose to do, she simply wants to rest in his presence and feel his arms around her. I am praying that she will get that chance and that the environment of Mountain View will not stifle her desire. I pray that God will use her and my dad to create change there and start of fire of love, so that other people will know they are Christians by their love and not by their intellect. There is no reason for me to avoid the love of God in my life. I am thankful for Valentines Day, the fact that God has helped me embrace my season of singleness and that it is a day that I can truly remember that I am loved so much by God. Jesus loved me so much that he came through the most humble means possible to die, because he loved me. I don't think I can ever understand how incredibility deep that love is and I don't think I have to. I need a God that is bigger than my brain and who can love outside the limits of my mind.

..simplicity

Jesus told us that "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:21). For the modern American a double take must occur since the initial reading of the passage leaves the reader puzzled. I read it quickly in my own devotional recently and then realized that this is a section of scripture that I needed to take a closer look at.

The implications are much deeper than a physical level of possessions and dwell in the world of the heart. It clearly makes the claim that where you put your treasure; the valued things of your life, your time, your energy, and your thoughts, that is the place where your heart will inherently be. If my treasure is consumed with my food or my clothing, the basic necessities of life that I often inflate to idols, my heart will be in them. A narrow minded lifestyle, filled with fleeting and meaningless worry about things that are needed for survival, brings me to a hollow and empty existence, where my focus is not on the amazing provisional power of God but rather on the transitory needs of this life.

Too much focus on earthly things keeps my mind tethered to this earth. If I spend time and effort worrying about what I look like or what I will eat I will not be spending that time with God. My mind will be securely anchored to this earth and the immense awesomeness of heaven will not be in the range of my view. Ultimately, the things of this earth take up too much time in my life, time worrying and wondering, when surrendering them to Jesus would allow me freedom to worship him and increase my faith in the fact that he will provide for all of my needs.

..need

God has a funny way of responding to me. I cried and whined at him last night, discontent with my circumstances and the substance of my life and went to bed asking God to become a need in my life. When I pried my eyes open this morning to face my day I saw clearly the flip side of my passionate night and the lack of faith I actually possessed. Where would I be if God let me have my way with myself? I would be stranded in middle Asia with a weak faith and be just as discontent with life because my heart had not changed, merely my location. I realized that having an overwhelming desire to be elsewhere illuminated the fact that I had not faith in him to work here. If God is big, He is big everywhere and if I don't see it then there is something wrong with me, not God. He is no bigger in India or in Africa than he is at Seattle Pacific University. Wanting something other than what he has given me proves how much maturing I need to do to bring me to a place where I can go some place and not melt under pressure. I have the passion now but I do not have the maturity and the discipline to make radical, reformed life applicable to me. I need to mature in the walm waters of a Christian campus for a few years, learn to trust in God (he knows I cannot get through this school by myself), and then he will give me the desires of my heart because I will have earnestly sought him. He didn't give me a passion for something completely different than what I have seen my whole life for no reason. He won't let that die with time and fade with the grind of school and culture. But I need to be refined so that the passion inside can be most clearly seen as Christ, meaning I must become invisible and only be found in him. That takes time and although it might be hardest in a place saturated with Khristians, I will be that much stronger to face the simple, raw things of this world.

My mom asked me to lunch today. It made me feel loved.
Jeremy apologized for Pamela and her outburst. It made me feel cared for.

..why

Why am I at Seattle Pacific University? Why am I here, in a place that seems to be mediocre to me, and have a passion for something so much bigger? Why do I desire to be broken, emptied of myself, yet remain in an environment that makes it so easy to not rely on God? Why am I waiting for tomorrow to come for my life to begin when I am never promised tomorrow? Why do I have to be surrounded by peers at a school to learn about God? Why is it not possible for me to learn about life and God through action? Why is my faith so weak that I seek something different than the place I am? If God is everywhere that means that he is here, but does that necessarily mean that I am suppose to be here? Is the reason I am here because I am too afraid to go and do something or is it for preparation for something in the future? If I do not want a life of mini-vans and ballet practice why am I preparing for it through my actions now? If the choices I make today create the person I am 5 years from now, don't I need to change something today in order to be the person I know Christ desires me to be? I want to be dead to myself and live a life that requires Christ and leaves no option otherwise. I would much rather have a life that makes me weep bitterly at the end of each day out of frustration, but in that moment be completely emptied of myself that I have no strength of my own. I want to die. I want to live as Christ. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering. I want to be broken and crushed for the sake of Christ. I want to be found in him, knowing nothing of myself because at the end of it, I don't matter. This shell that is me will die and there will be nothing left here. I don't care about my reputation or ego but I want to be only in Christ. I suppose I want to be perfect in Christ but I realize that that is a process. If to obtain that perfection I have to die to myself, should I find the place that I can do that the fastest in or the place where it is the most difficult? I think I am going to go cry now.

..faith

I want to live a life that requires faith, rather than limiting it to an option in my day. Would it be wrong to purposefully strip away the luxuries of this world to force faith and trust as lifestyle requirements? I want to walk with the unknown of tomorrow to be truly unknown, no 401K to catch me if I fall because it would be another net that I would create by myself. We are never called to have a retirement plan in the Bible, why is it a requirement for modern living? My parents want my life to be bigger and better than theirs, for that is the American dream. I want that too, I want my life to have more passion and more joy and more faith than theirs but that results in a lifestyle that is not as big or as comfortable as theirs. Faith is the need of something and the trust that it will be provided for. If I am not in need then how am I suppose to have faith? I can muster up things in my life to fill my need for faith but if the essentials of daily living require faith to make them come together, how much stronger would my faith be? Life is fulfilling when it happens on the fringes, and that is where faith flourishes. It grows in doubt and opposition and becomes strong when the waters flow hard against it. I want to live with faith as a requirement and with unbounded love as its obvious conclusion and if it means that I live a life with no financial security and no promise of an okay tomorrow that is fine by me.