Consumer vs. Being Consumed

To know who I am, I need to know who He is. 
To know what I've been given, I need to know who He is.
To know what promises have been made to me, I need to know who He is.
To know how to worship Him, I need to know who He is.
To know how to love, I need to know who He is.


You get the point.


In this season (or whatever you want to call it), I've been really praying for a renewed sense of discipline in place of the "me-me" mentality I take on when life gets too busy. A friend reminded me the other day that discipline is a form of submission, and that cut me to the core. I've said "yes" to myself so much that in parts of my life, i've forgotten my First Love. I've sacrificed deeper intimacy for temporal satisfaction in things that are fleeting.


"Luckily" for me, my First Love never goes farther than I how far I go away because He's always here, always with me, always loving me. My Dave wrote something the other day that went hand in hand with this: "You always have access to God's heart, but does He have access to yours?" Being in the presence of God requires me giving Him access to my heart, and i'm praying for an increase of that for this season (and for the rest of them to come). 


I'm going through the Psalms right now, and time and time again, I'm blown away by how His character is revealed through the Word. It's thick with who He is, and I love being reminded of how exciting it is to fall in love with Him. This is what I was reminded of again about who He is just in the first 8 chapters:

He is:

*the Giver of Life

*the Sustainer

* the only Peace

*the only Safety

*the Director

*the Guide

*the Giver of Joy

*the Protector

*the Merciful One

*the Healer

*the Deliverer

*the Trustworthy One

*the Defender

*the Just Judge

*the Lord Most High

*the Excellent One 

My prayer is that we would long to know Him more and pursue Him as He delights in pursuing us. I pray that we would know the difference between being consumers of His love and being consumed by His love. 

Vancouver. The Arrival. The Preface.

8.10.2007

For those of you that know, I headed out to a Nieu Communities RoadTrip from August 10-18. I went into this only knowing that this ministry is meant to come alongside communities, cultures, and individuals to establish relationship, to share love, and to serve where there is a need.

Friends kept on asking me what it was exactly that I would be doing on this trip. To be completely honest, I didn't know what to expect. All I knew was that a few of us from RockHarbor: Marion, Deb, Jake, Jon and myself were going to meet up with anyone esle that had signed up for this trip to Vancouver.



After a 2 1/2 hour flight, we arrived. It doesn't look incredibly different. In fact, it looks a lot like different areas that California has. This should be great!!! Familiarity, but a sense of adventure. This is really what I thought. This is really what I thought was coming my way in the following week.

To set the scene for you, the first day consisted of this:
We arrived, got off the plane, explored the city, and met everyone. The team, great. Staff, great. Dinner and introduction preparing us (well, giving us glimpse, really) of what was to come.











Something I pondered before I went to bed (which, in turn, is really what turned to be out a huge truth that manisfested itself in this trip):


" God places His saints where they will bringt the most glory to HIm, and we are totally incapable of judging where that may be." -Oswald Chambers



Stay tuned. It gets insane.