To have His mind...

...is my prayer for all of us. May we have the mind of Christ.

I'll leave you with this excerpt from Mr. Chambers--good old Oswald.

Come unto Me." Matthew 11:28

God means us to live a fully-orbed life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when that life is attacked from the outside, and we tumble into a way of introspection which we thought had gone. Self-consciousness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of the life in God, and self-consciousness continually produces wrestling. Self-consciousness is not sin; it may be produced by a nervous temperament or by a sudden dumping down into new circumstances. It is never God's will that we should be anything less than absolutely complete in Him. Anything that disturbs rest in Him must be cured at once, and it is not cured by being ignored, but by coming to Jesus Christ. If we come to Him and ask Him to produce Christ-consciousness, He will always do it until we learn to abide in Him.

Never allow the dividing up of your life in Christ to remain without facing it. Beware of leakage, of the dividing up of your life by the influence of friends or of circumstances; beware of anything that is going to split up your oneness with Him and make you see yourself separately. Nothing is so important as to keep right spiritually. The great solution is the simple one - "Come unto Me." The depth of our reality, intellectually, morally and spiritually, is tested by these words. In every degree in which we are not real, we will dispute rather than come.

I love the emphasis on the fact that freedom, healing, and experiencing love have so little to do with what we do--but rather Who we come to. May our awareness of Him--His love and grace move us. 

Good, Better, Best: Let's get personal.

Sleeping under light sheets in what seemingly felt like the perfect summer night led a 7:30 AM wake up call that I was actually prepared for. The cool breeze of morning was dancing through the windows of my friend's house where I spent the night. I woke up to conversations and hugs shared with good friends in the heart of Orange. I could already tell it was going to be one of those days. One of those good ones :D.

I drove about a mile to Kimmie's Coffee Cup in the Orange Circle to meet with Frankie, one of the teammates from my Uganda trip and raddest women I've ever met. She is southern hospitality at its finest (e.g. "swate tay"). Met with a smile and yet another hug, we found ourselves talking for three hours about what God's showing us, how His Spirit is moving and how when we sincerely say "He is good," He always ends up showing how He is far better than we could ever imagine. Passion oozes out of this woman; it's contagious. Where the Spirit moves--she moves. We laughed, we cried, and we gave Him the glory for all that He has done and is doing. She's felt the need to meet with me more so than she has since we came home from Uganda (early January). And likewise, I've been having a hankering to meet as well. It turns out that that wasn't at all coincidental. The Spirit's been leading us to the same themes of deliverance and healing as well as the same passages as we've been praying through things. We've both been spending a lot of time in the book of Hosea--both being reminded of and compelled to pursue, all the more, our First Love. At 24 and at 51, He is wooing us. Awesome :D. In the midst of our time together, I couldn't help but be thankful for how He's woven people into my life. I am rich because of the Who/who's in my life.  

Driving to campus for some major paper-writing and book-finding, I kept in mind the fact that Biola is currently holding its annual Missions Conference. One of the reps from ELIC (English Language  Institute China) came to speak the other day, and I wanted to stop by and say "hi." Well, the "hi" became an incredibly comfortable sit-down conversation about our overseas experiences, God's provision as well as His sense of humor. I asked her about the teaching opportunities seeing as how i'm feeling led to do long-term missions work. They have a number of opportunities, but their 2-year ones stood out to me a great deal. They encourage and firmly stand behind sending out teams and not just individuals. I'm 100% behind this. I cannot fathom going overseas and teaching in a foreign land without the support of the Body--near and far. The countries that ELIC is involved with are China, Mongolia, Laos, and Vietnam. If any of you are wondering, my parents are currently doing missions work in Vietnam. They work during the year and go over there during the summer months to serve and cultivate what's been established over there through their Non-Profit [Helping the Poor Children]; it's a program that focuses on the impoverished children in the rural villages--providing children with tuition for school while establishing relationships with their families to share the Love and Life of Christ through service. During summer of last year, I was prayed over by this elderly, but fiery couple, the Masons. Jesse felt that the Lord had put on my heart a draw to "my people"--the Vietnamese, and I was deeply moved by this. My mom also had a dream about all of us serving together. I've continued to pray about these words and visions, and I'm just asking the Lord to give me discernment and further direction (I wouldn't mind the prayers!! :)) Confirmation, please! Where He says, "Go," I will go. There are just moments when I just wish I knew, but He's enjoying me just coming to Him to talk and get to know Him, and i'm more than fine with that! 

All this is good and well, but I feel like it's just be blabbering away. I'm referencing things that seem to only "mean a lot" if you were there to experience them. If you don't want to get personal or see a glimpse into my heart, you might want to stop here. Otherwise, proceed. I invite you into this processing as a part of being honest and transparent. 

I realize it's anticlimactic to preface certain things, so I'm not going to--well literally, anyway. In light of this time of preparation (getting my MA in TESOL) and the Lord growing my inner [wo]man, my excitement is met with a very deep sense of longing. I've never been one of those girls/women who lives by this idea of a timeline. I never said i'd do things at a certain age. And I definitely never imagined being married by a certain age. Recently, i've entered into a new and sometimes uncomfortable but typically peaceful dialogue with God. Lord Jesus, I'm done with school in a year and a half. I'm open to you sending me anywhere....but...but God...I don't want to go alone.  I paint this no other shade than true. 

Here are the things I know to be true:

1) God is the giver of the best gifts.

2) God knows me more than I know myself--He knit me in my mother's womb. He is my heartbeat.

3) God has blessed me with the opportunity of knowing some of the most spectacular men ever! Period. Whether through friendships or relationships, God has shown me men who desire Jesus and pursue Him with all of who they are. This includes my dad. Many of the men in my life live with Kingdom vision, and I couldn't be more blessed. They've set the bar...pretty freakin' high. 

4) Marriage is the physical manifestation of the love between Christ and His church, which means this: It's a big deal. 

5) He, whomever he is, will be my Kingdom partner. We will be iron for each other. We will be extensions of His love to each other. This quote rings true: love does not consist of gazing at each other but looking outward in the same direction. What direction is this you ask: 1) Jesus and 2) Whatever country we find ourselves in, haha. 

6) God is, and will always be, my First Love. And the man I marry will love God with all of his being and love me well because He will love me through Christ's love in Him. Likewise me with him. 

7) Trusting God is one of the best ways to worship Him. Indeed, this whole process is worship. I first want to know my Jesus--not to attain something or someone but to be fully open to Him and His work. 

8) Dynamic Duo. Words spoken over me. I gladly receive them! 

9) God's in the business of blowing our socks off. If we find ourselves manipulating situations, we fall victim to using what we know to do what we think is best for us. Silly humans. He calls us to trust. The tree that is firmly planted by water whose roots are nourished by the nearby stream did not plant itself or cultivate itself. It stands firmly rooted in its Source of life. May we be these trees. 

I guess a list of 10 would have rounded things off nicely. Oh well. I don't say these things because "they make me feel better." Knowing truth doesn't always make the process easier, but it does make it far richer. I walk through this time with the confidence of Christ and with the full assurance that He sees, provides, is present, near, almighty, sovereign, and worthy of all worship. 

In closing. We often want what's good. We hope for the better. Ultimately, He has the best. 

More Jesus, please! He gives the best gifts. He is the best gift. 

:: BE THE DRUM::

Music really does bring the world together. In this case, music's bringing the world together for the relief efforts in Haiti. Eighteen stellar artists came together and poured their hearts and talents into this project. It's one of those "donate as you feel led" type of things. There's no minimum (at least I don't think there is) or a maximum. This project represents giving, receiving, restoration, and hope. Here again we see the power of music. Enjoy! 

http://bethedrum.com/about/

Some more artwork from the project:

Sometimes the Muse is too Great to Keep Silent.

I've done it for about five years now. But tonight bears a different tone and strikes a different chord. Tonight marks an "end" of five years worth of meeting once a week with a group of people who have become as close to kin as you can get without being related :). A gathering that I thought was going to be sad and heavy was something very other tonight. The conversation flowed (and we even had Soph Skype so we could all be present!). It takes great courage to venture into the unknown and unfamiliar, and i'm proud to say that I know a courageous bunch! The Holy Spirit came, rested upon that room, upon us, and guided the conversation and allowed us to see His grace from beginning to end.

I can count the places the group has been held: at the CSULB dorms, Alex' apartment, the Termino House,  and Em's apartment. What's a bit more difficult to do is to look back and count how many people have actually come through the group. There have been some who have been there for the whole 5-year stint, and others who have just been a part of the group in the last 6 or so months. But regardless of whether one invested months or years, each person has marked a different layer of God's hand of faithfulness, grace, and provision--all illuminating His sovereignty and highlighting His beautiful orchestration of each life in the group (even some lives outside of the group!!).

We left tonight with mixed emotions--some filled with hopeful anticipation of what the future holds, some excited but still actively grieving something that's been very much a part of their lives, and others feeling a bit lost. But my prayer is that as each of us left Em's house, we would present the postures of our hearts as worship to a God who hears, who cares, and will give us clarity and give us more of Himself as we ask. Because our Maker exists in community and relationship, He will continue to provide community for His kids, and I look forward to seeing how that will manifest in each of our lives.

I mean--wow! What stories and testimonies of God's favor we get to share and bring into so many aspects of our lives. It's not just that we get to share, but that we must share. These stories all point to how amazing God is, and i'm floored to think that God would gift me with something so amazing to be a part of for 5 years of my life.

Being given the privilege of being both a member and a leader of this group, I've learned a myriad of things that are irreplaceable, and I praise God for allowing me to learn them in this environment. I've learned the value of being vulnerable, the beauty of being broken before the Body, the power of being honest, the weight of living in community, the humility of leadership, the strength of unity, and the healing power of prayer. Those are only some of the things that come to mind. This group has been and will continue to be family, and it makes me giddy to think that this will always be looked upon as such a sweet time in my life--so so dear to my heart.

For those of you who know what I mean, i'm sure there's an appreciation for this bit of reflection--an homage, if you will. Others might think that this is me being over-dramatic about something that seems to be nothing. Oh, let me tell ya...it isn't nothing. It was more than I could have ever asked for, and it excites me to know that God wants to keep surprising us with how he uses the Body to bless the Body.

I sit here like an overflowing cup--pouring over the brim with joy and love. Thank you (each of you) for how you've invested your lives into this group, how you've shaped it and each brought such a unique flare to its dynamic. The Lord has held this group in His hands for the last 5 years, and will continue to do so with each individual as we move forward. The Lord has been the bookends for this journey, and there's a beautiful story to prove it.

A glimpse of the last few years :)

Aaaa-mazing! My LBLG Fam, you've been a constant source of inspiration in my life. Thank you so much.

"But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body"

It's a long one, but it's been a long time in coming.

I had been carrying a backpack of bricks around for a year. You'd think I would know by the strains, the tiredness, and this unyielding sense of, "Seriously? C'mon...this has gotta end..." that I would have figured out I was carrying some kind of superfluous weight on my back.

Call it maternal, call it the "developer," the carer, or the controller in me. It's a mixed bag of all of those things. There is much room for those things to be sifted out with hopes of removing more of the control while strengthening the other traits.

I know that I didn't need to wear the backpack this long to learn what I learned, but God gently helped me carry that as he knew the scales would fall off of my eyes. Impeccable. That's what His timing is. Much came to my attention yesterday and the past few weeks that solidified some revelation that had been given, and more revelation was given that finally released me of the weight of the backpack--it just slipped off of my proverbial shoulders.

I wasn't able to go to every session of The Torrey Conference (an event that takes place every year at Biola University), but I was able to go to the closing session. I appreciated the fact that there was a recap of the overarching themes/messages of the week :

* Trust the process of suffering & move into it.

(rehearsing the whole of your faith/Psalm 60/77)

*Trust God for treasures in darkness.

*Trust the power of incarnational love. 

*Trust the bigger pictures.

*Trust His care for us.

All that I've shared is the bare minimum backdrop to a very complex, multi-layered, bittersweet friendship of mine. I don't know how you deal with things, but I have an incredibly hard time watching and being present with friends who I know are walking straight into a hole--a hole of heartache, a hole of destructive behavior, of whatever--you name it! Whatever the case, there's much self-inflicted pain; all of which, in my mind's eye are events that are completely avoidable. I want to love, but I don't want to condone certain things. I want to be there for, but I don't know If I can hold the hand of someone who is hurting themselves. I wanted to love her, but in trying on my own, I more so realized that I wanted to fix her.

There is the problem. "I" want to love, "I" don't want to condone, "I" want to be there, "I" don't know if... "I, I, I!" All of the I's in my thought process slanted my heart towards what I thought as wise (doesn't even matter whether or not I was right). My heart was bent, and trusting God became even more difficult--the focus was off of Jesus and placed onto myself. Wisdom is crap without a deep rooted trust in Love.

Well, there in the raw, has been one of the biggest struggles in my life in this past year. I wanted so badly for a friend to be well that a posture of love quickly turned into a posture of control masked as   love. Trusting God with that friendship was lip service. Well, no--more like a tug-of-war between trust and myself; there was much back and forth with me foolishly thinking that I was actually winning at certain points.


Let me revert you back to these previous statements: I want to love, but I don't want to condone certain things. I want to be there for, but I don't know If I can hold the hand of someone who is hurting themselves. Like a ton of bricks, it came down on me one day; God loves me when I'm a complete idiot, and He also is present with me when I am self-destructive. In God's love, He shows His wisdom. He's doesn't love me if, He loves me even if. 

In places where I know nothing else but to be with someone, I was reminded that I need to trust in the incarnate love of Jesus. Just be, and He's got the rest. I am helpless, but He isn't.  

While I was hanging out with some friends, a friend shared a vision God gave him for me. He saw me writing with an ink pen in this journal with a huge smile on my face, splattering ink everywhere, but loving every moment. Things shifted, I was still writing, but now I was writing frantically and there were no words showing up. I started writing my own story.

I'm writing your story. Let me show you how amazing your story is going to be because it's a part of My story.

So, I don't know if it's appropriate to call it this, but there was a sequel to that vision. He also saw me trying to hold someone else's pen as I attempted to write her story (mind you, this is what the Spirit's telling him; this friend wasn't completely unaware of the situation with my friend). This is when the backpack just seemed to fall off of my shoulders, and as I just cried, the tears seemed to cleanse my soul. The very thing that "did it" though was the verbal declaration of, "God, I give my sister to you." The verbal act happened in community, and that's what I had needed all this time. I don't know how many times I had said that in my head or in my heart, and it still wasn't enough to bring that darkness into light. There was a release of that to the Lord in the Body. Healing!


God is with us. Emmanuel. El Emet. God of Truth. Thank You for being with us and being Light for us and in us. I don't know and will never know how it is that You love us so much.