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| Dear Xanga, It’s not you… it’s just. Well, I’m seeing someone else. I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. You’re a great blog and I know you’ll find someone wonderful. I’ll still pop in every once in a while, and write a little something but for now, I’m at: www.iamabbaschild.blogspot.com | | |
| Song of praise  I am deeply loved.
You have filled my heart with joy. You know me and see the deepest parts of me. You have blessed me beyond measure. Loved me just as I’m made to be loved. These last two weeks, God has brought a lot of healing in my life and redemption, leaving me feeling deeply loved in the core of my being. Expressing his love for me in ways I cannot articulate but feel in every fiber of my being. I am feeling really cared for and loved today. I have a diamond ring on my finger and just got flowers. A couple Fridays ago, as I was running a bunch of errands after work for leaving for Orlando, Nia calls me and tells me she needs to meet up, one last time before she leaves. I’m thinking it has to do with her meeting the parents for the first time and of course agree. I get there, a few of the girls yell surprise and I’m like for what? I forgot my birthday was coming up on Monday, the first day of new staff training. We were at Panera and it was great to see those girls on last time before I left. Then, they tell me to close my eyes. I hear whispering and laughing around me as they’re fumbling to do something. My heart races, what is going on, I wonder, what IS it… “How should we do it?” “Just like that,” one of them says. “Okay now…open!” I look and see a beautiful diamond ring in a Helzberg Diamond box. I don’t say anything. Shock is written all over my face. What is this? The first thought in my head was it was Nia’s engagement ring that she was showing me, maybe Chris just proposed and she wanted to show it to me. Guys I can’t take this, Oh my gosh I say. Is this some joke? Maybe they found this ring somewhere and wanted to show it to me. Then as I reach for it, Nia goes, WAIT! And my fears flood in, oh maybe it’s not mine. It is Nia’s. Then they all go, no it’s yours. She was making sure the price thing wasn’t still on there lol. I’m of course teary and still in shock. Then I read the card. It was so beautiful. I felt like it was people I truly love and care about saying, we love you back. We really love you back. You never love to expect to be loved in return and so when that happens, when you see and experience that it is astounding. It truly blessed me. In the card they wrote if anyone deserves a diamond ring, it is you. That just spoke volumes to me and struck a chord with a lot that God’s been speaking in my heart. That you are loved, deeply loved Mazvita. First by me, and by others. You are wanted, special, and loved because I first loved you. I just got the ring back from being sized yesterday. And today, one of the ladies at work, an older lady single who has gotten to be a good friend, brought me a large bouquet of flowers from her front yard. A beautiful arrangement of pink and purple peonies, lilacs, and roses. I have a full life. Jesus you have come and given me life. Blessed me with amazing friends, amazing times, amazing people in my life, amazing families to be a part of, amazing children to love, an amazing dream you’re unfolding before me with the calling you’ve placed on my life, and amazing life, full and rich. Not lacking in anything. You’ve given me more of yourself. I desire to give to you but I offer so little. You keep loving me my giving me more of you. This morning I was encouraged. Full of faith. I hoping to get to see the kids today, the baby is almost two months old. I miss them so much. I thank you lord this morning I wanted to see things in your reality. Help me to see things as you see them lord, help me to rejoice in you today. Thank you for speaking to me through this verse this morning, help me to keep my eyes on you: Who among you fears the Lord And obeys the word of his servant Let him who walks in the dark, Who has no light, Trust in the name of the Lord And rely on His God. The prophet Isaiah | | |
| relinquish control::stand in awe and worship::the key to peace is authority  This is God, our God forever and ever;
He will be our guide even to the death. Psalm 48:14 In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed, In your strength you will guide them. Exodus 15 Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that will prevail. Proverbs ::: “The story is told of a little girl whose father was an airline pilot. As they crossed the Atlantic, a storm came up. The flight attendant awakened the little girl and told her to fasten her seat belt because they were in turbulent weather. The little girl opened her eyes, saw the lightening flashing around the plane, and asked, “Is Daddy at the controls?” The flight attendant replied, “Yes, your father is in the cockpit.” The little girl smiled, closed her eyes, and went back to sleep. God is at the controls of our lives. Or, rather, He wants to be at the controls. But He gives us the freedom to pilot ourselves as we wish. The problem is that we often crack up, much as we could expect to do if we took the controls of an airplane we had not been taught to fly. God knows us. He knows our strengths and our weaknesses, and He knows what is best for us. If we will only relinquish the control of our lives to Him. He will see us safely home.” – Billy Graham devotional ::: I can’t describe why but I feel like a different person than who hit the road for St. Louis a week and a half ago. It was the most stretching week and the most amazing week. I can’t put into words all I experienced and the battles the Lord brought me through. His peace and His never-ending presence quieted all in my heart as I could rest in Him knowing I was exactly where He desired for me to be. I feel like I’ve been through the wringer, wearied, stronger, encouraged, built up, ripped apart yet with a spirit willing to advance as I’m entering deeper into the battle. There is nothing left for me to lean on but my God who fights the battle as I wait on Him. Lord be my strength, my refuge, my love, my all. I have to keep going. It feels like it wasn’t even real and that it was a different world. Lord I surrender all to you. I surrender this process to you and ask you to be glorified in it. Be glorified in me. Help me to define and strive for faithfulness not success. I am not in control. This is probably the scariest realization I’ve had every single day last week, continuing into this one. Today marks day one on the official support raising trail (I wrote this on Tuesday) and it is scary not knowing the process and the journey the Lord is taking me on for the days to come. I want this journey to be marked by my relation to you and my love and trust for you. I want to know you more. To fully trust and rely upon your love for me even when I can’t see or feel the assurance of that love or of progress. Let it be a long, joyful obedience drawing me closer to your heart. The key to peace is authority. Lord, you are the prince of peace, the ruler over all, who or what is in authority in my life besides you? It’s a scary, yet secure place to be, I’m placing my life in your hands, Lord. Trusting you for my every breath. Lesson from staff training: 1) Worship the Lord first; 2) Let everything else flow out from that This song has been playing in my heart over and over again since last night, as the Lord’s purposes continue to prevail my feeble attempts and plans and I’m left with nothing but more in awe of him and His saving grace. Stand in Awe – Jeremy Riddle Gracious and astounding
God's love so confounding appears to us
In a cleansing flow of blood!
The Son left throne and glory,
Bore the Father's wrath and fury in our stead;
And for the sins of all He bled!
Chorus:
Stand in awe and worship!
Raise a voice and worship; Come adore
The King of kings and Lord of lords!
Behold the Lamb in Heaven
He was dead but God raised Him from the grave;
For His arm is mighty to save!
Now glorified and reigning
The keys of death and Hades in His hand;
And all hail the Lord of every man!
The King of kings and Lord of lords. | | |
| true worship Last night of GCM New Staff Training “Missions is NOT
the ultimate goal
of the church. Worship is.” “If the essence of worship is satisfaction in God, then worship can’t be a means to anything else. You simply can’t say to God, “I want to be satisfied in You so that I can have something else.” Because that would mean that you are not really satisfied in God but in that something else.
And that would dishonor God, not worship Him.” – John Piper "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 "You shall have no other gods before [a] me. 4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:6 | | |
| No One Wants to Die on a Cross ::: Intro by Ravi Zacharias: “We often hear the phrase “the crux of the matter” or “the crux of a situation.” The word crux comes from Latin and simply means “cross.” Why has the word crux come to be associated with a critical juncture or point in time? Because the cross of Jesus Christ is truly the crux of history. Without the cross, history itself cannot be defined or corrected. There is another word we often hear when we are in the throes of indescribable pain—the word excruciating. That, too, derives from Latin and means “out of the cross.” Across time and human experience the cross has been the historical event that intersects time and space and speaks to the deepest hurts of the human heart. But we live with more than pain and suffering. We also live with deep hungers within the human heart. These existentially gnaw at us with a desperate constancy. There are at least four such longing. The hunger for truth, as lies proliferate. The hunger for love, as we see hate ruling the day. The hunger for justice, as we see injustice mocking the law. The hunger for forgiveness, when we ourselves fail and stumble. These four stirrings grip the soul. As I see it, there is only one place in the world where these four hungers converge. That is at the cross. I dare say, therefore, that in this mix of pain and longing the divine answer is restoring and sublime. For within the paradox of the cross is the coalescing of our need and God’s provision. A.W. Tozer has been one of the greatest writers of all time on themes as profound as the soul’s hungers. He well grasped the paradox of the cross. In his opening essay, “The Cross Is A Radical Thing,” he exhorts the believer to resist the downgrading of the cross to a mere symbol. If the cross has become to us a humdrum ornament to our faith, we have not understood it, and we have not felt its offense. Tozer’s essays are truly needed in our day because he understood the death of Christ in both its timeliness and timelessness.” ::: If we should suddenly be revealed to those around us on the outside as Almighty God sees us within our souls, we would become the most embarrassed people in the world. If that should happen, we would be revealed as people barely able to stand, people in rags, some too dirty to be decent, some with great open sores. Some would be revealed in such condition that they would be turned out of skid row. Do we think that we are actually keeping our spiritual poverty a secret, that God doesn’t know us better than we know ourselves? But we will not tell Him, and we disguise our poverty of spirit and hide our inward state in order to preserve our reputation. We also want to keep some authority for ourselves. We cannot agree that the final key to our lives should be turned over to Jesus Christ. Brethren, we want to have dual controls—let the Lord run it but keep a hand on the controls just in case the Lord should fail! We are willing to join heartily in singing, “To God Be the Glory,” but we are strangely ingenious in figuring out ways and means by which we keep some of the glory for ourselves. In this matter of perpetually seeking our own interests, we can only say that people who want to live for God often arrange to do very subtly what the worldly souls do crudely and openly. A man who doesn’t have enough imagination to invent anything will still figure out a way of seeking his own interests, and the amazing thing is that he will do it with the help of some pretext which will serve as a screen to keep him from the ugliness of his own behavior. Yes, we have it among professing Christians—this strange ingenuity to seek our own interest under the guide of seeking the interests of God. I am not afraid to say what I fear—that there are thousands of people who are using the deeper life and Bible and prophecy, foreign missions and physical healing for no other purpose than to promote their own private interests secretly. They continue to let their apparent interest in these things serve as a screen so that they don’t have to take a look at how ugly they are on the inside. So we talk a lot about the deeper life and spiritual victory and becoming dead to ourselves—but we stay very busy rescuing ourselves from the cross. That part of ourselves that we rescue from the cross may be a very little part of us, but it is likely to be the seat of our spiritual troubles and our defeats. No one wants to die on a cross—until he comes to the place where he is desperate for the highest will of God in serving Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul said, “I want to die on that cross and I want to know what it is to die there, because if I die with Him I will also know Him in a better resurrection” (see Philippians 3:10-11). Paul was not just saying, “He will raise me from the dead”—for everyone will be raised for the dead. He said, “I want a superior resurrection, a resurrection like Christ’s.” Paul was willing to be crucified with Christ, but in our day we want to die a piece at a time, so we can rescue little parts of ourselves from the cross… People will pray and God to be filled—but all the while there is that strange ingenuity, that contradiction within which prevents our wills from stirring to the point of letting God have His way… Those who live in this state of perpetual contradiction cannot be happy Christians. A man who is always on the cross, just piece after piece, cannot be happy in that process. But when that man takes his place on the cross with Jesus Christ once and for all, and commends his spirit to God, lets go of everything and ceases to defend himself—sure, he has died, but there is a resurrection that follows! If we are willing to go this route of victory with Jesus Christ, we cannot continue to be mediocre Christians, stopped halfway to the peak. Until we give up our own interests, there will never be enough stirring within our beings to find His highest will. – A.W. Tozer | | |
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