Psalms 65:3 “When we were overwhelmed by sins, you forgave (or, made atonement for) our transgressions.”

Since the year started I have kept coming back to this verse. I truly stumbled upon in, seemingly by accident, one day and I have received so much comfort from it.

This verse came to me in the middle of a fast. For 21 days I prayed that God would break me and make me more like Him. I prayed that I would die to myself and live more fully for Him and not for my own satisfaction or to make much of myself, but that my life would make much of Him. I specifically prayed that God would take a specific sin away from me, something that I have struggled with for years.

During the fast a dear and close friend confided in me that they to struggled with the same sin. What was so amazing about this was that I had, up until this point, never shared this part of myself with anyone. To have someone just come to me and confide in me the same thing that I had been praying to get rid of was truly the work of God. We were able to share our struggle in a way that we never had before. Not with a condemning spirit, but with understanding and both of us having the desire to change. We prayed that night for God to give us both strength and courage to be honest. It was the most amazing experience ever.

This confession of sin in myself and the accompanying accountability of my friend has truly shown me Gods unending mercy and love for all of us. That when I felt alone, or “overwhelmed by sins”, God made a way for it to be safe for me to share and it reaffirmed that He forgives my transgressions. This verse reminds me of this every time I read it and I continue to be thankful.

I. Am. Emotional.

It’s true, I am the typical girl when it comes to my emotions. If you cry, I’m crying. If your heart is breaking, mine is breaking too. If your depressed… well, you get the picture.
In my younger years this was a big problem. I couldn’t handle all of my emotions, much less anyone else’s. Sometimes it got the best of me and I suffered for it. Negative emotions would hit me like bricks and I could spend days in a vary dark place, alone with my thoughts, frustrations, and fears.
I could get so bogged down by my life and the lives of others that I would stop talking. Yes me. I could go days without having a real conversation with anyone. I would answer and ask questions, but in reality I was just trying not to feel anything. I looked like a robot, completely detached from people so that I wouldn’t have to feel them or let them know how bad I felt.

As time has gone on things have changed. I’m not the girl that wouldn’t speak, as anyone who knows me can attest to, lol. But I still feel things in the same ways. The difference now is that I know that my feelings are a gift from God, not a hindrance to my life. God has showed me that my feelings are not to be hidden, but to be embraced. They compel me to action, to love others when they are hurting, and to give Him glory in the process.

I would rather feel everything then to feel nothing but hollowness in my soul. So I see my emotions as a blessing and not a curse. Just some thought I had the other night.

Reaching Our Students

I found the following article on a website called Youth Worker(http://www.youthworker.com). The author is Jeff Vankooten, founder of LivingYearz. I think it's an important reminder to us all that, no matter what gadgets we come up with, the most useful gadget we have in ministry is ourselves.




If you think you can reach us, don't blame yourselves when you fail. It's not your fault. We have changed dramatically since your halcyon days; and our values, attitudes and expectations are wildly different than yours. Don't let the costumes of our baggy pants or the awkward gait lull you into complacency. We are smart and dangerous, and our methods for navigating the world are far beyond your ability to comprehend. Resistance is futile.



We were socialized into a world of accelerating change. We never have seen Larry Bird play basketball; we have no clue who the Soviets are. Starbucks always has been on every corner. Atari predates us as do vinyl albums.


We are unbelievably adept at technology. We know you know this, but don't even try to keep up because we'll leave you in the haze of our digitized dust. We were born with a mouse in our hand. You wrote love notes on paper during third grade; we text them on cell phones. You passed atoms in the classroom; we passed bits. You might often hear the buzzing of our world in the background of yours—some call it white noise, others cyberspace, some the computing cloud; but everyone knows it is there even if they can't quite place it—like a silent fart.
Our information is organized across multiple channels, some of which you are not aware (ever heard of Twitter? Postulate?) and constantly is updating or expanding. We see you as just another channel from which we derive our information about your world—and your God. So there. Click.


We are wildly connected. Information and messages flow easily from one place to another; and we transport it with us on really cool, miniaturized hand-held devices. Our knowledge isn't housed in physical libraries, relegated to the confines of a classroom or accessed solely in church buildings and programs. I know you won't want to hear this, but you aren't the primary source of our knowledge on a subject, even if that subject is Jesus. You are just one tool among many, adding a bit of value to the overall linkage of our intelligence and spirituality.


We participate in the creation of content and emphasize social affiliations and active engagement. We are a swarming, heaving hive of connectional nodes and interactions. We are an ethnically heterogeneous group of consumers who are confident in our ability to read anything, buy anything and experience anything.


We have been so commercially indulged since our inception that the first words out of most of our mouths were not "Mama" or "Dada" but "Coke" and "McDonalds." We are bonded to brands. By age 10, we were visiting stores 270 times per year. It doesn't mean we're proud of that fact; deep down in the places we are less and less capable of accessing, we know there has to be more. Much more.


So if you decide to reach us, help us access that deepest place that not even technology or the market can penetrate. Don't package spiritual products for us to consume. Embody Christ in ways that are tangible and enduring. Love us from the core of your being. The more relationally significant you want to be, the less technology you should use to communicate to us. Use your vocal chords and tear ducts. If you want to create a piece-meal Christ that speaks to us on a perfunctory level, use all the technological tools and gizmos at your disposal. We'll hear about Christ, sure; but we won't truly know Him

Fear of the Future...

I’m going to admit this, I’m a little nervous. The school semester starts up next Monday and, to be clear, I’m scared. Not about the coming semester. No, it will be a breeze. I’m scared about what’s going to happen when it’s all over.

When August of ‘10 hits I hope to be starting seminary school. And seminary school is the scary part. What am I going to learn? Will I be any good at it? What if I fail out and never finish? I am hounded by these thoughts at the start of every semester. I completely believe that I am in fact not smart, that I can’t learn anything, and that any value I have does not apply to school. When it comes to college I feel completely inadequate as it is, much less going to school to learn more about God’s word.

But this would be obedience to God, that I go. And that I do well. So why am I so scared?? Because the enemy wants nothing more then to make me scared and afraid so that I can never reach my full potential, that’s why. He does it to us all of the time, in every aspect of our lives that he can. Jerk.

Just something that was on my mind today…

Can't Convince You

As per my last post, God is really showing me things about ministry and how I am to interact with my students. Just as I can’t love my students into a relationship with Christ. I can’t save them from sin or their lives or anything else. Something else that God pressed on my heart this week was this

You can’t convince someone into a relationship with Christ.

You can’t just tell someone about how much God loves them, and then love on them yourself and expect drastic changes in their heart, in their relationships, and more importantly in their relationship with God. It’s God. It’s God’s job, no, His joy to change hearts for Him. We are only vessels on this earth, commanded to do His will.

I have a student who wants a relationship with God. But there is one huge issue standing in her way. Herself. She has spent her life with drug addicted parents, with boys who use her body for fun, and she’s also had to live with her own self-deprecating thoughts about herself. She prays for God to change things and gets mad when there is no immediate response from Him.

I can tell Her that He is working in her life. I can point out ways that God had protected her and kept her from harm but those things are turning out to not be enough. I can’t convince her to love God. And I can’t convince her to submit to Him. Her salvation rests on the shoulders of the Holy Spirit, not mine. All I can do is what God commands me to do and pray that in every interacting I have with her, I’m being obedient to Him and not working for my own ends.

Love Isn't Enough

I have learned a lot from being involved in student ministry. A lot about myself and a lot about students. How they think, what they feel. Things like that. One think that God is just killing me with right now is this

You can’t just love them into a relationship with Christ.

I can’t just will them and love them into accepting Him. No matter what I do, what I say, what I give them, how often I pray for them. Non of that can save them. Non of that can give them an authentic relationship with God. The vessel that I am is just not enough. God has got to do all of the work.

How do I leave it all up to God? Well if I’m going to be honest, I don’t always. I want to fix them. I want them to know God and know His love and blessings. I want to free them from bondage. But God is showing me that, even though my loving them won’t change them, it won’t necessarily change their heart for Him, it is what I’m called to do. To love them through their mistakes and their hurts. To show them Christ’s love. All I get to do is be obedient to Him and rest in the fact, and it is a fact, that He is working in those students lives. In ways that I never could. And for that, I am thankful.

Matthew 13:22 The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. 23 But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

This passage of scripture was used this weekend at Lifechirch.tv. It struck me, hard. This is a commonly used scripture when illustrating people and their faith. I would imagine that every pastor, at some point in time, has used this passage. But maybe not in the way I intend to. This is what I head when pastor Craig recited those words…

Matt 13:22- the one who received the seeds was me. The thorns the scriptures are referring to are my family. The lifestyle I was raised in. How I was shown by the women in my family to carry myself and behave as a women. Their worries about this life and how to make ends meet for the sake of the family were a heavy burden on me growing up. Any hope of a savior was quickly swallowed up in their worry, snatching all the joy that a savior could bring. The very joy and life that Christ could have given me, to us, was choked out of our hearts as soon as we got back to the car. Life, or the enemy, had intervened where God had intended to bring us joy, and life killed everything.

Matt 13:23- I never saw good soil until I felt old. Old enough to know that life was hard and that, in general, hope had abandoned my family and left us all to rot in our bitterness. And honey, we rot in fashion. But good soil started to find me. But for the most part, it always felt like quicksand. Just as unreliable as everything else, just this the name “happiness” attached to it to make it sound nice. I had a good example of what good soil was, but no follow through from anyone.

I understand good soil now. It’s the person who sees the world for what it is and still has joy in Christ, no matter the circumstance. But it can be more then that. It’s the example we set for others. I have more to say about good soil, but I’m done for now.