The Beauty of Art

Sometimes all I need is to see God working in someone else's life
When I am feeling a little off or discouraged to see someone I am praying for succeed makes me get excited
To see God using his children and to see those children living in his grace is so amazing
I was drinking coffee with a friend las night (well more like my best friend) and she was describing some of her prophetic art to me and I just got it, I completely understood what God was trying to say through it. And I am pretty sure she already knew exactly what it meant but I just had to explain it because it got me so excited. And I feel the need to share what this was. (I hope you don't mind, I just think you and your painting are awesome!)
So she had a painting and it was ugly so she kept trying to paint over it with white paint but the colours kept blending into this ugly grey. when she tried washing it off it just wouldn't work and she even tried to scrap it off with her nails but with no success. So eventually she got so frustrated she crumpled the paper up. But God told her to grab a fresh canvas, to put her canvas over top of it and imprint the ugliness onto to this fresh canvas. But not to stop there, once she had done this God said to paint all these beautiful colours over top and it completely hid the ugliness. And that is when it hit me. The ugly canvas was us, humanity, trying our hardest to cover our sins. Trying to earn forgiveness, that our works would be enough to cover all the dirt. But all it does is blends into grey, leaving us all the more frustrated, leaving our works nothing more than dirty rags. But that clean canvas, that is  Jesus, that is him in all his perfection taking our sins on so that he can make them beautiful, so that when we surrender them he can take our sins and cover them with his amazing grace. I have always known this and live in this, but I just got so excited when I heard it in painted form and to realize that, that was what God was trying to say and he had revealed it to me.
I still get so excited when God reveals himself to me. As I have become better at listening, I have realized that God has always been speaking to me I just doubted my ability to hear him. But he is so much bigger than my doubt and so much patience to wait until the day when I am ready and willing to listen to him and to let him use me.
He is so much bigger then the attacks I am and will face as I grow closer to him and I need to realize that having an off week is nothing to God, he has been around forever and can wait that week until I am ready to stand up again. And I am able to stand up in his strength alone and not allow myself to be so easily defeated by some deception by some stupid enemy. 

I have all these ideas swimming around in my head and I wish I could find a way to write them eloquently
But all these thoughts just overwhelm me sometimes
I have these moments of inspiration but they tend to come in the middle of class
I have moments of manic thoughts, when I am overcome by what it is I want to say, but by the time I get to a piece of paper, I have become so distracted by ten other thoughts that they never get to escape.
Seriously, if you could see the inside of my mind right now you would understand why I feel so crazy right now
But I don't see anything wrong with being crazy right now. I am loving it. I have decided to embrace this crazy and see where it takes me.
I have all these dreams and ideas coming to my head that one day I want to drop out of school and help people and the next day I want to go to class so I can be one step closer to getting where I need to go.
And once again this is not at all what I wanted to write about and to be honest I can't even remember what I was going to write about so I am just going to go with this.
I have all this passion right now, like overwhelming, can't contain even if I wanted to kind of passion. And I don't know what I am supposed to be doing with it. It is not the kind of joyful jump up and dance passion, but this deep burning in my soul that makes me want to change something.
And I think what I need to change right now is me.
As I have grown closer to God and walked more in his holiness I am becoming more aware of all the small areas of my life that I need to fix, all the refining that God still needs to do in my life.
And it is frustrating, because there is a lot of work left. Before I could see all the big things that he was removing from my life and that was great but not we are getting down to the details and they are frustrating. I mean these are my habits that don't glorify God, the parts of my that he never intended, the lies I still need to work out and the places where I need to be humbled. And it is really hard, I mean I don't even know where to begin changing things that I have been doing for as long as I can remember. But, at the end of the day it doesn't matter that I have no idea how I am ever going to accomplish any of this because I never could, only God can and that is why I am walking in his light. So as much as his light may highlight all my dirt, it also shows that I am one step closer to reflecting his glory in my life.
I honestly have no idea what I was going to write about and now I have that nagging feeling where I just want to figure it out. Maybe I just need to carry a notebook and write down all these thoughts as they enter my swirling brain. And maybe when I am in the middle of class I should just stop taking notes and start writing, because that is what I want to do but I always feel like that would be frowned upon.
Because right now I have about 3 different things I want to write about but I feel like I should leave them for another blog but then I worry that I will forget about them later. You see this is what the inside of my brain is like, ALL the time. It is a very confusing place to spend any amount of time trying to sort out.
Well I want to end off with one final thought. That our God is HUGE. I am talking heavens can't contain him. And I mean have you seen how big the known universe is? It's enormous, and that is only a fraction of what  is out there. I would just like to point out that the universe is infinite. Meaning that infinite amount of space can't contain God; try to wrap your head around that one. And while looking up fun universe facts I also discovered that there is an estimated 300 sextillion stars, and God has every single one named. That is a lot of stars. Does that not just blow your mind? Because it sure blows my mind and I become so overwhelmed with the magnitude of my God that there are not enough words to describe it. It just sends chills down my spine and this feeling in my soul when I remember that, this huge God is my father and loves me personally.

Whatever happened to love?

As many have had to hear before I can rant for a very long time about love and especially the word love. My biggest issue is the over use of the word love. We say we love everything and everyone; we love anything from a starbucks coffee, to a new shirt, to some cute animal. We have become desensitized to what that word means what power it holds. No wonder we have no problem saying I love you to the first boy who holds our hand. And it is no wonder that we have no problem just transferring that love around, I mean love never seems to last that long anymore. People are too distracted and there are too many shiny new toys out there to "love" to stick to anything for too long. When something breaks or someone lets us down we have no problem just shrugging it off and taking our love back. There are girls with broken hearts everywhere I look because they gave themselves away for "love" that didn't last.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Whatever happened to love like this? To loving someone with everything you have? To loving until death, until it hurts to even think about letting them go because they have become a part of whom you are and where you see yourself going. Whatever happened to being allowed to admit that this is the kind of love you want, that I want. Whatever happened to romance? Where did we decide that romance had died, and let lust replace it? Some days I look at the world and I am just sad, I wish that the people of the world and the church would claim this love as their own, realize they have a father on heaven who loves them so much more than these words and they deserve amazing love on worth and to not sell themselves short.

We have fully turned love into an emotion which it was never meant to be. Infatuation, lust and 'like' are emotions but love is a deep seeded truth.

love (noun): a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

                   Christianity: God's benevolent attitude towards man

                                     man's attitude of reverent devotion towards God

When I went on dictionary.com these were just two of the many definitions I found about love. Love and Christianity are still linked within the secular world, which says something about what Christians are supposed to stand for.

I have come to the realization that as Christians we have such a hard time maintaining any kind of loving relationship with God long term because we have lost what love really means. What it means to choose to love over letting the emotion take us where it may. We have allowed the world’s definition of what love is to become our definition of love and then we wonder why we are so unsatisfied.

As I fall more in love with God every day I realize that I have never known what it was to love God and receive his love up until a month ago. I was living with the worlds definition of love, letting my emotions take me and being satisfied but not living in the over flowing abundance of what God's love really is. Until we learn what love really is we are never going to be able to receive love? Until we learn to love ourselves we can't expect to be able to receive love. If we don't think we are worthy of love then we are never going to be living in the love of our Father.

And when I think about love I also think about the love I desire here on earth. I realize that there is a lot in myself that I need to work on to truly showing how I love others but I have also realized that I have sold myself short. I don't want to compromise my desires or dreams around another person. I want them to fit into my dreams. And although I am more than willing to change my dreams for them, I am not willing to let go of what God has put into my heart. They have to work around God's will, not God working around my will.

So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,...[man] will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." Genesis 3:14a-15b

I was confronted with this verse the other day and it got me to thinking. We are God's children and although we have fallen and are cursed we have power in our redemption. We will be bitten by the serpent, temptation will get the best of us and we will fail, but all that is, is one small nip to our heel. And with that heel is what we will use to crush Satan's head, not hurt or damage but Crush, as a friend said, have his brains all over our shoe. So my question is, why do we let a small strike to our heel completely destroy us? We fall one time and instead of walking it off we fall to the ground wallow in self pity for a while and wonder why it is so much harder to get back up again. I feel like I haven't emphasized enough, that we can DESTROY the enemy, he is some slithering coward and we are God's children. He has so much power in our lives because we let him. We let him speak lies into our life and we let him continually hurt us because we don't get up crush his head and walk away. Instead we tell him exactly where it hurts the most and then wonder why he won't leave us alone. Once we stop making Satan so big and God so small we will realize that we look ridiculous for being scared of snake when we have GOD on our side. I mean he is GOD, take a moment and just think about the magnitude of our God, we make him so commonplace, so mundane when God is magnificent and incomprehensible. HE IS GOD. And as another friend likes to add, he is on FIRE. I mean really who is going to win this fight; some snake or a pillar of FIRE.
And when I say we, I mostly mean myself, that is something I need to apply in my own life. As my pastor has said "blow for blow"; don't just take the hit from him and walk away, hit him back, don't let satan have the power because his power comes from deception and when you are living in the truth he loses all his power.

Picture this:
There is a girl, 4 years old, hair pulled back into a bun, a couple of hairs falling out of place but presentable. She is wearing her freshly cleaned, wonderfully pink ballet outfit and her slightly scuffed shoes. She is standing with 6 other girls who are in the same state she is; giggly with nerves and excitement. This is their first recital ever. They have worked all year to show off their new skill and the audience is eager to see how they have done. As they walk onto the stage following their teacher the lights begin to grow brighter and they stand squirming and ready to start. As this little girl adjusts to the bright lights there is only one thing she is looking for, her dad. And she sees him, sitting in the third rowing smiling up at her and just as excited and nervous as she is. As the music starts she pulls her eyes away from her dad and focuses them on the teacher who leads them through the whimsical steps to her very first performance. And she stumbles a few times and becomes distracted by the other girls and the bright lights that seem to make everything more difficult. She even falls once but manages to get back up and keep on dancing. As the music fades away she looks back into the audience and their is her daddy beaming as he applauds his daughter. As she walks off stage she is so excited to be done the performance, but hopes that her mistakes won't cost her the pride of her father. As she walks out the stage door and searches for her dad she sees him still beaming and holding a single pink daisy. He picks her up, pulls her into a tight hug, and whispers how much he loves her and just how overwhelmingly proud he is of her. He hands her the daisy and she asks him about her mistakes, and he responds with; "What mistakes? All I saw was my princess doing her best."
Now take a moment and picture this:
That little girl is you, and that dad is God. You are his little girl, his princess and he wants to give you so much more than a single daisy. He wants to pick you up, hold you tightly, and tell you how much he loves you and is proud of you. Because he doesn't see your mistakes he just sees his daughter trying her best in a world that trys to point out the worst. You are the apple of his eye, his image, his creation. You are the crowning jewel in his creation, the magnificent finale to his perfect creation. So as the lights dim and you walk off the stage of the day just remember that behind the stage door is your dad with a gift and a hug and he doesn't see your mistakes, he sees your perfection.