Heart

"A heartless Christian must be a terrible grief to our Lord." - Oswald Chambers

Where does your heart lie? What is your hearts desire? Chambers was specifically referring to the fact that some Christians really don't care about people. Our first priority seems to be ourselves... which is generally true of most people. My question, however, is more broad... What is your hearts desire? Look at your life and examine it. What do you focus most of your attention on? What are you striving after? What do you care the most about? What is something you are passionate about?

I thought about those questions... and I had a few different things come to mind. Then, I had a thought... Shouldn't I desire Christ the most? Shouldn't I be most passionate about Him? Well, obviously! I think that it goes without saying that Christ should come first in all areas of our lives... I also think that It's okay to have things we are passionate about... Desires that the Lord gives us to bring us closer to Him. Desires that are not of the Lord need to be completely removed... cut off from your life. I have a list of things that need to be removed... who doesn't? I can already tell that this process that God is taking me through right now will be a long one, but it's SO worth it!

He has definitely answered my prayer of giving me a huge desire to get to know Him more on a daily basis...

the little children

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." - Matthew 19:14

I just watched Where the Wild Things Are. It just reminded me of how much children need God as well.. I work with kids every day, and I couldn't imagine doing anything else. My heart is so heavy for children. I wish that nothing bad would ever happen to kids. There are so many behaviors that are stemmed from their life situations... people think that certain kids are problem children and will be for the rest of their lives... I don't agree with that. I think that all a kid needs sometimes is for someone to take an interest in their lives and love on them. People tend to give up on these 'problem children' and write them off as a lost cause. Breaks my heart. God desires each person in their unique character and situation... especially children.

Sometimes, all we can do is pray.

Wait... that phrase sounds terrible. I stopped for a second and read that. "All we can do is pray"... Like it's a last resort or something? I don't think that's what prayer was made for. I think it was made for us to worship God. Sometimes, we only pray when we need something... when something is going wrong... when we're confused... when we're lonely... when we're bored... when we're feeling lost... when someone we know is facing a crisis... when we ourselves are facing a crisis...

How bout this... pray just because God is God. Pray because you want to talk with the only truth and love we really have: Jesus. Pray because you can't get enough of Him... because you simply want to know Him more... pray because you want to worship.

I think this quote from Oswald Chambers puts it quite bluntly (like Chambers often, ever so eloquently, puts it)

"If we are hard toward God, we become hard toward other people."

We become hard towards God by "dictating to Him what we want Him to do" through prayer. We can be quite bossy with our prayers...

I don't want to become hard toward other people... I want to love others. How can I love others and not become hard toward other people? By being honest with God while you worship through prayer. If I want to love these kids, I need to worship God so that I am in the place with Him that His love will flow out of me to those around me.

After all... God is love.

"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." - 1 John 4:8

Faith.. Friendship.... and prayer

Faith:

"Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led." - Oswald Chambers

Saying that, however, how hard is it to put your faith into something that you do not entirely believe? You have to have faith in something that is true and real. Knowing that it may not give you a lot of worldly success... but knowing that by doing so, you are furthering the Kingdom of God! Faith is a tricky thing. Believing in something that you can't touch or see... sounds outrageous! I like to look at it this way. I like to see those around me and situations I'm in as God Himself. Feeling my sister's baby kick, for example.. now THAT is God. It's something that boggles my brain! There is a completely different soul living in my sister's body! Watching the sunset... God. I could go on all day long naming things that are so unexplainable... the only reasonable explanation can be GOD! He shows Himself to me daily. He let's me know He's here. I wonder how I don't see Him in MORE! He's everywhere!

Now... for the whole "never knowing where you are being led" thing... It's one of the hardest things in the entire world to let go of and to put trust in. Sometimes I find myself freaking out about a bunch of little things. I freak out so intensely sometimes. I wonder where I'm going to be living next, what my future holds, how I'm going to make it until the end of the month with only a few dollars left in my bank account, if my sister's baby is going to be healthy... Things that God is obviously big enough for. Why don't I give Him enough credit?! Why do I doubt... EVER! It IS hard... It is certainly hard. We tend to think that we know best... that we know ourselves better than anyone... and we know the solution to problems. I challenge you to actually STOP next time you're about to make a decision... or back out of making one for that matter... and actually PRAY about it! I think we forget to pray about things. Every day things should be prayed over. Every situation and person we come in contact with. I tend to feel like my faith gets stronger as I start to trust God with EVERY LITTLE small thing in my life and not just the big things.

Friendship:
"When you have a right-standing relationship with God, you have a life of freedom, liberty, and delight; you ARE God's will" - Oswald Chambers

WHAT?! I will come to a point in my life where I don't even wonder if what I'm doing is right or not? I will know?! I will be so close with God that I will KNOW?!?! That boggles my brain. That makes me SO flippin excited to pray daily... about everything. I have always desired to be in that place. I have just been SO distracted with 'my' life and 'my' plans recently. I don't know if I've experienced this kind of closeness with God... but Lord knows I want to! It sounds more exciting to me than a relationship with another person. I have focused so much of my life, emotions, and thoughts on finding the person who I'm supposed to be with on this earth, that I forget the one I will be with for all eternity!

I have always known that I can't ever be satisfied and deeply in love with any one person unless I'm not first satisfied and deeply in love with Jesus. He IS love... without God, I have nothing. I don't know how to love. I couldn't possibly know how to love without having God living it out through me.

"You are free to make decisions in the light of a perfect and delightful friendship with God, knowing that if your decisions are wrong He will lovingly produce that sense of restraint. Once He does, you must stop immediately." - Oswald Chambers

THAT QUOTE! O man... I have most definitely experienced that feeling before. I have struggled and fought so viciously against God before so that I could do what I want to do. In the end... I was left heartbroken and full of regret that I didn't listen to the pull of the Holy Spirit sooner.

I have been so challenged lately by things Chambers talks about in My Utmost for His Highest. The one I'm reading today, he asks us to examine our prayer life and think about the last time we prayed. "Was your determination to get some gift of the spirit for yourself or to get to God?" - Chambers. He also quotes Matthew 6:8 - "For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him"

If we have a desire to be closer to God and to further understand His will in our lives, PRAY! That's pretty much all there is to it!

stay focused.

Sometimes we, as Christians, get carried away with things that SEEM extremely important... not saying that they're not important, but they're not the priority. I was reading My Utmost for His Highest again today and I read, "not making our first priority to win souls, establish churches, or to have revivals, but seeking only 'to be well pleasing to Him.'" God doesn't want our focus to EVER be off of Him. Even if it it's with something that seems like it's pleasing to Him.

I remember Kelly Doherty from His Hill talking about this a lot. He used an example that I can't ever get out of my head. Picture your fist up in the air right in front of your face. Picture that fist representing something that you are focused on, something that takes most of your attention. Picture seeing your other fist up in the air behind that other fist... that represents something that you've lost sight of. It represents Christ. Picture the first fist getting so close to your face that you can't even move your eyes to look past it. You want to look at the second fist in the air, but you can't seem to get rid of the vision of the one that is directly in your line of sight. That thing.. that FIST has become the most important thing in your life... Sometimes, we may think that we're focused on something worth-while... We may consider it of GREAT importance. While, all the time, that other fist seems to be getting further and further away. That's what it's like when we focus on something other than Christ. We start to see the provision, instead of the provider. We start to worship something that is merely a stepping stone to get us closer to Him.

"I must learn to relate everything to the primary goal, maintaining it without interruption." -Oswald Chambers

Sometimes I find myself praying about something in particular SO much that I forget who I'm praying to... I start to only see what I'm praying about. It's never about that. It's never about what you can get out of your walk with Christ... It's about making "our aim... to be well pleasing to Him." - 2 Corinthians 5:9