Not that holy and not actually going to change the world

I'm just going to throw it out there that some days are harder than others. For all of us. I guess this is obvious and may sound dumb but I am one of those people that pretends to believe stuff like that but really in my heart, not so much. Those days are almost guaranteed to be the days I don't blog. I'm usually not too too self conscious about my writing but it surfaces from time to time. Like right now I'm wondering if I should change what I write and how. Not like stop talking about Jesus, but you don't have to talk directly about Him because i think you are kinda always talking about Him because in Him all things hold together. But its kind of one of those things that maybe ever writer struggles with is that you want what you write to mean something to someone and be popular and cool change lives and all that. But once you start trying to do that you're basically going to lose your spark, probably. And sometimes you may just be like Picasso or van Gogh or every other masterpiece maker who really isn't appreciated until after they are dead. Well, I don't really think I'm anything like any of those guys, but you get the point. Just write what your heart says and if my heart is on Jesus which it is a lot of the time when i am writing just because that is really how we fell in love then he's the guy I'll write about. And the nice thing about Jesus is that you don't have to be cool or incredible or applauded or have 500 followers because He really is enough. He's crazy about me. Not because of my writing or grades or dreams but just because I'm me. And thats enough. But I get really nervous because writing brings out a lot of the holiness and love for jesus in me which of course is beautiful but if you just see my writing or even most people who see me on a regular basis may think I sort of have it all together. With jesus or whatever. I really really really don't. you just have to trust.me. I don't want to hang out with him all the time. Sometimes I don't even feel like talking to him at all.

I was talking to a friend about changing people. You cant, he said. you're just not going to. Gods the only one that ever changes anyone. And I think about how I have this idea in my heart that I am going to change the world. Or at least a community or a city or some lives. But I'm not because all those things are made up of people. And people are changed by God. We can be his instruments but He is the one that moves in their heart. And the reality is, of course that is true. He was the only one big enough to change me. and to continue to change me. No one else. Yes, God uses our words and our actions and our love in ways that are far more than we ever hoped or dreamed. But he is the one who makes it deep into our hearts, into places that no human can really go within another. He is the only changer.

take my heart

Jesus,

Lives of quiet desperation. They are everywhere, love. Slow starvation. Light dimming in the eyes. Its terrifying. The temptation is to do everything to keep myself from realizing the desperation. To tell myself that I'm mistaken. Its not too much for you.
 You are light. You are life made manifest. Salvation spoken into being. I think, Jesus, that life is really tough because I was made for fellowship with you and I'm just not there. Well, I'll never be fully there until I am with you but I am not seeking fully after your heart. I know Jesus that what you would love for me to do is slow down. I'm not sure why my pace is fast and panicky. When I come to the living water, I think maybe it would be nice to stay awhile. When I get into the Word, maybe just savor it one verse at a time, pondering it, romancing it, letting it settle deep in me. Productivity is suffocating me-I'm so inclined to it. Like I have this idea that the more of the bible I read, the better that is. But you are not looking for me to master the text like its a class I want an A in. Its for us to fall in love and interact and for you to speak softly and tell me the things in my life that you know are killing me so that I can put more of myself into your heart. I'm supposed to let it master me. Break me then build me from the ground up. I have this sense of grandiose service of changing cities and countries and the world. Of changing lives upon lives. Feeding thousands. That is not the point and it is not your way. You invested in living life with people. Just a couple. Hanging out. Joking around. Building their strengths. Recognizing the God image in them. You are calling me to the same. your heart beats to a different rhythm then anything I know. But I am here to know your heart. And it is to my heart that you call. Show me Lord how to make these thoughts my life, not just learning or writing or concepts or ideas. Not just words. Take my heart captive to yourself.

to you and me, love God

My delight,

Hush little one. I am here. I promise that I am with you now and that I will never leave you. Now, love, I know how hard this time is for you. Remember, I know everything about you. I know all the darkness that envelops you; I know the secret wishes and anguishes of your heart, I know your dreams. I know all of it and I love you deeply and passionately not because you love me or because you glorify me or because of the way you look or act or anything. I love you because you are my utmost delight. I love you because I formed you and knit you together in the secret place and you have been written upon my heart since before the universe. So slow down. I have not called you to be successful, but to be faithful. Cling to me. Now, you and I both know that a person only has two hands and cannot cling to many things at once. And if you are holding onto more than one thing you are not holding anything very closely are you. So drop it and just grab me. I will sustain you. I will glorify myself with your life. I will dance order and grace into the chaos of your life; I will paint loveliness in the muck. I am light. In me there is no darkness at all. Do not keep trying to purge yourself of all that darkness that is suffocating you. The only way to get rid of darkness is to let light in. I am light. Oh how I love you. I am enough for you. And you will not find that until you are stripped of a whole lot. You will not know that your worth is not in what you do until you have nothing to do and you are forced to finally look at me and hold out empty hands. I want empty hands. You will not know that I will satisfy the cravings I built in your heart until there is no one else satisfying them. You will not know that I am enough if there are many other things cushioning your life that are just making barriers between us. Stay awhile. You wont spend much time with me if your to do list is a mile long will you? Are you starting to see what a gift this is? This nothingness you are fighting? There is so much more I want for you. I want you to learn the beauty of solitude but I cant with all that noise down there. Silence is mine, darling. Sit in it, soak in it. Come quietly to the tabernacle, enter the sanctuary. Prayer, love, you are just a baby in prayer. Its such a beautiful thing.  Or the Word, I watch you rush through it so often and I am so glad that you look and you want to know it but you have to savor it to really know what it tastes like. It will move mountains in your soul.  Relationships. You must be loved by me to love others. Otherwise you will both end out in deeper pain. Let me love them through you. Because people will hurt you just as you have hurt people so many times. And it stems from a need that no human will fill for any of you. But relationships are what I designed you for. You are relational in nature so you cannot continue to be so afraid of them. Yes, they will hurt. But the sting will not be the same if you know that I will not hurt you. I promise I will never hurt you. You have never known anything like me because there is nothing and no one on earth like me.
But I am here. With you. I’ve got you. But you have to let me. Hold you, that is. And though theoretically you like and understand the idea, you’re resisting me. Being embraced fully does not appeal much to you does it? But deep down its there. The need. The thirst. I love you. I will never stop telling you that because you must know that more than anything else. I love you.

God

our fellowship is with the Father

I just keep tearing people down. And I think maybe thats why I'm having so much trouble being close to God. Because we both know that I am not loving those He adores. There is numb sort of satisfaction to not loving people all that much but compared to the sweetness of Christ I have no idea why I continue to return to this well of poison or why I am so critical. And a lot of people might say don't you think thats a little extreme? WE all judge, we all snicker, we all gossip. Its normal. Well, its killing me. I didn't even realize it, it didn't hit me hard until this morning as I read through first john. Its almost like trying to connect with someone but bashing their wife. Because God said I have betrothed you to me in righteousness and he was not just talking about nice people, or attractive people, but creation. This is one of those things that I know very well on an intellectual level but my heart is just starting to taste truth. But when your heart is sore you just don't really want to love anyone and risk it getting even more bruised. But God will take my heart and hold it perfectly and I can really entrust it to him and then I can love people shamelessly and recklessly.
I just want to learn not to fear openness. Its so easy to pretend and talk about Jesus and do Jesus-y things and no one will even know whats going on. So easy just to kind of go with the flow and ignore that awful sense deep in your stomach that there is something very not right with the life I'm living, we are living.

God is light, in him there is no darkness at all. Nothing kept hidden. All exposed. So bright and brilliant it hurts. Thats so foreign..God, take me there.
you are Light, you are Love, you are everything I am not and yet I have been chosen and called since the beginning of time. Just because of you not because of me. And until I know your love and your presence and how you feel about me, I wont know how to love other people.

I love that. You're not like, keep trying. Love harder. Do more. Stop judging. Be better, for goodness sake. No. You are like, come here. Come here and let me love you. Let me love you the way your heart demands and your soul is starving for and then you will not be able to NOT love others. It simply won't be an option. Thats all I ask of you. That you let me love you. 

note to God

Dear God,

Thank you for being you. I will cling to you. Just you. I trust that the morning follows the night. I trust that no dark is too dark for you because you have overcome the darkness. I love you. No matter what I love you. You're enough for me. Here's all that I am. Its yours. I surrender. Its not much, but you don't ask for anything else. Humble me, that I may exalt you. But when I am brought very low, all the way to the dirt and to the earth come with me so that I am not alone there. Its okay to be sad. You know sadness more than I do. We can be sad together. Thanks for Jesus God. He's real great. I;m so glad you sent him. It doesn't really get old. It still makes me cry when I think about him. He really is the best. Come dissolve this loneliness and purposelessness with your presence. I am enough for you. There is no perfection in my body except your Spirit. And thats okay. Its going to be okay, you say softly in my soul. Nothing can separate us. I don't want anything else.

A Gritty God

Beautiful,

I am the only one you need, come lay all of you at my feet.
I'll gather you up and draw you close.
I don't want you to think that it is easy to be in love with me.
I don't want you to keep searching for a fairytale.
Its not going to happen.
Stop filling your time with busyness with buying and errand running and getting ready for nothing and eating out and spending and working to get money to spend it to just cycle through the day and not think about everything that is really hard and sort of sucks.

I have more in store for you.

Full life does it exists and it starts at the cross.
Come.


-Jesus


I'm so glad that Jesus is a gritty guy because life is really quite gritty at times. I'm really glad he didn't die on a huge gleaming cross that is really attractive because my heart is not gleaming and polished. And we need a cross that looks like our hearts. I'm glad that Jesus is not made real in really emotional church experiences only, but that he is more than our emotions and our institutions and our worship sessions and I'm glad he had dirt caked on his feet and that he cried and that he was mad at people sometimes and that he never tried to make himself into some fairy that would be fun to go along with because he is enough just as he is. His life speaks to me when I am hurt and broken and when I dont think things are very beautiful and when I'm a little bit sickened by myself. He seems to know that. I just really really like him. And he likes me. So much. And I guess that sounds really stupid but sometimes we forget about jesus genuinely liking us. Not even minding all those things that no one else likes or those things that no one else even knows about. Kind of like how your parents love you but they have to and they dont always like you. He always likes me. Thats a miracle.
In second peter, peter says were not just making Christ known by some cleverly devised argument we heard, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. But whats even better he says, and more sure, is the prophetic word which is like a lamp in a dark place because sometimes its really hard to see the majesty even if we know it. I just love that. He's like, this isnt something were trying to prove or change or make really attractive so you buy into. We simply know. We're telling you because its the best thing there is he. He is the best thing. He's the morning star rising in your heart. Thats beautiful. I can be kind of a beauty skeptic because I've experienced some surface deep beauty. And it often seems that pain goes much deeper than beauty. But Jesus was pain and was also beauty. The fullness of beauty. I cannot be skeptical when it comes to Christ. There is nothing surface deep about the cross. Its the opposite. Its far more than I will ever know. I cannot create expectations it would not exceed ten million fold.

I cant help but feel that if I lived by this my life would look different. The way I treated people would be very different.
Jesus, take me to the cross.

Dear God,

I'm just sort of empty so here I am. You are the only one that can fill me up. I'm lonely though I'n surrounded by people, let down by the holiday frenzy and massive amounts of material things, tired and lazy all at once. I need you, God. Without you, I cant find any life. I'm sorry for running from you. Sometimes I just don't know how to stop. Love, I'd like to learn what it means to pray, to pray hard. I'd like to learn what it means to be silent. I'd like to stop busying myself with errands and conversations and everything but you. You are right for me. I miss being close to you. I miss you so much. I'm just off without you. I'm not me. All I am is yours and if I'm not actively being yours, then I'm not being me either. Come and be with me. or make me come and be with you. Thanks for being patient. Thanks for sending that little guy a long time ago so that I get to write this to you know. Thanks for not minding that I'm sad and messed up and run after everything else when I know and you have shown me time and time again that you are the wildest lover I'll ever have. Thanks for the wind that whispers about you and for painted skies and ending runs early to lay on the grass and think about you. Thanks for Katie and David, sorry I don't love them well. You love them so well. I love you, God. I really do know that you're the best even if I don't act like it. Days where I don't get to be with you stretch long and hopeless. Even though I'm sad today you're the same yesterday and today and forever. Your yoke is easy and your burden is light. I am so weary, so heavy laden, so here I am, coming to the living water. Laying all my shortcomings and sadness and frustrations at your feet. Give me the courage to stay here for a while. Not just gather it all right back up and run away. Don't let me leave just yet.

Krystal

hair cut.

well. I decided I'm cutting my hair today for Libby because I love her and she cut her because she has cancer. You know I'm not really into looks but girls just get this strange attachment to their hair. I'm really attached to mine. Like a security blanket almost. And hair isn't really one of those things I'm very daring with-I've had like the exact same hair cut for I don't know..5 years? my whole life? And all these girls have done it for her already which makes it even harder because I have this dumb thing about wanting to be really cool and blaze my own path and now I feel like I'm just copying everyone else but this is really the nicest thing I could do for her. Libby is so worth it. Its just hair after all. But I'm little bit terrified. I don't want short hair. The more I think about it, the more I think this is the worst idea ever. But libs did it first. Thats why I'm blogging it because then I cant change my mind.

Libby, I dont know if you ever read my blog but if you are reading this (and I'm probably going to text you today and tell you to), I love you. I want to share this journey with you, this sickness, this hair loss. I want to suffer with you; you've suffered with me and been joyful with me for three whole years. Thanks for letting me sit on your couch and cry. Thanks for inviting me to campaigners that one time at chick fil a after the soccer game with Becca and Mackenzie. Thanks for countless cups of coffee and for loving me with Jesus's love because it changed my life. Thanks for loving Ryder well because Jesus loves Grassfield and Chesapeake through Ryder. Thanks for fighting cancer really hard and loving Jesus really hard. Thanks for those really doughy pancakes you made me and Allison.Thanks for reminding me that Jesus is enough.  But really, thanks for living Jesus is enough. He really is.

You have loved me so well.

Jesus love,

Make me more like you.  You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me. Even when I have nothing to say, I can come and just be. Show me love how to cling to you when everything changes and I’m thrown out of my comfort zone. Freedom exists in full bondage to you and abandonment of all the freedom the world offers. I’m so sorry for my short temper and anger and unwillingness to see how passionately love the people that I don’t…

I was doing the 5k run for young life and it hit me that I want to run to and for Jesus. That I want that feeling of delirious exhaustion when I approach the gates of heaven, knowing that I held nothing back. I thought about how running is the heart of young life. Running after high school kids. Loving them hard. Even though that love will not produce the desired results. Even though kids will reject our love and run from us. Even though girls will choose boys over Jesus. Even though you go deep enough that your heart breaks with theirs and for theirs. And that we run only because Jesus came running after us. My dear friend Mike said he thought it was idiotic to say “I found Jesus” because he was never lost. He’s always been here. Its just we were running away from him.

So I was running hit by how unutterably beautiful Christ is and the fact that every time I see Libby or Ryder I just want to cry because they loved me like Jesus does and pursued me and were there for me. They really do look like Jesus. And I wanted to get up at the breakfast and pour out my full heart but I knew this really wasn’t about me at all. Then Ryder was talking and he started talking about Hugo girls who were there and that me and Shanie with the Hugo girls are the picture of young life. And God said so evidently “you do not need to glorify yourself because I will glorify you and more importantly I will glorify myself with your life.” And he also said, “Words are powerful but loving these girls speaks so much louder. Don’t talk about what it looks like to follow Jesus, just run after him. Don’t worry about conveying things, speaking into microphones and powerful messages. Just abandon yourself to my Son and let me work in you.” But perhaps more beautiful is that Ryder constantly points to other people and builds them up and glorifies Jesus through them. Ryder is one of the most incredible people I have ever met in my entire life. And he is always, always shining light on everyone else. That’s exactly what Jesus did. 

nothing compares

I can't stop thinking about the cross. About Christ dying. When Jesus is talking to his dad in the garden right before he was taken he said "Father glorify me with your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed." I can't even imagine that glory..that deep intimacy...absolute perfection. Where is he sent, though? What is God's response? The cross. Utter seperation. It was a lonlieness, abandonment, a forsakenness we could never possibly experience. They were together before the universe existed. Who was even in more pain, The Father or the Son?

Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? 

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And it hit me that all those terrible things God talks about in the Old testement every punishment for their abandonment was met in Christ. Every single one. Judgement was always inevitable. But all judgement was placed on one, in one heart breaking, world changing person's death. In Hosea God says of his people who have cheated on him (which is me as well) he says "I strip her naked and make her like a parched land and kill her with thirst." One of the things recorded in the gospel of John is Jesus whispering "I thirst." I always kind of skimmed past those statements to ones like "I will betroth you to me forever" but the marriage is after the price has been paid and the whoredom has been addressed. Jesus never cheated on Him. But he was judged as the whore for all humanity. Every single consequence of everything all of us we have ever done on that cross, on Christ.

"Only the one who has experienced it can know what the love of Christ is. Once you have experienced it, nothing else in the world will seem more beautiful and desirable."

A close friend asked me during bible study how I could put everything and all of myself into one thing, into Jesus. Its hard a question because you really do have to experience him and have pure holy loved poured on you to abandon every other thing and take after this homeless carpenter and join his ragamuffin group of broken people who strive only to be broken further and follow him where none of us would ever want to go if not for him. There is nothing else and no one else like him. He loves me. He really does. More than I'll ever know or understand or deserve. To exchange all the glory and all the love of God, to abandon his throne first to come and then to die while I was still chasing after every other lover. Nothing compares. This love and this life is really only in him.

Fix your eyes on the Crucified and nothing else will be of much importance..

Love,

Its been awhile..where have you been? I've missed you. I know how hard it is to fix your eyes on me when everything is going right, when incredible things are happening with your life, when you are busy and have lots of people you adore..but, I have to tell you, this is still it. The path is still down to the cross. My love is enough for you. I promise. I know that your deepest fear is being worthless. But worth will not come in people you love, in missions you are passionate about, in lives you change. Worth is not in anything at all that you do. You are worthwhile because I have called you my Beloved, because I came to be with you, and because I died your death. Thats really it. Stop running after less wild lovers and pursuing all these other things. Come back and sit and rest and stay for a long long time and remember that no one needs you,  but that they need me. And that through your brokenness, and only that, just as Christ was broken beyond belief will they be ushered into me who alone can enter the secret place in their hearts and love them well. Let me dethrone you and lead you, lovingly, carefully to the cross. I'm taking you there because thats where I am, that is where we can be together. I do not ask you to be broken alone. But I warn you that you cannot be successful and enthroned and pursue the worlds love and not be alone. Come to me. I love you. My love is enough. Jesus really is enough.

God

(okay, ha, I wrote this earlier this weekend and forgot to post it-I think-so I'm just posting it now)

God,

I was with Jessie yesterday and  she was driving me to Hunter when we realized they had early release and we were both secretly a little excited that we could spend more time together. And this morning when I got a text I would be picked up later I realized that you maybe felt the same way. So happy, that you have a few more precious moments of me all to yourself. That’s who you are. You want to cherish me.  You love when I give you time. And I think I’m giving you all of my time because I do love you like crazy and I do want to give you all of my life, but there is still this thing where I spend so much time doing, doing, doing and you are like “can we just hang out? I just want to love you. I want to show you what love is. All this busyness is yours, honey. Its not mine. I just want your heart. I’ll teach you how to dance. I’ll teach you how to pray. My love is constant, for you it is beyond comprehension, but I would love for you to live like Jesus. The One who went to a different town when people told him to stay, who ignored his disciples, who spent nights in the mountains and mornings with me. Don’t you see? He couldn’t bear to be apart from me. No satisfaction of a good speech or eager crowd or awed disciples compared to the depth and height and breadth of KNOWING me. Because he knew they would turn. He knew that these people, whom he loved enough to die, would never satisfy him. Saving them wasn’t the point. Loving me was and is and always will be the point. Loving me involves giving up all of your life. Living me will let me love them in you. Don’t take offense darling but my love is better than yours. I know each of those girls you love on. I love that you are doing so but come to me, lean into me, dissolve into me that I can love them instead. My love is what is different. Its what is not found on earth.

God I lift up to you the girls you are going to entrust to me.  Perhaps more so I lift up clenched hands for you to gently open because I want to keep them to myself. I want to be a Savior sometimes. Sometimes I just want something to  lay at your feet. But you want me at your feet not all these things I’m piling up. Lord, will I ever lose this huge urge to be significant and productive and important? Will I ever know in my heart that knowing your heart is far better? I just love you, dear Jesus.  That’s what has made these months the best of my life…knowing you. Writing to you, talking about you, being loved and pouring love that is yours on people. Talking about you because you are what made my day right. Seeing that you are better than everything else I’ve turned to for so long. Reading my journal God was strange because the entries were so beautiful. Stunning encounters with you. Yet, I did not know you well. I was so hurt, so desperate, so sad and anxious. And the two seem so contradictory. How could it be? I think I needed to be stripped of a whole lot before I could find you for real. Because when there is a choice between you and Rob my humanness sent me to him. When there is no choice, you. I came here purposeless essentially. No one needing me, no work to do.
There is a constant push in me to be needed. To be important to people. To be necessary. And I am not. You are. 

Most Beautiful Weekend (and Probably Longest Post) ever

My pastor said something that resonated so deeply with my frustration with writing and expressing the way Jesus captures my heart and makes a melody with my life today by saying that when we talk about Jesus its like were lighting a match and hold ing it up to the sun in the middle of the day. Jesus is the sun and my words are the match. You cant see the match because of the utter brilliance of the sun (and really, the Son). I have absolutely nothing to add to his glory, no exhortation that is worthy of Him, no words to convey who He is and the miracles he creates every minute of every day.
 But I will write still, simply because I trust that God want to make something out of my love for him. That he will take these little words and stories and entries and do more with them than I ever imagined. Simply because he is that miraculous.
I just cannot wrap my mind around the love, God's love, for people in me. Its so much bigger than everything about me. I am so small compared to God's love for one single person. And God is making me fall deeply, entirely in love with people. I go downtown and love my homeless friends with more love than I've ever known and come back and have this crazy heart for my suite mates. And it goes on and on.
Its so clear how this unusually hard week was preparation for this beyond beautiful weekend. you must know, my dream was to live life with the homeless in college. I mean friends. People who I know their names and their stories and can just sit and hang out with them. And this weekend that has begun to be made manifest. I went to Moore Square friday night and met two men, Roy and Mike. I could write paragraphs just describing them, but if this is like a novel no one will read it haha, so please just ask me-in person or however, and we can talk for hours. But short story, Roy was sweet but distant and Mike was straight up mad we were there and sick of "do gooders" always trying to help the homeless. I invited them to Help Portrait Raleigh after talking with them for maybe an hour. The next day, Help Portrait Raleigh, was literally like a pocket of pure heaven on earth. We were taking professional portraits of poor individuals and families and it was just incredible to cherish the people who came. They get offered food and clothes everywhere, but rarely do they have hair and make up done, professional shots taken, people exclaiming how gorgeous they are, and just feeling beautiful. Hearts melted at Portrait Raleigh. It was ONE community, that is what is so crucial and so distinct. It was not one group of church people handing something to a group of homeless people, it was all of us having this huge picture taking party, talking laughing, eating together. It was experiencing in ourselves the way God feels about these people we ALL are guilty of ignoring and disdaining. Just a million little things: first family portraits, couples getting a picture together, peoples first picture with Santa at 50 or 60 years old. The fact that people stayed for hours after they were done just because they were welcome and it was a lovely environment. Serving, but without barriers. Without prosperity gaps. Watching women find themselves beautiful. Parents getting portraits to give to their children for Christmas. People who we don't make eye contact with the center of attention. A man praying for lunch, never dreaming of a feast with friends. Going around, inviting people, and then waking with them, because its really scary to go unfamiliar places on your own. opening peoples pictures with them and seeing there child-like, sheer delight at their photo. Then, when I literally could not see the day going more up, Mike and Roy walk in. It was like Christmas seeing those two guys come through the door. I ran and gave them big hugs and I had another opportunity to probe through the barriers searching for his heart. Seeing it there all along. Taking a picture, the three of us. Roy and I just sitting together for at least an hour..sometimes talking sometimes not. Just friends. Really friends.
I know this is going on forever, but then today after church Ansilta and I decided to go back to Moore Square. And it was today that I saw how Portrait Raleigh was so much bigger than I ever imagined. It was a connection we now have with this community. A real connection. This is such a treasure. To go and be able to talk and share stories about yesterday, and to come back today just to show, this wasn't a one day thing. It was the door opener. Now, I can go and just hang out because we know each other. I didn't see my guys but I got to talk to some different people from yesterday and learn more about who this community is. Talking to a guy who said that the surplus of food and clothes makes it so people never have to work. Just being humbled that they are willing to let us sit with them, two girls who know nothing, who have everything, just sit. Nothing to offer. Just coming to learn. To love. To listen. So satisfied with the day and only a little bummed that I didn't get to see my guys, and then I look up and Roy is waking towards me. He looks just like Jesus. Seriously. Jesus was not even joking around when he said being with the poor and the homeless is being with Him. If you want to know Jesus better, get to the streets. Jesus is all over the streets. I can't even describe it. And then Mike was there too. And we sat with them for probably another hour. Talking about our families, where we are from, God, favorite books. And Mike everyday starts of skeptical, harsh and mad and I mean he has such good reasons. He had a family. He had a job. He's white. He sleeps alone outside rather than in shelters. He's extremely smart. This sort of thing shouldn't have happened to him. His biting comments sting. They're meant to. But the longer we talk, the more I treasure him, hearing about his kids, how he taught them the constellations on family camping trips...My words aren't adequate. But by the time we left, you could see he was secretly sad we were leaving. He told us to tell our parents we loved them. He's right-mom, dad, I love you. I do not say that enough. I love you.
You know I rest my fingers and I just feel Jesus whispering in my heart. you poured it all out, love. Its enough. he is enough for me. And I am enough for him. Its just..overwhelming. I did nothing to deserve a life this beautiful and holy. I can't believe that Jesus loves me so much and that this is who he is. And that not only can I, but he wants me to pour all of my life first into him, and through that, inevitably, inot loving people. Loving people who are not loved by the world. And showing me what they mean to him.

"Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever."
only God could have words written two thousand years ago in the hand of Paul that describe my heart better than I ever could have.

Longing

I urge you to do nothing. I literally plead with you to sit and do nothing for a long long time and try really hard to feel and listen to yourself. I think maybe one of the most important parts of a journey with Christ is facing our longing. Now this entire semester has been the saddest and the best most beautiful months of my life and it has been a time of unearthing longing. Deep within us, the deepest most intimate part of us, is a longing that is unsatisfied. And I think maybe the entirety of our lives is trying to satisfy that longing and pretty quickly running from it and hiding it and burying it. And everything in the world offers a cure to longing. But Jesus does not. Because he knows that longing is not something that can ever, ever go away in our lives here. And so when we come, consumed by longing to God, he does not say, like everyone and everything else, "no, thats just a figment of your imagination. Thats not real or true." He also does not say "Yes, that will go away with more. If you just get a better job or a better spouse or better kids or better pills or better body or better grades or write a better book or more friends that will go away." I think maybe this is what he says:

"Yes. Yes, love, I know. I know you're experiencing this gut wrenching, terrifying longing. I knjow it full well. And it will not be satisfied by any of those things." (Noe, this i sa really scary moment because we were hoping he'd say that something would make it go away) "I designed you with that. I designed you for affliction because I am the God of all comfort. I came, dawned flesh and came, so that we could suffer through longing together. Because if there was no longing, there would be nothing to suggest there is anything beyond this present life. And though that would provide comfort for now, that would be the most tragic thing in the world. There is hope in something beyond you. There is longing to remind you that there is something better. Something yet to come." 

Gerald May said that the secret to falling in love with life is to befriend our yearning instead of avoiding it, to love our longing rather than trying to resolve it, to enter spaciousness of our emptiness rather than trying to fill it up. 

And the best feeling in the entire world, really it is the best, my heart aches so hard for you to know this for yourself, is to be brought low, lower than you ever wanted to go, and realize that you are nothing. I hate discovering that I am nothing, that no one needs me, that there is nothing I need to do, that all my busyness, no matter what kind of busyness it is is ALWAYS just me running from longing and trying to hold on to my own significance. But when you enter that dark place, the God of all comfort is waiting. And then you discover the cloud of witnesses, the Pauls and the saints and christ-lovers that have come before who know it as well. And the Word becomes alive because you're there with paul as he writes, and its both of us at once and there.And jesus is so so so much better when you actually need him. 

It is not possible to share in the comfort of Chirst without sharing in the sufferings of Christ. And the sufferings of Christ is the terrible sense of separation from God. It is the darkest part of human existence. We have ripped ourselves away from the One we were woven into. But until we enter into that truth we won't know the hope, the life that comes with it. 

We all know that inward uneasiness that there is a  way of life vastly richer and deeper than this hurried existence, but instead of embracing it and seeking it, we try to shove down the uneasiness with a multitude of temporary fixes, trying to slap on enough bandaids when the problem is cancer of the soul. 

Its one of those days where its so big in my heart, this moment seems so monumental and my eyes are welled with tears and my heart is swollen and God is lovely and I can't express it and its the worst. These words aren't adequate. Its too big for words, for any expression I could offer. Its a soul thing, you know? But it all comes back to the truth that my words are nothing, but God and His Word is absolutely everything. Let him whisper these deep truths into your soul. he will. Draw near. Do nothing, be nothing. Cry. Its okay. He loves. Oh, how he loves. 

Love worth living for

I just want to know who God is. I've lost sight of the value of everything else. I want to surrender at all and go after one thing. Because  there is only one thing that bids me come and die. There is only one who loves me purely and furiously and loves the pedafiles and the sociopaths and the killers purely and furiously. Ant the ache is everywhere, I see it in their eyes, aching that is dulled by a life that doesn't satisfy, by the music that's ghostly empty and the music that's pregnant with meaning, I see it in kids who you never ever want to grow up because they are born looking an awful lot like God and life seems to stamp that out of them and I want to come to jesus like a child again stripped bare of all the worth I found in everything else. I want to wake up in the morning desperate to be with Him and snuggle into Him every night and I want  life that looks different, life that is real and right. Listen: he's stroking our souls. He wants us. Why he wants us I have no idea, but he does. Its what were all waiting for. There is no hope here (on this earth, in our human lives.) There is no joy. There is quiet desperation. And the poor in spirit know him. What if I was homeless? What if I woke up in the morning on the street and had nothing to do, nowhere to be? Where would my value be? But to Christ, my value would be no less. Exactly the same. He has come before me. He has petitioned on my behalf. I hammered the nails. Every scar on my soul is on his as well. I heard today from Alonza, another once homeless angel, another follower of Christ, that we have to read the Word out loud so that its not just our eyes but our ears and our mouths as well, cleansed by the Word. And do I really think its healing? Or do I still treat it like some moral teaching and really good stories and something I read because I know its really good to read. But its far better, Prayer is better. Worship-better. Life is better with Jesus. I am convinced. Not by own reasoning or conclusions but by the way God cascades into my life every day, making miracles, changing hearts being real and hard and here. And I am nothing and he is everything.

**I urge you to listen to Anis mojgani on youtube, I've fallen in love. Heres a link to one of his poems called Shake the Dust but they are all really really (really) good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qDtHdloK44**

God of all Comfort

Today looks like Jesus. It was crazy because I was thinking about how heartbreaking ministry is. Bible study got postponed, so many of my friends have to deal with such hard stuff at home, and my heart just grows and grows for all these people in raleigh and all these people in Chesapeake and when I see them hurt, and even just seeing tons and tons of people who don't know his heart, who don't know its everything they've ever wanted and more my heart hurts. But this hurting is a blessing because Our God just happens to be the ultimate comforter. And so as this wave of sorrow strikes, I get on to my blog not even planning on writing so I don't know why, and found that my beautiful bible study from home left me the best comment about how God is working in their lives and union mission and how they are all so nervous for college and that they love me. And maybe I don't hear God audibly, but if thats not Him comforting me, I don't know what is. He says so beautifully:

Yes, this is the hardest thing you could ever invest in. Its also the only thing. Life with me is heartbreaking, but it is beauty beyond compare. And for all those that are struggling, there are also those that are blossoming in Christ. No matter how bleak the lives of some may seem, there is a group of girls in Chesapeake Virginia learning and living and loving what it means to follow jesus. We have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul..this hope is not in anyone's spiritual life, in poverty alleviation, in Raleigh or in Chesapeake, in Africa or America. Hope is the one who did not cling to his divinity, but cast it off to be with us. To be our mediator, to allow us to be CHILDREN and no longer be SLAVES. That hope is not compromised by anything I do or don't do. I say this to myself every day: its not about me. There is so much freedom when that rings true in our souls. Thanks girls, for being Jesus to me. Keep fighting hard and loving hard. You're all miraculous.

the Word

My soul makes its boast in the Lord. What is it? What is it about these precious words written thousands of years ago by a young king writing psalms to his divine lover. How is it that it soaks so deep into my spirit when I let it. These words are just different. They aren't like anything else I've ever read. Magnify the Lord with me. Lets not worry about how or when but just join and magnify him. The world may be magnifying Christmas trees and Walmart deals and final exams, but there is only one who is above and beyond and better than this world, and that is our Jesus. I was afraid I didn't have anything to write about again and Paul's words rose from within: we have nothing to preach but Christ and him crucified. We're not coming with fancy words or shiny presentations or crafted arguments. Just a people crying out to Jesus, knowing that we have found refuge in Him. Nothing else brings refuge. Maybe my only regret from a really lovely time home with the family is that I didn't take time to hide in Him. As if I thought I should spend all my time with seeing people. The catch is that I can love only when I am loved first. I'm learning that spiritual growth isn't like world growth where you grow and then you just kind of stay at that point. I  have not become more loving or Christ like. I simply have submitted more to Christ and leaned into Him an awful lot more on a daily basis. But if I wake up in the morning and rely on my own strength and love then it will fall pitifully short no matter how beautiful yesterday or the week or the month has been. Its not that my love is growing it is that Christ's love is growing in me. I'm just as human as I always have been. I don't have time not to be with Him for an hour or two, just us, because its all about him in me. When its just me then of course I'll act the way I always have and it will be like traveling back in time to before college. Just like I keep telling people how much I love college but really its Christ that I love. Not college at all. I mean college is where and how I am with him but college without Christ-I cant even imagine it. Not just in the direct sense, but it would be college without community, without worship, without heart to hearts, without entering into brokenness of my own life and the brokenness of others and knowing that there is restoration and all restoration is in Him. College without Jesus would be college without light. And home without Jesus would be home without light. But the crazy beautiful thing is that light comes barging in even when we forget to open the door. Being home has been treasure. Decorating, eating together, laughter, family movies, wyldlife girls, seeing old friends, being loved and cherished. Luckily for us, Jesus lets himself in. So even when I didn't rest in Him because I was too "busy" or it was too hard to find a space, or whatever other reason, He came. And he continues to come. Jesus is alive. And those who look to Him are radiant. They become alive as well. I met two homeless men yesterday whose radiance only belonged to Christ and it hit me again that pure radiance, full life, is about Christ. There was far more light in those standing outside on a cold morning, in hands joining in prayer, in family in Christ, than in the craziness of black friday shopping and spending hundreds and maybe saving hundreds too. But full shopping carts offer no radiance. Not that shopping is bad, I had the best time doing it with my mom. Shopping and all these other cultural-societal things can certainly be great and even honorable to God. It just promises life and can't deliver it. But if we come to Christ first we can fully enjoy all these other Christmasy things knowing full well that our life rests in a different kingdom all together.

Resting in Him even when I am not tired at all.

So I'm in that hyper, joyful, life is lovely sort of state right now where my mom is getting closer by the minute and the day has been full of unexpected wonders from jesus. But I've decided to come and write and be with jesus because He is better than my joy and he is my joy. So often, these times of full life are times when I say, "see you a little later, Jesus. I love you and all but I am having a great day so lets hang out later on when I'm struggling or lonely or empty." But I am getting to this place when I want to be joyful with him. And when I have enough energy to run, I want to be disciplined to be still and know that He is God. Because the happiness of this day is momentary but the joy of consummate love is eternal. And If I come and share all of my life with him, not come running when struggles weigh me down, there will be far more comfort in the struggles because He will be the God of my whole life: of my joy and of my suffering. That which is fleeting (these emotions) seems so strong but He is eternal, and though His strength is quieter, it is richer, it is matured, it has stood the test of time and borne the weight of storm after storm.
 So I will embrace this moment of happiness with the knowledge that this moment is but a moment that will pass but Jesus will hold fast to me and I to him. That his love demands that in all deep joy there is deep sorrow as well because then in all deep sorrow, deep joy is found as well.  Though I have moments without affliction there is suffering in this time, people are in pain, the world is in a dangerous place. But if we try to run from it, try to avoid the pain of being human and separated from our Love, it will still strike us down and when it does it will be consume. I've always been one to swing from delirious joy to ugly sorrow and something in me knows that there is constancy in Christ that invites another life. Because somehow that crazy happiness gets so high that it tends to end in a crash.
 If I wait to run to Him when the pain has already overwhelmed, I will not find the comfort possible if I live knowing that he is better than everything here even when everything seems flawless. Bigger than all the good and all the bad. Better than life itself. This is our lover. The fullness of sorrow and joy always come together. I would rather live my whole life with Him and resting in Him then trying to desperately maintain happiness knowing that pain is close at hand. So in the joy that today brings I will embrace it fully in him, which means knowing that this is not the best day of my life and tomorrow is not the worst day of my life. Knowing that true goodness is yet to come which lets me take every moment as something from him to be cherished, even suffering, persecution, pain. Those are part of life here. If I ignore them they will take me over when they strike. If I embrace them, even in the darkness they will not overcome me.
When we make our bed in Sheol and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea you, God are there, when we take the wings of the morning and ascend to the heaven you are there (Psalm 139). You are the same God in both and you love us exactly the same in the blackest darkness of night and glorious light of the morning. You are good. I Love you more than this lovely day.

He is True.

from our True Love...

My Beautiful Child,

I am here. I am here when you are running. I am here when you are mad at me. I am here when you are ready. Run, baby, run into these wings. We can fly together. I just want to fly with you. Come, come into the secret place, come ponder the presence of Christ on earth. I came. I came in Christ. He is alive. Again, He is alive. Not Abraham's son. I spared him. Not your son, my delight. My child. My Beloved. Isaac was spared, Jesus was sacrificed. Love, what if you started to live like everything i said is true. It is. I am true. I am love and I am just. You must live darling in the truth that you are justified. That you are my people and I am your God. You are not home. I have prepared a place for you. The place your inmost self is aching for. The part of you that no one has ever seen or known. I know it. I know you. You must believe me with everything you have when I say you can ascend to heaven or make your bed in Sheol and I will be there. I am pursuing you. I know you think the darkness is covering you. Listen to me, hear this, darkness is not darkness to me. The light will not overcome the darkness. Jesus is Christ is the light. And he came all the way. I have betrothed you to me forever. I have betrothed you to me in justice and righteousness in steadfast love and in mercy. Cry out for mercy and I will come flooding in. Christianity is "Pick up your cross and follow me." The time is now, my love demands a response. It is the only thing worthy of your life and I am worthy of every part of your life, every single part. I will take you where you never wanted to go. But we will go together. There is no such thing as following Jesus safely. What would your life look like if you knew this was true. True enough to change everything. What if you believed that I am great enough to change you. That I am worth all your money and all your time and all your marriage and all your dreams and life itself. My love is better than life. you were meant for more. So much more. More than you will ever know. Lets reorient your life tonight. This is it. This is life. Its true. It all true. Not your son, not your delight, not the love of your life, but mine. For you.

All for you. A thousand times over.

Failure yet holiness

God doesn't need me. Which is good because I am flawed and he is perfect. I had a beautiful day but something I committed to helping with I completely forgot about and and I sort of failed them. Its a fellowship dinner my church is doing for a family they are helping and I was so looking forward to helping out. Which sucks. And it punctured the fullness of joy in me after a holy precious day. But from this blow it seeps deeper into my soul that what a miracle it is that He chose me to serve Him and allows me to join the  mission of advancing the kingdom. Yes, I am weak. I will even fail people. But, I will remember that God will not fail. When I mess up is when I remember that every lovely moment  belongs to Him not me. It is He working in my life, working miracles and mending hearts and sowing seeds and bearing light. Its okay to fail because he does not fail. He even enters into the messes I make. And it reminds me that he will work miracles in that event whether or not I am there-I am not necessary. The fact that I said I would help and now am not will in no way make it any less miraculous and lovely and of Him. I  He will work in the poverty of Raleigh no matter where I am. But he will also say "go" and I can respond. Its just funny that I was so excited to pour about the utmost glory of my day and as soon as  I got online I realized that the day was filled with both success and failure. And it took that to make me see that it isn't me. Its never me. It is God to whom all glory belongs. So now I will share the way jesus was working in my life today more humbly. I will come a little more like the man who said I am a sinner and didn't even look up than the one who said thanks for making me different, not like those sinners. Can I be super vulnerable and say I think that a lot? I think its because not many people have the chance to really enter into urban impoverished culture and life and I am beginning to see that the Lord just might be taking me there. Which is lovely but it is so because he is glorious and envelopes us in His glory not because we are glorious. Its a strange paradox that the further you  get in the faith the more broken you become, or maybe just the more aware you are of your brokenness. But, finally, today I got to work with a bunch of people from Ship of Zion feeding a ton of families and giving out hygiene products, doing prayer etc. But we got there about three hours early to set up and set up was done super quick and I didn't know a single person. So I started to hang out with these kids even though they were really intimidating and just the way the relationships grew throughout the day was beyond what I could imagine. It started off so awkward but gradually we became comfortable with each other and within such a short time they were running over to hang out with me and teaching me how to have attitude and braiding my hair and laughing at my dancing when I tried to dougie and walk it out and jerk. And even the parents and adults started to realize I really wanted to know them. Life on life. It really comes down to that. Treasure beyond treasure. And all the Lord. None of it me. Constantly marveling at the fact that I really do get to live this life. Marveling at our Jesus.

angels and worship

I met an angel Tuesday. Her name is Cynthia. I was interviewing her for a school project. I asked her how she was and she said "Blessed." Not good or okay but blessed. The Lord is just so evident in those who love him deeply and fully. This deep peace and quiet, powerful joy flowed from her spirit. She poured her story out with grace..a story of deep pain and suffering. Of alcoholism and drug abuse and being abused and being homeless and just entrenched in darkness. But she could not stop saying how blessed she was. How God laid a path for her and opportunities rose up describing it as a "red carpet laid out in front of her." And when she spoke of her house, her very spirit smiled. She told me she had not always been the way she is now. That she thought no one wanted to help her and that needing help was weakness. The people who pursued and loved her relentlessly though, began to uncover in her the gentle spirit and beautiful person I was changed by. She is not the only one with a beautiful spirit, that just takes work and effort to uncover. Every human was created in the image of God, with his qualities embedded in their souls. The way she blessed me ran much deeper than what I can hope to put into words. I just remember riding my bike there angrily in the rain and leaving and riding back with an overflowing heart, unable to stop smiling. We certainly have ourselves a mysterious incredible God. One who can break through anger and habit and fear and the comforts and walls we build to encase our hearts.

He is so worthy of worship. Worship may become the greatest delight of our lives if we let it. Lets worship more. I'm starting to realize that I don't even know what it means to worship in the deepest sense. I think it may change everything about my life. For some reason I never take the time to sit and sing to him in my room, as if somehow I think I'm too busy, which of course I am not. If God is not too busy for me then that says there is no way I can be too busy for Him. I was made for Him. We all were. Imagine how deep relationships would go if we spent our time together in worship in prayer instead of socializing and staying of the surface. Imagine how sacred the spaces in our lives would become if they where places where we got to encounter our Lover. I have a feeling that the more time we spend loving God the more love we will have for everyone else, for life itself. Because there will never be a time where we actively love Him that we are not loved back a thousand fold.

The church of my heart

Today I found the church I’ve been searching for. It’s called Mount Zion, it’s in the roughest neighborhood in downtown Raleigh, and it doesn’t even look like a church. It looks like a run down house. It’s possibly the most beautiful thing in the world. Its just such unfiltered Jesus I can’t get over it. It is the most cramped sanctuary I have seen and he says every week they have twice as many people as that which can be comfortably seated. I just love it. I talked to the pastor and he just talked about the difficulty of distinguishing between his biological and adopted family. He takes people in. Literally. They literally feed their community however they can, they clothe them, it’s a desperate mission of restoration, justice, crying out to Christ to make something lovely of our messy lives. 

I come back to campus and overhear conversation of gossip crazy partying Facebook. And I realize the tragedy that the huge majority will never even leave the school, and the majority that do will do work at a distance. But the time has come to enter fully into people’s lives. Here is what Christ forcefully advances in me: I cannot forsake the students here for the poorest of the poor 2 miles down the road. It’s both. God is ached for in the slums and he is ached for in prestigious, gleaming conference rooms and he is ached for in trendy coffee shops. The naturally move is to write people off to lessen the magnitude. We cannot. The multitudes are not to be marginalized. There are 27 million victims of human trafficking in the world right now. There are 31,000 students at North Carolina State University, most of whom are searching for real life and deep truth. WE are all searching for it. There is pain in the church and in the brothels. There are broken halfway around the world and there are broken in our neighborhood. God’s speaking this into my soul because he knows me, he knows my tendency to pick favorites, to pick some people and ignore others. And I cannot possibly begin to understand the needs of Raleigh NC, let alone this world.

 So therefore there is one response and one only. To look to the One who can. The one who already knows the width and length and breadth of the brokenness and knows that His love is deeper and stronger and wider and taller. The battle has been won, yet war wages on.  I cannot love well without Him. Paul said and I know its true: “Nothing good dwells in my flesh.  I delight in the law of God but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin.“ And the next thing he says is that there is NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What if that is how the church was viewed? What if people said all I know about them is that there is no condemnation in their Jesus. They do not condemn me. No matter who you are. It gives me chills. I haven’t heard many say that when asked to describe the church. And we should never ever suppress the truth or deny that there is good and there is sin. But no condemnation is truth as well. The truth that people may have never ever heard. We have been set free by enslaving ourselves to Christ. We have placed ourselves in the law of liberty. We can now be held captive by the law of the Spirit of life. God has done what we could not do. And this is our message to bear, this is our air to breathe, this is our life to live. 

Autumn Trees

It hit me this morning that I am here, in college to learn how to pray. To learn how to be with God. And what it means to be known by Him and that He knows me far better than I know myself. And everyone thinks of college as getting your degree and life skills and figure out your life plan but I think God wants me to know Him intimately. And not know Him and do this and this and this. Just know Him. Everything else will follow. I read this lovely thing about how autumn trees beg us not to worry. And the idea of leaning up against them and asking what it feels like to lose so much and to stand empty and just wait patiently for God to come and fill. What freedom that emptiness must bring. The trust required. The trees trust the Lord.
And when I really get into Him, I slow down my heart and my mind and I take a seat at His feet, its right. Right in the deepest sense of the word. I've been thinking so much about going home and seeing my family. But it is only when I am with God and fully satisfied by Him alone that all I want to do is love on them. Love them as hard and as well as I can. Not care about what we do or how they respond to me, or whether they think I'm different or more mature but just love them. God is the only one who creates in me a desire to give and not a desire for any reciprocation. Because he really really is enough. Most of the time I cannot grasp this truth but the glimpses and the moments where it hits me, those are the moments that have made this the best season of my life.
People will be impacted by being loved. Not by being fed or healed or successful or empowered. If they are not first loved the rest of it loses its value. All that are just the tangibles of being loved. And the only way anyone can be loved in the deepest, greatest sense is if they are loved by the One who is Love. Thats what my life is about it. ANd the only way I can make my life about it is by being loved by Him as well. Being poured into so that I can then pour out.

Hephzibah

My heart has been on the people I know who are missing out on real life. I think about them all the time. I see the ache, the deadness in people's eyes, and my desperation grows for people to know real life. And this sense of urgency and responsibility grows but it was so clear today that Jesus urges people to say nothing about Him, not to make his name known. And part of that is the fact that he hadn't died yet but a big part is that Jesus's healing comes with no conditions. Something in me wants it to be an exchange, "I did this for you, this is what I want you to do for me" and thats a lie. Jesus does not need me. He in and of himself is enough. He is enough for me and he is enough for every human being who ever lived. And I must cling to this because as I get to know people and get entrenched in these conversations about religion and faith and God and where life is found, my role is never to convince or reason with people. Its not even to verbally share the gospel. And really gospel sharing isn't that hard. Its a statement. Jesus died for you. I'm coming to find that Jesus is only made real in our love. That if I actually want to expose someone to the gospel, I've got to get in their life for the long haul. I have to love them. Really commit to loving. To spending time. To listening. To life on life. That is the gospel. That is Jesus.  Its quite comforting to reach the point where you tell them about who Jesus is and why we love Him tons. But those are probably just words. If Jesus was just about words, he wouldn't have came here. God gave the most beautiful words to His people, whispering them in their souls, showering them with his love but he knew that ultimately it would take living with them in every way. And Jesus IS God's Word. This is so deep and gorgeous. God's spoken Word is a person. Not just any person, but God made human. God spoke salvation into being by having Christ put on flesh.  Christ, this person that I crave, that I stake all that I have on, is the Word of God, the word love. And so it holds true that God doesn't call us to words in the way we think about them. He doesn't call us to proclaiming "jesus died for your sins." He calls us to be Jesus. He calls us to open ourselves to Himself that he may make his word living in us, make it love in us. Our proclamation of salvation will never be in anything verbal, but will always be in love. In relationship. I met with a girll yesterday and we talked for like an hour and a half about God and why Jesus is different then religion and how I can say there is only one truth and what heaven is and its so discouraging sometimes. Which is because I'm trying to approach this logically. The only way she will ever have any sense of who this guy Jesus is will be when someone loves her the eay he loves her. Actually like 1/1000 of the way he loves her. And God's like, "Krystal if you really care, its you. Stop putting your effort into things you can control and outcomes you can expect like your grades and invest. Go eat with her. Learn who she is. Get to know her the way I do. Darling, I know how to love her perfectly. I do love her perfectly. My delight is in her." And that will take a lot more work then occasional conversations about God and why He is everything her soul aches for. Because until she is loved like that she won't ever know there is more than the way life looks right now.

I found the loveliest verse..
You shall no longer be termed Forsaken and your land shall no longer be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight is in Her, and your land Married, for the Lord delight in you, and your land shall be married.
Isaiah 62:4

Lets memorize it. Lets anchor our soul in this promise. Lets say it over and over again in our minds until it becomes a river running through us, God's sunshine on our face. This is why we love. Because of His love. And this is why his Love is more than any human logic, anything we can do, any independence we crave. Because, in our deepest darkness and dirtiest sin He knows us. And this is what he says. And these words are  not just words it is the person of Christ and the love of the Lord. His Delight is in Us.

The hebrew word for His Delight is in Her is Hephzibah.
whisper that over and over into your soul and the people around you until we breathe it in as the Lord has breathed it out upon us. Hephzibah. 

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and without Him not one thing was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1: 1-5

Me and a couple of my favorite girls just started a bible study and we're going to journey through John. And so we read through this first section and twenty beautiful, haunting, inexplicable questions arose. How can God put on flesh? Did God send Jesus or did Jesus choose to go? What really is sin? What about people who are atheist? The nature of the Trinity. The cross. The wrath, the love. All of it at once like this flood of holy curiosity and who he is. And it astounds me and delights me that I will never have a clear grasp. This little section of John will never lose its mystery. The nature of the One we love will always be elusive, beyond our small minds and anxious desires to understand in fullness.
And that every time I read it, it strikes a chord, yesterday it was the notion that I could dive into the bottomless ocean of the nature of God and the trinity and the sending of the sweet sweet Son and that today this idea of the light in the darkness it what I will treasure and hold in my heart. And I think of my own deep fear and dislike of darkness, my desire to avoid it at all costs, and the boundaries I've placed in not wanting to travel to deep with people into their brokenness, especially if its a brokenness different than mine. The light shines in the darkness. There was no darkness, nothing too disgusting and uncomfortable and horrific for Jesus to ingest. I read about a guy who as a kid fell knee deep into sewage (sewage as in what came directly from the bathroom) and was so glad it was only knee deep. He went on to say that not only did Jesus go head under and immerse Himself but he ingested the sewage. Sometimes we don't want to consider our own sin and darkness that gross, but when we look at ourselves and the glory and perfection and purity of God, we realize that the comparison does not to justice to what Jesus did. And it applies to our lives because, we as the body of Christ, must not have people that are too entrenched in sin for us to carry light to their darkness. Quite literally the serial killers, the traffickers, the rapists, the abusers, the insane...Jesus ingested it already. They are given His robe just as we are. I know this awkward and unpopular and uncomfortable but I have to bring it up because its crucial in understanding who Jesus is and who we are as His body and bride. Life in Him is the light of all men, light that will seek out the darkest part of the blackest night of the human soul, and that darkness will never ever overcome it.

I'm astounded by You

Well, Lord, I just want to throw it out there that you are the most marvelous thing I have ever encountered. I am amazed by you,,God. You offer life. You, Jesus, are life. I’m binding myself to you . I don’t care God, what my life looks like, as long as it looks like you. Lord I know that the deep truth is that life is hard, very hard, but you are enough. Jesus is enough. I don’t want to be remembered. I don’t want my name written in history books, I don’t want to win a Nobel Peace Prize; I don’t want glory for helping people or changing their lives. Lord, my prayer is that the only thing people will see when they envision me is you. That I will fade and you will triumph and shine in me. I have found nothing in myself to put any hope in. But You Lord, are beyond worthy and perfect to place hope in. I can’t believe I’m here and this is life and I get to know you.

You’re molding in me this life not of telling people about Jesus but being Jesus. Not talking about God’s love but letting you show your people your love through me. You are the most precious thing I have to offer. That my mission is to bring water to the those dying of thirst but never to do so without the living water, the flood of life you are. To clothe the naked always knowing that only the pure robe of Christ will end our shame and nakedness. To loose the bonds that bind people unfairly and break every yoke, always bearing the image of the one who said “Come to me you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Sweet love, you are more than I ever ever imagined. Holy. Rivers of holiness bursting through this campus and this city of Raleigh. Rivers of tears streaming down our face when we see the One that makes our hearts turn violently inside our chests. Streams of joy flowing through our veins and the glory of a new and ancient life, the life for the body and blood of Christ.

Break my heart for what breaks yours.

The craziest thing is that I am nothing in all this. Everything beautiful I say and do is not me. It is You alone. As my dear friends grow in You and encounter you its so clear that nothing I do will bring them life. That you are working in ways bigger than me, but you have swept me up in this work of yours just because. That you write yourself into my writing as I just pour out all that is in me to you.  I don’t want anyone to look at me and see this great person or this super spirituality or maturity. I will always testify to the darkness of my own soul. The evil in my heart. My own lack of love and words and constant desire to make it about me and to steal Gods glory. I will never really be able to describe the frightening natural state of my heart and the depravity there. And I offer that to show that this about God. It has nothing to do with me except that he captured me. And now he is better than everything I’ve ever known. 

Day to Day Living

The thing is God,
I trust you.
I trust that you are for me and not against me. I trust that nothing can ever separate us. I trust that you are actively involved in my day, working in the messes I make, moving in me to be here. It is so freeing to hold on to these truths. To not be dismayed by the fact that I walked all the way to global village for the first time in weeks to get a latte and be with you. To not be bothered that all the other coffee shops in walking distance aren't open, because where I am and what I am eating and the music that is playing doesn't matter. It doesn't make you any less affectionate toward me or make our time spent together any less intimate and holy and satisfying. I've forgotten how to live without you. It is so humbling to see how little love I have to offer, how exhausted I am, how short my patience is when I haven't allowed you to pour into me. I just find more and more how dependent I am on you. And its so beautiful because that means that the more ministry I want to do, the more loving I want to do, the more I must be with you. Martin Luther, I think, said he was so busy he didn't have time NOT to spend 3 hours a day with you. It makes sense. But what is also lovely beyond compare is that sometimes I don't have the time and I haven't given you all of me and still you use me. Today I was sure I was supposed to grab my bible and run to have time just for us. Instead, I spent an hour with a suite mate with a hurting heart. I didn't have my own strength but it was not hard at all. I find such peace and delight in sensing the presence of the holy spirit in my soul, working where I cannot, love coming from within me that isn't my own. That wherever I am I can always close my eyes and be just with you. The peace in me that you are the designer of my life, that you gently guide me along the still waters truly does restore my soul.
       The more time you spend with the Lord, the more you find that no piece of your day will ever be enough..not half an hour, not three hours. But when you have reached that level of desperation for Jesus to continuously flood your soul, you are also at the point of seeing you can spend every moment in communion with him, constantly listening to those secret urgings, receiving the gifts he bestows, in conversation, unable to get the cross out of your mind. Now, to be quite real, i'm not there yet. And the beauty is none of us will ever be there until we experience real life..until we go home to Christ. But there is no limit to the amount of God and the amount of love we can experience here either. Lets cherish this time here in this land we are not citizens of., bearing one another's burdens, not losing sight of the cross, not seeking popularity and affirmation, not "meandering in the maze of mediocrity," but always always staring at our beloved and seeing every person through His eyes. Lets cherish our days here for they are numbered, and know that we can cherish them because we know that there is something far better for us.

Intimacy

A newborn child is a deeply, passionately intimate creature. As I marvel upon the undeniably holy relationship between parent and child, the adoration the child has for this person that they depend entirely upon and the parents nearly painful swelling of the heart for this small person who has suddenly become the center of their universe, the one thing they must protect at all costs and the one they could never let go of, it is possibly the clearest and closest humanly vision we get to how the relationship between God and human was intended. That deep desire for intimacy the child has is inherent, it is not learned or placed within them. They were born that way. How can we possibly consider this and not see that they were woven together with a need for their Creator that parents temporarily stand in for. And think of how you have loved your children, those first unutterably precious moments together, that love that is frightening with its intensity and certainty for these little beings, or how you will when you have your own, and imagine that there is one that loves us more than we love them. "The very nature of the Creator is one of total intimacy." The first thing John says is that the Word was with God, and we must not thing of this "with" as standing next to each other but as facing God, toward God, "with" in absolute entirety. We know this. Our heart resonates with this sense of togetherness. I would go so far as to suggest that every human being, when the layers of pain and success and masks and experience and coverings and independence are stripped away, has at the core of their being the desire for intimacy that has not been met by anything earthly. It is something that becomes covered and painted over as we move through life, that starts to dissolve when the hardships hit and the thirst becomes something we can live with, something we can ignore, and in the most desperate of cases something we begin to deny entirely. But if we examine the young, the ones least calloused by the harshness of life it is undeniable. Kids respond to touch. I think of the kids I've worked with and how they climb all over me, how they snuggle in close during a movie regardless of their socioeconomic status, their race, their family, their attitude. Its runs deeper than all those things. There is a reason we all love babies...they are most in tune with their desire for intimacy, most accepting of their utter helplessness, least aware of outside forces. 

     Today I met an incredible guy from Belgium who was absolutely convinced God didn't exist. And it was so humbling because I begun writing this post this morning so convinced, so sure of the evidence of God all over the place. And I prayed that God would show me where the holes were, where I could grow and learn. And this afternoon I meet this guy who is pretty brilliant, he has put so much thought into this, and reached a different conclusion than I have. He's existentialist-believing that life has meaning when we give it meaning. Its something we create for ourself. And so I am going to look into the brilliant men and women who have gone before me who have looked into these dark and dangerous questions and found Christ there, found that he is the answer. And I love him. Seriously, I love this guy so much I met today. And the only possible way I see that being possible is that Jesus loves him desperately and is in me. And literally seconds after, my mind spinning with the mass of knowledge too great for me to discern, I ran into this wonderful woman of God and it was such an encouragement. That we are not in this fight alone. That God's love is bigger even when in it is inexplicable. Its just my heart, my heart that testifies to Christ. He rings true in my soul. I know thats not empirical or calculable or tangible but I know it more than I know anything else. I stake my life on it. As I write this, an amazing friend of mine looked over and asked if I was writing. He said he knew because my eyes sparkled and he could see it on my face when I write about Jesus. And there is this light that bursts through my soul when I see Him and interact with Him and talk about Him. Its so real. And the love for people around me just defies my own broken nature. I don't naturally love people I barely know desperately and entirely. But Jesus does. And its in me. I can't wait to see where this relationship goes, and what we learn. He has already taught me so much just by encouraging me to go deeper in this faith. Back to the love..its loving people without caring whether they love you back. Just loving them because they are so beautiful, so precious to the One that loves me. And loving because all this love from God feels right when its poured out. The satisfaction lies in pouring love not in the response the love evokes. These guys I'm with in the lounge right now: I just want to be like "I love of each of you so, so much." But that might be a little weird. But it makes it so Jesus really is quite real. So real.

Knowing His Heart

Henri Nouwen said that perhaps more than anything else there is a desperate need for people who intimately know the heart of God. Therein lies where each of us should pour our lives. Knowing his heart. Before going to work. Before raising our families. Before saving the world. But how? How do we go about this knowing of the divine heart? Maybe we should just ask Him. To take time in solitude, there cannot possibly be enough time with our lover. He knows our needs. He knows our very souls intimately. He will run his finger over us gently until he comes across the cracks and then he will pour into the cracks. There is something deep and mysterious and painful about real solitude. About awareness of ourselves, our urgencies, our discomforts. Where are thoughts wander when left to rove. The parts of us that we bury and bury and really would not like Him to come anywhere near. I know because I have it all in me. I am so resistant to relinquish myself to my maker. Oh, how I rush to put a time limit on time with the Lord, to schedule with Him, to tell Him about what I want to do and to bring out that mental list of people and things I just really need to pray for and blow through them. But I know, I know, these deep heart things must not continue to spread dangerously underneath the surface. They're not things I should just get used to, learn to live with. We have to begin this rough journey of love and opening ourselves to each other. I am the most resistant of anyone to this kind of love.
I'm like, "come on God don't be a mood killer here. Lets just keep this relationship in a safe place. I just want to talk about growth, about Jesus of the past, about plans and majors and casual things. Anything but brokenness papa." Robert Benson said you cannot be multiplied enough to be shared. You can only be broken enough to be shared. And Jesus, God himself, shared everything with a few guys. It wasn't some mass movement at the time. Just life on life. And jesus hung literally broken for the entire world to see and to laugh and to hate. That certainly where I've been intending on going. But the call is to follow. And to follow anything or anyone or good people or  role models or the really really good people who did great stuff-no the call is to follow just one. One named Jesus.
And I want to share with you all the beauty I am living. The hope I have for this campus and this city and this world. Share the random interactions of the day and the discoveries about God and the call to go to the broken, to live life with high schoolers, testify to the incredible things my beautiful community in christ is doing here. They are beyond compare. And I want to talk about wyldlife girls back home and 8th and 9th graders who already have a heart for the Lord. And Libby and Justin who are warriors for Christ. And we should. We should share with each other the deep precious joy of life with our Lord and preach the gospel to each other everyday simply by our expanding hearts for people, for each other and those so so far from their Love. But I must also share the hardness of my heart. That I am broken and that I have no hope in myself. But I have hope in the One within me. And if people will see him in my life, it won't be where I am intentional about it or trying to do this or that. It will be in the look on our faces, the little ways we interact with humanity, with God-we will be marked. It will be evident that we know a Heart that is better than the ones here. A Heart that is better than anything anyone has ever seen. It lies not in resumes and projects and statistics and money raised and aid given-it is in faces and hands and feet, in the smiles and the touches and the going, and God is here. Lets abandon everything and get to know this Heart.

Clinging

Hey Love, 

Take my heart. And my life. All this chaos. All this running. And you're in the silence. In the whispers the wind makes as it rustles the leaves that float lazily to litter the ground. Such deep glory. Such perfect love. And yet I run and run. Running is right-if it is running to you. But I tend to run just to run. Because if I'm running I'm sure I'm productive, and productivity still seems so significant. God, I want to follow you my way. Which kind of undermines that whole following thing. I come to you asking "Where, love? Where would you like to send me? To use me? To be glorified?" But I have so many answers in my mind of what I where I want to go that there is no way I can possibly listen for an answer. And there is all this loudness everywhere in college, but when I get away I realize how much loudness is in my mind, how much restlessness in my soul. And I get so panicky and overwhelmed by all the people who desperately need you and I don't even know where to start. 

Let this urgency, this love burn-burn hard in my soul that I may think of nothing else, nothing but you my king. You, whose dew is the dew of light. Fingers brush the diving for just a moment. And its just more real. More right. Than anything else. And somewhere in me, its stirring. The life you are painting for me. A life of humility where I resist being humble. A life of transparency though I want to be so strong. A life of obedience I will try to undermine again and again. But still, you will be faithful. To me. Which is hard to accept and embrace. Because I won't. God, you are quite beautiful. If there is anything I discover deeper daily it is your beauty. Right now I am overwhelmed, sidetracked, unsure where to step and still taking my life from you still sprinting through the days with full schedules and an empty heart, but knowing, knowing the alternative is you. And finding rest in you. Finding joy and peace. And life. Life that is counterfeit from every other source. Sources so close and so far from you. All counterfeit. you're authenticity is enough for me. Jesus is enough for me. And he is enough for this world I feel so obligated to save, so responsible for. I am not. I am here to be present with you, to be obedient to trust that your plan is greater, inexpressibly more lovely than my own that I still continue to develop and cling to. I am here to cling to you. Nothing more, nothing less. 

From: Christ

(a letter from christ to his people)

Dearest Darling,

Come, come and stay a while. Its been too long. Come to listen, just for a little while. I want to whisper to you what your soul needs to hear. Come as a first urge, not as an after thought. Lets do something new today, I have this whole world to show you. Stop chasing after less wild lovers. I am the one your soul yearns for, the one your soul followeth hard after. Resist the temptation to get up and search elsewhere for what is at hand.  Yes, if you come with me, I will take you where you do not want to go. Yes, you will do more than you ever imagined, every day will be surprising and miraculous, yes the air tastes sweeter the closer we get. It will be easier if you choose not to follow. Everything about you wants to lead, wants to be in control, rejects my love, my self, for power. Everything in this world affirms it. But this discomfort, this pain I will lead you into is where life is found. It means you have to become close to people. I will take all your time, not an hour a month. It may take all your resources. Your job. It will certainly take your social status and reputation. This following me stuff, that is. But those are all much less wild lovers. But still I bid you, come and die. If your wondering how to serve, think of the people who no one wants to help. The scum of the world. The ones that make your stomach churn a little. THats who I want you to love with your life. Think of those living lives of quiet desperation. Now, love if you know few people suffering and desperately in need of me, it because you know few deeply at all. I promise you, as you peel back layer after layer in the pain of real relationship, real love, you will eventually get to me. In every soul. Darling, I know. I know the cries of their heart more intimately than anyone else. I know what they were made for. So come love. Come and follow. If only you could imagine what I will do with you and through you and in you if you answer the call, the call that makes your soul stand on tiptoe. The call of your Lover.

Jesus

Being the Body and Bride of Christ

Sometimes, a lot of the time I make this blog about me. And its just such a journey to see what it means to give it to God and let it be His. I don't know why I hold on to so much that belongs to Him, that I would love to let go of like my life. I glanced at the entry I had written from Tuesday and I was so surprised. You see, I never read them so I started and I just thought "I didn't write that. I don't have those words. I never could have written something like that." And it just humbled me so much that when its so late and I just sit typing away God could come in to these fingers and weave Himself into the text showing on the page. And that even when I think I'm making it about me, and I am of course, that he is still making it about Him. And I learned anew that He is doing things that we could not do, but in us and through us and we don't even know its happening. That we won't ever know the ways he works, the way the kingdom is advanced that He has us be apart of. Because we are beautiful to Him. Beautiful.
Last night I was watching the rain and I always have these revelations but I just thought that I don't need revelations. SOmetimes I need to just be with my Savior. Just look at what He is doing. He is doing so much. And the rain is just so tragic and delightful and fast and slow all at once. And I always rush through it or get frustrated by it or barely take note of it but I never just watch it. I never just watch anything. Because thats a waste of time and I just like as if time is this precious commodity that I can exploit and hold and manipulate. And I can. But it will be my loss. Because it doesn't belong to me. And the harder I fight for time, the more of it that slips out of my grasp. (as I am typing this it just started raining. That would be God I believe.)
I've been thinking about how I can't give love unless I get it from God first. That it has to spill out from the top while I try to shake out those last drops, the dregs of love. And thats lovely because we have no choice but to love God lots and lots if we want to love people. Because when we love Him a little, He loves us a lot. Like sprinkling versus downpour. I can't even imagine how he has such love in Him. It defies logic. And I never thought of myself having a finite amount of love but I certainly do. But He has an infinite amount of love that-and I was going to say tap into but thats wrong-an infinite amount of love to lavish on me that I may be Jesus, for real not figurative, and love people. And this I think is a little bit of what they mean when they talk about the mystery because its nothing but mystery really. And that Christ is not made real in people's lives by the message that a guy died for you a long time ago. He is made real in love. And love comes through people first and then directly through God. And so our love is so significant. Our one to one love, life on life love. Thats where gospel is-not in a speaker to a group or in a building or in a book. We are both His body-His hands, His feet, His eyes, His words and His bride. And that in order to be the body you must be the bride because the love does not come from anything we have of our own. And in order to be the bride we must be the body because  its the only way to know Him. Both cause each other and result form each other and exist in harmony. And  both are made real only when we come lay our head's on Christ's chest. Not that we accept or consider that John rested on his chest but that we do it. We dare to be enveloped in that sort of intimacy. That sort of love.

I really shouldn't be writing given thats its so late but there is just too much to pour out, to much glory to give to the Lord to not. There is so much life in Christ. And I know I probably express that all the time. But I have found that sometimes I have the same revelation day after day partially because it is so true and partially because I forget every day. But I never want the cross to get old. I never want to have days where I am not astounded by the bounty of life God provides. I will never have a day where I do not seek my own glory, where I am again confronted by whether to take the path up or down. When I don't find a fuller definition of giving my life to Him.
I was talking to my dear friend Jessie the other day about how to spend time because I want to spend more and more with Jesus but meanwhile there is class and people and life going on and I cant spend it all hiding in Him. And she revealed to me this stunning notion of life with Christ, of holding Him dear to my heart throughout the day, sharing with Him as I walk, inviting Him into the little decisions, seeing his presence in conversation. And I start to see how he equips me. It is so humbling because it is absolutely illogical. Like I shouldn't be equipped the way I am and I know there is this force moving in me and through me and that it is the Spirit. Because I know myself, I know I have no ability to be someone my friends are thankful for. And how Christ's life was surrendered to the Spirit and the Father and that God does in us and through us what we could never do or prepare ourselves for. And the idea of living constantly with Christ is so precious to me. It is sweet to the taste. And as I reflect on the day, I see that in these everyday yet undeniably miraculous conversations I find myself in, I am interacting and spending time with the Lord. And as my heart grows the more I pour it out, the more I feel for people, I know that there is only one Replenisher.
And I've found that our understanding of the Word becomes real when it is in our lives. That studying ceaselessly, it will be just a study. But when something happens and you think back to the gospel you know. When I can't get a kid from Boys Club out of my mind, i know what Paul means as he tells these churches "you're written on my heart, I think about you all the time." I know what Paul means when he says your power is made perfect in weakness, I'm beginning to see the way Gods love is so different as John describes.
Thank you, Lord, Lover, Friend for being you. For being a poet and writing this hurting humanity love sonnets in the Word and in the skies and in the trees that fall. Thank you for holding my hand as you gently reveal to me the darkness of my heart-though its depth makes me want to run. But even more God that you would use me, and grow me, and love me and that I wouldn't even know what was happening and you do it just because you're you. And thank you Jesus for living and for dying so that my condemnation was stamped on your bloodstained brow that now when I choose the world over and over, every time you rescue me saying "No, not her. She is mine." And God teach us that uncomfortable truth that the people we want to label "most" sinful, the people who's depravity is limitless, the traffickers and abductors and corruptors-those that we essentially condemn to hell-you say "No. Not even him. Not even her. They also can come into these arms. Because it is what I did not what any human being did or did not do that gives them the chance to be embraced by my perfect Papa."