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.