Ps 46:10

Be still and know that I am God. 

Barking

At this point the dog has been barking for 70 minutes...straight.

**Update**

The dog has stopped barking after 85 hell-on-earth minutes.

Axiomatic

7But when [John the Baptist] saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch him baptize, he denounced them. “You brood of snakes!” he exclaimed. “Who warned you to flee God’s coming wrath? 8Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. 9Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones. (Matt 3:7-9 emphasis added)

You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. (James 2:19)

"[He] walked in a divine sense of rest..."

'[He] walked in a divine sense of rest. Like, 'You know what? Everything is going to be okay. The Lord is still on the throne. We're gunna make it." Larry Stockstill on his recently departed father of 97 years, Pastor Roy Stockstill.


Below is a memorial of a holy man, who lived a long and blessed life. It is inspirational for me to hear of his joy and rest. You may not know him, I didn't either, but I have experienced the legacy that his obedience to God has created.

How safe is too safe?

Jesus' words were bold. They were brave. They were true. Jesus himself was the Word of God--the word God used to create the universe--made man. And our Heavenly Father entrusted to us that very same Word to be proclaimed to all the nations of the Earth.

In Matthew 28, often referred to The Great Commission, Jesus spoke to his 11 disciples and commanded them:

 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

As Christians, we are vessels of the Word of God.  We have to believe that the same saving power that God's word had for us, it will also have for others. We don't need anything else. Therefore, we do not need to sugarcoat, pussyfoot, elaborate, apologize for or defend it. All we need to do is "testify" to it.

But how can we make disciples if we ourselves aren't disciples? How can we proclaim the Word of God when we don't even know the Word of God.

God wants us to have hearts as pure as children's hearts, but an intellect of an adult--he wants us to have a mature understanding of Him. Therefore in order to make disciples, in order for us to become new creations "we must cultivate a hunger for the Word of God."1 We have got to read his Word, and Thanks be to God, His word is free to us! (Of course there are places where the bible is not accessible, but in most of the world, we can access 100 different translations of the bible just by using our smart phones.)

I'm being challenged in this area of my life. I want to be transformed and yet I'm not allowing the transformational power of the Word of God to enter my life. I'm not saturated with his Word. If God created Light and Sky and Water and the entire UNIVERSE by using his words, how transformative can that Word be when its full creative power is unleashed within me?

Filling the Void

Its has only been 2 weeks since Lent began, and I feel desperate when I see how much time I have left. I also thought that by breaking my addiction to social media and other media, that I would have been a healthier person, but I'm not. Maybe I've not given it enough time, but I find myself replacing social media with other just as unhealthy things.

See Lent is not a time just to abstain but also to take up. You remove something and fill the void with Christ.

That's what I've been missing.

I'm realizing now that when you remove something from a crowded space, that space doesn't remain empty. Something else comes in to fill it (even if it is just air molecules). This happens in our lives. If you take something out, you have to be intentional about putting something healthy and good back in. Because the space does not remain a void. It will be filled.

Repentance

I'm reading Bonhoeffer in my spare time at home, and listening to C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity on Audible in the car. Funny enough both were recently touching on the theme of Repentance.

Enjoy!

"Now what was the sort of "hole" man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor-- that is the only way out of a 'hole.' This process of surrender--this movement full speed astern--is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death... Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. "C.S.Lewis, Mere Christianity Ch4 pg 59-60

"The Gospel is protected by the preaching of repentance which calls sin sin and declares the sinner guilty.  The key to loose is protected by the key to bind.  The preaching of grace can only be protected by the preaching of repentance." Bonhoeffer


Bonus Bonhoeffer quote (page 272) that relates to my recent post, which you can read by clicking here.

"We must be able to speak about our faith so that hands will be stretched out toward us faster than we can fill them... Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic... Do not defend God's Word, but testify to it... Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity!"

Metaxas continues, "He wished to impress upon his ordinands that when one truly presented the Word of God, it would undo people because it had the innate power to help them see their own need and would give the answer to that need in a way that was not larded over with 'religion' or false piety. The grace of God, without filter or explanation, would touch people."

page 361

Charles H. Jr.,

You checked out a book back in June of 2014. I found your bookmarker today. A little piece of your forgotten past has amalgamated with my present. 

I wonder did you ever finish? Or did you stop on page 361? Did you stick the hold receipt somewhere in the book when you checked it out, then never getting around to reading the almost 600 page Bonhoeffer, simply return the book to the library without so much as flipping through its pages? 

Anyway, it was cool running into you today on page 361. Maybe I'll catch you again later? 

Our Lord and Savior who?

So I was helping to lead worship this Sunday. It was the first week of a new series called Heart Attack, which takes a look at our relationships and things that wage war against them.

We had a number of things go wrong this morning from microphones not working and buzzing during worship, to our pipes freezing, to the computer crashing numerous times... so many system breakdowns that it would take a post all on its own to address them all.

But if I were to point out the Number 1 thing that went wrong on Sunday, it would have to be me.

At one point during our worship set, I felt compelled to pray. I wanted to express to our congregation that the only perfect love they will ever experience is the love of Christ. But when it came time for me to speak I got scared. I started second guessing myself. I started to think that my prayer was too radical for the unbelievers or new-to-faith in the audience. That the word Jesus Christ was too offensive.

So instead I said something like, "Thank you for the perfect love that only you can give, our Lord."

It wasn't until this morning that it hit me!

The ONLY message that an unbeliever or new-to-faith NEEDS to hear is that Salvation comes through submission to Jesus Christ.

If we preach that message every single Sunday, it would never get old because it is the ONE and ONLY thing that saves souls from entering the gates of Hell!

Every message we preach, every song we sing, every prayer we utter should at its very foundation be about salvation through Jesus Christ!

Nothing has been revealed to me more clearly. If we go a single Sunday morning service without even touching upon the saving power of the blood of Christ, then we have not done the will of God. If nothing we say invites an unbeliever to commit his life to Christ, then we might as well pack up and leave the building.

One should never be scared, ashamed, or intimidated to share the GOSPEL--the Good News--that God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to LIVE as a man and to Die on a Cross, offering himself as the perfect sacrifice as atonement for our sins, but that is not all--3 days after he died on the cross, he rose from the dead! And whoever should believe in Him will not perish but have Eternal Life!

I pray to God to give me the strength to allow this to be at the heart of everything I do or say! I ask him to fill me with His mighty power and that through the holy Spirit, I commit myself to pray bold prayers--never again allowing the devil and his lies to penetrate my worship again.

My Reader

My daughter reads until her body falls to exhaustion almost every single night. We sleep with our doors open, so I can hear the distinctly sharp rustle of pages turning until past midnight. 

I reprimand her sometimes--I go into the room and demand she close her book and fall asleep. 

Then sometimes I don't. I just let her read until she falls asleep--whatever time that may be. 

See I remember being a little kid who would read under her covers using a flashlight--scared my grandma would wake up, catch me reading late at night, and force me to close my book. She loved me deeply and felt that my sleep and my studies (of which success relied on me not being tired at school) were more important than whatever book I was reading. 

I bet there were plenty of times she knew I was reading under the covers and didn't say anything. Probably for the same reason I don't say anything to Lia--because she knew how much joy and happiness it brought me. 

Here's a picture of my 9 year old reading a biography on Condoleezza Rice with her Encyclopedia of Marvel Comics open on her pillow. 

 

False?

So I finished the" Draw the Circle, 40 day Prayer Challenge" book last night and realized today, after looking for another book in my bookshelves, that I own a lot of Mark Batterson's books, "The Circle Maker," "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day," and "Draw a Circle Around Your Kids."

I figured they are all small books, and I could read them fairly easily and get a spiritual refill! So this morning I sat down to read "The Circle Maker."

But as I read chapter 1, a slight discomfort kept nagging at me. Especially when he wrote this, "With the authority of the prophet Elijah, who called down fire from heaven, Honi called down rain." 

Who is this Honi the Circle maker that this guys keeps talking about?

Is he in the bible? If this Honi speaks with the same authority as Elijah, how had I never heard of Honi before?

So I did a quick google search. Turns out many Christians have a problem with Mark Battersons' Christian books on a Jewish legend not found in the bible. 

And while I think the prayer challenge is really good and the book very well written and even inspirational, I do have a slight issue on his basing the whole thing on a legend, which is not biblical. 

Some sources call it heretical and Mark a false prophet. I don't know if I would go that far. 

But it does place enough reservations in my spirit that I'll hold off reading his other works until I look into it further. 

Enjoy

I took this picture of these beautiful tiny pink flowers yesterday from a bouquet I bought. It's a little punch of color in this cold,  white, and gray world outside.

Feeling exposed

I used to not have an issue expressing what I wanted so passionately to say. Not putting it into a poem or making it rhyme, but just typing it out plainly and bluntly. I've become completely neurotic about what others think about what I've said. Will they look too deeply? Will they misinterpret? Will I offend? Will I sound like an idiot? Will what I write affect my career? Will it affect my relationships?

I mean it absolutely consumes me. 

I've recently been tasked to write a small blurb about myself to go with a picture of me on a website. And I can. not. get. it. done. 

I second guess every word choice, every sentence, every single train of thought. Should I mention that I'm passionate about delving deeply into the word of God? Oh man, what if the other people didn't put anything like that, then I'll sound so arrogant! What if they just put that they like knitting? Do I have any PASSIONS like knitting... obviously not knitting, but something like it? hmmmmmMmmmMmMmmMMMmMmmMMmmMMm

Nothing.

Ok. Let me take out passions and just put that I sing in the band..... but what if that undermines my other role. Should I mention my other roles to reinforce my experience with the organization? hmmmm probably not.

And on and on and on it goes.

See I've come to realize as I've gotten older that you can't just say what you want and there not be consequences--even as small as the knowledge others have about you--the insights they glean. Those are consequential.

I've come to treat this space--a cyber-space that I've maintained since I was 19 years old, as a place to hold my most cryptic poems that expose but don't tell what is on my mind. 

Funny thing is that barely anyone reads this, and yet I'm more afraid of exposure than ever before. 

Destined

how would you know
that somewhere far away
there's a girl with all the words
but with nothing left to say?

My yoke is easy and my burden is light

Easy
Ease
Gentle
Cool Breeze,
Yellow and Red
Falling
Leaves,
Tall and thin
Blades of Grass
Bending softly
Against the wind.
Long, slow kisses
And soft firm skin
Wavy locks
Of hair that blend
Blonde and brown
And black and gray.
Everything
I see today
Pushes the darkness
Farther away.

Put myself out there

Didn't let the flat tires deter me

From setting out into the warm sun

And the cool breeze

Clear skies

And a new lease

On life

With fresh eyes

and my soul set free

From the darkness that was cast upon me.

There it is

Took a minute
But now I see
What I was missing
Was humility--
The power to make
My life and wants smaller
All while making
Your greatness taller,
Bolder,
Stronger,
Right to the front
Of my mind and my thoughts.
See I knew something was wrong!
I had belief
But no love.
I had knowledge
With no awe.
And it took one dancing child
With her arms raised high
And her joyful smile
And her gleaming eyes
Bursting with gladness flowing from inside
To remind
Me of the happiness that comes
From being a child of the most high one.
So here it goes:
"Glory Glory Glory
To the Lord God Almighty,"
As I join with the chorus
of the Angels on high
That with every breath
Proclaim with pride
That they surrender their lives
To their Lord Jesus Christ.

I went home

I recently traveled back to New Orleans after being away for over 3 years. I didn't take my husband or kids. It was just me---traveling solo.
And it was the most liberated I have felt in ages. I was able to visit everyone i wanted for as long as I wanted without having to feel guilty for leaving my kids to be taken care of or having to beg Lee to come along. I was in complete control.

I went to a wedding and danced.
I went to a bar and played pool all night.
I drove to the lower 9th, to arabi, to marrero, to kenner, to terry town, to boomtown casino!

Just everywhere.

The love that I received was overwhelming. People who love and miss me were just lavishing me with attention and nothing on this planet could have prepared me for it.

Trust me, I feel like God brought us to Raleigh and he has plans for our lives here, but what I have back in New Orleans is special. I have history and deep affection. I forgot about that...

Challenge pt 1

I decided to challenge myself to write something happy. But I needed inspiration. So I've put together a series of photographs that I've taken through the years and allowed them to take me back to that place--of joy, or warmth, or peace, or contentment. 

Dappled
Beneath the broad and cool canopy
Of your heart-shaped leaves
Once deep burgundy
Have now turned green
Peaceful and quiet
tranquil yet defiant
Through the rustles and creeks
That the wind
Uses to welcome and greet.

Mini-breakdown

My mind is in a state of change--

insecure and unfastened.

My spirit slightly broken,

Bruised, and disheartened.

"You think too much" 

"You push too much"

"Just let it go"

"Just let them be"

And deep inside I keep wondering

"Why does it always have to be me?"

The one to apologize

The one to adjust

The one to bend

And the one to rush

To take on so much

For those who care so little

And with every breath

Condemn and belittle

All that I do

And all that I care for

Without any concern for the time

And the effort 

I invest in this chore?

Give me a break!

My goodness, My God!

I do this because I love.

And I don't need any thanks or any praise

But some Grace

Would be nice.

And some flexibility 

Would be great!

And just like the words on this page

All blurted out and spewed all over

My hurt is dulled

And my spirit glazed over

With the numbing mist

That it instinctively applies

When little chips and little hurts

Expose the tender me inside.

Mending and strengthening

Until the next injury arrives.