Take Heart (Awake)

verse 1:

Fill me up so I can fall again

at your feet

on my knees

my blood is on your hands, I keep saying “I can’t”

but you won’t let me go

i keep slipping but it’s my own fault. I’m loosing vision in the procision of my future…of my past

and I can’t take it back, I’m only giving what I lack

it’s a fact…that(scream)

chorus:

you are the only one I will ever be completely sure of

satisfy…what lies…beneith(scream)

I am off to sleep. I want to awake, but I can’t breathe, sinking in the deep. As my eyes shut tight. I try to hold them open. But they fall, as I fall

And I need to need you more

so i’m taking heart in the storm

as I fix my eyes… on you.

verse 2:

This is way to obcene, for me to stay

and all I know is you are stronger, still

breaking me flat, to get you back

to where you were when I was sure

and this is not to stop, i wont let you take me…it’s safety that I want

but i don’t need…to shake.. in this earthquake

i am starring at your guilt, it was my guilt. That put you there. Thank goodness you didnt stay.

in the…grave(scream)

bridge 1:

i need you to pick me up and hold on tight

you are my love, you are my love, you are my love

Awake, Awake, Awake(scream)

bridge 2:

take heart, this is not the end. take heart, our father is alive (x4) <all sing>

chorus

Revolution

So, I thought I would blog today. Sometimes I have the urge to, but then I find something I would rather do, and then I loose my inpriration. That kind of happened to me tonight, but I decided I would write all the same.

I’m almost finished with Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell. I just read the chapter entitled, “Swollen Bellied Black Babies, Soccer Moms On Prozac, And The Mark Of The Beast.” It made me come back to reality. The reality that America is so extremely completely greedy. The book talks about how America is an Empire. Just like Egypt and Persia and Assyria and Rome were empires. Did you know America uses 20 million barrels of oil everyday??? that’s enough oil to set one-gallon jugs side by side and circle them around the equator and around the world 6 times.  Also, did you know that one billion people in the world do not have clean water and an average american uses 600 liters of water a day…..?

REALLY????

We are so obsessed with ipods, iphones, itouches, and imacs. We go buy new clothes when we are having an off day, hoping it will make us feel better. we spend millions of dollars on church buildings, when every 7 seconds, a child under 5 years old DIES from hunger.

I look at my own life. I thought I did pretty well giving what I had to others. The truth is: I have SO many clothes. The truth is: I spend my extra money on soda and dinners at Qdoba and Noodles and McDonald’s…instead of helping people who are freezing and starving and bleeding and coughing and dying.

I am spoiled rotten.

We are so BLINDED by our STUFF that we take Jesus for granted. I spend so much time trying to think of how to make Jesus more interesting to us spoiled people. The truth is: Jesus is Revolution.

and we need His  revolution to save us  from our insanity.

How He Loves

So I’m sitting here listening to the Hope CD from BigStuf. There is a song on there called “How he loves”….I love the beginning. It says “He is jealous for me”….God wants our hearts. He wants to be the one we put our hope in….not friends or boyfriends/girlfriends or parents or material things or our jobs or sports….That’s just it…We can try our hardest, run our fastest, study for hours, bleed ourselves dry and we wont ever be good enough….Because we are human, we will fail. We will have our hearts shattered and we will shatter hearts….people will leave us and we will leave others…people wont give us a chance…and we will judge others and do the same thing! That is though. “If grace is an ocean, then we’re all sinking”…God’s grace is so unfathomable in our minds. We can’t understand how he loves us….Even after we turn our backs on him, deny him, forget him, dont believe in him….HE STILL LOVES US! and not even any less….Nothing we do could make him love us less….

Something that is confusing is that “We were never meant to be alone”……and yet God is suppose to be the only one that fills us…I’m trying to figure out how that works. I don’t know if i know anyone who is completely alone and still trusts God with everything…I don’t really want to do it alone. I don’t think I could. I need people in my life to help me and encourage me when I start to doubt and think it is all hopeless….I know God puts people into our lives to shape us….but we can only depend on God? That’s tough….

But He loves us…so my problem is how do we believe in people but not get let down? How do we encourage others to be better without shaming them? How do we relate to others and still stand up for what is right and good? how do we balance the moral side (right things) to the grace side (forgiveness)?

These are the questions runnning through my mind. “but i dont have time to maintain these regrets when i think about the way he loves us”

That’s  all over the place…but that’s how i feel right now i guess.

Post #1…Post Grenada

I figured I would save my blog about Grenada till later because I want to write my reflections first. So be patient…

I am realizing more and more that God uses those people who aren’t the best. He wants to display his power through equipping those he has called. If we are open to his power then he will use us. Isn’t that awesome!? It’s good news for me because I know I am not the best singer or guitar player or teacher or speaker or friend or person…..and if i say yes to God then he will use me! On the way to Grenada God spoke to me and said “I’m going to surprise you”….I didn’t know what that meant until I kept getting surprised For one thing I led worship at a church on Sunday and was so nervous I was crying….I didn’t feel prepared or equipped. In the last year my self esteem has gone way down and so I have been feeling useless and not good enough and discouraged….But God surprised me in making the worship awesome! So much so that after the preaching, the people asked Ken for more worship!!!! ahhhh, so me and the girls ended up winging it old school! eek! but it turned out good…their worship leader (also a woman ) came up and helped out vocally and that was a big help. It was a blessing to see Christians actually worshiping God and not just singing the words to a song. It was their prayer because even after the music faded you could hear hallelujahs echoing throughout the church…”praise you Jesus” “We love you Lord”…..It was a wake up call to what our worship should always be like…even though God gives and takes away will our hearts choose to say blessed be your name Lord?? I also have been learning that we should be able to worship God and hear his word no matter who is the messenger! A LOT of times people complain about who was preaching or leading worship…and that is so sad, because we should love worshiping and hearing God’s truth no matter who it is!!! Plus I know first hand I have been ridiculed for doing ministry because maybe people don’t like my style…it really hurts to not be appriciated when my heart is for God and for the people….not myself… I realize i’m not the best but God has and still is using me….

Also, On the plane ride back started to prepare me as an evangelist (aka: telling people about Jesus)…when I had the oppurtunity to share the gospel with an 84 year old man who believed in Darwinism AND a muslim woman. ahhhh…And it turned out great!!!

I pray God that you would use me in a mighty way and that I would develop a love of your word and for your people. Make me brave and help me to perservere despite people’s whispers….including satan’s. Teach me to give grace like you do..and to know that I do not have to control anything…you have it all under control for my good…Help me to be patient and passionate…full of your spirit and your power….change me!

Can’t Sleep

I can’t freaking sleep. it’s 1:18….I tried to go to bed at 11:30ish and laid in my bed for almost two stinking hours…so i am up, drinking water, writing some of my thoughts down so maybe i can stop being an insomniac and fall asleep.

I want listening to my ipod as on attempt to sing myself to sleep earlier….to my worship playlist and just starting thinking about how i love music and worship music and God and started thinking about how honestly i do feel like things have a chance to get better…that i may be on a slow climb to the beautiful mountaintop…but then i started thinking about rituals and how sometimes….well…a lot of the time we just do things because we are expected to…..like….standing up during a worship service, raising our hands, closing our eyes during prayer…stuff like that….and I started to think about how i am in a place where i know God is real and that he has the best life possible for me, and that he loves me..and yes i want to follow him….but there is some barrier thing that makes me well….not genuine in why i do things…that may not makes sense….In some cases I am very genuine, like how i treat my friends or being honest with those closest to me. But some of it seems very hazy….There seems to be a lot of this fog floating around me and my circle of life lately. It’s confusion about why we do what we do, it’s grey areas, and going with the flow, and feelings….it’s hazy is what it is. I was thinking about how i hope i get to lead worship this summer, and how i want to do these songs, with these people, with these videos in the background….but then i thought about the legitimacy of all that. How many people actually mean the words they sing at church….like in “come thou fount” it says here i raise my ebeneizer….what does that mean anyway?? why do we sing things in a room with lights and loud guitars when we dont even know why we are doing it. dont get me wrong, I love that. but i am guilty of getting up their with my guitar and leading a band…trying to worship God, but am i inviting others to just sing with me…or to worship the amazing God with me? How many people of a youth group of 100, actually mean what they sing??? I know that God has blessed us with the gift of music, because it moves people, it touches them, comforts them, helps them feel…….but instead of going to church just because we should, to sing songs about who knows what, when all we really want when it comes down to it….is love right now….why go at all?

This is what I am excited about. People loving each other. That’s what draws me close to God. I go to church to be encouraged and empassioned about God and to love and be loved. I realize my love sucks sometimes though. Sometimes I start to believe i have “so much love in me” but really Jesus said it’s easy to love those who love you….and sometimes i cant even do that right…..

But this is a weird time in my life….things are a little hazy…..i am confused about a lot of things, maybe i dont know what im singing about, maybe i am going because i know it is what is best for me…..but I do know that before you reach the top of a mountain, there is sometimes fog, so thats ok with me. I know God is calling me to something more than myself….to a better way of living. I may think i know what is best for me, i may just want to do what i want to do…what feels right, but the truth of life is that God wants all of me, he wants to bless me, and be my rock….and he promises he will not withhold any good thing from me….so i will wait on God now….and he will give me the strength to do what I need to…

I know a life with God is sooooo good. I remember the times me and him walked together and he blessed me and i remember the times I had to learn lessons in my life and came crawling back to his open arms. I know what it is to go through suffering and to wrestle with God, what it is like to not walk with him, to forget him, doubt him, and try to run…but right now i see that all of that was God drawing me to himself….i can see the top….just keep walking….listen to the words of the songs and sing praises to the God who gives the good life.

All Messed Up.

Things got all messed up. Somewhere between growing pains and moving to college and letting go and holding on….I have been shaken. I never have been so confused, never so easily angered, never so rotten and caught up in sin. I feel overwhelmed because there are so many things I need to fix. But the problem is I feel so weak, too weak to actually work on anything at all. I know that isn’t true, but I have tried to reason myself out feeling a certain way or acting a certain way…But the slightest thing throws me off the edge. I might wake up and think…I can get over this, I can be the person I need to be in this situation…But the littlest thing sends me raging into a pit….and then I can’t fix it…I have been getting mad so easily…I have been having a problem going with any sort of flow. If it’s not what I had planned, I get upset or hurt. And that’s the other thing….So many lies are always filling my head and I try to hold onto any shread of truth….because my faith is being shaken….I know in my head that God will never leave me, he works things out for the good, that he has a plan, I know all that…But my heart is full of pain and doubt….I’m not sure what the doubt is….it’s not that I think God doesnt exist or isnt faithful….It’s just that so many things I have always believed are being questioned and on top of it all I have been dealing with a depression of sorts, and massive spiritual warfare….So I guess anything I have ever held onto for dependence is being shaken…I dont know if it is because God wants me to depend on him for everything in my life or what…..but things use to be so much simplier it seems, It wasnt ever hard to have faith….I had mentors, I had many friends around me all the time, I could always go home. I cant just go home anymore….I cant just call my friends and say I need them to come over, I feel very alone, and confused.

I’m a mess of sins. God knows. So I am dying out for new life, for a closeness from God that I have felt before, I need some security…that things dont always have to end…because things are all messed up. And I’m sorry.