Random Ramblings

In lieu of V-Day and my love for chick flicks, I thought I would share this video with you all.  It’s pretty hilarious….

HE is beautiful. I listened to the song “Beautiful” by Gateway Worship sometime last month, and I was just floored. (I recommend you look them up on myspace or download this song.) I am amazed by the gifts he gives us to worship him, that we could even have the words to express what greatness God is. I pray for the words of this song to be my heart, and to be reflected in my life. For God to be the sole passion of my heart and all my motives be pure in seeing that he is holy and has cleansed me from my former way of life. And I also hope the same for all I love…

Here before Your altar
I am letting go of all I’ve held
Of every motive, every burden
Everything that’s of myself

I just want to wait on You, my God
I just want to dwell on who You are

Beautiful, beautiful oh I am lost for more to say
Beautiful, beautiful oh Lord, You’re beautiful to me

Here in Your presence
I am not afraid of brokenness
To wash Your feet, with humbled tears
Oh, I would be poured out till nothing’s left

I just want to wait on You, my God
I just want to dwell on who You are, You are

Beautiful, beautiful oh I am lost for more to say
Beautiful, beautiful oh Lord, You’re beautiful to me

Holy, Holy, Holy, You are, You are

This verse was on my google homepage this morning, and I was so inspired by it that I wanted to share it with you all…

“God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” Numbers 23:19

So this leads me to wonder, how often do I change my mind after God has told me specifically to do something? Most of the time it is because I do not feel equipped. But if God tells us to follow a certain direction, then he certainly will enable us to get through it. I pray to have the faith to trust in this.

This story just makes me sick.  I’m sure many have heard about it, but I cannot stop being in shock.  There is something seriously wrong with our world today.

Walmart Stampede

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

okay, so it’s obama…. i voted for mccain, and i am slightly dissapointed, but more dissapointed in the reactions of the general public.

to those who are freaked out and have some impending sense of doom: it’s not the end of the world. and even if it is, it was going to come one day anyway. you did your part, and now it is what is.

to those who are freaked out and think obama is going to make everything better:  just remember, he might be the president, but he is human. yes, i do believe when we as a nation work for change it will come about, however, the president is not the answer to all of our problems and will not make everything perfect.

last weekend our pastor spoke on the elections.  he made no persuasion toward one specific candidate.  the only one that we were persudaded to was GOD. Jesus is our savior and the hope of the world, and only when we are serving him and seeking him can a perfect change come about.  He is the one we are to serve, and He is the one we are to fear. No man walking this earth now can make us or come against us.  I just hope the rest of this nation can open their minds to see that God is the supreme leader, and that they would turn their hearts to him in faith.

i hate being jealous….

but i am all the time….

i know i am fearfully & wonderfully made….

but i want a different face.

still praying to be content.

i loved this article on relevantmagazine.com.  i am praying to be this content.

Not Alone

by Anne Sims

I know, I know. You’re already looking for holy, sanctimonious, snobbish “it’ll be worth the wait when your prince (or princess) comes and makes it all worthwhile.” Not so, I say. And it’s not easy for me to say that at all. I’ve been married seven and a half years, was single for 27 before that, and I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to be single.

Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m not looking to be free of my husband … not at all. Seven and half years later, I think we’re finally getting to the good stuff. We know each other way less than we thought we did on our wedding day, and much better than we did that next morning when we woke up as Mr. and Mrs. We’ve been through some really tough stuff together: We’ve both had surgeries, mine minor, his less so. We’ve struggled to pay bills—really scary ones, like the one from the IRS. We make an odd couple—both tremendously damaged by our childhoods, and healed in some painful and wondrous way by one another. But I digress…

Singleness. I never valued it when I had it. My goal was always not to be alone, and since I make friends with male people more easily than with female people, that meant I was “not alone” with male people quite a bit. Emotional intimacy was easily had, and I mistook that more than once for love, and that led to sex and the giving away of bits and pieces of myself.
And the older I get, the more I wish I hadn’t given so much of myself away. I wish I’d learned to like myself better as a single person, valued myself more, given more of my heart to God and less of my body to men who didn’t love it like I should have. The older I get, the more I realize how deep God’s love is, and how like a father I have broken God’s heart in the past—not irrevocably and not with rejection, but with sadness for how little I thought of myself, how much of myself I gave that I can’t get back, how little I trusted myself when I was so determined not to be single.

By the time Ben and I married, I had grown up a little. I’d sort of given up on not being single, and was working on learning to love my single self. We actually had a very deep conversation about how we were not dating at this point in our lives, over a dinner that started as a convenient grab-a-bite-after-class and was, by the end of the evening, looking more and more like a date. I liked myself, and so I didn’t just jump at the chance to date someone, to be “not alone.” I found that because I valued myself and had a sense of who God was calling me to be, I felt freer to hold back, to be “wooed,” to wait for a sense that this time it would be the time to give my heart definitively and not try to buy love with the rest of me.

What I think about singleness is this: It’s a time to come to know who you are, to be at peace with yourself and with God. It’s hard to feel all that comfortable when you know you’ve left bits and pieces of your self and your soul behind, and failed to value them the way God does. But they can grow back.

Singleness for me was mostly years of failing to understand that true love doesn’t ask for my soul, but receives it, shares it and grows it. It was years of failing to realize that I had “true love” in my platonic friendships and in my relationship with Christ and in my family, and that it was time to stop looking elsewhere for love. And singleness was the incubator in which I grew up, from a childish seeking for comfort anywhere I could get it, to finally feeling that in Ben I’d found a love and acceptance only God had felt for me before. It was years of learning to face myself in a mirror and see contentment reflected back.

So yeah, I’ve been thinking about singleness. Part of me misses it, but only to the extent that I failed to value it when it was mine. There’s freedom there, to travel and to think out loud, to take the crazy job or paint my toenails purple (he hates it when I do that). You can eat what you want and watch the ball game without worrying about what anyone else wants to do. Singleness was right for me for a time. It’s been right for my best friend all along—she’s my age, and, I think, secure enough in God and in herself to enjoy it while it lasts, while staying open to the possibilities of being not-single. It’s right for another friend, who find it to be her calling in life, to be satisfied with who she is and comfortable in her own skin.

Singleness is about adventure, self-esteem and growing up. And it’s about you owning your soul, until it’s time to give it away to the one who gives it back to you, with theirs. Here’s my word of wisdom from the other side of singleness: It’s who you are when you’re single that sets the course for who you’ll be all your life. Be whole, and yes, holy—don’t give yourself away. You’ll miss the pieces you let go.

I have just had an incredibly blessed weekend and I haven’t felt this rejuvinated in a long time.  God has really been working incredibly in my life, and I just wish I felt this way everyday… this weekend I spent some time with my church doing Servolution, which is a time when we go out into the Baton Rouge area and do different service projects.  My group went into the inner city and cleaned up in some neighborhoods.  It was definitely more than I expected because I knew people would be grateful, but they even expressed it in their faces and in speaking with us.  I know that it really has a deeper impact than I could even see up front, and I truly believe we sowed some good seeds into their heart. 

I also think I was moved to a new place through service.  Even though I KNOW that this life is about God and is far bigger than myself, I believe the Lord is humbling me and preparing my heart.  I want him to humble me, because quite frankly, I am selfish and have started to become like a typical 26 year old American. I refuse to settle for the typical now, because this life cannot be sustained in finding satisfaction in the world.  What I mean is, I have looked to so many other things in this life to make me happy, AND THEY CAN’T.  Only knowing Jesus as my Lord and Savior has moved my heart to complete satisfaction, and he is STILL completing it. 

A part of me has grown restless in him trying to move me out of my worldliness because my feelings decieve me all the time. Many days I have found myself doubting God because i couldn’t feel his presence or salvation in me.  I can see now that a lot of that has been because I chose to dwell in my bad feelings.  Actually, this is something I realized a long time ago, but maybe now God is bringing a change to the forefront.  What I now know is the way I feel cannot measure his love for me, and I must choose daily to follow him and trust that he is working.  I really want to express more on this issue, but my mind is failing me now, so perhaps someday I will write more.  For those who read I just really wanted to share how good and faithful God has been in working with my life.  Like I said there is so much more to say, but since I can’t find the words, I just want to glorify him because I know he has given me so much love undeservingly.  It’s so amazing how he still loves each of us and cares for each of us no matter where we have been or what we have done.

I also want to link the blog of one of my favorite singers right now.  This girl is constantly inspiring me and uplifting me through her words.  Check it out: http://bethanydillon.com/journal/journal1.aspx

my heart on display
all my fears come to show
every time i see you
every time i hear you

and then i pretend
like a silly little fool
that i don’t love you
that i couldn’t know you

why do you that thing to me
why do you make me go
head over heels over myself
in love with you