Update

Well I think it is about time for an update. Well first I want to let you all know that I had the best Valentine's ever. The guys on our team made us dinner, and wrote us notes and got us flowers, it was sooooo sweet! I love the guys on our team.They treat us like ladies, but not just like ladies but like their sisters in Christ. They protect us and honor us and treat us with absolute purity, and for that I am so thankful that God put me on the team I am on. Anyways the last few weeks have been crazy. I have realized a lot about myself and a lot about what God has for me. We went through two events this past 2 weeks. The first one was our retreat overcome. This was all about overcoming past hurts, sins and things in our life that keep us separated from God. I realized a lot. I view myself in usually a bad way. But God revealed to me how He sees me. And how much He loves me and how He picks me out of the multitude. Gods love was lavished on me that week. This week we are in our thing called testify. There are these people from another church here to speak proficiency over us. To help us to realize our original design. It's not in a weird way, but just showing how God made me. It is cool to see God speak truth into my life. God is so amazing I have seen Him do crazy things. I think we limit the power of God a lot of times. God has infinate power, and usually we tend to not use it. But we need to realize that Gods power is inside of us and we have the authority to use it in Jesus' name! I think the sick and hurting should be healed all the time, but we rarely use the power we have. God has given us power... use it for His glory.

Princess

I think every girl has always wanted to be a princess at some time or another. I think it is a longing that is put deep inside of us by God. We are His princess. If God is king and I am his daughter it makes perfect sense that I am a princess.

Ephesians 1:4-6 (The Message) How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love.

Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

We are adopted in as a child of God. He wants us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving. That means we are cherished and adored by God, so much so he wants to lavish on us.

Psalm 45 9-15

Daughters of kings are among your honored women;
at your right hand is the royal bride in gold of Ophir.
Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear:
Forget your people and your father's house.
The king is enthralled by your beauty;
honor him, for he is your lord.
The Daughter of Tyre will come with a gift,
men of wealth will seek your favor.
All glorious is the princess within her chamber ;
her gown is interwoven with gold.
In embroidered garments she is led to the king;
her virgin companions follow her
and are brought to you.
They are led in with joy and gladness;
they enter the palace of the king.

This psalm just demonstrates how God wants to treat us as His bride as His princesses. God is enthralled with our beauty. God wants to bestow beauty for ashes. We are loved so much by God. But the problem is the world always tells us other wise. We aren't pretty, smart, skinny, outgoing, althetic, sexy, girlie....enough. That what the world says to us. But God says the opposite. God loves us the way we are. We are His creation, His master piece.

I guess I am telling all of this because of two things. One, girls you need to realize this and acknowledge what God has given you, and who you are in God.

Two, guys...you need to treat girls like this. For the last month I have been in DLA I have met the most amazing guys ever. They are true gentlemen and they want to respect and honor women. They treat us how we are, as princesses of the Most High, and their sisters in Christ.
1 Timothy 5: 1- 2 Treat younger men as brothers,older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.
They have treated us the way men should, and not because they like us or anything like that, but because we are their sisters in Christ and they want to show us how real men should treat us. That is what is should be like. Guys who love God should treat ALL women like that, which respect and honor.


I am a princess, my father is the King of Kings

Change

Change
It seems like the whole world is screaming for Change.
Change the world.
Change the nation.
Change who you are.
Change your hair, you style, your weight, heck you can even change your face!
Our world is seeking change everywhere. In Politics, books, magazines, tv, Oprah, and anyone else who will say they have the answer. We seek to change so much, but how do we really change things, and what do we really need to change. I think people know our world needs help. The AIDS epidemic is out of control, kids die each second from starvation on the other side of the world, and here in America child obessity is the highest, people are out of jobs, stocks are low, people are uncertian about the future. But where do they turn? Drugs, Alchol, pleasure, other people, ANYWHERE but where the real answer lies...JESUS. If we want to see real change in the world, people getting their life together, hunger gone, happiness..true happiness, we need to turn to Jesus. To get change we need to change our hearts. We need to break our heart for what breaks Gods. And we need to pray. Pray for a real change. Where prayer focus' power falls. A revival is coming, and its times to play a part in it. We need to pray, pray for our nation, pray for others, pray for children in Africa, pray, pray, pray. Every little prayer matters to God, we need to get our hearts in line with His. Its time for a change. Its time to see healing and resoration. Its time....


How do we do it?

Pray

home

If home is where the heart is what if my heart isn't anywhere. I feel like my heart has no resting place. Like I don't feel at home here, and I don't feel at home there. Where is my home. My only true home is in Jesus, yes I know that, but seriously I want to feel at home somewhere. I know where I truly feel at home...and I miss it so much. Home is where your family and friends are... I miss running though metro with out my shoes on and saying hi to everyone who comes in or everyone I know. I miss dancing around, singing to myself. That is my home. I miss home. But God has called me to leave everything to come here. To be apart from what is confortable so I can be dangerously unconfortable for the cause of Christ. I want to live for God in a why that inspires others. God is so much closer than we think. I can't wait to know him more.

Lonesome

A lot of times i feel out of place here. Like I just don't fit it. It's been hard because I feel like no one wants to really be friends with me. But I am often times reminded of Jesus and how He probably was a little lonely at times. He was separated from His Father. He has felt every emotion we have felt, He understands where we are coming from. That gives me hop can look to Jesus and find my peace in Him. He is my strength, my song, my joy, my peace and my refuge. I can find assurance in knowing that truth.

The Vision

This is from Red Moon Rising.. the book we are reading, it's about 24-7 prayer

The Vision

So this guy comes up to me and says "what's the vision? What's the big idea?" I open my mouth and words come out like this…
The vision?

The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.

You see bones? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn't even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport.. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision ?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers

choose to loose
that they might one day win
the great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed.

Young people who beat their bodies into submission.

Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain".

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them ?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them ?

And the generation prays

like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive

inside.

On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,

they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don't you hear them coming?
Herald the weirdo's! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.
How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D. And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

My Life?

I knew when I started DLA that I would draw nearer to God. That I would seek His face and His will for my life and I would grow in my understanding of Him. I don't think I truly was ready for what I was to encounter. Not just seeking Him..but Him seeking back. God is searching for us and seeking and pursing us just as much as we are to Him. He loves us and wants us to be in a relationship where we are fully surrendered to Him. This has been hard for me. I think I have always tried to surrender to Him, but really I have only given Him a fraction of what He deserves. But in the last few weeks, I've been going after Him like I've never done before, and in return I am finding Him like I've never found before.

My prayer is that this year I find Him, and seek Him and never go back.