Don't Blink

Tonight on stage, in the middle of this choir performance, in the middle of all of these people, half of who I didn't know and will probably never see again, I blinked. The first semester of Senior year is over at the end of this week. This was my last Christmas choir concert, and I didn't want to be here. I didn't like choir anymore. I've had a really bad attitude about everything and it was obvious. I didn't even want to be in school. But I heard this voice on the inside that said, "Cherish this moment, because you're going to miss this."
It's true that I haven't had a good attitude about this year. Sometimes I catch myself acting like the typical person with a bad case of senioritis and I don't do the right thing, and I don't care, and I say the wrong things and do stupid things. I keep dreaming about leaving and moving to Kansas City, which isn't bad, but sometimes I walk into class and I've thrown my shades on and put life on autopilot while I take a nap, as if this year didn't apply to me and as if I had no purpose in coming to school. One morning I was complaining about how much I hated riding the school bus, and how I tried to avoid it at all costs, and my friend Hannah told me that riding the bus was a chance to witness to people, and coming to school was the same opportunity. I think about those words a lot. The hardest thing about this year has been staying awake.

I want to find reasons to do things instead of to not do things. What I'm saying is that I don't want to think "Oh, I'll never see these people again anyway so it doesn't matter." I want to find a reason to pray for that guy in the hallway who is on crutches because I'm leaving and might not see her again, or sit next to that girl that nobody likes because these moments are few.
Nowdays When I open my bible and pray, it's as if I'm taking a long, needed rest and drinking cool water from a familiar stream after running ten miles. The water and rest sustain me, but I need more of it more often in order to finish out this race strong. I don't want to barely make it through my last year of high school. I want to run.
 We have 5 more months to impact Oakland High school for Jesus.
We have 20 more weeks to be a light to people we probably won't see again.

Thankful: day 18

So since we're 18 days into November, the month notable of Thanksgiving, We started a 5-things-a-day list of Things that we're thankful for at the Slab last week. 

Before tomorrow morning hits, here we go:

1. Great leaders and mentors who genuinely care.

Sometimes I stop and ask myself "What now? Is God actually working through me? Am I where I need to be?" And my leaders are there to support me and remind me of God's love. I don't have to be having a good hair day to sit in front of my leaders and talk to them about life. I don't have to always answer "Good" when they ask "How are you?" Because honestly, I would be lying if I always said Good. They're there for me to open up to and to guide me. God confirms so often that my leaders and close, spiritual friends are in my life for a reason. 

2. Acoustic music. Because who In the world can go through a fall season without it?

3. God's tiny whispers of love and confirmation throughout the day, even on the rough days.

4. Warm beds. 

5. Mrs. Tucker letting the Slab use her classroom this season. She's so quirky and cool. 

Start off the day in thanksgiving, and end the day in thanksgiving.  For each day in life is truly something to be thankful for. 

I've Prepared a Place for You, Even in the Storms of Life.

The season is pressing down on me.
I can get frustrated, I can fight, cry, throw a tantrum like an angry toddler, ask why and try to run away to escape my circumstances. I can wrestle like Jacob did, because of my lack of understanding. But there's something about sitting down in the middle of the storm and accepting that the rain is pouring down. I don't know how long the storm will last, but I'm here in the middle of it and I'm going to get wet. I will sit in the storm. I will accept defeat, throw down my pride, because I'm not strong enough. I'm a tiny paint drop in this world that makes up the rest of the picture. Even still while I sit in the rain, God isn't just standing there watching me get wet and laughing at my weakness. He's made a place for me, and You. He is my shelter, my refuge and my strength. He's putting his wing overtop of me. But I wouldn't know that he's my shelter until I sat down and accepted that I'm not strong enough. I am weak and broken. I will never be enough. But he is enough for me, and he is limitless. God is outside of the confines of our minds, and for us to even try to wrap our minds around Him is impossible and foolish. I can no longer put confidence in my ability, because in my own power, I can do nothing. But through His anointing and grace, and in His power, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. I am only who I am through Him.

Tears have indeed been shed this week. Tears of stress from severe opression and persecution, and asking God those "why" questions, tears of joy and inspiration from seeing someone radically praising Jesus during our Sunday morning service for the first time in a long time, and tears of goodbyes from friends who move away one by one. But all I can say is that maybe he's carving out a place in me for more of Him. Maybe he's closing old doors and opening new ones, paving new paths and shedding a new kind of light. Maybe my next tears will be tears of thankfulness. 

Selah

It's the little things that remind us of the past, and how much we miss it. And surely because of this, better things are yet to come. So let us keep our heads up and Take a moment to Selah- To pause and ponder his greatness, and his love that we can't wrap our heads around.
It only gets better from here.

A Cup of tea on a Tuesday morning

This Fall break I've learned that sometimes it's easy to forget who we're talking about when we say His name. Jesus. God. Jehovah. Yaweh. The one who holds the Universe in the palm of his hand and the one who knows the number of hairs on your head. The one who knows each and every one of us from the inside out. The one who wants to search us out as we go on an amazing journey to search Him out. He could have chosen anything when creating this universe- he could have made us like robots and forced us to Love Him. He could have made us without choices and could have made a world without the risk of being imperfect. but instead he gave us the choice.
"Love that isn't voluntary isn't Love." Misty Edwards says in her book "What's The Point? Discovering Life's Deeper Meaning and Purpose". We have the option to Deny a loving God who can determine whether or not we wake up the next morning. He is mind blowing. His Love is unfathomable. The entire concept is almost scary to think about even though we can't completely wrap our minds around Him. But this I know: Everytime we say Yes to Him, even thousands of years later after Jesus died and rose again, God picks us up and places us on his magnificent shoulders to carry us to places in life that we could never imagine. From the Valleys we go through, to the highest mountains in Life, He is still God and He is still with us as He promised. It's easy to fear complete surrender to Him. What it boils down to is complete and full trust in Him, His grace and His plan. We're scared that the Lord's plans won't be as good as ours, or that they won't work out. But He sees everything and knows everything, even the parts of us that we haven't discovered yet.
I knew I was going to IHOPU for college the moment I entered the 24/7 prayer room at age 15. Of course that didn't stop me from trying to look at other colleges later, because everyone I confessed my dream college to would just kind of nod and change the subject, or say "Where's the money in that?" or ask me how I was going to sustain myself with a career and how I was going to be successful. Rethinking my decision, I began to worry about how it would all eventually pan out. Where would the money come from? Where would I live and how long would I be there? What would I do after I graduated? After all, everyone else goes straight to a "real college" to receive a degree for a job. But Why are these the things that every American HAS to do in order to "be somebody" and live out the good ole, cliche "American Dream"?  Who made those standards and why must we abide by them when we've been called to greater things?
Ultimately I can't run from His calling to the next step in Life. To do so would make myself miserable. But at the same time I've never felt like I belonged somewhere so much before. Eccentric young college kids who love Jesus and coffee, 24 hours in the prayer room per week, Theology classes and music classes focused on worship and composition, sitting under the teaching of people like Allen Hood and Mike Bickle... Honestly, I wouldn't want to go anywhere else. I want to go to IHOPU and understand more of Him and less of myself. I want to seek Him and find Him in extreme ways that I've never yet encountered, with young men and women who are passionate to seek His will here on Earth. God knows my heart so well and picked that place for a purpose, whether or not I'm going to have a degree in something that will make me thousands of dollars a year.
If God has called you, yes, YOU, somewhere, whether it's to a lawyer's office or Africa or the janitor's closet in a train station He's called you, and you're going to love what he's called you to. Because he knows you! He knows you from the inside out. However, In order to find his calling for you, you must search for Him and His heart. He will then reveal his heart and secrets to you as you draw near to Him. He has already planted desires and dreams in your hearts that you will long to fulfill, and with the Almighty God living in your heart, nothing will keep you from achieving your dreams but Yourself.

A different kind of Jesus

The song of the day: You Know Me- Steffany Frizzell from the Bethel Loft Sessions.

I dream about Jesus often. I always think about what He's like in person, what he smells like, how he behaves, what his voice sounds like, and most of all how amazing and everlasting his embrace is. Oh how I have dreamt and envisioned the embrace of Jesus, my friend and my love. From Him embracing me in visions on the floor of youth retreats, where I thought of myself as worthless and unforgiven, to Him embracing me in dreams, reminding me of His everlasting and unfailing love. He will always embrace us. The one who died on the cross so that He and his heavenly father could spend eternity with us embraces our hearts. That is a hug I anticipate the moment I reach heaven.

A long time ago, my dear friend Seth told me that he didn't really favor images and pictures of Jesus, because to him it seemed that once we saw a picture of Jesus, that would be the image of him that is printed in our brains forever. The picture of a man in a white robe with long brown hair and facial hair. I didn't understand how pictures of Jesus could be relevant to our relationship with Him, and it wasn't until this week that I found out the Why. In a dream that I had this week, I dreamt that Jesus was coming. I knew he was coming, and my family and I were waiting in our house for Him. But instead of sheer excitement and backflips, I felt fear and anxiety at the thought of his near return. "This is the end?" I thought. "Are we even finished yet? Is there not more to do on this earth?" I wondered  all of this as if this temporary world was more important than what was beyond the horizon. I kept peering out of the window, looking for a jewish man in a white robe, but there was nothing. Suddenly there was a flash, and I closed my eyes and expected to be zapped to heaven or something crazy. But instead I heard a knock at the door. I went to open it, and a man was standing there. But he wasn't dressed in white. He didn't have a halo or even long brown hair. He didn't even look like someone far beyond our world. He had shaggy hair and a scruffy beard,with jeans and a t-shirt. His face lit up when I opened the door and he smiled. "Hey!" he said, and opened his arms to embrace me. A kind of hug that was reuniting. The kind of embrace that says "Now we'll be together, and nothing can separate us. Not even time."

The hug didn't seem to have lasted long enough before the dream ended.

I really love Jesus. Sometimes he has to remind me that he isn't a far-off distant kind of God, but he is close to us. He isn't coming with the image of being beyond our human comprehension, but he comes with the intention of being with us. Of sitting by us at the lunch table or going on a walk with us at the park. He knows every fragment of us. He laughs and jokes and smiles. He embraces us and he misses us and wants to live with us for eternity and love us. He's just like us because we were created to be like Him.

So God, let me be able to see you as a dear friend. Help me to understand you even though your ways are higher than mine. Let it be a fun relationship, not a distant one. Let it be full of love and simplicity.