Pray for the Middle School Generation.

This is an excerpt I wrote in my journal when I was 12 and in 6th grade.

"There are so many thoughts whirling around in my head right now. I guess I'll start off here.
Ever since I turned 11, my life has become worse than I'd ever imagined. Mainly ever since I entered 6th grade. We have a group of rejects in my grade. I hang out with them because I'm rejected, too. Some non-rejects will come up to me and say hi or just be nice or whatever but most of the time it isn't like that. Me, Nick, Ethan, Levi, Ora, and Savannah tend to stay away from other people. We're not completely rejected, but we group together.
I'm worried about the future a lot. Like I said in the beginning, since turning 11 everything has changed. When I was younger I was a weird, happy, normal kid. And then I wake up to be this confused, sad, put-down person that everyone hates. It feels like I'm so misunderstood and broken. Nobody loves me.
This is another thing to figure out- there has to be a bigger purpose in life. There are many questions here unanswered, but they can't stay that way. I have to answer them, figure them out on my own, but I can't do it alone. I want God to send me a dream... maybe he will if he's still listening.
I wonder how I'll survive. Most people thing suicide is the answer. I don't think it's the answer but sometimes I wish it could all just end. A lot of people think drugs and sex will fix everything, but it doesn't. There must be another way, and I have to figure it out! I'll go til the world's end to find out why I'm here and if I even have a purpose."

 


When I was in middle school, I identified myself as a reject.

Reject; noun:
"The person or thing that is rejected or set aside as inferior in quality."

Inferior.

"One of lesser rank or station or quality; a characteristic of low rank or significance. Falling short of some prescribed norm."


"Sorry, you're not good enough." was the lie that I was fed in that time.
 "Nothing you can do will ever make you qualified to be somebody because YOU don't have what it takes to be whatever you want to be. You don't deserve a purpose in life or a future because you just aren't as good as everyone else. You're below everyone else and you deserve nothing."



Being fed a constant lie is dangerous. It hurts and kills on the inside. When the truth isn't revealed, you become blind, wandering around with your own idea of what the color purple is without ever having seen what it really is in its true state. You start to assume things to your own lack of knowledge.

Lack of knowledge is the death of humanity.

Lack of knowledge was the death of that 12 year old girl from Coffee County Middle School who hung herself last week.
That girl took her life because she didn't know that she had divine purpose. She didn't know that she was fervently loved, and fearfully and wonderfully made by the almighty God. Even though she was bullied and got a lot of crap from the other kids in her school, no one looked her in the eye and told her that SHE was the generation that would shake the earth, and that SHE had a future and a hope. No one told her that she deserves to live because there is a God the loves and desires her heart no matter who people say she is.

I am 17 now and sometimes struggle with the same thought. You're not good enough. But I know that it's all deception. When I encountered the love of Christ for the first time in my life, it literally took these "scales" off of my eyes and I could finally see. I felt like I could breathe without pain on the inside of not understanding who I was. I didn't want to "end it all" anymore. I stopped wanting to slit my wrists. I stopped writing depressing poetry and I stopped crying myself to sleep. Because someone looked and me and said "You have a divine purpose and a God who loves you. You are the generation that will see a revival of love." Not just the warm fuzzy love you feel on the inside, but the love that has the power to break a generational curse that says "You aren't good enough and nobody loves you."

And so this is my prayer: For those who don't know their purpose to encounter the love of God and to rise up into their calling. It's a journey, and no one's journey deserves to be cut short because of deception and lies. We each have a destiny to fulfill and, and it's big.

Alleluia, Holy are you.

When Banning started praying over the schools on Tuesday night at the Jesus Culture concert, AND when he started talking about prophetic musicians and praying over the musicians/songwriters, I think I almost exploded. God is raising up prophetic musicians in our generation across the earth to release a new sound. I went to ATC music academy last summer so that I could learn more about what prophetic music is, and I never thought that I would end up studying and hearing about it so much, but it's so real. I feel like I'm hardly beginning to skim the surface of what it really means to prophesy the sounds of heaven through song. I feel like deep inside I'm suppose to uncover it and teach others what it means while learning it myself. This is a generation of spiritual song-birds springing up. And more importantly, this is the generation of Jacob, the generation of those who will seek the face of God. The generation of lights coming out from under the basket.
I love how he said that when you turn on a light in a room, the darkness has no choice but to go. It isn't like you're standing there watching them battle, because the light automatically rips right through it. I had never really even thought of it that way. I
And Chris Quilala sang a song that says the words,
"I will climb this mountain
with my hands wide open"
When I thought about climbing a mountain with my hands wide open, it seemed like a foolish idea. How can you climb a mountain without hands? Surely you will fall going up a steep mountain with just your legs working. But that's the thing- you have to trust God. You have to surrender your idea of what gravity (or circumstances) are and you have to trust that his yolk is easy and his burden is light. You can't trust your own understanding of physics verses the one who created them. Climbing the mountain with your hands wide open and trusting him is a ton easier than doing it all by yourself. The biggest thing is trust in him. Not in people alone. Not money. Not in work. But Him.

So this is it. This is me climbing this mountain with my hands wide open.
This is me believing for that last $900 that has to be in for the remainder of my Kenya trip next week. God's gonna provide everything.
This is me climbing out of the valley I've been going through.
And finally I'm almost to the top.

Laying down burdens, picking up faith.

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
Matthew 11:28-30

It's the simple things that can be so easily over-looked.

I have slipped into some serious crap over the past couple of weeks. Partially because I've allowed myself to and partially because I began settling for what is around me rather than changing it. I've always said that I want to be a thermostat, not a thermometer. I want to change what's around me for the better, not leave it the way it is and not do anything.
 My family has been going through a lot of problems and challenges this month specifically. Accident after accident. Problem after problem, literally in layers. I'm pretty sure that this is almost the worst I've seen it. I feel like it's an attack, like the devil is trying to blind everyone, including me, so that we settle for what our circumstances declare rather than what God's word says.
Complacency is really easy, and that's what I've had problems with. It says that you don't have to care. Complacency says that You don't really have to be a thermostat. Sometimes it's okay to be a thermometer. Besides, just laying back for a while isn't going to hurt anyone. Loosening your guard and your morals isn't going to mess up anything. Accepting things is okay. Wanting to be like everyone else is okay.
But is it really okay?
This is where I stand. In the middle of this family crisis and in the middle of the last week of raising the most money for my trip to Kenya.
I've felt like panicking and quitting, but that would require me to say No. And I won't do that. I'm not quitting. Even if a tornado comes and rips my house apart and takes all of my stuff with it. Even if the day before my Kenya money is due I still don't have enough. Something is going to happen. Something always happens. Not because I'm looking through the eyes of an optimist, but because God's word promises and he always keeps his promises, even when everything looks hopeless. I love Jesus. Even when I'm frustrated because I don't have a car. Even when I don't make perfect grades. Even when my family is the way it is. Even when I make bad choices and when I mess up.
He still loves me.

Dreams of Freedom.

I dreamt that we were somewhere where no one was suppose to find us. We were sneaking around a place where if people would find us then they would do something bad to us, like either kill us or put us in a confined camp.
We took every pathway we could to find this mountain, and finally we found the path, and we climbed it. While we climbed, we talked about life and how things happen sometimes to make life what it is instead if what we think it should be. We talked about faith. We talked about struggles. We talked about the Why and the Why-not.

Then we made it to the top.
And I put my foot down on the tip.
And when I looked around, I could see the entire world around me. The vastness, the beauty, the colors, and the sound of wind. A picture in my mind that I never wanted to let go of.

I knew we were suppose to be quiet so that they (whoever they were) wouldn't hear us, but I didn't care. I knew that no matter who heard me, I was on top of a mountain and I knew that we were free.

I lifted my hands in the air and felt the rush of wind, closed my eyes and let out a victorious shout. Like the shout and laugh you would make when you were on top of a mountain and felt completely free of anything and everything that had ever happened.

And then I woke up.

Overthinking.

Most of the time this tends to get me into trouble more than anything.
Maybe you feel like you're in the same boat.
I've often been told that I like to overthink things. Well, that's the thing. I don't like to do it. I just do it. I can't help that that's the way my brain tends to function. Sometimes when I overthink things people call me stupid. I don't like that because nobody deserves to be called stupid in a rude kind of way. I can't help that when others go the easy way I have to learn things the hard way. I can't help that I naturally tend to learn things a different way than you do. When someone says something it can take me to an entire new level of thinking. Most of the time I like it quiet and I like to be alone because I can just think. I can think about life and what it means and what God does in life.
Some days thinking can get me into a lot of trouble. For instance what is happening now. I can wake up and do my usual routine and live out the Christian life that God has called me to live while overthinking things, but unless my thoughts are grounded by the word which I'm suppose to root myself in every single day, then they're useless. When my thoughts are transformed by the renewing of my mind in Christ then that's what my thoughts begin to glorify him and become useful. And when my thoughts are glorifying him, everything else will fall into place.

I play the piano and had a hard time reading because I would overthink the chord charts and would want to fit in whatever works just so that it would work and sound good. But the exact chords that are written on the page have to be played before you can add the creativity, because that's where the foundation lies. I look at this as a metaphor for how we have to stay founded on the word rather than just working in whatever works. We have to mediate on the word so much that it's rooted in us. If not, then how will we be able to live out in all of the other possibilities that he has called us to? How will things fall into place if we aren't rooted in God's living words?

To Truly share and show Love.

My family has come a lot closer this past week. This past Sunday night my sister Carrie had a stroke. This wasn't expected, but it wasn't completely out of nowhere. She's in a rehabilitation center right now regaining movement of the left side of her body.
You don't realize how often you use the left side of your body until it stops working.
You don't realize how much time is given to you before you use it up.
Lately I have been back into a season where I feel that God is teaching me about love, sacrifice, and time again. I have often found it difficult to show love to people through my actions and words some days. I've felt bad because of teenage junk and I've thrown myself pity parties. I've been selfish. I've taken the things I have for granted and I feel that God is revealing to me what it truly means to have those things.

I was listening to a friend talk a Slab the other day. She said that a lot of times we take people for granted, and so often we're quick to judge and ignore people that God put in our pathway for a reason. Those people could be annoying; we could think "Why the heck did God put me here with these people?" and we can spend time getting so impatient with people and annoyed by them and snap on them for no reason.
 This sounds cliche, but really think about it for a minute.
Really ponder these thoughts:
Do you even know what that person could be going through?
Did you ever stop to think that God has you sitting next to them for a reason?
 Maybe it's to help them with something big or maybe it's just to smile at them. Afterall, every action you make bears a consequence. However, this thought isn't to cause pressure because Lord knows how often we screw up and say things we don't mean. But it's to inspire a change in how we live on a daily basis.

Consider the people that surround you, and consider what you do. Because the time we have here on this earth is so short and so quickly spent. I don't want to live a life constrained by things that don't matter and things that waste my time. But I want to make sure that these moments are well-spent. I want to say kind words to people. I want to compliment them, even if it annoys the crap out of other people and they call me a suck-up. That's just a negative term for kindness, in my opinion, and there isn't anything wrong with kindness.  I want people to know their beauty and their highlights and I want to be sweet to them.


So guys, here's to a week of getting stronger and a time of loving more. Here's to a week of learning to dance in the rain.

You Satisfy my Soul with your Love

Hallelujah, you make all things beautiful.
Hallelujah, trials and testing prove there's gold.
Hallelujah,
you turn mourning into joy.




We can be having an awful day, a terrible week, the worst time of our lives; But at the end of the day, when everything is said and done, as long as we having the confidence that our God loves us unconditionally, and that he is eternally ours and that we are eternally his, that is the point when we realize that nothing can truly harm us. And we experience the most genuine liberation and freedom that can exist in the human state.