Great and Effective Doors

I Corinthians 16: 5-9 "⁵ After I go through Macedonia, I will come to you—for I will be going through Macedonia. ⁶ Perhaps I will stay with you for a while, or even spend the winter, so that you can help me on my journey, wherever I go. ⁷ For I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. ⁸ But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, ⁹ because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me."

Paul wanted to visit the Church of Corinth sooner, but he saw a great and effective door that he had to attend to. He actually doesn't come and stay with them, if you read 2 Corinthians you will find out he couldn't because he was busy with his "great and effective door". So what does that mean? What exactly is a great and effective door?

A great and effective door in your life is an opportunity that comes up that coincides with your calling. So, Paul's calling was to spread the gospel to the Gentiles. It was not his calling to build up and disciple churches, although he did some of that too, his main objective was to spread the gospel to unbelieving Gentiles. So Paul's great and effective door would be giving him the opportunity to do just that. He could have stayed with the Church he developed in Corinth, and helped them grow. But he would much rather do what he was better at and what God wired him for.

To discover what a wide and effective door is in your own life, you need to know what your calling is. I spent many years at church, signing up for every class, every ministry, every trip, and whatever I could get my hands on. I had no idea where God was calling me and I was going in every single direction possible. But as I grew and matured, I began to slowly discover what my calling was, so I dropped some things in ministry and focused on others.

I still don't feel like I have a very clear direction. That is something that I am really digging to find. I have a mission statement, but I am still not sure it is totally accurate. I want God to be the one giving me my calling rather than me just giving myself one. A wide and effective door doesn't happen very easily if God isn't holding it open.

If you know me, you probably know my struggle with what is next in life. I have made plenty of plans, but instead of wide and effective doors there have been closed vaults. I know God has a plan for me, but I have been so lost and I have no idea where the path starts or which direction it goes.

Based on my current mission statement; The purpose of Emily Troe is to prayerfully and lovingly use my creative gifts and talents to convey the gospel of Jesus Christ the those who have rejected or been rejected by the church, I have seen a few wide and effective doors. One of them being my church. My church is a very arts based church, and those are the "creative gifts and talents" that I was referring to. Another wide and effective door is some of the people that I have gotten to know. I have a wide base of people who reject church or that the church has rejected that I have the opportunity to share Christ with.

But beyond that, I am stuck. Should I go to school next year, or not? Should I go to discipleship school? Should I go to an arts school? Should I go travel to another country and preach the gospel? Should I go back home and do ministry at my own church? Should I find a man, marry him and start popping out babies? Okay I hope that last one can wait a little bit...

There are so many options that i have available for me. And the doors all seem about the same width and the effectiveness varies depending on what I am going to be doing after. I just feel so directionless. I am tempted to write down all my ideas, put them in a hat and whichever one I pull out I would do. But I just don't know how wise of a decision that would be.

I suppose I should just look at what gifts God has given me and sort those out. Well I just took a spiritual gifts test and here are my results:

Score	Graph of Score	Spiritual Gift	Statement / Response
25	==========================	Hospitality	13 = 5	41 = 5	69 = 5	97 = 5	125 = 5
23	========================	Music	20 = 5	48 = 5	76 = 3	104 = 5	132 = 5
21	======================	Encouragement	6 = 3	34 = 5	62 = 3	90 = 5	118 = 5
19	====================	Pastoring	21 = 5	49 = 3	77 = 5	105 = 3	133 = 3
19	====================	Faith	9 = 5	37 = 5	65 = 3	93 = 5	121 = 1
19	====================	Exhortation	8 = 3	36 = 3	64 = 3	92 = 5	120 = 5
19	====================	Missionary	19 = 3	47 = 5	75 = 3	103 = 5	131 = 3
19	====================	Poverty	22 = 3	50 = 5	78 = 5	106 = 3	134 = 3
17	==================	Wisdom	27 = 1	55 = 3	83 = 5	111 = 3	139 = 5
15	================	Leadership	16 = 3	44 = 3	72 = 1	100 = 3	128 = 5
15	================	Apostle	2 = 3	30 = 3	58 = 5	86 = 3	114 = 1
15	================	Administration	1 = 5	29 = 3	57 = 1	85 = 3	113 = 3
15	================	Discernment	5 = 3	33 = 3	61 = 3	89 = 3	117 = 3
13	==============	Teaching	24 = 3	52 = 3	80 = 1	108 = 3	136 = 3
13	==============	Writing	28 = 3	56 = 1	84 = 3	112 = 3	140 = 3
13	==============	Mercy	17 = 5	45 = 1	73 = 3	101 = 1	129 = 3
11	============	Intercession	14 = 1	42 = 1	70 = 3	98 = 3	126 = 3
11	============	Craftsmanship	4 = 5	32 = 1	60 = 1	88 = 3	116 = 1
11	============	Evangelism	7 = 3	35 = 1	63 = 1	91 = 3	119 = 3
11	============	Celibacy	3 = 1	31 = 3	59 = 3	87 = 3	115 = 1
11	============	Giving	10 = 1	38 = 3	66 = 3	94 = 3	122 = 1
9	==========	Prophecy	23 = 1	51 = 1	79 = 3	107 = 3	135 = 1
9	==========	Knowledge	15 = 3	43 = 3	71 = 1	99 = 1	127 = 1
9	==========	Helps	12 = 1	40 = 1	68 = 1	96 = 1	124 = 5
8	=========	Miracles	18 = 5	46 = 1	74 = 0	102 = 1	130 = 1
2	===	Healing	11 = 1	39 = 0	67 = 1	95 = 0	123 = 0
1	==	TonguesSpeaking	26 = 1	54 = 0	82 = 0	110 = 0	138 = 0
0	=	TonguesInterpreting	25 = 0	53 = 0	81 = 0	109 = 0	137 = 0

All right, well it was near what I expected. Hospitality is number one, I didn't know music was a spiritual gift, but okay cool. And number three is encouragement. I love how I have I tie of 5 for number 4 and all of them work together really nicely. There is Pastoring, Missionary, Poverty, Faith, and Exhortation. I have really wanted to be a missionary for a long time. I don't know if I would be a missionary for my whole life, but I do want to do it for some time of my life. And the fact that those 5 gifts are so needed as a missionary is really cool.

So this thought process is going to be a lot longer than this blog, but all I can say now it, thank the Lord that celibacy is low on the list!

holier than thou

So I was up this morning chatting with my mom and dad about several things and one thing that we touched on was the way some people act like they are too knowledgeable to get taught by someone else. I admit that I have often felt this way and have had to fight that feeling off during teachings. Sometimes when I have all ready decided in my head that I can't learn anything from somebody, I just wait for them to say something wrong so that I can discredit everything they say.

It hurts me to see that I have treated some people that way, when they were godly people just trying to convey a message of Christ. But the enemy is very cunning. He knows how to get in our heads and screw with our minds. If he can't make us disown Christ, he makes us feel holier than we are so that he can get us to stop listening to Christian leaders.

How does this start? What puts it in our heads that we are so much better than other people? I think that I have often been taught that the Christian community today has been very screwed up, and we have lost the fire of the early church. And I think when I hear a speaker that is not giving me a message about being super radical that I write them off as people that are stifling the passion and the power of the Holy Spirit. I clearly see the error in this judgement. There is no need to tell me, but that's how my mind tends to operate.

What I need is some rewiring. I need to recognize that people put into leadership are usually there for a good reason and they have godly hearts and want to give us something, not take anything. I will never stop taking the things I hear and weighing things against the Bible. It is still important to make sure things are biblical and accurate. If you believe everything that you hear, it will create some conflicts.

There is so much that people have to offer. And when we close our minds to that we tend to miss out on all kinds of cool stuff. As long as we make sure to put everything we hear through our truth filter (aka the Bible) then we should be good.

I really have nothing more to say on this subject. But this blog is super short. So, forgive me. I will try to think longer thoughts tomorrow.

Going Home

I have never been one to love home. I mean, yes, I love my family and my friends. But home was that place where I sat around waiting for the next exciting trip or adventure. People would always complain about being home sick and I never felt that. Even moving out was not hard for me. It was hard to leave my little brothers, but I was so excited for a new journey.

But suddenly i have started missing home. Not enough to move back, by any means, but I miss seeing my friends every day and hearing my baby brother say ridiculous things and hanging out with my other little brother. Finally today I get to go home. I won't get to stay for very long, but it is worth it to just be with the people I love for a moment.

The most exciting thing is that my friends don't know that I am coming yet. I am going to go watch some as they sing solos for a high school solo and ensemble contest, and they have no idea I will be there. I am excited to see their faces! I just hope they don't plan on reading this before I get there... but I am pretty sure that won't happen.

You know what I love about going home. I can walk through the door, throw my stuff on the floor, flop on the couch, and I feel so loved. My parents will make me tell them everything that has been going on, and they will ask me about my plans. My little brother will run up and jump on me showing me all of the new stuff that he has gotten. My other little brother will grab his guitar and show me a song that he has been working on. My friends will burst through the door and tackle me and do heaven knows what! I just can sit back and feel love. It was not always like this at home, because when I lived there full time people always knew what was going on with my life and they would see me all the time. But now, they don't get to see what I do all the time and they want to know.

The idea of home makes me so excited for heaven. I imagine that when I get there it will be that feeling of that love being poured out. I will finally get to be with God. I can't even begin to speculate what I will do! I doubt...

Interruption: You may have noticed that this is a day late. At this point of my writing, my mom called me and said that she was here. I had to quickly pull my stuff together and go. So of course I left my blog where it was. Didn't even finish my sentence (and honestly I don't remember where my mind was going with that). Then I was busy seeing my friends sing and stuff and as soon as I got home I played with my little bro until he went to bed, then i went to my friend's house and had an amazing time with my friends. I was a wack job, playing crazy games and such. It was fun. So anyway, it is now midnight and I figure that I better finish this blog so I can start fresh in the morning.

So I was just bringing up the point of heaven being our home. This earth is just a place we are living at the moment. And going home is going to feel amazing. The feelings that stirred up in me tonight were great! To have my little brother run up to me and ask me all sorts of questions with his big brown eyes, and to laugh and joke with my friends in a way that others just don't understand (they don't understand half the time either, but they expect it).

When I was playing games with my friends, I kept laughing uncontrollably and making a pretty big fool out of myself. And one of my friends just looks at me and asks what my problem is tonight. I told him that i missed home. These were the people that I loved the most and my emotions were running so high. I haven't had that much fun losing a game in my life. They don't really understand, and maybe they never will, but I just love them.

So if going to heaven is like that feeling but even more supernatural, that is gonna be awesome!!! There are no drugs that can get you that high. (Sorry, there were several drug references made tonight, and i am not sure why) Well, I really need to get to bed so I can get up for Church tomorrow! God, thank you so much for allowing me to live life with these incredible people. And please continue to litter my path with awesome people that I can continue to worship you with!

We Need Each Other

What to write about today... My lack of sleep made it extremely difficult to get out of bed this morning, especially because I have been getting so much sleep every night. But here I am, ready and willing to focus on my creator. Today I kinda want to talk about friends, and spiritual community.

I don't know what I would do without my friends. There have been times in my life when I have felt very distant from friends, and they have been some of the lowest points in my life. God created us to be in community, not only community with others, but community with him. I feel that Christian relationships are so much stronger, because Christ is the binding cord for us.

It seems funny to me that Jesus would have a best friend, because he was... God. But it is made quite clear that John was his "best friend". Jesus told him things and showed him things that he didn't tell other people. And because Jesus had a tight circle of friends, he showed me that it was okay to have that. A part of me has always kind of felt bad for having a few select really close friends. But Jesus did. It has been hard for me to find a balance of what I tell anyone and what I should only save for my close friends. I have made the mistake several times of telling people about issues in my life or things that I am dealing with and it has not been the best decision. When the person doesn't know the way my mind works or about my past they can misread what a say or they will just look on me with judgement.

But my close friends have been with me long enough to know what I have struggled with in the past and the way my heart and mind perceive things. They will also keep me accountable for the things I do and always make sure I am in step with the Lord.

The hardest thing about moving, was losing my spiritual community. The first thing I wanted to do was seek out a new one, because without those friends being a part of my support structure I felt very lonely and vulnerable. It wasn't that long ago that I started to find that and begin to work on relationships. It is especially hard, when the other people know each other and you are trying to work your way in.

I have been so thankful that God sent me people. There isn't any bonds like I have with people at home, but that could change, unless I have more moving around to do. I don't know how long I plan on staying here, I don't know where I am going next. But I do know that God has something in mind for me. I wish I knew what it was so that I could plan accordingly, but I know that he likes surprises. My prayer is that although I may go around from place to place, he will always provide me with spiritual community.

Part of the reason I hope to go to discipleship school is because of the friendships that get formed. Like I said earlier, growing in Christ together really strengthens relationships.

The reason that long term missions has been something that I have wanted to do for awhile is because it is all about developing relationships with the people of that country. And it becomes an amazing thing to see God using those relationships to bring Glory to himself.

Our God is a mighty and a powerful God, but he is also a relational God. He wants to be our best friend and our lover. He wants to be the one we think about straight out of bed and throughout the day.

And now I have to drag my tired body to work, and there is no way I will be able to do it without God's strength, so I am pretty lucky to have that at my disposal. Love you Jesus.

the mind's eye

I have known so many people who have heard God strongly through dreams and visions. They get vivid pictures in their mind's eye and they hear God's voice. I have always longed to have a dream or vision like that. I have asked God again and again if he would reveal himself to me in that way. And I have had a vision, but in it, nothing supernatural happened and I did not hear God's voice. I am thankful that God gave me the vision he did, but I often question why I can't experience him like some other people have. Am I not seeking him enough? What am I lacking?

I know that I shouldn't question God and his reasons for not revealing himself to me like that, but I always think that it is my fault. I will try to just lay on the floor and meditate on Christ and let him speak, but I get so mad when I feel like he isn't trying. I have begun to see that my relationship with Christ is different than other people. I just can't quite put my finger on how. And I am not sure if it is something that I need to work on, or if God just decided to do things a little different with me, because I have a different mind and heart.

The one vision that God gave me was about a year ago. I was just sitting on my couch, thinking about nothing much when suddenly people started to appear in the room around me. I often have people over for movie nights or game nights, and it looked very similar to this. People were laughing and having a good time. Then one of my friends, that I had just gotten to know a little bit at the time of the vision, got up with a hurting look in his eye and went into the other room. As I went into the other room I saw him pulling out a syringe to inject drugs into his arm. I was shocked and scared, but I went closer to him. He saw me, but the tears were flowing down his face, and he did not try to hide or push me away. I sat down close to him and he leaned into my lap and I flung my arms around him and began to pray. It was the sort of prayer that could not be said with so many words, but I felt the spirit speaking for me with groans (Romans 8:26). As I sat there praying, tears were flowing down my face and when I opened my eyes again I was alone. But I had walked into the other room and was sitting on that couch.

After this happened I asked God what it was all about. Was it a revelation about what was going on in this guys life? Or was God showing me the kind of people he wanted me to minister to? Was it just so that God would get my attention and was trying to get me to be aware of the situations of the people around me? I still don't exactly know, but I assumed that it was all 3 of these options. I immediately texted the guy to ask him if he was all right. He was confused by my sudden concern, but seemed to be fine. Then I rewrote my mission statement. I have always tried to figure out where God wanted to use me, because I want to go everywhere and do everything, but I need to figure out God's specific calling so that my ministry is not spread so far that it is too shallow. My mission statement became this; The purpose of Emily Troe is to prayerfully and lovingly use my creative gifts and abilities to convey the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who have rejected or been rejected by the church.

That may seem unrelated to the vision, but the part of my mission statement that changed was the people I was serving. I have always had a heart for the drug users, the prostitutes, the people who the church tends to look down on. And this vision made me realize how much I had a heart for the people who were such outcasts from the church. As I continue on with my ministry, I see some things I want to change in my mission statement, but right now I am not focusing on that.

One other time that I know for sure that God spoke to me was on a mission trip in San Diego. We were all in our sleeping bags ready for bed, when I looked over and saw one of my best friends with her face in her hands crying. Her Bible was in front laying out in front of her and I didn't think much of it, because I thought God was speaking to her heart through the Bible. Then as I am laying there I hear God tell me to go hold her. I refused, I said, "no, if I was crying, I would just want everyone to leave me alone. Plus, there are a ton of girls here that are the comforting ones, I don't really do that." So I pushed that away and closed my eyes again, but God again told me to go and hold her. I just tried to get it out of my head, and I peeked to see if anyone else was going to her. They weren't. And one last time God says, "Emily! Go hold that girl!" It was a little more stern, but I reluctantly unzipped my sleeping bag and went over to her. I don't know why I sat the way i did, but I sat to the side of her, but faced her, and used my legs as a base and I wrapped my arms around her to hold her. She continued to cry for awhile, and I contented myself with sitting there and saying nothing. Soon after, she sniffed and looked at me. She told me that God was giving her an extremely vivid vision. She was getting spoken to by God, and she told him that she was too weak, and she needed somebody to hold her up, and at that moment I came over to her.

WOW! I was so shocked. I was so thankful that God used me like that, even though I didn't want to at the time. Ever since then, I wanted the kind of vision that she had. But I feel bad wanting that. God chose me to support her, but I questioned why i couldn't be the one that he showed himself to like that. But maybe I am just not as much of a visual person as some people are.

I always thought I was, but during an exercise that we did at church the other day, I am not so sure. What she did was describe a landscape, or a picture and told us to see it in our minds eye, then the picture showed up on the screen. And she said that although we saw something of the sort with the words, we saw more with the actual picture. But I disagreed. When I saw the picture, I was let down. In my head it was much more vivid and lush and realistic, but the picture was just flat. So is that it? God has provided me with such a bright imagination that words can speak to me stronger than they can to other people?

That's why I love reading books like the Chronicles of Narnia. The world that he describes is so vivid and complex and there are so many fascinating creatures and scenes that my imagination just gets to play in that world. I have never understood people's dread for reading, because it has always been so intriguing for my mind.

But I don't know if that is the reason I do not see visions like other people do. How am I supposed to put into print the way God works, and the way he decides to speak to people. I guess I just have to look at every aspect of my life closely and see where God is speaking to me, since he may not speak to me as clearly as I might like.

Well thank you for reading about my thoughts this morning. I think today is my completion of one week of blogging every morning. And I hope that I can continue even when I have to be at work early.

dragons, towers, and princesses

I was going to blog about dreams and visions and prophetic things from God today, but I think that I will save that for another time. What has been pressing on my mind is dating and relationships, and since my blog was about marriage yesterday it seems to fit the theme.

A friend of mine told me the other day that I am the girl that every guy falls for at some point. And sure, that seems like a compliment, but I hate it. I have very high standards for a guy. I am not a girl to try to date unless you are seriously looking to make me your wife. Honestly, if I could have it my way, I would never date. The ideal situation would be to have a really close guy friend, that one day would ask me to marry him. Although there would have to be some courtship in there to seek God's guidance and Christian council, but I would really like to avoid the dating scene.

I have been on one date and it went great. But God was using that situation to teach me about relationships. I wanted to have a godly relationship, I have seen so many hurtful relationships and so many sinful relationships that if I was going to get into one it had to glorify God in every way shape and form. So through my short flirtation with a relationship I looked to God and listened. What he told me was that if it was worth it, it could wait. So I told him that we could not look at dating for a few months, just to make sure that it was where God wanted us to bring our relationship. And he agreed, but as that time went by, I soon found out that he was not on the same page as me. He tried to push my boundaries, instead of protect them. So I knew that he was not the guy for me.

Pushing my boundaries the way he did was the big turn off for me. I really liked him, but as soon as he wanted more than I was willing to give him, even though most people would think it was a stupid boundary, he began to scare me. One of my major fears has been romance. When guys try to be intimate with me in some way, I get so scared. I like to be sarcastic and goofy, and when people start getting into my heart like that it is frightening for me.

When I first realized that I had such a fear of being romanced, I was scared that I might never be able to be intimate with a man. But I have become less scared of it the more God has taught me about my fears. And I often am thankful for my fears, because they keep me from going further with a guy than I want to.

I was making up a story yesterday about a princess locked away in a tower with a dragon guarding it. And God said to me, this is you. He explained to me how I was locked in this tower of my fears and this dragon was all my defenses I put up. And there were many men who came to try to fight for me, but they could not slay the dragon. Until one day a knight came and with one swift movement his sword hacked off the dragon's head. He easily climbed the tower and embraced the princess.

He told me that it was okay to have my defenses up and to be frightened, because there was going to be a day that he gave a man the right tools and the strength to fight for me and win his way to my heart. That helped ease my mind. Especially knowing, not only that God was going to send a rescuer, but that he was working on that man, and equipping him.

So yes, that is what God told me last night, that made me feel really loved by him. When he calls me his princess it makes me feel like a little girl getting dressed up in a dress and asking her father if she is a beautiful princess. I don't think girls are ever too old to be told that they are princesses or that they are beautiful. And I think the reason why it has been harder for me to just get into relationships than other people, is because I know that God sees me as his princess. I know that my love is not worthless and it is worth keeping in a tall tower until a worth man comes and saves me.

It makes me sad when women need that relationship so that the man can tell her how great she is, and how much she is worth. Because when he controls that, he controls her. If he makes her feel worthless she wants to prove that she is worth something, so she will go further with him emotionally or physically. When all she needs to know is that she is the daughter of the king and is worth more than she can imagine.

So now I suppose I will get of my princess topic and go back to the dating thing. There are some definite thing that I look for in a potential husband. The first thing is that he has to be a Christian. Not only a Christian, but a passionate lover of Christ. I need a man who is close enough to Christ that he is able to be the spiritual leader for me and our family. Even if I am the one in ministry and he is not, his job is to be the spiritual leader.

The other one is that he has to be passionate about the things he does. I am sick of passive men just going through the motions and not putting their heart and soul into things. I want a guy who is fierce and wild, not just a tame shell of a man. Also I look for someone to be my protector. After my dragon is killed and I am down from my tower, the man needs to be my protector. I want to feel safe with him and feel like even if the zombie apocalypse came, my man would have the strength to protect me.

Another thing is that I hope to find someone who's goals and plans in life don't conflict with mine. Meaning that I really want to go in the mission field for a part of my life, so that means that I would want to marry someone with that passion too, or I guess I could just do that before I got married, whatever God wills. But there are other things, like I want to have a big family, and if he doesn't want kids, then forget about it. I plan on doing theatre ministry and if his job means we have to constantly be moving, how will that effect my ministry? There are just things that need to work together.

I have a long list of specific things I would like to have in a husband, but those are just some basics that are important to me. Basically I want someone similar to my daddy, because he is great.

But the truth is, I am 19. And I don't plan of getting married for another 4-ish years. So yes, I have seen some guys who seem to be husband quality, but we will wait till I am closer to that time to get married. Who knows where I will be, or what I will be doing? Well, God does, and only he knows who I am going to marry. So I will let him worry about that right now. I am glad I am not a guy, I would not like to have to do the pursuing. All I have to do is sit back and wait for God to bring that guy along. But as of now, I am just going to enjoy my singleness and bring God the most glory that i can!

One verse that has kept me strong in not going too far with a guy is Song of Solomon 8:4 "Daughters of Jerusalem, i charge you: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires." This verse pops up 3 times in the book in 2:7, 3:5, and then again in 8:4. It is the woman saying this to other women. She is saying waiting is so worth it!!! Don't just give your heart away!

the sanctity of marriage

Gay marriage is a pretty big issue in our country today. And when I was asked about my opinion, I said that gay marriage is not something that should be legalized. People like me, who don't agree with gay marriage are very looked down upon in our culture. People think that I am closed minded and heartless to say that two people who love each other can't get married. But my view is slightly different than the norm. I just believe that marriage should be taken away from the hands of the state and given back to the Church. Marriage is not what it used to be. And I think that the state can have whatever kind of union they want. But marriage is a Christian idea of the holy and godly union between a man and a woman.

Where is the sanctity of marriage? People no longer save their bodies for their future spouse, and when they get married they will go off and fool around, or get a divorce and try someone else out. I am so sick of marriage being taken so lightly. Marriage is meant to be a permanent binding. And on my wedding day, I want to say the words "till death do us part" with a strong sincerity and commitment.

People say that they fell out of love with that person, or fell in love with someone else. They think that they have no control over their feelings and emotions. When you start to feel the spark and the passion diminish, it is time to get to work on keeping the relationship alive. Marriage is not an easy thing, it takes work. People don't want to have to work in their relationships so they just drop it and look for something else. But they are missing the best stuff that comes from marriage.

What bothers me most about this culture is our loose hold on sex. The people who are dating and not having sex are considered the unusual. Sex is meant to come on the wedding night to create that oneness between the man and the woman. If you give that up, what is the point of marriage? I know so many people who live with their boyfriend/girlfriend and act like a married couple... but why get married? The wedding night would not be any mare special than any other night.

A friend told me that sex had no more depth or meaning than a kiss. My heart broke, because God made sex to be such a powerful expression of love, and when you treat it like nothing more than a kiss... what else do you have? But of course maybe his definition of kissing is a little more intense than mine. But I just hate to see that our culture has put such a low price tag on sex.

From what I gather, most people don't plan on having sex when they do, they just get caught up in the passion of the moment and it happens. And that sounds so dreary to me. What has always enticed me about saving sex until the wedding night is the mystery. You both know what is going to happen, but it is the first time and you get excited about it, and instead of a wild make out session gone too far, I get to seduce my husband. Seduction has always been such a beautiful thing to me. When you are using it God's way there is such a beauty. I think about Song of Solomon, where it is a husband and wife on their wedding night, basically seducing one another.

Song of Solomon, I think, really describes why waiting to have sex until marriage is so important. The man is slowly being revealed to his lovers body and he is enticed and seduced by it and he keeps telling the woman how beautiful and perfect she is and she feels captivating and loved. The beauty of it is that they had never seen each other's bodies before, they had never touched each other before, they hadn't even kissed. So when it was all being unveiled that night, it was a beautiful mystery. It was the way God intended for sex to be used.

I almost don't want to get married, because of how much it has been tarnished. It no longer feels like an unbreakable union under God. But more like 2 people who "love" each other and want to have a big party that is super expensive. But I guess I can't speak for everyone. There still are people who keep the sanctity of marriage. I can only hope that someday the meaning of marriage will come back to the heart of marriage and there will not be so much sin that happens through or because of marriage.

satan's most useful weapon: media

What I want to blog about this morning is media. I am getting so sick of the downward spiral that has been going on. I used to watch like Gilligan's Island and Flipper. But now every show has grotesque sexual innuendoes and dwelling on things that, as a Christian, are not God glorifying. It is so hard in this culture to protect your eyes and your ears from evil. I often catch myself laughing at jokes that are made that I'm sure make God sad. Why do we find this vile enjoyment out of sinful things? In every show it is quite easy to point out lust, greed, envy, slander, and even idol worship. And we watch these things daily without a second thought.

I decided to write on this topic because of a movie I saw last night. "Black Swan" was an award winning movie, so I wanted to see it with my knowledge of cinematography and film. But this movie was dark. In that movie theatre, I felt so horrified and terrified that I wanted to run out (and I wish I would have). The movie was about a young girl in a ballet company and she ended up getting the lead in their version of Swan Lake. Their version had the white swan and, her evil twin, the black swan. The director told her she was perfect for the white swan, but didn't think she could pull off the black swan. So the majority of the movie is her trying to get herself into the character of the black swan.

Most of the movie is showing the things that she sees, but aren't actually happening in reality. Even when the movie ended there was a sketchy line on what was reality and what wasn't. But in her quest to become the black swan, the director tells her to "touch herself". There ended up being many scenes in the movie of her masturbating. At one point there was a scene of lesbian sex, but that was only in her mind. The sexual point of this movie basically disgusted me. I was told that it was necessary for her shift from a good little girl, to something fierce and wild. So apparently sex tapes are super artistic and creative now. Basically it looked like a porn video with awesome actors.

She also began to think that her fellow dancer was always after her. She saw her all over the place, in her mind, trying to take her place. She also would sometimes look in the mirror and it would not match up to what she was doing. Her alter ego would show up time and time again with a smug and creepy look on her face. At the end she is so caught up in her madness that she stabs who she thinks is the other dancer, but it ends up being herself.

I could go on about the dark themes of the movie, but I have neither the time or the energy to do so. She ends up dying in the end, but with a smile on her face, because she played both characters perfectly. The movie was way darker than I like. Last night I could barely sleep, my dreams were dark and frightening. It is not a place I like to be.

Well that was a long thing about one movie, while I am trying to talk about media in general. But I just think that this movie somewhat portrayed where the movie industry is at. The idea that artistic movies have to be dark, and sensual is a common thought for people in our culture. The more they are freaked out, and the more they have to bend their mind and get in a dark place, the more enticing it is for them to watch.

It just makes me sad, because what is next? Twenty years ago, they would not show a man and a woman who were unmarried in the same bed together. Now we are comfortable watching unmarried people have sex, even if it is gay sex. So where is the line going to be pushed now? Because the line has to be pushed for an edgy movie. Is the cycle ever going to stop or rewind? Because if I watch another movie with a sex scene I am going to bust a cap. Why can't people just see that sex is something to wait for until marriage? It is not something to go and throw around to random people. Ugh, I am just so sick of it.

So how to Christians fit in to this dark, sexual culture? Obviously, we are the children of the light and we are to abstain from sinful ways. We are supposed to be in this world, but not of it. What does that mean for us? It would be pretty hard to completely avoid the negative media, but I think it is a matter of the heart. You have to always take in what is coming at you through the filter of the Bible. you need to always have a clear distinction of what is of God and what isn't. And there are things that you should just stay away from all together. Because I saw this movie, I am going to tell my brothers and sisters in Christ not to see it, because it will not bring any glory to God if they do. But the way I can bring God glory through watching it, is to study it and through that study the entice of it and why it is affecting the people of this culture the way it does, or by explaining to Christians who do love the movie, why it is ungodly.

When we become Christians we must "renew our minds" (Romans 12:2). This means that we are no longer a part of this sinful world, we are now citizen's of God's kingdom. So even though we have become conditioned not to be affected by the sin that goes on in movies, we need to work against that. We need to make ourselves be affected. The only way things have a chance of changing are if people are willing to step up and make it happen. As Christians in this world, we are responsible for showing Jesus to the people around us. It is time to step up not only in the media world, but in every aspect of the world and fight off the enemy.

I will praise you with singing

Why does music move us the way it does? In a movie, the background music sets the tone for the scene. If something scary is about to happen, the music tells you and you begin to fidget in your seat even though nothing has happened yet. While I am writing these blogs I like to play instrumental music and it helps me feel inspired.

I guess the topic of music today, comes from thinking about the time of worship at church. My favorite part of church is singing before the Lord together with the body of Christ. I find it to be such a powerful and moving time. There are some songs that I just get lost in. The words speak to me so deeply and I just close my eyes, lift my hands and offer it all to God. Some songs inspire me to dance, some make me want to cry or fall to my knees.

Since I have moved and worshiped at a new church, I have not been able to worship to my favorite songs. I always get frustrated at all of these songs that I don't know. It is hard to get deeply in a place of worship if I am staring at the screen for words and trying to pick up the melody. I don't want to complain about my preference in songs, it is just something I am struggling with. I hope that soon I will get to know and love these songs that are new to me, so that I can offer my worship the best I can to the Lord.

But I do miss the songs that I have fallen in love with. Yes, I do sing them when I am at home with my guitar, but nothing beats the loud music filling the room and feeling everyone's love for Jesus pouring out. There are times when I can just feel God moving in a place. I have been in worship that has been so powerful that anyone who wasn't a Christian, thought we all looked like fools, falling to our knees, lifting our hands, shouting words that were not in the song, crying, and laughing. But that is where I feel the power of the Lord the strongest.

God seems to like singing and music. A large portion of the Bible is full of songs. Songs or praise, thanks, desperation, hope and love. Emotions seem to flow more easily with music. I am not one to easily cry, but when the music touches me I let the tears fall unashamedly. I love to move about and dance before the Lord when I am in song. I do not claim to be the best dancer, but music makes me move. And when I sing songs such as "Undignified" how can I hold back as I sing "I will dance, i will sing to be mad for my king. Nothing Lord is hindering this passion in my soul." If I am telling God that nothing is holding me back, I better not be holding anything back!

One of the most moving songs for me is the song "How He Loves" by John Mark Mcmillan. The imagery that is in that song is so powerful and it puts me right at the foot of Jesus.

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.


And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all


Yeah, He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves.


We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…


He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves.

This is a song that I like to sing in a small room with a group of my friends... It begins with a simple acoustic guitar and voices singing the melody, and as we continue more instruments might get added and the voices begin adding more layers. We may do the chorus five times, sounding different every time, and each time getting louder and wilder. Then we sing it one last time quiet and together. It makes me excited for heaven, because I imagine that the singing up there feels similar to that.

So this was a little shorter than my last two posts have been, but I have a shorter amount of time, because I have to go to church this morning. I now feel in a place ready for worship and ready to except the words that God has for me today. Even though I go to church alone and sit by myself, I feel like I am a part of something with the body of Christ all around me. God, thank you for giving us the gift of music as a means to get closer to you and feel your power and love. Give me complete focus this morning, so that I don't miss anything you have for me. I love you.

to be with Him

So I would just like to start off this morning by saying that the first 8 chapters of Leviticus are basically disgusting. It goes through all the kinds of sacrifices the Israelites had to make, and I can only imagine what a bloody mess it would be. You put your hand on the head of the animal and slaughter it and take the blood and throw it around. Well basically it seems disgusting and I thank God that we are not required to do that anymore.

Well, I said yesterday that I would meditate on relationship today, relationship between God and man. So I guess I will start at the beginning and work my way through.

In the beginning there was God. And God, for some reason, decided to create this world. He made a man. And he decided that the man couldn't be alone. Now this is my first point where I stop. Adam wasn't alone, he was with God. Adam got to walk and talk with God. And I just thought if you had that kind of unity and relationship with God, why would you need someone else? Did God make the woman, because Adam really needed her? Or was that just the plan to populate the entire earth? Maybe, man was always destined to sin, so whether Eve was there or not there would be the fall of man. If this is the case, then Adam did need the woman, because he would not always get to walk and talk with God. So perhaps Adam needed Eve, but not yet at that time. And God says things like that, because he does not have the restrictions of time and he is in all time at all times.

And now we have both Adam and Eve, they both get to dwell in the garden with God, but there is an evil force. Because in every good story we have an evil force. I often question how a perfect God somehow created imperfection... but that is not a discussion for this morning, sometime I will get to it. So the evil comes to the woman, the weaker of the two, and offers her a chance to be like God (he was lying). She knows how awesome God is so she goes for it, then she offers it to Adam, and how could Adam resist such a beauty like hers, so he goes for it as well. At this point they are ashamed of their nakedness and they are ashamed of their sin. So when God comes to the garden looking for them, they hide. Now, God is probably the best hide and seeker ever... so there is no way that they can hide from him. But he plays along, like a dad playing with his small child that he sees moving in the curtains, but pretends that he can't find. He calls out to them asking where they are and why they are hiding. They answer back that they are ashamed of their nakedness and they go on to explain what they had done.

I feel like God was very sad at this point. His creation with whom he loved to spend time with, turned from him. And this was the beginning of a long and hard battle to get them back. God had to send them out of the garden and into the harsh world. Now the human race had fallen. They were no longer worthy to be with God. But God never stopped loving them. He just had to pursue them now and fight for them.

So we go through the Old testament, and the people multiply and with their numbers, they get more and more sinful. Then God comes to Noah, he see's nobody else in the world that is seeking after him, so he starts over again with Noah's family. This doesn't stop sin, but God starts with a relationship again. He has shown Noah how faithful he is and he gave him a promise that he will never flood the entire earth again. Now Noah will teach his children about the faithfulness of God. That is something that I don't know if Adam and Eve taught. They knew what a horrible thing they had done, and they saw the perfection they had lost, but did they know where they were at with God? Did they know he still wanted them? And that he was never going to give up on mankind? It is all just speculation, but I tend to wonder these things.

Now the story begins to unfold even more. God develops relationships with some key men, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These men follow God and even though they screw up from time to time, God makes a covenant with them. They are to develop into a great nation. And this nation becomes God's chosen people. I feel pretty bad for the people who were not his chosen people, because they were screwed. But I dare not question God's perfect plan. The nation of Israel strategically get put into Egypt with the whole story of Joseph, which I am not going to go into at this time. But after awhile of them living there peacefully, they get too big and freak out the Egyptians so they get put into slavery. So it's a pretty big bummer for them, but God has a plan. He brings along Moses, a man who sucks at public speaking, to talk to Pharaoh and free the people. God wants to show the people of Israel his awesome power. This is his time to capture their hearts and trust. So he continues to harden Pharaoh's heart to show his incredible power. He wants his people to trust him as he takes them through the wilderness and gives them instructions. This is the time when he teaches them about rules and how to use sacrifices to atone for their sins, yes, it is something that was done in the past. But he gives them exact and specific instructions on how they are to do things.

I am going to kinda skip past the rest of the old testament. It continues with the Israelites turning from God, and God getting them back. It is a back and fourth struggle. Also the rules of God had been expanded on and they had forgotten the powerful God behind those rules, and it became all about the rules. So then came the time to change things. It was time for the big battle to be fought. God sent his only son to be the sacrifice to save our sinful world. When Jesus came into the world he created quite the uproar. God saw that it was time for relationship to be restored with the human race. Yes, there always was some form of relationship, but he wanted to to be personal and passionate, as he had intended it.

Jesus came and gave people an inside look at God's heart and how he wanted each of them to belong to him. God no longer had a chosen people, he wanted everybody! Thank God for that, if not, I wouldn't be included. And it would really suck not to be included in God's family.

When Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice, he covered us all for all time. Now when God sees a person who has accepted the grace that we have been offered, he sees not our sin, but the purity of the one who saved us. And God no longer had to be an outside force trying to get people to follow him. The Holy Spirit was put inside of us, so we could all be spoken to and we can all hear God and see him. We get to talk back and fourth with God and live to glorify him in our every day lives.

Again, this is just mw thinking out loud. They are not perfectly thought out or anything. I am just so glad that God has allowed me to know him. I want to celebrate that by meditating on his past, present and future. I could write for another few hours about relationship with God, because it is not something that I can cover in 2 hours, but I have to meet a friend in about an hour so I will leave this for now. And I just want to quickly thank God for the overwhelmingly incredible incredible gift he has offered through sending his son to die for our salvation. I love you Jesus.

Wake Up

When I first moved out of my house and to my apartment, it began to be routine for me to wake up ridiculously early and spend time with God in the Word and in prayer. I have somewhat fallen away from that. Not completely, but I definitely don't give myself the time that I used to give myself. Now I have time to get through a few chapters and maybe do some reflection, and maybe not. The purpose of this blog is to give me space to reflect every morning. I want to have a goal that I can easily be accountable to. Maybe nobody will read this. But if you are reading and you see that I begin to skip days... or say things that are not really thought out, please call me on it. I find that the longer I lay in bed the more likely I am to sin. Yeah, it may sound crazy, but when I am laying in my bed in the morning being sluggish, sinful thoughts tend to creep in my head. But when I get up, my thoughts are much more God glorifying. So that is another reason for this. I want my thoughts to go straight to God right out of bed.

I guess what I have recently been reflecting on has been hearing the voice of God. I have recently decided to read the bible cover to cover. This morning I began Leviticus. When I read about how God spoke to the people I get so jealous sometimes. God spoke to Moses like they were BFFs, he brought him to a mountain and just spoke. Moses knew exactly what God wanted him to do. He gave him the exact measurements for the ark of the covenant, the lamp stand, and everything else for the temple. There was not much that Moses had to figure out for himself. And I so often just wish that God would take me into a cloud and tell me all of his plans. Man, I want to see the back of God!

But maybe it wouldn't have been so great back then. I then realized that although God spoke very clearly, he spoke to very few people. He had his chosen people, the Israelites, and he didn't even speak to all of them directly. They definitely saw his power at work plenty of times, but the relationship aspect was a lot different that it is now. God now will speak to all of us, not just a chosen few. I realized how thankful I am that I at least get spoken to personally, even if I can't always hear it clearly. I don't know how well I would respond to someone else telling me what God told me to do. When Jesus came to the earth, it changed things so much. The Holy Spirit was a huge force in the old testament, people say that it was the cloud and pillar of fire that led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promise land. And that incredible force has been put inside of every single Christian. Jesus became the atonement sacrifice for us so that God no longer saw us as such screw-ups. The old testament sacrifices were only temporary, they had to continually offer sacrifices whenever they sinned, so God could not dwell with them. They were too sinful. We might even be more sinful than they were, but Jesus paid the price for it all. And when God looks at us he sees perfection, because of the price his perfect son paid. Now with a clean slate the Holy Spirit can dwell inside of us, so that we can be the major force of God.

This is all kind of thinking out loud. I am not trying to put this together really well, so i am sorry if it sounds somewhat random. But here is my closing thought:

God doesn't so much speak as loud and clear as he once did, because his spirit lives inside of us. We are a part of him and he is a part of us. We hear him much more personally, we hear him through thoughts, dreams, people around us, ect. Sure, I still wish that I could hear him loud and clear telling me exactly what to do from time to time. But our relationship then would be a lot less wild, mysterious, and exciting.

I think that's what I will reflect about tomorrow... relationship. Well that is all I have time for this morning. I will leave with a prayer:

God, thank you so much for your goodness. You are more perfect than I can comprehend. I am in awe of your majesty and your perfect plans. I ask that you will carry out your plans in me whether I am aware of them or not. I am so imperfect, I cannot see the picture that you are painting, but use me in whatever way you see necessary. I want to offer you control of me, because I am incapable of controlling myself and I have proven it over and over. God, take this broken down shell of me and use me to make your name great. Thank you for your love that is beyond human understanding. Wrap me in your love and grace and let other people see that and be blessed. I love you Lord. There is nobody more deserving of my love than you. Continue transforming my heart and making me new every day. In Jesus' perfect and holy name, Amen.