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.