Dance a little bit

Grafiti from my city :)

Hello Prayer Friends,

I have been feeling the need to be creative lately and have had no outlet for it. As many of you know I love music and singing and often my inner thoughts, joys, pains, and love can be expressed through song. Lately, though, this emotion inside me hasn't wanted to come out in a song - sadly. I have found myself wondering more about the love of God and what it looks like to live in that love every single day. I really want to sing about it :)

I have been faced with a lie from satan in these last few days - the lie that God's love depends on us. The Bible says that God knew me before he created me...he KNEW me. He loved me before I ever entered this world. He chose me not based on who I am, what I do, or how I live but because he is sovereign. He gets to decide - not me. Many times I find myself judging my own actions. I came to a point last night while praying when I realized, for the first time, that I almost always am sitting in the judgment seat of my own life - judging when God should love me, when he should forgive me, when he should draw near to me, how much he should love me, how much blessing I deserve, and when he should speak to me. Am I the judge? Everyone in this moment should be sighing a resounding NO. Thank Jesus I am not the judge of anything!

This is where Grace enters the picture. I know what it is. I know what it means. I know it is free. But for some reason I haven't allowed myself to truly fall into it. By continuing to take God's place as judge I haven't allowed his grace to swallow me up. When I believed in Jesus as the Redeemer of this world and of my life, I accepted that he died to cleanse me. Why is it so hard to just believe that God loves us and is so willing to forgive us. To take us back. When I sit in judgment on myself for something God has already forgiven, or when I decide that because my whole day wasn't filled with work that I am an unworthy disciple, I am not letting God take me in. I want that! I want to experience and know the true LOVE of Christ! His redemptive power alive in my life! I want to know the joy of truly releasing myself to Jesus and allowing him to clothe me in his forgiveness...his grace.

Some of you might be thinking in this moment, "what does this have to do with her update about ministry?" Well, it changes how I live ministry. If I think that my skills and my talents and my ability to share the love of Jesus somehow make God love me more or less then I am constantly weighted down by guilt because I can never live up to God's standard of holiness. But if I realize and accept that God loves me perfectly no matter the mistakes I make as his missionary and more importantly as his daughter, then I am free to live his love without the fear of messing up.

Can you picture God's love? When you think about the beauties of this world that scream his majesty - the mountains, the oceans, the deserts, the stars - Doesn't it make you want to dance? And sing? And Jump around screaming and waving your arms about?? God is HUGE and he loves us...US! And it does NOT depend on our ability to serve or work or be a good daughter, mom, father, or son. It depends on GOD! And he does NOT fail us! So take a minute to get excited by the love of your Father :) The love of your savior. Maybe dance around and sing. And maybe serve him out of love and not out of obligation or fear. He will not stop loving you.

Does this mean we stop striving for holiness? By no means...

"What then? shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey - whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness....But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:12-18 & 22-23

Amen