Warring further still...

Knowing that this season in my life is where it should be is probably easier to accept, than for me to accept the truths of what God Himself has spoken to me about the future. I will tell you that what I am walking through is difficult and hard, but what God has spoken to me is even harder. Not because it will be painful, although I am sure it will be at times, but because of the reality of what it is. I am in a season of prepping, I believe, in my life for the next season of living out what I know God has said. He has given me direction in many areas of my life and yet I am still in this waiting game. At Bible Study tonight I was reminded that as Jesus had the cross before Him, those hours in the garden right before were necessary. He needed to go and seek the face of His Father. He needed to go further still. (Matt. 26:38-39) He wrestled with the dread for the task He was about to undertake. I know that God isn't asking us to take on all the sins of the world for all the ages ever to be, BUT He has asked us to undertake some pretty difficult circumstances in our lives. Big or small, when it is JUST us and God, we must choose to go further still. When we are surrounded on all sides and are just having a hard time in our own minds, we need to go further still. When God asks us to wait on Him, for His timing and plan, we are to go further still. When we are asked by God Himself to walk in a direction that may be scary or hard, He is asking us to go further still. When we are living in a situation that isn't ideal but it is where God has us, we are asked to go further still. When God asks us to go through an illness, whether it be ours or someone else's, that is His prodding us to go further still. When God asks us to fight for something we aren't sure about, that is His desire for us to go further still. When there is warfare to be done for family and friends, and the ONLY one to do that warfare is you, He is calling you to go further still. When we are asked to go further still, what does that look like? What would our warfare look like at this point? This is just an observation but I believe that God has this for us all. I believe that not always is it a painful issue we walk through to be called to go further still. I believe that in warfare, whether it be for ourselves or others, that we are to always go further still. We are to fight with everything we have and that means going further still. There is a scene in Braveheart where the William Wallace encourages his men to advance. They are waiting for his leading and once they engage the enemy a bit, they do what? They go further still, willing to lay there lives down for one thing, FREEDOM!!! They advance and they continue to advance, they continue to go further still. It is the same in our lives, if we are not the ones to go further still, the enemy will advance. And I mean he will advance with a vengeance. I want to be the kind of warrior who goes further still. Just like Jesus did in that garden, it says earlier in that chapter that He was with the 12, then went with the 3 and then went further still. I want to be the kind of warrior who goes further still. Just like Jesus did, no matter how hard it was or how alone He felt, He went further still. it was something He had to carry alone. He had to advance alone. He had to stay until the bitter end. He, leaving the 3, went further still. I want to do that, I want to be the kind of woman that when I wake up in the morning satan says: "MAN, She's UP!" I want to go further still. When someone isn't lovely to you, I want to love them and love them further still. I think you get my point, God asks us to go further still in many areas, not just the painful ones, in Love, in Joy, in Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control, Forgiveness, Grace, Mercy, and warring for others. In all of these things we are to go further still, Jesus did, and if we want to be like Him, why would our requirements be any different than going further still. I read this quote at our study, I have used it in a previous post but I believe that it is timely for us today.

Since I am Hawaiian I had to add a picture of some Hawaiian Warriors, and since they don't wear a lot of clothing, I thought this picture would fit best. 

"A warrior is one who is engaged aggressively in or experienced in battle. A warrior possesses the dedication that money can't buy. A warrior is someone who fights, not because of what [he/]she is getting out of it, but because of what [he/]she can give. A warrior is a soldier with a "die for the cause" attitude. A warrior will do whatever it takes to ensure victory. A soldier signs up to join the fight; a warrior stays until it is finished." -Warrior Chicks, Holly Wagner

Great I am

I heard this song at a service I went to tonight and I have to tell you that God moved on me. It is amazing. I encourage you that as you listen to this song, read the words. i have put the words up and they are on the video. Please listen to the entire song and ask God to speak to you. Ask Him to show you that He is the Great I Am! I know He will, just ask and believe He can show you. 




Great I Am-New Life Worship

"I wanna to be close close to your side 
So heaven is real and death is a lie 
I wanna hear voices of angels above 
Singing as one 

Hallelujah Holy Holy 
God almighty Great I am 
Who is worthy 
None beside Thee 
God Almighty 
Great I Am 

I wanna be near near to your heart 
Loving the word hating the dark 
I want to see dry bones living again 
Singing as one 

Chorus 
Hallelujah 
Holy Holy 
God almighty Great I am 
Who is worthy 
None beside Thee 
God Almighty 
Great I Am 

He's the Great I Am Great I Am 

The mountains shake before Him 
The demons run and flee 
At the mention of the name 
King of Majesty 
There is no power in hell 
Or any who can stand 
Before the power and the presence of the Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am The Great I am 

(Chorus) 

Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am The Great I am 

The mountains shake before Him 
The demons run and flee 
At the mention of the name 
King of Majesty 
There is no power in hell 
Or any who can stand 
Before the power and the presence of the Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am The Great I am 

(chorus) 
the Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am The Great I am"

Thank you Jesus for showing up! I love you! Please meet us where we are so that we can continue our progress in our relationship with you, even in sleep. May Jesus Bless your day!!! 

Ho'okuu Ha'alee

I am an all or nothing kind of person. I don't think life should be lived only half way. You can either live life to the fullest or why bother at all. This tends to be a problem for me in certain areas like washing my car. I like it super clean, and why is it that only broken sprinklers that drench your car, show up when you just had it washed? Well if I washed my car, especially myself, and something gets on it, I freak out a bit. So instead I have found it easier to not wash it. I know it looks like I don't care or that I am lazy, but the reality is, that I freak out so much in my head, I just have to leave it alone. This is the case in most parts of my life. If something is clean and it gets messed up in the slightest I just leave it alone. Sometimes this even includes my walk with the Lord. Things will be going great and then BOOM, I fall with something I have said or done, and then I just leave it to get worse. These past few years I have tried to force myself to be proactive about things so that they don't get so messed up that it takes twice as long to clean up. I am not quite there yet but the fact that I even thought about being proactive is a step in the right direction. I bring this up because I want you to know that if you feel this way, or know someone who does, you aren't alone. I am learning how to balance this area of thinking but there is one area I will refuse to put this into practice. Now you are probably trying to figure out why, and how that can be healthy. You are probably asking yourself that if you do it in one area it will tend to bleed into other areas of your life. I agree with the latter statement. It will and that is my hope. I hope that as I allow this area to rule, the others will fall into place. I am talking about loving Jesus with reckless abandon. What does that look like? What does that show to others? I pray that you will be able to answer that for you and your relationship with God. I did.

This concept has been the cry of my heart for a long time now. Although I am not an expert by any means in this area, I can tell you that being an all or nothing kind of person, reckless abandon makes total sense to me. I tend to do it in the wrong areas at times, but nonetheless I am still learning. If I wasn't learning, I'd already be in Heaven. I am so devoted to the idea I had it tattooed on my wrists. Ho'okuu Ha'alee is Hawaiian for Reckless Abandon. Now I am sure you think I am awful for tattooing myself and that is ok, but I didn't do it for anyone else but me and Jesus. I know everyone has an opinion about tattoos but I know when I hear God and this was a God thing. I have it on my wrists because I can see it when I lift my hands to worship and that is where Jesus was nailed to the cross. I also have it as a reminder to me that I am to run to Jesus, love Him, love others, and fully surrender all I have, want, and desire to Him with RECKLESS ABANDON. This seems to be the theme of my life right now. I want to always love with reckless abandon. To run steadfastly with reckless abandon to  God who loves me and changes me. I decided to do this right before a Sunday Morning service. I told my brother Brian about it and determined in my heart that I needed to be reminded of it ALL the TIME! It is forever on me and I am ok with that.

I bring this up because I want to always make sure that in this area of my life I will be all in all the time. This is a good thing if it bleeds into other areas of my life. I want to make sure that I am always running "the race" as the Apostle Paul calls it in Philippians 4. I pray we can all be people of reckless abandonment for God and God alone. I pray that as you search your own heart to see if you have reckless abandonment for God, that you ask Him where you can show Him that in areas of your life. He may ask you to do something that you never thought you would do, but I bet He will show you a way you can honor Him more, or be reminded of Him more. It may not be as drastic as a tattoo, but as you resolve to let Him do what He wants please be ready for anything. What do you picture Reckless Abandon to look like? Maybe a child running toward their parents with joy because they got an award for good citizenship at school. Or a man running to his wife who he hasn't see in 18 months because of his deployment to Afghanistan. Maybe it looks like two little cousins who haven't seen each other in a long time because they live in different parts of the world. Whatever the case may be, ask God to show you how it looks in your life, and then ask Him to allow your Reckless Abandon for Him to bleed into all areas of your life.

Lord, You are King over all, when we are still afar off, you run to us with Reckless Abandon. Allow us to know that kind of love for you and for those around us. Allow us to not just want it, but to know how to live it out in our daily lives. Let us be a people of Reckless Abandon to You and only You. Thank you that you see our hearts and know our desires. Allow our desires to line up with your desires and change anything in us that doesn't. Thank you, In Jesus Name, Amen!!!

Feathers aren't just for flying

Last night I was listening to my music before I went to sleep and I was sad because a song came on that reminded me of something that God is working on in my life and it stung. I will tell you that I cried a bit and then I turned my head to face the Lord. I know that His ways are higher than my ways, and His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. He moves and works outside of space and time. He is a creator, not a duplicator and He loves me enough to keep me struggling so I don't lose focus on the fight. Yet when we ask our Father to show us something to keep our hope and faith alive, He does it His own way and in His own time. Well I prayed and laid it all back on Christ before I went to sleep. This morning I woke up to a glimmer of hope in my current circumstance. He was confirming something to me and blessed me by whom this message came through. My friend in New Zealand, whom I love so much and miss her and her family terribly. She was used by God for ME!!! I was floored this morning when I woke up. 

I am blessed by her obedience to this and for sharing it with me. Then I got up and got ready for the day. I put on a cute necklace my sister gave me for my birthday this year and earrings that matched. They were turquoise feathers. As I was waiting for my breakfast, God asked me to read Ps. 91. I began reading it and  verse 4 jumped out at me it says:

  

"He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge, His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart." 

I am sure you can guess where this is going. God confirmed to me again, which He didn't have to but He chose to, that He has a plan and that I will be covered with His feathers. Its a new promise to me that I want to hang on to. I want you to know that you can hope in Jesus like that and He can cover you with His feathers. He can have people you don't expect hear God for you when you are having trouble listening to God clearly. I am blessed to be surrounded with such people and to know them. I am count them dear to me, even if they live far away right now from me. Praise the Lord for fellowship, even if it is 1,000's of miles away. I pray the Lord would bless you today and cover you with His feathers. 

Being the Light?

Have you even really thought about what that statement means? What does it actually mean to be the light? Well I know we talk about that at church and teach children songs that tell them about it but really what does it mean. I have been thinking about what this means and what to share with you. I pray that what God has been showing me will help you wrestle with this question.

Let's start with what light isn't and maybe that will help a little in this. If something is dark what does that mean? It just means that there is an absence of light. Some of the things I know light isn't is dark, it doesn't hide well, it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for doubt about how something looks, and it doesn't give way to fear. So with just these few thoughts I can venture to say that light exposes things for what they were. I remember being scared when I was little and I always wanted to sleep with the light on. Why? Because if I thought something was in my room in the light I could see that it was only my childish imagination. How do you feel when you see those first glimpses of daybreak when you have been up all night afraid of something? I will leave you with that thought for a moment.

I want to talk to you about the parable of The Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-24. Stick with me here, we all know some version of this story where the son asks the father for his inheritance early and the father allows him to have it and the son leaves to a far off land. I want to stop here and see if I can maybe give you a new take on this story. Try and look at this story from the Fathers point of view. The father loved his son so much that he chose to give him the inheritance early. He loved him so much that he let his son leave and travel, and he loved his son so much that he waited for his return. I know I am skipping some things about the son, but I said this is the fathers point of view, so the son left and then the father waited for him. Now before the son left the father could have said no to his son and made him wait for his inheritance. This father loved his son so much that he let him go, not fighting him or telling him that he didn't love him anymore or that he would never have a place to come home to, it says that he let him go. I want you to now picture this father as God Your Father. He loves you enough to let you leave if you want to. So now lets reenter the story from the son hitting rock bottom, if wanting pig food isn't rock bottom, then I am not sure I know what rock bottom looks like. The son decides that even his fathers servants are looked after better than he is, so he sets out for home. It says that when he was far off, his father saw him and ran to him. Now I have a question, if the father wasn't looking for him, would this father have seen him? I wonder how often that father looked for his son. I wonder how many nights he stayed up just waiting for his return. How many nights do you think that father left the light on for his son? Do you think that son saw the light from far off and knew that he would be home soon to see what would happen?

So back to the light, what does light do? It gives hope, it dispels darkness, it comforts, it can give warmth, it allows us to see, so we don't fall over something, and it shows things for what they really are. So here is my real question, if God tells us we are the light of the world what does that mean? Well it means to me that we dispel darkness, and we bring hope and comfort to those in the world. We also show the world how dark it is. That sounds like a pretty cool, hard, and exhausting job, but that is what Christ gave to us. I know that I am not always good at it, but I sure want to take my job seriously in this and make sure I am doing it well. So what is being the light? Its dispelling darkness and giving hope to others. Lord, please help us be better light to others. If our light is dimming, please change us so that we can give hope to others and dispel darkness, even when its hard and it hurts to be that person, please give us courage to be light, your light. Thank you Jesus for giving us this gift. May Jesus bless your day!!!