God, my desire is for your words to be spoken, for this blog to be yours and my frustrations to go away. I want to write. I want to write. I want to write. Use my hands.
Faith: (n) Complete trust or confidence in someone or something
God is so faithful. And if we don't believe that, then we're missing a huge piece of who God is. It's not just believing either..it's knowing, feeling, genuinely trusting that He's faithful. It's reading in Scripture of all the ways He provided and loved and pursued.
What I don't understand, is how we read about His faithfulness and we experience His faithfulness, yet we forget and choose our own way. A really awesome friend of mine, Christen, drove us up to Jacksonville a few weeks ago. We went to this amazing, Spirit-filled church called Celebration. The pastor spoke about how we don't live on the mountain top, but we temporarily go into the valley to bring people up. This is God being SO faithful to my prayers. I've been kinda concerned with my relationship with Jesus being on this roller coaster. It's up, it's down, it's up..I would get frustrated at myself for not being on this constant high.
But in 1 Kings, Elijah sees God in so many ways, has so many mountain top experiences: he gets food from the raven, his family's provided for, he brings a dead boy to life, he wins a "God face-off" with King Ahab. All these things were so evidently God. But after all of this, Elijah's life is threatened once and he runs away from the direction God has him.
So I'm asking God what he wants written in this blog, and He..again..is faithful. I've been Elijah this month. I've been experiencing AMAZING mountain tops and yet, I chose me when it came to making a big decision this past week.
MT (mountain top) #1: That sermon
MT#2: Thinking. Loving. Doing. by John Piper. Our struggles start as a small thought in our mind. We see what we want to see. (scientifically proven)
MT#3: Passion planning...where pieces are missing, new pieces are slowly and faithfully being put into place. People are dropping and new people are taking their place.
Dad & I decide to put people into a hotel just to find out the next day Matt's dad has Hilton points...
MT#4: my FAVORITE...I met my friend Katie for Starbucks last week and I start to tell her how I've been praying for an opportunity to plan another high school girls night of struggles for a different church. Right as this is happening, a wonderful woman of Bayside church comes walking up and starts to talk to me about how she's been asked to work on an event to focus on their high school girls' struggles and weaknesses. Literally, nothing like this can be called a coincidence.
MT#5: Boy keeps coming to church
MT#6: Morgan Henning & I are driving home from rehearsal, and it's quite in the car...out of nowhere, we break into laughter. The Spirit was so overwhelming and so alive in that car ride home, the joy was too much to hold in.
MT#7: God is continually giving me new ideas & more speakers for this Bayside girls night
MT#8: Bayside's Monday night group... "You can tell a lot about your spiritual hunger by the sins you commit"
MT#9: He used my past struggle to help out a broken heart tonight
MT#10: God took over my words, heart and thoughts for my last speech in class
MT#11: I've been praying for an accountability partner and God brings me Lindsey Gow, my twin
The list could go on. And I can't finish a single one of those without throwing a smile in the midst of them. God is so faithful and so amazing.
Then why are we so quick to let our flesh desires take over. God has been working a LOT on me with a struggle of mine. The other day I was battling in my mind about it and I just became still and prayed. I promise, it was like a switch. POWER of prayer and the realness of God's faithfulness. Kari Jobe sings this...
"Love came down and rescued me
Love came down and set me free
I am Yours, Lord I'm forever Yours
Mountains high or valley low
I sing out and remind my soul
I am Yours , I am forever Yours "
We will continually have these mountain top experiences. But when we're sent into the valley, we are to remain faithful because He has us there for a reason. "Don't let your fire burn out, somewhere somebody needs a reason to believe. That's how the lost get found" (Britt Nicole) Whatever your valley is, glorify the name of Christ and you will see Him in that low time.
In that valley, in that time of darkness...
we are to REMEMBER what God did on the mountain top.
"same God in the good times as in the valley times"
we are to WAIT on God and move when He gives us the go;
"when we don't wait, we run ahead of God, therefore we're out of the will of God"
we are to LISTEN for God with no expectations
"Choose to be in a relationship with the only one who can get you out of the valley"
God is good,
prayer is powerful
& there's no other Love like this.
Mark 16:15
:)
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