Good AND Loving?

So, in my previous blog, I wrote about God being good.  In the last few days, there have been moments of deeper revelations into areas where even though I have knowledge that He is good, everything in my prayer life and day to day living proves that I do not truly believe this and do not allow this truth of His goodness to sink into the very core of me. I am constantly giving God a loop hole in my prayers in case He doesn't answer, I won't blame Him and become bitter.  In my prayers, I almost pray expecting Him to fail me.  In a way, I'm trying to protect myself from being let down by His character.  But I am learning that His character doesn't need protecting or defending.  He is who He says He is.  He says he is good and makes all things happen for the good of those who love Him. Numbers 23:19 says "God is not a man, so he does not lie.  He is not human, so he does not change his mind.  Has he ever spoken and failed to act?  Has he ever promised and not carried through?" He is good and I can trust him!  I can pray honest prayers and believe He loves me and knows me.

 I have never struggled to see God as serious and mighty and king and ruler. I have never doubted that in his presence, there are serious issues and serious discussions and serious missions.

But love has been so much harder. Seeing God as someone that laughs with me and kids with me and wants good things for my life and provides cool friendships. Seeing Him as someone that cares about the little things that no one else notices or as someone that collects my tears in a jar, as Psalms says, has been difficult. Believing that it gives Him joy to see me writing or designing or playing sports or a million other things has been hard.

Things are changing though. He has been showing me that He is more flowers than thistles, more laughter than wrath, more open hand than closed fist. Is He serious? Without a doubt. Do I still feel like it’s a big deal to come into His court? Certainly, only now I think it’s OK to arrive there by water slide.(acuff)

His Goodness.

Recently, some really cool things have been happening in my life.  I was able to go to Texas for my cousins wedding, go to Austria for a YWAM conference, and visit my teammate's home in Sweden!  Currently, I'm on outreach playing beach volleyball and soccer with a bunch of people along the beach.  In the middle of all that, I've met an amazing friend that has been incredible and I think sometimes..it's too good to be true (this friend happens to be a boy (wink, wink, wink) but that's not the point of this post...maybe there will be another update on that later haha) Anyways, the point of all this is with good things happening around me, I have caught myself constantly waiting for the punch line...waiting for the point where this all ends, and I go back to slaving away for my master.  Waiting for God to take away these good things and put me in my place.  I was praying and reading Jon Acuff and I suddenly realized a few skewed views I have of God. 

1. The god in my head is a jerk.
The first thing I think he’s going to do when I bump into something good is take it all away in some horrific call to somewhere else.

2. The god in my head calls me to things I’d hate.
He’s not a god that lines up the unique way he created me with a unique calling. In fact he does just the opposite. He finds something I love and then acts me to do something I’d hate. 

3. The god in my head doesn’t give good things, he removes them.
When I find myself in the middle of something good, my instinct is to wrap my arms around it and protect it from the god in my head, not thank him for it.

How did I get there?

How did I get so far away from who I feel like God tries to reveal himself as over and over in the Bible?

As I’ve said before, when God has a single moment to reveal himself to Moses in Exodus 33, what does he show him? Does he show him his might or his power or his anger? When he essentially says, “When you see me, this is what I want you to see,” what does he show Moses? His goodness.

“I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence.”

He reveals his goodness. God isn’t a jerk. God is good.

And throughout the Bible, God doesn’t call people to things they’re not created for. He calls them to situations that awaken deep seated purpose and desires in people that God himself placed there before they were even born. Paul, the loud, bold, road tripping persecutor of Christians, is not called by God on the road to Damascus to become a quiet, shy, homebody theologian. He becomes a loud, bold, road tripping megaphone of hope.

God doesn’t call us to things we’re not designed to do.

Throughout the Bible, we also see a picture of God as someone who delights in giving. One of my favorite examples is Luke 11:11-13. Jesus says:

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

I love these verses because they’re just blunt enough to break through my callused heart. Jesus uses such crazy examples! He doesn’t say, “Which of you fathers if your son asks for an egg, will give him a piece of bread?” He says, “If he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?”

I think he uses two such wildly different things, an egg and a scorpion, because he knows we’ll be tempted to create a jerk god in our head. A god who would give us the worst thing possible. A god who’d give a scorpion instead of an egg.

I don’t know what the god in your head looks like.

But, I bet he’s a jerk. I bet he wants you to be miserable. I bet he’s got a suitcase full of scorpions with your name on it.

That’s not God though. God loves goodness. God loves mercy, not sacrifice. God loves gift giving. God loves the sick. God loves the mess-ups.

And though it may feel hard to believe if you’ve spent years with a different god in your head, God loves you.

Ultimate gift

"The ultimate gift of the Gospel is NOT the new heavens and new earth, the ultimate good of the Gospel is NOT the redeemed body, the ultimate good of the Gospel is NOT forgiveness of sins, NOT redemption, NOT propitiation, NOT justification...these are all means!! The ultimate good of the Gospel is God Himself beheld in the Glory of His crucified and risen Son, enjoyed because of His infinite beauty, treasured because of His infinite worth, and reflected because we're being conformed to the image of his son. Christ suffered once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God...there is no end after that...everything before that is means" - John Piper

Eat, Pray, Love

To be honest, I’ve been talking too much my whole life, but I’ve really been talking too much during my stay. I have another two months here, and I don’t want to waste the greatest spiritual opportunity of my life by being all social and chatty the whole time. It’s been amazing for me to discover that even here, even in a sacred environment of spiritual retreat on the other side of the world, I have managed to create a cocktail-party like vibe around me. I’ve found myself creating appointments to see acquaintances, having to say to somebody, “I’m sorry, I can’t hang out with you at lunch today because I promised so-and-so I would eat with her.. maybe we could make a date for Tuesday.”
Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss. So I am not going to be the social bunny anymore, I’ve decided. No more scurrying, gossiping, joking. No more spotlight-hogging or conversation-dominating. No more verbal tap-dancing for pennies of affirmation. It’s time to change.
God isn’t interest in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality.
So what is my natural character? My dream of finding divinity by gliding silently through the place with a gentle, ethereal smile - who is that person? That’s probably someone I saw on a TV show. The reality is, it’s a little sad for me to admit, that I will never be that character. I’ve always been so fascinated by these wraith-like, delicate souls.. Always wanted to be the quiet girl. Probably precisely because I’m not. It’s the same reason I think that thick, dark hair is so beautiful- precisely because I don’t have it, because I can’t have it. But at some point you have to make peace with what you were given and if God wanted me to be a shy girl with thick, dark hair, he would have made me that way, but he didn’t. Useful, then, might be to accept how I was made and embody myself fully therein.
This doesn’t mean I cannot be devout. It doesn’t mean I can’t be thoroughly tumbled and humbled with God’s love. This doesn’t mean I can’t serve humanity. It doesn’t mean I can’t improve myself as a human being, honing my virtues and working daily to minimize my vices. For instance, I’m never going to be a wallflower, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t take a serious look at my talking habits and alter some aspects for the better – working within my personality. Yes, I like talking, but perhaps I don’t always have to go for the cheap laugh, and maybe I don’t need to talk about myself quite so constantly. Or here’s a radical concept – maybe I can stop interrupting others when they are speaking. Because no matter how creatively I try to look at my habit of interrupting, I can’t find another way to see it than this: “I believe that what I am saying is more important than what you are saying.” And I can’t find another way to see that than: “I believe that I am more important than you.” And that must end.

Crazy. Beautiful. Life.

I wanted to sum up my life in the last 3 months in one word, but the English dictionary just doesn't have a word that can actually describe this crazy beautiful life I've been living!  First, I looked up the meaning of the word "busy" but it says, "actively and attentively engaged in work" that is a true statement, I have been busy, but I couldn't describe my time here with the word busy because it neglects the excitement and joy of it all!  Actively engaged in work? How could I classify what I get to wake up and do every morning as work? Work sounds boring!  So I thought of words like active, accelerated, and rapid which do a better job of describing the word busy with adrenaline and excitement, but still those words don't do justice to my time in England!  How about I catch y'all up on what's been going on in this area of the world, and maybe you can help me come up with the perfect word.

So, starting in March, I went to Denmark and visited my Danish friends Laila and Kirsten!  I was also able to speak on a bible weekend retreat for students age 12-18!  Laila and Kirsten introduced me to dark bread called rugbrød! I think I was addicted almost immediately and since coming back to London, I have searched the streets for a Danish Ryebread dealer!  I need my bread fix!  The time in Denmark was just incredible and full of joy while catching up with these girls and laughing about our times on DTS!  Also during the bible weekend, I took a walk with one of the youth at the conference and during our conversation, I couldn't believe how much I was learning and being encouraged by her as oppose to the other way around!

When I returned to London, my sister came to visit!  Jacee was only there for 3 days, but it was so much fun to hang out with her!  It was great to have a group of Texans in my backyard again!  Jacee came with some of my friends from Denver City and one of my best friends from Texas Tech, Katy Moore!  We sang the Texas Tech fight song and it was great to have people wearing red and black in support of the Red Raiders! We were able to see the Lion King, which was my first Broadway/West End show, and stroll around downtown London at night!  It was so much fun having them here.  I just wish they could have stayed longer, but now it just means they will have to come back to get the real tour of England!

The day my sister left, my friend from South Korea came to visit, and she helped me get to work on alot of the design work that needed to be down for the Forever team.  Together we completed 2 weeks of work in 2 days, so it was such a huge blessing to have her here!  The last day that she was here, we went on a quick tour of London and wanted to take pictures in front of the O2 arena!  When we arrived, we saw that Enrique Iglasias was performing that night, so we went to an official and asked if they had any more tickets.  The man told us they were sold out, but 3 people didn't come and claim their tickets, so we could have them for free and the VIP lounge bands that went with them!  It was so much fun and really funny because seconds before we asked about tickets Lynn had said "Who is this guy?  An actor or something?"  Maybe the hardcore fans out there wouldn't be so happy that mediocre fans just got front seats to the man of their dreams!


After the concert, Lynn left for the Airport, and I went straight to Manchester for a week where we as the Olympic Forever team ran a week called "DTS Gathering"  This is where trainees from all the YWAM bases around England come together for a week of Evangelism training and outreach (as well as sleeping on the floor and having 60 girls sharing one bathroom!)  Myself and Rebecka both led the sports outreaches.  During the week, we ran 2 football clinics, played a football game and helped with a football tournament!  Football was the key and we were able to use sport to show Christ love.  They had outreaches of Art, Family and Children, homeless ministry, and prayer walks.  It was so much fun and really cool to have such variety of ways to Evangelize.  We are already planning our next gathering for the beginning of June, so I'm excited to use the same tools we used for Manchester, but this time we will be able to do outreach with a beach as our "football pitch" hopefully we can play a little volleyball as well!

When I returned from Manchester, the next task was receiving my level 1 football coaching badge!  This meant playing football (soccer) everyday from 9am-5pm.  It was actually really fun and I learned so much about the sport!  We practiced coaching around 14 drills, and while we were not coaching, we were being coached by the other trainees!  With this training, I will go into an area of London next week and run soccer schools for kids grades 1-5!  I'm really excited because the format will be integrating football and life lessons together with Jesus being the focus of it all!  I just hope that the kids don't really show me up and make me look like a fool with their smooth skills.  I know it is highly possible to be beaten by a 6 year old, so I'm a bit nervous!  Good news is the weather has been amazing and I have a great tan which I heard was almost impossible to receive in gloomy England!

So that all brings me to this week.  I just returned from a recruiting trip to Scotland where we talked with the bases there about getting involved in the Olympics and encouraged them to begin thinking about how they can be apart of what we are doing in England.  It was an amazing trip and Scotland was incredible! It was great to see the land of William Wallace and the Lockness Monster!

So, after hearing about life in England, does anyone have a word that could describe this madness, this crazy beautiful, frustrating and stressful, wonderful life.

Robots

The robot named “me” was beautiful. At first.

Have you ever tried to be someone else? Have you ever tried to change who you are? To make yourself better, or smarter or just different? I have and for awhile it actually worked.

I built a robotic version of myself, I mentally constructed an entirely new version of me. I didn’t have any plans and certainly didn’t crack the Bible for guidance in this transformation. I decided instead to rely on what had always worked for me in the past. I built an opposite machine.

Pure and simple, One semester I was determined to be the exact opposite of who I had been the previous semester. If I was a jerk to everyone in the fall, I would be nice to everyone in the spring. Never studying became relentless studying. Constant time with bad influences became no time spent with bad influences And so forth.  I constructed my identity to be who I thought I needed to be.

I just did the reverse of everything I had ever done first semester. I played a game, I was who I thought everyone expected me to be. The results?  Life was great and everyone liked me. It worked so well, and I secretly thought inside, “Forget God, when I’m in a jam, I’ll just whip out the opposite approach.”

The opposite approach served me well for a while until I ran into problems that were just too big for that small coping mechanism.

Every trick I relied on to solve problems failed. And when I cried out to God about why he wasn’t fixing the situation, I felt like the answer was because I kept expecting the fix to come from my menu of options. I kept, qualifying my cry of “help me.” What I was actually saying to him was, “help me in one of the following ways that I’m used to and have tried before and understand and approve of.”

But God doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t take the recipes for success I’ve always tried and then just add some God flavoring. That’s frustrating, because that makes it really hard to manage him or life for that matter. Isaiah 55:8-9 speaks to this point: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” I used to rage against that idea, because I wanted God to be like me. To fix things like I would. To handle things like I would. In my time frame, in my way.

But the truth is, his way is always more patient and loving than mine would be. If it were up to me, extreme punishment and years of back breaking penance would be the first thing I received if I ever ran away from home. That’s what I tend to feel is in order when I fail. Guilt and anger and shame are the first things that jump into my mouth when I mess up. But not God, because he’s different than us. He’s not restricted to the human understanding of cause and effect, action and consequence. His way is different. His way is Christ. His way is grace.

Ultimately, God doesn’t just replace our solutions with new solutions from him. He replaces them with him. He knows that if he gave us a new list of action items, we’d worship that instead. When pushed into a corner, when darkened by stress and turmoil, we would seek comfort in our printed out list of instructions, instead of the instructor.

So instead he offers us a savior instead of a solution. He offers us a relationship, not a routine. Full of mystery, full of creativity, and yes, sometimes full of frustration. (Jon Acuff)

Not Without Love....

I tried Lord
Chin up, head high
All zeal and no joy
Thinking all my good deeds could please Jesus
Boy, was I wrong
Though I knew the right songs, all my cymbals and gongs played the melodies wrong
And it wasn’t long ‘til I saw my disease
A life spent wanting to please
On hands and knees
To make right, to appease
God help me please
This can’t be Christianity, it can’t be
The whole thing’s like insanity
Where’s the rest of eternal security?
Where’s the hope of a God big enough to cope with all my hang-ups and insecurities?
Certainly this isn’t breathing
My chest burning and heaving
It’s like my pulse is ceasing
Like my heart quits beating 
Yet this I recall to mind and therefore I have hope:
You died, Lord
You died, Lord
Assuredly, like the coming of the dawn, the Father’s love song goes on
Drowning out my bitter songs
And breaking through walls and barriers
Christ swoops in, removes sin, picks up His bride and carries her 
So I can sing in agreement with the King this thing:
There’s only one thing that pleases the Father
The God-man on the tree in the midst of the scoffers
Now I finally see that Christ is what Christ offers
And I’m finally free in the love of the Father