Community

i surprised my mom for mother's day last Sunday. this is what i did:

first of all, i wrote her a card telling her one of the things she has taught me. she has taught me so much about how to be accepting of every kind of person. i also made her a picture frame and put a photo inside that was taken last summer of us and my father. on the way home i stopped and got her a bouquet of lillies as well.

when i got home to Charlottesville, i put the flowers, card, and bag on the front stoop and knocked on the door very loudly. i ran to the back door quickly and waited for my mom in the kitchen. after she came back that way from answering the door, i could see that she had her present in her hand and so i yelled, "happy mother's day! i love you!"

we then spent most of the day together just sitting around watching TV and talking about life. afterwards we went out for a family dinner. i really miss these moments with my mom.

recently i have been realizing my next lesson: Community with others is important.

when i first moved up here to Reston, i was ready to be on my own. i was excited to start over, make new friends, build new relationships within my ministry, and thrive in change.

i always embrace change [for the most part]. i tend to like to change things up often. change is good, in my mind.

so that's where i was. i couldn't wait to get my own place and live on my own for a while.

but since then, and through my mother's day experience with my mom, i've realized that community is key. not finding friends my own age, or getting involved in a small group of ladies, or having Tommy around all the time. what is key in my life [what has been and will continue to be] is that i have community with believers.

it doesn't matter how many close friends i have or how many small groups i am involved in, how much time i get to see my mom, or how many kids i interact with every week. what matters is that i have community with believers, where i worship with them, rejoice with them, and suffer with them. having this kind of community with other believers is what has made my move so easy and so exciting.

Colossians 3:16 says to "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in al wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God."

yes, we need to be in the Word, reading it and letting the Words we read effect our actions, but through this we should be led to community with one another.

we interact with God personally so that we can teach one another. we interact with God personally so that we can admonish one another. we interact with God personally so that we can worship in song with one another. we interact with God personally so that we can give thanks to Him.

seems to me that the major point in all this is this: we interact with God personally so that we can have community with one another.

so in conclusion, don't think you can do this on your own. we need God, first and foremost in our lives, but we also need each other. this is how God thrives among us!

A Manner that is Worthy.

Lately I've been taking notice of my responsibility to God and feeling it weigh on my shoulders a little bit more. I've been realizing the great and mighty calling that He has for me as a child of God. I've been compelled by His Word to step my life up a notch when it comes to pleasing Him and representing Him well.

Philippians 1:27 has been on my heart this week:
"Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ."
Wow. That is a crazy powerful statement to me.

It doesn't just say "live Holy because God is Holy" or "take after Christ's example in the way you live your life" both of which are what we are taught to do elsewhere in the Bible. Rather, this verse says "Let the way that you live your life be worthy of what Christ has done for you."

Basically, "Live in a way that is worthy of Christ's death."

Is there anything I can do that is worthy of Christ's death?

I mean seriously, there is no possible way that I could even remotely live in a way that deserves any form of His grace.

And this is the realization that I have been coming to almost every day of my life these days.

It seems like a harsh reality to be in. And it is, but it's also comforting. And it also challenges me.

So every day I wake up and ask myself what I can do today to act worthy of His grace. And maybe all it is, is to pour into the lives of those around me. And maybe He wants me to spend extra time in prayer. And maybe He wants me to call my parents, or an old friend, or write a letter to someone I haven't seen in a while. And these are all things that I am willing to do for Him, and examples of what I have been doing.

But what has changed, is that I'm opening up to Him more through this realization. I'm constantly asking Him what I can do and constantly looking for opportunities to act in a manner that is worthy of Him. And He never fails to open up doors and teach me more than I could have learned before.

This life is a privilege. I'm tired of living it within the realm of my own selfishness.

So ask yourself this: How can you live in a way that is worthy of the Gospel?

Lessons in life & love..

As you can see, I've given my blog a face-lift of sorts: New name, new background, new theme. I've decided to devote my blog to a "life lessons" type of template and list lessons in each entry. I think this will be more helpful in the future when i want to look back on these first years in ministry: all that i learned and went through during this time. i was inspired by some events this week that have plagued my mind and have caused me to begin a list of these "lessons in life & love".. so here goes:

Lesson #1: Ministry is hard.

~ this may seem like a harsh statement to make, but to all you people out there who think my job in youth ministry is all just a bunch of fun and games, i urge you to think again. yes, ministry is fun. yes, ministry is rewarding. but ministry is more than just a job. i do more than just hang out with teenagers and get on facebook all day, and plan crazy activities. ministry becomes hard the minute you have to betray someone's trust in order to get them the help they need.

its not easy telling someone they can confide in you and then later realizing that they need to talk to a more trained individual who can better counsel them. it's not easy telling your supervisor the prayer requests of some students, knowing that it is something that was hard for them to tell in the first place. nothing in ministry can ever be completely confidential. and it's hard to try and explain that to a girl who just poured their heart out to you. "by the way, everything you just trusted me with.. i have to tell someone else because they can better assist you. thanks!"

yeah not an easy task.

but ministry is all about loving and intentionally pursuing others. as long as you are doing that, they will come around.

and i know my girls will come around. i will never turn my back on someone because they turn their back on me. Christ doesn't do that, so i will take after Him and show his love in this way.

Pleasing Aroma

I'm currently reading through Numbers [STILL! but I'm finally almost through it!] and I'm going to admit that sometimes it's hard to pull things from it. It can be pretty boring at times, but my ultimate goal when reading the Bible, is to read something over and over until I can pull some sort of application from it. [This is why it has taken me so long to get this far in it.] But something super simple in chapters 28 & 29 has caught my attention this week.

God wants His children to be a "pleasing aroma" before Him.

I will explain this.

In Numbers 28, God tells the Israelites about sacrifices and offerings. He mentions six times in this chapter to do these things in order to be a "pleasing aroma" to the Lord. IN chapter 29, this subject is mentioned five times. I mean, if something is mentioned eleven times it must be pretty important, right?

Since Jesus was sacrificed on the cross for our sins, we no longer need to make burnt offerings to the Lord in the temple as our sacrifices to Him. Jesus took our place. Because of this fact alone, we can have a relationship with the Father directly and don't have to go through a priest anymore.

We don't have to prepare a burnt offering every time we sin and take it to the temple with the hopes that we did it perfectly and that the priest will accept it and offer it before God on our behalf.

Jesus paved the way for our relationship with the Father in the sense that now we can speak with Him directly. This is what "prayer" is and essentially what it does. We can now ask God for forgiveness directly because we know that He hears us when we call on Him. [Isaiah 65: 24 ~ “It will also come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear.”] This is what we call "repentance" which essentially means - asking for forgiveness with the intention of actively turning away from that sin.

This leads us to what we call the New Covenant. The New Covenant is what comes from Jesus changing it all up after his death on the cross. Since we have all these new privileges through his death, we are no longer under the law of the Old Testament. The New Testament teaches us all about this New Covenant. The more you read the New Testament of the Bible, the more you learn what God calls Christians to do as part of this New Covenant. Instead of sacrificing animals to bring God our offering, we bring Him our offering through our lives and the way we live it.

God tells us all about this in the New Testament.

But the cool thing is that the Old Testament can teach us a lot about this as well.

It's like God set it up before the whole "Jesus" thing before it ever even happened.

AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HE DID.

The Old Testament paves the way for the New Testament. That's why we can definitely learn from these two chapters in Numbers by paying attention to what has been written these eleven times.

We must offer Him a "pleasing aroma" as we live for Him.

The question then is, what does a "pleasing aroma to the Lord" figuratively smell like? What does it look like for us to live this way?

[[I encourage you to comment on this post with your answers as to what your response is to these questions. I'll post a conclusion to this in a few days.]]

Parables from Ephesians 1 ~ Part Three

Do you ever have those days where you just feel kind of down in the dumps? I'm talking about the times where you might have had a good day, had a great time with God that morning, hung out with some great friends, got encouragement at work, but then you get home and you just feel disconnected somewhere and discouraged somehow. I have had my fair share.

It's not always happy or easy to live a Christian life. Having God in your life is an exciting thing, but that doesn't always mean you are going to be cheerful and bubbly. Fortunately, there are many passages of Scripture in the Bible that can be encouraging to us during these weird "I don't know why I'm feeling down" kind-of days. Here is one of them-- Ephesians 1:22 & 23:

"And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all."

These are the last two verses of Ephesians chapter one. Paul writes in lofty language sometimes, but let me explain the brilliance of this message in the words of the New Living Translation:

"God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church. And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself."

To summarize these verses in my own words:

God has it all under control. Everything He does is to benefit us, his beloved children. Christ has authority over us and his life was sacrificed for our sake.

This we Christians know, but we really should find encouragement in it. So smile, today is a good day! God is control.. He knows what He is doing.. and He is doing it because He loves you!

Parables from Ephesians 1 ~ Part Two

There is some interesting terminology that Paul uses in Ephesians 1:13:

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

Paul is saying that when we first hear the gospel and are brought to a point of salvation where we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, that we are then sealed with the Holy Spirit. And this isn't just something that happens randomly, this is a promise that God fulfills every time someone comes to know Him.

He comes through on His promises.

Awesome, eh!?

Question: what does it mean to be sealed with the Holy Spirit?

Answer: it means that the Holy Spirit holds everything together about our lives.

Above is a picture of a sealed envelope. Nowadays we don't see envelopes sealed like this very often, instead we lick the adhesive and seal them like so. This, however, is a wax seal, and was used to secure the envelope. Most often you may see stickers or labels serving this purpose as well.

When Paul speaks of a believer being sealed with the Holy Spirit, this is the picture that comes to my mind.

The definition of a seal [not the animal] is:

1) anything that tightly or completely closes or secures a thing, as closures or fastenings for doors and railroad cars, adhesive stamps and tapes used to secure the flap of an envelope, etc.

2)ownership and security, together with destination

So we can only assume that the Holy Spirit secures us, and that when one comes a believer, the Holy Spirit has now taken ownership of them.

God holds everything about our lives together and He does that through fulfilling His promise to us of receiving the Holy Spirit.

YAY Holy Spirit! :]

Florida [Part Three]

Please make sure you are reading these "Florida" entries in order. They have been written according to a series of events.

Part Three [4.1.10]

2 days ago we stopped at a fire station for lunch & worship in the middle of our 2nd 45 mile biking day. For me, I think this was one of the best days so far. All week I've just been realizing how weak I am. Seriously, I think I am the weakest link here when it comes to biking! I even had some weak days mentally. I was drained in almost every way. But what has constantly kept me going was seeing all these kids, even with their pain, screaming for ME personally. They've been cheering me on & encouraging me because they can see that I've been struggling.

A group of us girls at the fire station for lunch..

& John, the head Navigators guy

[the Nav's plan the trip for us every year]

Worship at the fire station today was SO great. One of the songs we sang was "Your Grace is Enough" & during the song I had a God moment.

In the 2nd verse of the song it says "You use the weak to lead the strong." That line just spoke to me because I was obviously the weakest when it comes to biking. I realized that that I taught a lot of people about humility and encouragement through those weak times. And as far as leading them goes, well I at least led my team to a point in which they bonded together and helped me, both mentally & physically.

A picture of my team mid-biking

As for now, I've been enjoying God's creation. Even yesterday I awoke to a beautiful singing mockingbird. I knew it was a mockingbird because it sang in many tongues. It was as if it was worshipping the Lord in every language.

And as I listened, I wanted to be like that mockingbird.

I want to worship God, not only in everything I do, but in many ways, many languages, and among many cultures.

I know that mockingbird was praising Him.

The view from my bike as we started off in the morning

What a beautiful sunrise!

Last night we watched the sunset on the beach by the lake here at Disney. We had worship & then watched a light show that Disney puts on after dark. A fireworks display entertained us afterwards. All I could see while we worshipped there by the water was God's glory. I kept singing the lyrics to the song "Everything" by Lifehouse:

How can I stand here with You & not be moved by You? Would You tell me how can it be any better than this?"

These words were the prayers of my heart! It was so evident to me that God's presence was everywhere. It is these kinds of moments that I want to remember.. these kinds of moments that I want to take with me always & share with everyone across the world.

How can it be any better than this?