Grace for Grace

At this point it feels like I'm a broken record, repeating the same sentiments again and again, but they haven't lost their flavor yet, so I am trusting that it is still sinking in for me.  As I have previously mentioned, this past year I started learning how little I actually know, how stupid we humans are.  Now I think I am learning what to do with it, why it matters. Praise God for the Holy Spirit because I consistently feel like He has guided me through each new lesson and understanding, like He is taking me through a lifelong class made just for me. It's silly but it feels really special, He feels very close. It helps me understand a little more how God WANTS me to understand Him, how He wants me to grow and submit and draw closer to Goodness. And His timing is of course perfect. See, I know these things: that God cares and His timing is perfect, but it's another thing entirely to see it actually changing my life and my heart, to feel His activeness in my process. ...

Even though it may not be smart to trust everyone you meet, I have found that because my heart is so secure in God, I can believe others without risking injury. Trust goes beyond feeling. Trust is something so steadfast and unwavering that no matter what feelings may cloud my judgement, I can return to Him because I TRUST. Trust is risky, but when it's given to the only One who will never let you down, there is no risk. Trust is choice. ^^^ That was written a year ago, when I thought I had so much figured out. I didn't realize that I thought I had things figured out, but somewhere along the way, I became self-assured, and believed without realizing it that God had given me some sort of special insight.  And the Holy Spirit in His kindness and wisdom showed me this past year that I am, in fact, stupid. It is a dangerous thing to find any truth in ourselves. We are easily swayed. There is so much in ourselves that is false that we don't see. We have no ability to form obj...

Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books. It is so comforting and so convicting.  Ecclesiastes makes it clear that all of our attempts at meaning or achievement are fleeting and flammable. It will all burn up. It doesn't matter what we do, we all die the same. Generations have come and go and no one remembers them. But a quiet life in pursuit of God, in pursuit of wisdom and love, will also die the same and no one will remember you. "All things come to all." It is all the same here. But: "I know it will be well with them that fear the Lord."  We are valuable, yes, and we can have a lasting impact on the kingdom of God, but we are also dust, only given value by Jesus, by the breath in our lungs and the hands that formed us.  We assume so much. We have our limited, human perspective, and we can't even understand how limited it is, and we rationalize God's actions through our filters and assumptions. We put our own crap on God, we try to figure out what He ...

 I think I am naturally inclined to most forms of hyper-spiritualism because I like to feel unique, like I somehow stand out by being more spiritual or close to God. The Holy Spirit has been convicting me that I really am not special, so I've wanted to take a look at forms of hyper spiritualism.   There is a trend in a lot of modern Christianity to use language that sounds good but that says very little. I myself have been guilty of using it and thinking that I somehow understand more than others because what I say sounds more spiritual. It's so stupid. It's a form of gatekeeping and it's self-righteous and ultimately man's words.  My journal Bible has gone through three versions of me. The first one was just figuring out God's love and who God was, writing down excitement and the sweet obvious statements of who God is. The second was super well intentioned, and I did grow and learn a lot, but I listened to others words more than I listened to God's. I didn...

 There is rest in the middle of tension, peace in the middle of grief.  We have been given the Holy Spirit, the Comforter!!! Maybe I wasn't meant to focus on that as intently as I do, but I have felt the gift of the Comforter over and over in my life. Honestly it's an eerie thing, that kind of rest and peace, because when I know that I should be agitated or freaking out or stressed, that peace is so steady, and it feels a little crazy.  There is a peace that comes from walking with the Holy Spirit. In John, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will be sent to teach us all things and that He will leave Him for us. And then the next verse says that Jesus is giving us Peace. Since peace is a fruit of the Spirit, I believe that Jesus was referencing walking with the Holy Spirit. Peace that passes all understanding, that fills us even when we are in unrest. That peace, the Comforter, comes and untangles the knots.  It never comes when you would expect. I've dropped mugs of cof...

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." This year I felt the concept of wholeheartedness being more important. At the beginning of the year, I didn't super know what that meant, thought I could feel that part of it was every single piece of who I am and what I do being aligned with God. It was a vague feeling, so it wasn't super helpful, but I trusted that the Holy Spirit would bring more understanding as it was needed. We were made to be whole, not fragmented, not splintered so that parts of ourselves are at war with other parts. Sin does that, it pits parts of ourselves against each other. In the Psalms, David talks about his soul being damaged by sin, praying that God would repair his insides because sin had wrecked them. That doesn't mean that wholeheartedness looks like perfection, but it looks like total pursuit of what God values, even when we mess up: reconciliation with no shame, accepting ...

"A father of the fatherless," "God setteth the solitary in families:" Family was the original design for everything. Family is literally what this all has been about: closeness, connection, love. Being so deeply entrenched in the Trinity. Us in Him and Him in us. I don't think that we're supposed to become the 4th member of the Trinity or anything, but surrounded by the Trinity, walking in harmony and constant connection. Jesus became human so that we could see a perfect model of the Christian walk. He said that He didn't do anything apart from His father. When did we lose how we interact with each other? The family of Christ, the Body of Christ, has become such a polarized and separated people. It looks normal because it's what I'm used to, but if I stop to really think about it, it is so sad and so out of balance.  We look at other Christians as "other" instead of "brother". Humanity's origin was "Let's make som...