I Call To You

To block out the world is not so easy
To call for silence so I may listen for you
I call to you in my confusing world
So I may rest in you
In your arms
In your love
and peace
Shaken and broken I come to you
Fix me now and make me new
I am with you now
and will always be
Forever yours
Forever yours
And you're forever mine!
What grace that calls me back to you
Back to my home...with you
What grace that pours out upon me
Flooding and washing me clean
Oh boundless love
Oh Devine grace
Never forget this place
Never leave me alone
Call to me and I will run back home
to you
My home is in you
You are my joy and my rest
Because of you I am blessed
I am yours wholely
I am marked
and named
I am set apart and called
Now take my will and bend it to yours
Even in my fear and my shame
you remain the same

Treasure

I think of you in the quiet still
Softly you are here
Everything changes when I know you are near
The air takes notice
All is at attention
All creation at attention
You create such a lovely peace
To call you is to hold you
Just to speak to you makes me weak
Yet stronger
Much stronger
Mighty
Help me to bend my will to yours
I love that you love to be with me
Amazing
Hold onto you
I want to hold on to you
To hold the hand of the one who made me
To cry in your rest
To rest in your peace
The peace in your storm
How can I know the love of one so wonderful
You are so good to me
Words are lost in your storm
So quiet and still
I am covered
I am drenched
I am filled but empty
I realize how empty I am without you
Closer
I almost hear
I almost feel
Like the laughter of children
Like the songs of the saved
The rain fell on me today
You were there
Washing
Flooding
Filling
Pouring
How beautiful love fell
What lovely rain
Again in your storm
Take me back
Tell me more
Tell me secrets
To share with you is to have everything
I don't know why I fight myself
I don't know why I sit and cry without you
You always want to sit with me when I cry
I forget how close you are
Someday you will wipe them all away
I have no grasp of you
Yet I want to try
You think of me as treasure
Something wonderful you made
You chose me to love you
And you are so happy I chose you
I am too
This is our place
I want to come back
I don't want to leave
I want to take it with me
I want to take you with me
You are MY treasure too

A Love Story

What is a child of God?

Heir

Blessed

Chosen

Set apart

Servant

Called

We do not even begin to understand what it means to be who we are.

God knew us even in the womb.

He keeps track of the number of hairs we have.  He says that we are highly favored and wonderfully made!

He REALLY loves us.

Here's how it began.

After God created a home then God created man to live there.  The creator loved the creation. Man was a treasure created and formed in the very image of the creator. God and man were very close and loved each other very much.

Then man was tempted to fall, or maybe even jump into sin thus separating himself from the creator.

Hell was made for sin. Man was not.

God is a just God. Where there is justice there must be rules.  God created rules thereby  creating justice.  God must follow his own rules.  Big rule:  SIN = DEATH

Because of justice eternal death (hell) had the right to take man and keep man.

Because of love God had to make a way to save us.

What to do, what to do.

Someone must die to satisfy the law of sin and death!

"I will go and satisfy the law and die for man," said the creator.

"Their judgment is upon me!"

God had to personally become man by being born of a woman.

Son of God and son of man.  

The only man without sin.

The only way we can be saved.

All of the filth and sin of all of man for all of time was placed upon our creator.  He took it all.  The very one who formed us with his hands and breathed our very breath into us died in our place and took our punishment.

The blood of the innocent was shed for the guilty. The righteous and Holy became sin and death for us. The creator gave his life for His beloved.

And I am forever grateful.  

Because he knew no sin death could not hold him. Because He took our place hell could not keep us.

He rose from death and with him he held salvation for all. A gift with no cost but paid for at a very high price. The very life of God was given up for me.

I am amazed.

Reconciled

Reunited

Returned

Justified

And Redeemed

The creator made a way to bring back to himself the created.

The beloved.

The treasured one.

And now that same blood that saves flows within every believer placing God in man to live.

What!  God lives in me?

And there is nothing that can separate the child from the love of the Father. NOTHING.  The creator can live in the created. The savior can abide within the saved. The two become one. Never ever to part.

A love story

The story of love.

No opinion needed

There was a show, at the moment I can't even remember what it was, where the lead character's line was "just the facts."  Well I want to give you something to think about without giving my opinion but giving you just the facts. This is the subject of immigration be it legal or not. A very touchy subject but one I would like to offer a different perspective on. These facts do not necessarily reflect my opinion and may very well offend your opinion. So please read with an open mind.

Jesus does not care about our border.

Jesus does not care about race.

In fact god created and loves all colors of people.

Sometimes people need to feed their family and feel they must move to another country to do so.

Jesus calls us to feed the hungry.

We are commanded to love our neighbor as our self.

Illegal actions made by anyone is still illegal such as not paying taxes.

The Americas did not need to be discovered, it was already occupied by native people. The races of people that that immigrated here stole from and killed the native peoples. If we use the same definition of today they were illegal. If your family didn't begin on this continent then your family was illegal.

Mexican people are native people.

Most native people did not understand the concept of owning land. The earth belonged to us all.

The earth was not created with boarders.

The Kingdom of God calls for a people of servants.

How can I serve you if I won't let u near me.

You don't need to prove to people you are a Christian...they will know we are Christians by our love.

God does not hate people, people hate people.

All races of people love their children.

What we do in this life directly affects the next.

You may like someone but to truly love someone requires energy and work.

Love is more than an emotion...it is action.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

A tree is measured by the fruit it produces...so are you.

The good Samaritan did not pass by, he showed compassion.

How many do you pass by?

We spend millions of dollars on shiny paper called magazines to read about people we don't even know.

A child dies of hunger every 6 seconds.

Why do we no longer care about the people around us.  We are so busy working to buy that thing we need.  I am tired of living in a world of just me and mine!  I want to live where everybody is important and has value. I want to help someone I don't know.  Because either we were placed on this earth to buy as much CRAP as we possible can, or we are here to live together.
To love together.
To eat and dance together.
That's the world I want to live in.

seven

Thinking of Fruit

The other day my best friend and I got in quite the heated debate over gender roles. Now she is a few years older than me and grew up in a different time and generation. Even with this age gap we usually met eye to eye on most issues. If we didn't I don't know that we would be as close as we are.
Anyway the subject, though never really got resolved, brought up some very interesting points. I realized that we do not see from the same point of view when it comes to religion. Now when I say religion I do mean religion and not necessarily God. We both share a deep relationship with our creator. But it became apparent that the way we perceive right and wrong may be worlds apart.

I will take most of the blame for the shift in ideas. Although we grew up at different times we did grow up with very similar  Protestant, bible belt, corporate Christianity teaching.   In my pursuit of knowledge and the overall dissatisfaction with the corporate American church I have adopted ideas and ways of thinking that I believe to be more true and less exclusive.

For so many years it almost hurt to tell someone I was a Christian because I didn't want to be mistaken for one of "them". You know those extreme bible pounding, finger pointing, down right mean people that I grew up and went to church three times a week with.

I had no problem in stating my love and devotion for the one who made me. It was guilt by association that I did not want.  So that's the way I proclaimed my faith for years and sometimes even today. But being out of the bible belt and the fact that Christianity is not so tunnelled outside of the belt I feel that I am taken more real and not some strange creature. And really I was a strange creature to both sides. Christians didn't like my "lifestyle" and didn't accept me as a real Christian. And non Christians wondered why I would be apart of a religion that hated me.

So back to the argument...umm debate. My friend tried to use the bible as proof that her statement was fact. Now I have no problem in referencing the bible but it just did not stand in this situation. We all know that the bible was written in a different time. And in different times the world is just, well different.  We do not accept slavery thing now and having a harem is usually looked down upon.  We also know that one just can't take every single thing the bible says and apply it to our lives. Such as not eating seafood or women should not speak in church or the cutting and not cutting of hair. But so many of today's Christian likes to pick and chose the rules they like and dislike so they can either point a finger or just feel a little better because they're at least not that person.

I go to a wonderful church that has no desire to conform to modern, corporate religion. Last week the message really stuck with me. It had to do with what we consider to be a great Christian. Is it studying the bible and knowing all this doctrine. Is it speaking in tongues and prophesying and healing people? Or is it going to church every time the doors are open that makes us a really good Christian?  Well Jesus said that a tree will be measured by the fruit it produces. Not how pretty the leaves are or how tall it can grow or even how well it can sing in the choir. Fruit. Jesus is most concerned with our fruit.

So I guess it really doesn't matter which of us is more right or wrong or out dated or ultra modern. What matters is what comes out of us and what we produce.  This goes along with my "makeover" for this year. I realized that I spent the last 40 years or so just living for myself and trying to make me happy. I just realized one day that it hadn't worked. So I thought it was time to try something new. Maybe make someone else happy. Time to stop feeling sorry for myself and blaming the world and God for what I don't have. Fruit. Jesus said that in the Kingdom of God what is high will be made low and what is low will be made high. Jesus came to our dirty sinful place and made himself low so that he could raise us up. If my Lord, God and savior can do that for me why can't I do that for someone else.