Purpose Statement

By the way, this is my purpose in a nutshell... I may tweak it a bit... it's almost midnight, and this is the first time I've put it in writing. LOL I've had it in my head for months now.

My purpose is to use my effervescence and people skills through writing, music, and personal relationships to counsel those who are in bondage and to lead them into the freedom of worshiping God in utter abandon.

Passion

Passion is the heart set free to pursue that which is truly worthy. Those who set their hearts on what is most worthy - the glory of God - live with joy-filled abandon. Their hearts are both seized and satisfied with the ambition for Jesus to be ardently worshiped. That love comes to dominate and integrate all other desires so that they live in the freedom of single-minded pupose. -Taken from Perspectives Study Guide

Love this!! It so embodies my personal pupose statement (which I haven't posted on here... will get to that evenutally)

The Cross: A burden or a blessing?

"Oh, I am soo burdened with this cross that I have to bear right now... It is weighing soo heavy on me. I don't know if I can make it one... more... step... Every morning I wake up and put that cross back on my shoulder and crawl my way through one more day. But thankfully God is with me! I know that He'll see me through; he is the one who gave me this cross, after all. It was he who said that I must take up my cross in order to be his disciple. So here I am, just plugging away, hoping I can survive one more day of this arduous cross-bearing life."

Hmmm. Sounds like the perfect model of abundant life! Is that what Christ really meant by 'take up your cross and follow me? I don't think so... He says that his yoke is easy and his burden is light! He says, "Come to me and I will give you rest!" Rest? Easy? Light? Wow. Are those words that describe your life? For most Christians, those words are a far cry from reality!

But wait, how is it even possible to have rest if we must carry a cross around with us everywhere we go? This is a hard life! We have temptation thrown at us from every direction. We have circumstances in our lives that are not to our own choosing. We have giant trials looming on the horizon everywhere we look, or we are in the midst of one now. Rest? There's no rest for the wicked! is the phrase that gets bantered about. No, there will be no rest until I get to heaven. Sigh.

So sad. That is not what Christ intended at all. This cross-bearing is not another 'chore' to add to our Christian check-list!! (or in this case, the ultimate Christian chore!) Nor is is suffering hardships for Jesus' sake (although that will happen!) The meaning here is so much deeper! So much better!

The cross was an instrument of death and total sacrifice. This cross that Christ asks us to bear is the cross of 100% surrender and sacrifice of our lives to him.

Romans 12:1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

This is a life of complete abandon to God, even unto death! In fact, the death of self. With self removed from the picture, Christ is free to live out his life through us. We are FREE to REST in him.

This is not a life of defeat, or a life of unbearable burdens. This is a life of attaining all of my hearts desires! For, I find that as I take up my cross in pursuit of him, he gives me all the desires of my heart. The very things that I once viewed as burdens are transformed into blessings! The things I once counted gain, I now see are worthless! My view point changes drastically. And I am victorious! I am free! I am living the abundant life he had planned for me from the very beginning.

If only I had never viewed that cross as one more thing I had to do every day, I could have been enjoying this life sooo much sooner!

Accepted?

People often ask me about my tattoos/piercings, so I decided to give the stories behind them all here on my blog. In order to do that I have to back WAY up to just before I surrendered my everything to Christ in me. My journey into the grace walk was not an easy one by any means! Having posted much on this before I won't go into the whole story again, but I have more to add.

I was terrified to yield to Christ. Absolutely terrified. Before I got saved I was afraid to become a hypocrite. I was afraid to be pressed into the particular Baptist mold that I had witnessed all my life. Then on the brink of abandoning my all to Jesus, I was afraid that once he had me he would throw me away. I couldn't possibly believe that he could accept all of me exactly how I was. How could he? I was hopelessly flawed. Yeah, yeah... I'd read all the stuff Andrew Murray, A.W.Tozer, Steve McVey, and Watchman Nee had written on being dead and God no longer seeing that stuff. And I knew the book of Romans inside and out: there's no condemnation in Christ, he sees me just as though I've never sinned, I'm accepted in the beloved, he'll never leave me nor forsake me, etc. I wasn't convinced. Sure, he saved me and that was pretty fantastic! But wasn't he kind of under contract for that? He died on the cross for redemption, and salvation was offered freely to all who would believe. It was a given. Acceptance however? That was another ballgame altogether. He just couldn't love me when it was all said and done. I envisioned it all too frequently... God would beckon me to come to him and place my life in his hands and I would do so with many tears. He would than laugh maniacally and say something along the lines of, "I've got you where I want you!" This never ended well - there was a lot of crushing and bruising involved.

I had an idea. Maybe not my brightest idea ever, but in my mind I had to formulate a test. I had always wanted to get my belly button pierced for as long as I could remember (super cute!!!) and had even asked Chris if I could many times. If I got a piercing God could either choose to abandon me or accept me anyway. He could either heap loads of guilt on me or shower me with love. I knew people who would never talk to me again if they knew about it, and the question in my mind was, "Is God like that?" So that's exactly what I did. I went out and got it pierced. Strange, I didn't feel different afterwards... In fact, I felt very free in a good way.

Two days passed and the axe didn't fall. I felt the wooing of the Spirit leading me to fall into his arms, and for once I thought maybe I believed him. If you have read my blog you know the rest of the story, for that is the night I knelt on my living room floor and did just that: I entrusted all that I was, all that I had, all that I would be, everything to Him. It's funny... it was so effortless. All those months of fighting it, and it was one of the easiest things I've ever done. You see, surrender is not something you "DO," It's something HE does. I simply laid down yielding to him, and he filled me up. That's it. I felt acceptance! I felt love!

So that's it in a nutshell. My belly piercing was nothing more than a fleece to see if God truly accepted me or if he could only accept me based on who I was. My silly attempt to figure out God! Apparently God didn't care one way or the other, all he wanted was for me to enjoy the perfect union he purchased for me on the cross as fully as was possible. Salvation was far more than the gift of life. It was the gift of LIFE in me! Christ in me! He desired a relationship with me! Wow.