About Me

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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Saturday, January 19, 2008

God is FANTASTIC!

"God is good"
"All the Time"

"All the time"
"God is good"

I often am caught between enjoying the truth of this part of some church's liturgy and hating its presentation. Often it is said in a monotonous drown, that leads even those who constantly see God's blessings if he is in fact good.

Plus, it's a lie.

 Because God isn't only good, he is FANTASTIC! (and even that doesn't begin to capture the excitement and beauty and faithfulness of God)

I was really struck by this thought so many times this week.
  • I have a friend who I had the opportunity to talk to on the phone the other day and she was telling me about how her relationship with her parents is being healed after many years of heartache and how they are growing in Christ.  God is FANTASTIC!
  • After two weeks of struggling, I've returned to Houghton to visit and have been blessed by being surrounded by people who care about me, who love me, and I know it. God is FANTASTIC!
  • I was talking to a friend last night and without him having any idea what's been on my mind, he spoke these words of truth out of his own life that brought so much affirmation to me. In fact, the conversation in and of itself was an affirmation for me. God is FANTASTIC!

And I could go on and on. When are we going to open up our eyes and see what our God is doing, in both the big and the small things? When are we going to see how blessed me truly are? And when are we going to get excited about who God is? 

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Who am I?

Girl. Daughter. Lover of God. LOVED by God. Social Advocate. Intern. Complex. Emotional. Learner. Ambitious. Anxious. In between. Lost. Lonely. Bold. Scared. Timid. Caring. Student. Dependable. Dependent. Loving. WORTHY. Insecure. Liberal. Innovative. Intelligent. Happy. Mixed-Up. Fearful. Helpless. Maternal. Self-aware. Sarcastic. Wounded. Thoughtful. Spiritual. Uncertain


These are just a few words to describe who I am. Incomplete, but giving some idea of the shape of my soul, my emotions, my being, none the less. But what happens when you lose some of your identity? The words need to shift. That's why there are so many of them, when you loose a piece of your identity or pick up a new aspect, then who you are works to accommodate that change.

Right now, I feel like I've lost huge pieces of who I am. Other aspects of who I am, I'm having a hard time living out. So what happens? The self-description reflects these changes with words of apprehension and timidity. I know that someday I'll regain a balance, but in this moment who I am is lost and confused. And know that no one can really fix this situation, that no one really even understands this situation,  beyond me with God. 


"If I could just sit with You a while
I need You to hold me
Moment by moment 'til forever passes by."

PS> This is my 100th post

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

No Child Left Behind

  For those of you who are unaware, the No Child Left Behind Act is up for vote again this year in congress. President Bush is recommending not only that we continue the act, but possibly add to it. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080107/ap_on_ca_st_pe/bush_2) 
  I'm not a fan of No Child Left Behind. There. That's out of the bag. I haven't been a fan as someone who was drastically effected by this act in school, which is sad remembering that I was only in the public education system for the first two years of the acts existence. I was part of the advance placement curriculum, which was shot to pieces because of this policy. We had kids placed into the curriculum that couldn't handle it, but insisted that they should be there. The standardized test said they should be in AP, their work ethic and all of their grades said they shouldn't be, but "the test is the best indicator". So enter kids into AP that shouldn't be there, who had to cheat to even make it through. What does that say to those of us who actually worked hard and earned our grades?
   On top of that, ever class I had in high school that had a connection to a state assessment test wasn't taught to expand our knowledge base, it was taught in order to help us pass the test. We are talking AP kids here, taking a test that is designed for the average high school student. Instead of meeting us at our desire to learn, our curriculum was dumbed down so that we could pass a test that we were going to excel at anyway.
   And there of course was my parent's absolute favorite. We haven't been raised to a very competitive family. That statement needs clarification. We are competitive against ourselves. My brothers have always participated in sports where it was you as an individual competing against other people, true, but more importantly competing against your own scores. And for me, school and music were always driven by me achieving my best and doing better then I did previously. This was most clearly demonstrated when I went from not even being in the top ten percent of my class my freshman year to being number three in the class, thus throwing the entire top ten out of alignment. But this was hardly even acknowledged. Our school didn't place emphasis on people who had academic achievements, because they didn't want other kids to feel bad. Grant it, there was a large emphasis placed on athletic achievements, but just not academic. 
    So once again, I'm not a fan of No Child Left Behind. If anything, I think it has dumbed down the education system, trying to standardize children to being little academic clones of the person next to them. No one achieves more or less then anyone else. The thing that saddens me even more is that this mentality has seeped into our culture, 'meet the bare minimum for requirements, don't work to achieve more because it won't matter'. The place this mentality breaks my heart the most is in the Church. It seems that the Church is working to standardize the way faith should be lived out and look, which isn't what God intended. God has created us 
uniquely equal. We need to learn to celebrate our differences, because they all play into this greater mission God has for us. 
   This concept that we are unique has seemingly been lost to us. I just came back from speaking at this conference for students who feel that they might be called to a specific form of ministry that takes place in the local church. I was helping my pastor, who co-chaired the committee in charge of the entire event, work through evaluations for the weekend and we both stopped our conversation when I read "you need to teach kids how to discern their call. There were too many individual stories and not enough direction" (paraphrase). Whoever wrote that comment has lost the idea that we are unique and that our calls and their discernment are not standard by any means. The point of all of the call stories the kids heard during the course of two days was supposed to emphasize that, because no two stories are the same. God communicates to us differently, and we interact with his differently as well - or at least we should be.
   Somewhere along the way, the Church has adopted a No Child Left Behind approach to preaching. Save the souls, get them into a pew, and move on to the next person. This makes me physically sick. Don't get me wrong, evangelism is so important, but it is no more important then discipleship, this foreign, abandoned concept in our lives today. Sometimes I wonder how God is going to react when thousands upon thousands of shallow Christians get to Heaven. Is he going to be pleased? Who's going to be held accountable? Faith isn't meant to be standardized. This is why I despise the "four steps to salvation" because not only does it put everyone in the same box, but no one is asking 'well, what happens after step four' because they are too preoccupied with the beauty of the plan. Then if discipleship is addressed at all then it is placed into a box as well. Spiritual disciplines are meant to grow each of us as individuals, and are too be adapted for our own individual needs. There is no one size fits all model. 
   My prayer is that No Child Left Behind loses it's control over our lives and our faith.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Let's Talk About Worship

 I just got back from a conference where I had an opportunity to present on God's calling in each of our lives. My favorite speaker was by far Ed Zeiters, who used to be the president of United Theological Seminary in Ohio. I just really feel the need to share with you some of the things that he said, because it was that powerful.

   ~ Each human life always effects human history. There is no middle ground. We either effect the world for good or for evil. That's sort of a scary thought isn't it? That your life is so closely connected to other's that you continually have this domino effect - either for or against God. More scary is the idea that being a Christian doesn't mean you automatically make a positive impact for God. Too many Christians aren't living out the Gospel, aren't giving hope. What type of impact are you making?

~ We are called as Christians to be creatively deviant. Haha. I love this. We are supposed to be trouble wherever we go. Think about Jesus; his message was so radical that it created a stir wherever he went. When we becoming the Gospel for the world we realize that we aren't called to spread the message the same way to every person, hence the creative deviance.  :)

~ The things that Christians are most in danger of losing are faith and zeal. This is why we should never settle for second best, we need to have a disciplined spiritual life, and have to work to change the world the way Christ did - through vulnerability. 

~ We need to work on waiting, yielding, and being still. 

Saturday, January 5, 2008

300 and the Church

  These thoughts have been bouncing around for a while, so I figured I would post them:
I watched 300 for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I know, I'm behind the times. Chalk it up to being out of the country for a semester. Anyway, I watched 300 and as the first battle scene came across the screen (type in 300 and first battle into youtube if you haven't seen the movie, since my link application is being fickle) and the first thing that popped into my head was 1 Cor 12. Oh the life of a religion major. Really though, I've been bombarded by this idea recently that we all need to start reading more spiritually, that is we need to read scripture and other books with the mindset that God is trying to speak to us. I didn't realize how long I had actually been doing that already. Because when you read spiritually then you see the application of what you read everywhere. It goes along with being able to give an account of the faith you have. Anyway, I'm watching this movie and my thoughts go to 1 Cor 12.
   In the scene the Spartans all clump together for battle and move in exact movements, always as a unit. Each man holds their shield to protect the man on the right side of him. Each individual move they made was for the good of the unit. Each man had his own strength, his own unique gifts, and his own training that he brought to the army as a whole. But even with these unharnesses and there expressions, in battle the Spartans still fought under one unified mantra "for Sparta" At the end of the battle the other army stood decimated while the Spartans have no casualties. 
   And I couldn't help but ask what if the church functioned like this? Are we even capable of moving that in sync? What if we unified ourselves "under God" and let each person bring their own gifts to the Church?
  1 Cor 12 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. Toe one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, t another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines. The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were baptized by one Spirit into one body - whether Jews of Greeks, salve of free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 
Verses 4 - 14. 
    When are we going to stop comparing ourselves to others? I feel like when we don't recognize our own unique gifts we end up bashing someone else out of jealousy. When are we going to start to recognize how we each individually fit into this bigger picture that isn't about us.  I know shocking. It's about God's mission. It's about the Triune God being gracious enough to choose us to carry out his ministry on earth through the Church. Yet, the Spartans understood the idea of unity through diversity for their concept of battle then we do for the concept of ministering.