Short blog post

As thoughts from the past rush into my mind and try to disrupt the heavenly thinking that should be going on, and then my emotions take them over and feelings start to explode in my inmost being, my first reaction, as to most things is to ask questions. Sometimes those questions take me deeper into depressing thoughts and other times they lead to more questions. And as I fight for the answer, trying to distinguish whats coming from myself and whats coming from the evil one, it can lead my mind into a spiral of confusion. In this world of fast paced living and usually a faster paced mind which can take in the world around us in stunning time, we can get caught up in this circular motion of thoughts that can be difficult to come out of. When we finally decide to take a step back, and my step looks like this: I ask Father to silence the enemy James 4:7 "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" and then ask Him to silence my own thoughts. You see, I want to walk like Jesus walked and the reason Jesus could do all the things He did was because He listened to His Father. The other reason was because He knew the devil's schemes, something that we should not be unaware of. So, in a simple little prayer we get to hear from our Heavenly Father and we get to figure out and have some more insight on what the devil is trying to do. Try this in those times when your mind is fast paced and you know you need Father's perspective/peace/love/grace etc...

"Daddy God, please silence my own thoughts, I want to know your heart and what your saying about this situation. Please silence the enemy in Jesus name, I submit to you Jesus and resist the devil. Allow my thoughts to align to yours and speak so that I may know your voice."

And then listen! We often forget the listening portion of prayer, we fill it with so many words that sometimes its hard for us to hear what God really wants to say. I recommend a quieter place to listen, but with all the craziness in our lives we can learn to hear God in our business :)

Listening

With the impending doom of my future ahead of me (sarcasm), and so many people asking the "what's next?" question, I thought I would write a blog post to share my ideas, thoughts and feelings about the issue of my future. This question seems to come up anywhere in the world you go, for some strange reason I thought if I went to another country I could escape this question, and, to be completely honest I don't know if I was trying to escape it from myself or the people asking me. Either way its always there, that is, the future is still ahead of me and people seem to be very interested in it. It makes sense, and is a completely logical question to ask someone who just got back from a "missionary" type experience, actually its a fine question to ask anyone who's future is unknown (isn't that everyone? =).

So, at least for the time being, here is my answer. I hope that it doesn't seem like a "cop-out" answer, I certainly don't think of it like that, but to each his own.

Future, the always changing, always unknown and honestly the fear of many people will be an ever present danger to our thinking, if we allow it be. In "our" world (I say this because the USA/Northern Virginia area is very unique to a lot of other parts of the world) we must have an answer to this "difficult" question in our life. There needs to be an option, usually a good option as long as we justify it as "good" in our minds, to increase our current situation, we must build something, or do something that can be put on a resume.  PLEASE don't misunderstand what I'm saying. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THOSE THINGS!!!!! I applaud anyone that puts hard work into something and can proudly stand on that work, but there is something in our thinking that I believe needs to change and I certainly cannot do it. I think we need to start asking and talking to Jesus first, as in, before we do anything else. We need to ask what He thinks about the things in our life, our plans, future etc... and then "take a chance" and do what He says. I have no doubt that the things we can come up with by ourselves will be somewhat successful, or even have God's blessing upon them. Jesus loves us enough to get behind our plans even when we don't consult Him first about it. But, our whole life can change if we start to listen to Jesus, and not just listen, but actually obey what He says. When in doubt, go back to Scripture, Jesus spoke 2,000 years ago and whatever He said then is our truth for today, but I know He is always speaking and will honor our listening ears. My consistent prayer is from what He kept telling His disciples, "Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear."

So, daddy God, please let us have ears to hear you, open our minds to things you want to do and then give us confidence to obey what you say.

So, after a long explanation, my future is this: I will continue to pursue and listen to Jesus with everything I have and I am trusting that He knows exactly what I will be doing in the future. In the meantime, I will bring His Kingdom to the earth, and it's so much fun! I love it! Jesus is sooo good! =)

Back in the good ole U.S. of A.

I'm back! And now that I'm over my jet lagged mind and my body has caught up to the day/night flow of the time difference from Australia to the US I thought it would be good to update all of you on a little of my life.

As I sit here and look at the white powdery stuff that has lightly fallen on to my neighborhood I can't help to be a little overwhelmed. Thinking about the past 6 months is like trying to stop an oncoming train with a rubber band, it just won't stop, and I think that's the point. This life never really stops and it certainly doesn't go into slow motion like the movies portray. You know when there is a really intense moment in a movie and the main characters slow down, or sometimes everything else around them slow down? Well, real life isn't like that. It just keeps coming and no matter how many rubber bands you have, your thoughts/friends/events/church and everything in between is just kind of there. And with all the support of all the people around me I am so thankful, so absolutely blessed for all of you and I couldn't think of any other people to be sharing my life with than you. But, (of course there's a BUT) you see my perspective on life has changed since being away. I no longer see things the way many people in our world do, I have been consistently asking God to change my mind on things, to allow me to see the world the way He does. And I think, actually I know, that He is slowly answering my prayer. Even though this season of my life has not been the easiest (actually that's an understatement), Father is teaching me some valuable lessons about His Kingdom, about His church and about the people that are all around me that He so desperately loves.

That last statement is exactly the point. It's HIS Kingdom and HIS church, it can't be and never will be my kingdom or my church. The more and more I get to know Jesus, the more and more I just love people, and it goes for the church as well. Even though there are things that may upset me about church in general, it isn't mine, it has to be His. Over my time in Australia and India I got to encounter many different people, religions, cultures and much more and through all of it I have come to the conclusion that Jesus loves them all. And because Jesus loves me, you and everyone else in the world, my job is to do the exact same. I have to meet people exactly where they're at and love them, because Jesus does. What's amazing, and awesome, is that the more I have relationship with Father, the more I just fall in love with the people around me, He gives me the compassion and then I just do what He is doing, which is to love the person that's next to me.

Thanks for reading! Much more to come later :)

Here's a couple more photo's from my time in India:

Our group performing a "Jesus" skit in an Indian village

People watching the skit