Testimony of Christ in me.

I'm learning that who I am through Christ is more important than who I am without Him. It's the most freeing thing I've ever experienced; nothing else could ever satiate my heart, mind, and soul. I don't want to bother people who don't want to know Him, but I'm not willing to keep the most important thing I will ever know, a secret. If you don't want to know anything else about this topic, stop reading now.

If I could cure illnesses, I would tell everyone. If I could cheat death, I would tell everyone. If could teach joy and love, I would. If I could give away contentment and happiness, I would. But I can't do those things.

What I can do is talk about my Savior, who came to rescue us from ourselves, and our tragic fate on earth. He isn't magical, but He is powerful, and He is love. He brings freedom from fear of life or death, and purpose beyond your wildest imagination. He gives us more than we could ever give back. He guarantees his love to those who choose to acknowledge Him and adore Him for who he is.

Yet we waste time on the non-guaranteed, and we risk everything on anything else, just to hide from Him. So we can say we are in control, and we did it all ourselves. We seek the here and now in place of seeking the hope found in Christ, or hope in anything, for that matter, because "here and now" is tangible, and hope feels like wishful thinking. (Until you've experienced it in the magnitude of Christ.)

The truth is: the things we do are never enough. The lives we build are temporary, everyone is destined to die, and nobody knows exactly what comes after death. People live in fear, seeking anything they can get their hands on to comfort them while they wait for the scary unknown. Happiness is the word people use to describe whatever else they feel in between the fear. Love is just something we think we feel, and it is VERY conditional and limited. People get lonely, feel lost, suffer pain, face addictions, illnesses, death. It's really tragic, and we cannot save ourselves from it, no matter how hard we try.

That's where Christ comes in, He does what we can't do for ourselves. When you know Him, when you encounter the Living God, your Creator, you don't just feel better, you are brand new. You can't go back from this kind of genuine, unconditional, non-fearful, unlimited, eternal; love.

If you've never felt it or known it, you can't possibly know what you're missing out on, but that's why people who know Him should be telling everyone they know, what it's like. Because it really is important, and valid to existence. Not just now, but in eternity. Not just to get you out of hell one day, but also to save you from the "hell" on earth that every man, woman, and child has to face in some form or another.

Christ is not just about going to church, being good enough, getting out of hell one day, saving other people, feeling validated, finding purpose, or other reasons people come up with to make Christ who they want him to be. Knowing Him is what it takes to reconcile ourselves to God, to reconnect with the very thing we were created to do. Knowing Christ means finding grace and truth, and not wanting to let go of it for anything else. The purpose of God is not to fit Him into our lives, but to let him fill our lives until our lives reflect and glorify Him.

It's not about any of us. It never was. It's always been about the God of the universe. He was and is and is to come. He made us, to be with him and glorify His name. There's so much more going on than we are aware of, and Christ came to make us aware of it.

Please don't ignore him, whatever you do. You're missing out if you do, in more ways than you'll ever realize.

Profound realizations.

I do not open my eyes and wake up each morning just to stay in bed.

I do not get out of bed just to stand still and not go anywhere.

I do not go places just to be invisible and never do anything.

I do not take action just to do some thing that means nothing to me, I do some thing because it's the very thing I'm supposed to be doing at that moment.

I do not do these things without being seen by others and without ever knowing another person.


I do not want to meet new people or keep in touch with my past without a more significant meaning behind it.

I do not want to be silent in this world.

I do not want to avoid anything.

I have passions, desires, interests, opportunities, and I will seek each and every thing that I choose to seek.

I will live in the moment while simultaneously seeking the future and remembering my great past; great, not because it is spectacular to anyone else, but because it is my very own.

I have these things, think these things, feel these things, am these things; there is no avoiding myself.



...But all of this would only be enough purpose for me had I not already experienced a greater reality outside of all of it. This world; the things, the people, the majestic places my eyes have never seen--this whole planet and the whole universe--they are not enough.

They would have been, had I never experienced God. But now I know Him, and he knows me. I will say it and claim it as much as I can, where ever I am. Without shame, without fear, and without doubt.

Christ is my eternal Savior, and His love; my daily comforter.
God is my Lord, my Shepherd, my Father; and I am His servant, his sheep, and his beloved child.
The Holy Spirit is my lifeforce, my guardian, and my counselor.
And they are all one in the same.

My reality exists because they exist. My life has meaning because they are my life.

In Christ alone my hope is found; nothing else will satiate.

"Be careful that you do not refuse to listen to the One who is speaking. For it the people of Israel did not escape when they refused to listen to Moses, the earthly messenger, we will certainly not escape if we reject the One who speaks to us from heaven! When God spoke from Mount Sinai his voice shook the earth, but now he makes another promise: 'Once again I will shake not only the earth but the heavens also.' This means that all of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakeable things will remain. Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakeable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. For our God is a devouring fire."
Hebrews 12: 25-29

John 3:30

I was like the wind, I was my flesh.
On what I am made of,
I was nothing;
a weak human force.
Pointless breaths, 
but to be a prize in pointless conversations.
For better and for worse.

Less of me, less of me...

Love does not reshape the earth
or move the heavens.
But how love can mess the arrangement of lives!
Circling like a cynical vulture,
waiting to devour our minds.

For better and for worse.


Less of me, less of me...

Evil is not the opposite of good,
and hate is not evil.
I was not good, but I hated evil.
I was not evil, but I hated what I was becoming.
Time to choose.
From creation to commitment; to future glory.
For better and for worse.

Less of me, less of me...

Light reflection, eyes with tunnel vision.
How could I have ever found you on my own?
A supernatural life force inside,
I am no longer what has once died.
For better and for worse, forever.
I want less of me and more of you.

Loving others; introspection to introgression.

I pulled the following writings from my cousin's phenomenal blog, although she is not the original author, she found them worthy of displaying on her site. I also found them worthy of being pondered, written about, and passed along as necessary life lessons which, I think, we should all always consider ourselves in need of. :)

One of my greatest lessons learned:
Know that everyone has a story.
If you disagree with someone or find them hurtful or offensive or they trigger any major feeling inside you...be purposeful in asking.
Do not merely listen to their story.
Hear it.
Let it change you.
This has radically altered my life. It has brought much complication and pain, much joy and happiness. It has forced me to trade understanding for judgment and kindness for anger.
Please get very good at it so you can remind me, when I forget.

-written by Christine on her blog here.

I’ve learned that I have no idea who my teachers are. When I am silently ruminating over how I think I know more than some person who is irritating me, I am more likely shutting down the voice of a teacher that I need to learn something from.

I’ve learned that kindness is not something I merely indulge myself in when everything is going my way, but is a discipline I need to practice – especially when I feel tired, irritated, or feel like I have a justifiable complaint against someone. Being mean is being lazy.

-Excerpted from this blog.


I think that last line of the second author's thoughts sums up what importance lies in where our priorities will be. As we live on earth with the rest of the other lost and broken pieces of humanity we call fellow human beings, our soul's possible connection to anything rests on whether or not we can give and take love; our lives often rest on whether or not our souls can connect. Therefore, the valuable gestures of reaching out to other people is not just something that makes us or the other person feel good for just a few moments, or mere hours, it's something that has the potential to alter the existence of those two people for eternity.

As a Christ-follower, my faith is based on the fundamental and eternal truth that Christ's love for me, and my belief that he is all I need, has made my eternity reach it's fullest potential, and that his love within me is what gives me the ability to reach that potential, and to help coast others to the same kind of potential.

Paul paints a resplendent description of our humanness being touched by the power of God in 2 Corinthians 4. For me this passage arranges an immovable passion and awareness in my heart for bearing the weight of life with others, and for others, whenever I can. In verse 7 he states that while we now have God's light shining in our hearts, we are still just like fragile clay jars trying to contain a great treasure. Meaning that while we are now holding something bigger than ourselves, it does not happen by our own power, and it is not our power which causes that powerful light to remain with us. Paul goes on to talk about what our fragile human spirits will most likely need to endure as we bear the weight of life, about how and why we endure through it all, and he encourages us in his closing statements regarding the eternity we await.

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed.
We are perplexed but not driven to despair. (v.8)

We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God.
We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.(v.9)

But we continue to preach because we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, "I believed in God, so I spoke."(v.11, referring to Psalm 116:10)

...And as God's grace reaches more and more people, there will be thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory. (v. 15)

For our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don't look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we can see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. (v.17&18)

 Another (more famous) passage Paul wrote also comes to mind, one verse in particular:

If I gave everything I had to the poor and sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing.
    1 Corinthians 13:3

*

Think about that.


If God sent Jesus, and Jesus didn't love us even in his death, what would he have gained? What would have been accomplished? The story of the cross loses some of it's miracle and power when we erase love from Christ's heart as he is pierced and abused for our sake that day. The words of God in scripture would be so much less emotionally gravitating if we took out every mention of his love for us. I would find it so much harder to feel passionate about a God who is only just, only wrath, only judgement, etc. His love is what holds our existence together; his love is what offers an alternative option, now and forever. His love is what instills our desires to love him back, to worship him, to devote our time and thoughts to him, to land on our knees as prayerful tears touch our faces; his love is what creates love within us.

As I go over these thoughts, as I try to imagine every area of my life in which I can apply Christ's love, and I am overwhelmed with the unending range I have left to cover; if I start this second, applying these lessons to my life, and never fail again for as long as I live, it will still not be enough. Not even close.

 But if all I do is think about it, it will be the same as not caring at all. So I have no other option but to move forward with this inner meandering of mine and turn it into outward action that the world cannot ignore. :)



*The Mumford & Sons song, "Awake My Soul" (which you can find on my playlist), has the perfect lyrics to correlate with this particular topic of rumination:

In these bodies we will live; In these bodies we will die.
Where you invest your love, you invest your life.