You Are More

You Are More by Tenth Avenue North



I have lots of thoughts on this song but would love to hear what yours are first.

B

In the beginning

I bet you thought my title was referring to Genesis.
Nope... my intent for today's blog is to share how I personally discovered my true beginning. My journey of figuring out what it meant to love and know the only true Father started August 5, 2000, with this section of scripture from Matthew.
Matthew 6:31-34

What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

It's amazing how I can still remember sitting at this small, super hot and stuffy church, somewhere between San Francisco and my parents house in Escondido. The smell... the feel of the night... the emotions... and even the moment that I realized that I needed to put my trust in the Lord. Trusting that His Son's blood would cover my sins and allow me to have a real relationships with the Father that created me, still seems surreal to me. I am sure that over the past 10 years I have prayed that prayer a million times. But on that night I knew for a fact I experienced God in a way that I never will again. I am also sure that on that night, I fell in love for the first time. I fell in love with Jesus and have fallen a little more each day since then. However, it hasn't been easy and at times I don't feel like I love Him or that He loves me... but there are times when I need to just realize that feelings aren't everything.

“You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.”
Pearl S. Buck quotes (American author, 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1892-1973)

I have grown in my understanding as this journey has progressed. I have come to know that He is constant and stable, drawing me closer to His face. This is why it is my prayer that we may all have the strength and courage to run to that hiding place with our Lord. To allow him to draw us closer to him so we can look upon His face and experience the only true Joy that can sustain us and bring us to life. May this blog encourage you to remember your beginning. I would love to hear about the day that started it all for you.... feel free to share if you want.

B

Lonely

For the past few days I have found myself discontent and distracted but really I just didn't want to recognize what was really going on...there is a ... loneliness. This morning I read this in one of my many Henri Nouwen books and daily mediations.

God is calling you to deep, personal intimacy, an intimacy that is wonderful and very demanding. God asks you to let go of many things...you must live it with trust, standing tall. You must try to say, 'Yes, I am lonely, but this particular loneliness sets me on the road to intimacy with God'.

Now, I'm not a crier but as I sat and read over this something inside me broke. I realized that no matter how many times I heard the words I Love You from others there still was this screaming void inside me. I "knew" I couldn't find fulfillment in the words of my loved ones because they are only given to me as symbols of how much my True Father loves me. I "know" that God loves me but I find it hard to allow my heart to feel loved. And to have that love sink in.

So today I am challenged to not only allow the love from others to sink in but also the love from my Heavenly Father. That is where the healing will begin and where I will be able to love others the way that I want to and appreciate and value the love that they offer me.

Brandy

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Recently, I have been challenged to truly understand why we are celebrating different holidays. As I have researched different ones, I have been encouraged to see a hint of Christian truth throughout each.

Since it's St. Patrick's day I thought I would post just a little of the history.

These are a few facts historians believe to be true:

Patrick, who was born in Roman British Isles around 387, was kidnapped and taken into slavery at the age of 16. He was forced to work as a shepherd, and quickly learned that religion brought great comfort. At the age of 22, he escaped and returned to his homeland. In a dream one night, he heard Irish voices asking him to convert them to Christianity.

Heeding that call, he studied to become a priest, and years later he went to Ireland as a Christian missionary.

Ireland around the 5th century practiced Paganism, ruled by the Druids. St. Patrick helped spread Christianity through Ireland, and is also credited with helping spread the written word as he taught the Bible. Eventually monasteries and churches started to appear all over the country.

So what’s the significance of March 17th?

Most historians believe March 17th represents the date of Saint Patrick’s death.


After reading about this and asking God to give me his heart for this celebration, I realized that in a lot of ways this day is about celebrating Patrick's missionary efforts. Having spent months overseas spreading the Word in tough places I know first hand how difficult it can be and how discouraged one can get. So I have been challenged by the Holy Spirit to turn today's celebration into a day of celebrating all the people I know that are out there spreading God's truth and celebrating the true joy that can be experienced from loving and accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

It is my prayer that this also would be your purpose and desire in celebrating St. Patrick's day. May we join together to pray for an extra dose of joy and celebration to fill those that we know living out the call to spread the truth to the ends of the earth. May these people know the true joy and cause of celebration and be able to communicate this to those they are striving to reach. And may God use them like He did Patrick to bring His light into the darkness.

Brandy

A Lenten Prayer

Ash Wednesday - March 9, 2011

The Lenten season begins. It is a time to be with you, Lord, in a special way, a time to pray, to fast, and thus to follow you on your way to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, and to the final victory over death.

I am still so divided. I truly want to follow you, but I also want to follow my own desires and lend an ear to the voices that speak about prestige, success, pleasure, power, and influence. Help me to become deaf to these voices and more attentive to your voice, which calls me to choose the narrow road to life.

I know that Lent is going to be a very hard time for me. The choice for your way has to be made every moment of my life. I have to choose thoughts that are your thoughts, words that are your words, and actions that are your actions. There are not times or places without choices. And I know how deeply I resist choosing you.

Please, Lord, be with me at every moment and in every place. Give me the strength and the courage to live this season faithfully, so that, when Easter comes, I will be able to taste with joy the new life that you have prepared for me.

Amen.


Reflection


Over the years "fasting" to me has never been one of my strong spiritual disciplines; however, for some reason 2011 seems to be a year of God drawing me closer to his heart for fasting. Over the past 2 and 1/2 months I have been challenged multiple times to deny my flesh specific things and people that may have taken a position in my heart that was not honoring to God. It's been interesting to see what these things have been and when I have felt the Lords leading to give them over to Him.

My life coach continuously tells me that God is never late, he's always on time, and often he is early. This saying comforts me as I pursue God and his holiness, but it is also alarming to see how God's timing is always right. If you look at sanctification as the process that continuously allows us to grow and be challenged by the spiritual disciplines in our lives, then we must ask ourselves what God's timing has to do with this process. God's role in bringing certain things up just in time for us to develop that discipline for a reason or season is key in understanding God's heart for Lent.

As millions participate in the discipline of fasting it is my prayer that each of them would see how the Lord uses this time in their lives. Fasting has taught me that He will not hesitate to extract anything from our lives that is placed higher than he is and that those things are taken care of when he sees fit to take care of them. Because of His timing and planning He usually uses these disciplines to prepare me and help me have the strength to get through the next season or challenge in my life.

May you also seek the Lord and ask Him to reveal to you areas that you may need to work on. May we all continue to grow in the disciplines of the Lord as we lay our lives down in response to His sacrifice for us.


Brandy Kimes


Prayer taken from Henri Nouwen's collections

Creating a Home Together

Many human relationships are like the interlocking fingers of two hands. Our loneliness makes us cling to each other, and this mutual clinging makes us suffer immensely because it does not take our loneliness away. But the harder we try, the more desperate we become. Many of these "interlocking" relationships fall apart because they become suffocating and oppressive. Human relationships are meant to be like two hands folded together. They can move away from each other while still touching with the fingertips. They can create space between themselves, a little tent, a home, a safe place to be.

True relationships among people point to God. They are like prayers in the world. Sometimes the hands that pray are fully touching, sometimes there is distance between them. They always move to and from each other, but they never lose touch. They keep praying to the One who brought them together.



These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.

Reflecting God's perfect love

God's love for us is everlasting. That means that God's love for us existed before we were born and will exist after we have died. It is an eternal love in which we are embraced. Living a spiritual life calls us to claim that eternal love for ourselves so that we can live our temporal loves - for parents, brothers, sisters, teachers, friends, spouses, and all people who become part of our lives - as reflections or refractions of God's eternal love. No fathers or mothers can love their children perfectly. No husbands or wives can love each other with unlimited love. There is no human love that is not broken somewhere.

When our broken love is the only love we can have, we are easily thrown into despair, but when we can live our broken love as a partial reflection of God's perfect, unconditional love, we can forgive one another our limitations and enjoy together the love we have to offer.

These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.

Love and Friendship according to C.S. Lewis

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
— C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."
— C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

"Are not lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it."
— C.S. Lewis

"Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go... But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from "being in love" — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriage) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God... "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

"Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him."
— C.S. Lewis

"This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted. "
— C.S. Lewis

"The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

"Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives."
— C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

"Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities."
— C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

"To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator.

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest t all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed bu increased."
— C.S. Lewis (Letters of C. S. Lewis)