5 Search Results for "resolutions"
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Permission Permission
- From: annamariehope
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Description:
HOPE is a word that has been thrown around a lot in the last year - but I want to ask what HOPE in 2009 would look like to you? Is it a new job? Better relationship with your in-laws? Sticking to your new year resolutions? Or world peace? For me, it's about finally allowing God to use ALL of my life - that is every area. The parts i like people to see and those that I try to hide in the darkest corners of my heart.
PERMISSION became a big word for me in the last few days. As I begun to open myself up in prayer to God about the direction He wants to take in my life in 2009, So imagine my shock when I heard Him asking me 'Yes, but will you give permission to allow My Spirit to move through you?".
Would I give GOD permission ? In all my prayers of "God use me, God break my heart for you" i have somehow shut the door to Him. Much like that little child who wants her parent to play but refuses to let go long enough of the toy she is tightly clutching, so the game can actually begin!
In these first few days of the year, my focus has been on letting go for long enough for the Spirit to flow..whether through my words, my music, my worship or my thoughts...,
What thoughts/actions/desires have you been clinging to in your life? Have you asked God to come, then held Him at bay? What excuses have stopped you from fully allowing God to work through you?
Maybe this year, if we all allow Him to move, we really will find that HOPE for our futures
Happy New Year!
- Blog post
- 1 year ago
- Views: 149
- Not yet rated
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disillusioned disillusioned
- From: gloriousruins
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Description:
A few months ago I thought it’d be really cool to be disillusioned with the world. I wanted to be like a post-WWI expatriate or like Franny Glass from Salinger’s novel. I pictured myself in a bar drinking a Shirley Temple slurring my life story to the bartender, telling him over and over again how much I liked eating the cherries at the bottom. (I’d be faking the banter, of course, because I’m drinking a non-alcoholic beverage. The bartender is too distracted to notice.)
I decided a few months ago that I no longer cared about being prude or blameless, I wanted to dress like a whore and cuss the crudest words. I typed out a few cuss words that night. I felt a little better, but not a lot.
Then I decided I was going to marry someone at least ten years older than me … someone who was just as disillusioned as me so we could complain together about this godforsaken world we live in! and about how no one understands us! Or something like that. I don’t really know what disillusioned people complain about, to be honest.
And then I realized that I am not disillusioned. I am actually quite optimistic and forward-looking and hopeful. I just wasn’t happy with where I was and who I was among at the time.
A few months ago I was just starting college. I chose an extremely conservative Christian university to attend, not thinking much about all the rules that entailed. But I have always been a rule follower. I have always been the “good girl,” the teacher’s pet, the leader at youth group, the favorite daughter. (Don’t tell my sister.) I figured I could handle whatever this university threw at me.
Except … I couldn’t. That’s where all this disillusion came from. I thought this school would be my “comfort zone”: Christians around other Christians talking about Christian-y things. But I really don’t like that. I especially don’t like the pressure.
It turns out there’s no such thing as a cookie-cutter Christian. One week of college told me that. There are cliques here at Christian schools, you know, but all of them have the word “Christian” before them. The “Christian” preps, the Christian jocks, the Christian hipsters, the Christian nerds, etc.
I found it much like high school, except there’s that pressure of being “on fire for God.” Not only do you need that place to fit in … you need to prove your worth as a Christian: “Hi, my name is Lauren and I read my Bible every night.”
So into the first month of school I had pressure from all sides: to find friend and to be “on fire for God.” Neither were really working. I had friends, sure, but none like the ones at home. I loved God, sure, but I wasn’t healing people in Jaheezus name!
I began to realize that I did not like this. I did not like feeling of being judged by these Christians, whether they really were judging me or not, and I hated that it was hard to find friends at a Christian school. So I decided to become a Christian expatriate. I wrote down those cusswords. I started writing a novel about that bartender.
I figured that the reason I felt so disconnected with those people was because I just didn’t fit into their club. There are Christians and then there are Christians. I must have been part of the latter, those who look, smell and act Christian but aren’t really. I don’t follow their code of ethics or something.
I really wanted to break my school’s rules because I thought that would prove that I was not like the other Christians in my school, not just “kinda not” like them. Once I decided that, I found myself really bitter toward my roommates’ opinions. I made sure that I found a flaw in whatever the speaker said at chapel. I really had become disillusioned with the world.
And it was ugly.
I know the first few months of college are supposed to be hard. I know there’s a lot of homesickness and stress and fear … but I didn’t have any of that. The only thing I was really afraid of was myself. (As cliche as that sounds.) I didn’t like how I “measured up” against the Christians around me.
I would have killed to be the Christian hipster or the Christian prep. But I knew I wasn’t. I was the “Christian outcast.” I cared too much about where I didn’t fit in instead of seeing where I did. I got too caught up in, what the apostle Paul calls, “civilian affairs.” I was losing sight of my true identity and instead looked for it in others.
And so here I am. The semester just ended, and I can only hope that I am closer to the person I am supposed to be. A friend told me once that we can never really know our true identity, but I don’t know if I believe him. I mean, maybe not to the extent God views us, but I know that I can be closer than I am.
I know most people don’t follow their New Years Resolutions but I am going to make one anyway. This year I want to see myself the way God sees me: as a woman of God, passionate in what she does, a creator, thinker.
“This is my voice, all shadows stayed. This is my heart upon the altar laid. Please take all else away. Hear my cry, I beg I plead, I pray. I’ll walk into the flames, a calculated risk to further bless your name. So strike me deep and true, and in your strength I will live and die both unto you.” (”Identity Crisis,” Thrice)
with love,
ezekiel.
- Blog post
- 2 years ago
- Views: 94
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