compelled by LOVE

I just finished reading Heidi Baker's book Compelled by LOVE. It is a must read for every human being. I just want to go find dirty hungry orphans and hold them and love them and feed them. I want to be so full of Jesus that they see His love in my eyes. I want to exemplify a sermon on the mount life. Lord, help me lay down my life for love. Let everyone encounter You when they encounter me. It is so simple to imagine going to Africa and seeing the poor and destitute and giving your life for them...but what about your neighbor? What about the guy that just cut you off in the line at Walmart? Jesus, I need your eyes. Help me to see everyone through your blood. We cry out for discernment and so often we ask expecting to see the enemy. I can see him everywhere I need no assistance with that. I want to see how the Father sees. I want that level of discernment. I want every action, every deed to be motivated by love. I want to see the person who persecutes me and love them. If someone spits in my face I want to love them. I want to love. So much of the body of Christ wants to move in signs, wonders and miracles but how much more miraculous to manifest the love of the True and Living God. The glory of the Lord is the goodness of the Lord. It is a manifestation of power, the power of LOVE. It is the tangible goodness of the Father made reality on earth. I must go lower. I must learn to love. God is love. If I seek Him and to be Him to a hurt and dying world then maybe I will know Him. Then maybe my works will not be burned up as hay and straw and stubble. If my actions are not out of love then they are only selfish ambition.

Becoming

I am becoming someone new all together. I am seeking to be like Him, to reflect His countenance and character to the world in which I reside. It is no easy task. Every day it seems there is a form of progress and then in a blink maybe not. For the past year and a half I knew that the plumb line was love. You see, I have a hard time with that in application. There was an era in which I was known as the ice princess. Some think that is funny or that I am a little stand offish but what a horrible way to be perceived. So, I decided to be a lover, a radical laid down lover. This of course had to be the Lord because I was much too afraid of people to actually choose this path myself.....but I so want to be like Him.



Recently, it has come to my attention that as I have asked Him to break my cold stony heart and give me a heart of flesh what comes with that. To love I must suffer long which means I must suffer. To love I must keep no record of wrongs which means I must be wronged. The list goes on and on. It would be so easy to tuck tale and run, to continue to fear people instead of embrace them in their weakness. Perfect love casts out fear. My love is not perfect. It is weak and immature and self seeking but..... His love is perfect and covers a multitude of sins.



I have had a tough week. Just when I got revelation that I was going to have to love others in their imperfections mine were magnified and brought to my attention. I have made many mistakes and I am sure I will make many more. My first instinct was to cut all ties with humanity and hide in a cave like a hermit wallowing in condemnation. Silly I know. If I choose to be a lover then I must have relationship. Not surface acquaintance. Relationship requires vulnerability. I do not like the idea of that.

The Word says faithful are the wounds of a friend. Agh! So as Shampa Rice would say.."What to do?" I guess I will choose love. I will choose to not fear man or His opinion of me but to press on and press in. I will acknowledge and repent for the places I have given darkness room. I will allow Him to fill me over and over again with His limitless love. I will not look to the left or the right. I will appreciate the places I can suffer with Him and thus be conformed into His very likeness and image. I will pray for favor with those God has placed in my life. I will go lower. I will embrace my weakness so that His strength can be magnified. I will stumble at times but I will not fall. I will give my life for love. Please understand I am becoming a lover and it is a process.

If we love with our "whole being, nothing is lacking where everything is given."-Bernard of Clairvaux

Desperation

Behold God is great and we do not know Him. Behold God is great.



"Anyone contemplating the life of Jesus needs to be newly and more deeply aware every day that something impossible, something scandalous has occurred: that God, in His absolute Being, has resolved to manifest Himself in a human life (and is in a position to make this resolve effective!) He must be scandalized by this, he must feel his mind reeling, the very ground giving way beneath his feet; he must at least experience that "ecstasy" of non-comprehension which transported Jesus' contemporaries." -Von Balthasar, Hans Urs Prayer



Do what? Yeah, exactly! God is great and we do not know Him! Oh, how aware I am of this fact! Jesus! Holy Spirit, help me!!!! I must have a spirit of wisdom and revelation. Reveal Yourself to me. I am desperate to know You.



I spend over 50 hours a week in the prayer room, no where near enough. After 8 weeks I am only now beginning to get acclimated. Only now am I beginning to be purged on a deeper level. Only now am I even capable of understanding that I don't understand anything. I need insight and understanding. I am desperate to know You.



I am a man of unclean lips. Bring your burning coal and touch my lips. Cleanse me.



"I confess, Lord, with thanksgiving, that you have made me in your image, so that I can remember you, think of you, and love you. But that image is so worn and blotted out by faults, and darkened by the smoke of sin, that it cannot do that for which it was made, unless you renew and refashion it. Lord I desire to understand your truth which my heart already believes and loves. I do not seek to understand so that I can believe, but I believe so that I may understand; and what is more, I believe that unless I do believe, I shall not understand." - Anselm of Canterbury



Oh, the blood of Jesus that has washed me white as snow. Purified me. Made me righteous. Made me Holy. How great the chasm between where I am now in my revelation and where I am seated with You in heavenly places. I am desperate to know You.


I wish I could literally feed myself on the Word intravenously. He is so much more fantastically amazing than my brain can comprehend. I need more language to even describe where I am right now. I want intimacy with the Creator of the Universe. My desire is for Him and His for me. How is that possible? I am desperate to know You!!!!!!

His plans will prevail

My life is not my own. It seems that is constantly being confirmed to me. This afternoon I got into the prayer room and two index cards fell out of my Bible.

Isaiah 46:10-11
My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure...
Indeed I have spoken it;
I will also bring it to pass.
I have purposed it;
I will also do it.

Romans 4:20-21
He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief,
but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being
fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform.

I knew the Lord was establishing the "word" for the day. My journal seemed to have vanished so I grabbed another one out of my bag. It just so happened to be the exact one from this time last year. When I opened it there was an entry from October 8, 2007. I was sitting in the IHOP Atlanta prayer room. The Lord had gripped my heart and I knew I was called to the house of prayer. At the time, I was more "successful" and financially secure than I have ever been. I surrendered and told the Lord I trusted Him. I told Him I would follow His plans for my life and be anxious for nothing. I figured it would be maybe a five year plan....maybe I would eventually be an intercessory missionary. It seemed so far fetched and impossible. Here I sit one year later full time in His house. What ever word He has given you.....hold fast.....He has purposed it....He will also do it.

Nostalgic...not so much.

Some days I can be a little schmoopy. That is how I describe those feelings that come up every now and then. It can be over something or nothing. I LOVE the fall, the sights, smells and sounds... especially pumpkin spice stuff. Without fail one of those will trigger a warm fuzzy memory. Scents and songs take me back in time instantly. My senses go into overload as I am transported to another era and local. As I sat here revelating on just such nonsenses this afternoon I recognized what a trap that is. Those experiences may have been fantastic but God is doing a new thing and if we spend too much time on old things we get stuck. People perish for lack of vision. Make sure you are looking forward. It's okay to build altars to God for the milestones but don't cling to yesterday. It's gone forever and it's not coming back. I once heard a man say Christians raise the dead everyday. We resurrect lives the Lord wants to bury. I am passionate about music, always have been. Nothing gets to me like a song. Daddy wants me singing new songs and not getting caught up in old favorites. Old bread gets musty and moldy and so does the past if we try to keep it around.