Jeremiah 33:3..."seeking God's way"

Why do you oh Lord seem so hard to find?
If you are very near, why seek with ALL heart, soul and mind?
The best of things are free, so why withhold from me,
eternity, mystery of trinity, vision of your majesty?

Why does my tower of Babel never reach beyond the clouds?
Why my faith in Jesus so threatened by death shrouds?
Why abundant life, fenced in by this mess called earth?
Why the Pearl traded, for things that have no worth?

Can this flickering flame of faith be fanned to holy fire?
Can the Christ of cleansing blood burn out each base desire?
Show me great unsearchable things the way I do not know,
My king, my lamb, my source of strength, increase this candle's glow!

Managing Life

I wish I didn't have to manage life. The problem with having a vision for where I want to go in life is that I then think that I am responsible for getting there. So I get so frustrated when unexpected things throw off my plans. I have been talking about the class that I was supposed to take at Columbia next week for months. I took off a week vacation and have spent nearly three and half weeks reading four books to get ready for this class. Yesterday I found out that the class was cancelled and would not be rescheduled. This sets me back a few months on my graduation date which would have been next Sept. I was planning on finishing up that in Sept. then studying and taking my GRE before Dec. and starting to work on a degree in international development next Jan. So now I am under quite a bit of a time crunch.

But you know life can throw you some positive curves as well. As I was driving home from work today I saw a guy driving a moving truck next to me. I hadn't seen him in over a year and had lost contact. So I waved him down and we had a talk. He gave me his number. He was struggling with some life issues the last time I had seen him and he still is. i got his card. It looks like the Lord has just provided another person to add to my network of faith relationships.

Guess this all comes back to God's providence and plans rather than mine...why is this lesson so hard to learn?

Transformation

I have been focused on determining between God's agenda and my agenda. What I have found is that I don't spend enough time in prayer. Many times I am afraid to spend time in prayer because I may find out that things that I have been pushing for the Lord doesn't want for me. But when I do go to the Lord in prayer I find out that I have nothing to be afraid of. I am ok with letting go of things that He doesn't want for me and many times I am given confidence that He has placed certain visions in my life in order for me to accomplish them for Him.

Lucy is cool

When I say Lucy is cool it is one of those things that I had to come to realize rather than one of those things that I knew instantly. Who is Lucy? She is a retired officer at my corps. I don't mean to sound disrespectful but when I think of retired officer I usually don't think cool. I usually think "those people who don't want me to worship in my heart language" or "those people who don't understand why I don't particulary love the uniform" ect.

That is what I thought of Lucy before I got to know her. Lucy is radical. She believes that if you pour your life into the life of someone else and give what God has given you to that other person then you will become God's tool in that person's life. I know that's not radical. The thing that's radical is that she actually does it. I have watched her over time start one on one relationships with some of the younger ladies in the corps and I have seen them change to become bold witnesses for Christ.

She does something that our generation is prophetically crying out to the generation that she belongs to. We say, "Its about relationships!" We go on our tirades talking about how the church has to many programs and isn't focused on what really matters. But we spend so much time complaining that we don't have the time for the relationships either.

We need to be radical, not just talk about it! Quite frankly I need to be more radical. I have tried to become more intentional about building witnessing relationships. I have a few that I feel are just that. But I make an appointment and go and have lunch with someone and it goes well but then there is a lull in the relationship before there is another chance to get back together. Since I only have about three relationships that I feel are witnessing relationships there are weeks that pass without any real witnessing opportunities. This has led me to believe that I need to build more witnessing relationships so that I am cultivating multiple relationships and living a constant radical life.

My New Year's resolution? I just made it while typing...By the end of this year I want to cultivate enough deep relationships with non-believers that I will have one quality witnessing conversation every day.

Tsunami

I am amazed at how many people have died in the Tsunami. On 911 we experienced the death of several thousand people and it impacted the whole country. Of course, that was a deliberate attack and it took away our feelings of security. But what about those people that live in the countries that were hit by this Tsunami? I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that some of them probably are afraid to walk next to the ocean. It has taken away their security as well.

I was pleased to see that the US has decided to give 350 million to help the recovery efforts. As the only "superpower" as they say I think that it gives us the responsibility to lead in supporting not only this clean up effort but also to lead in helping the people of the two thirds world to have safety and development.

First Blog

I have been wanting to do this for a while. So I was just having a lazy Sunday afternoon and thought I would put this together.