Tuesday, March 23, 2010

keepme

Keep me, Lord.  I am Yours.   I trust You with this day and tomorrow's day.  I love You especially when I cannot see what's ahead.  Your promises are as good as done.  Your words... the sweetest taste i've ever known.  Your smile ushers a shaking laughter.  Your goodness blankets my inner girl.  Your strength overwhelms my feeble ways.  Your faithfulness draws my heart to a passionate pursuit.  Your friendship humbles me completely.  Your gaze awakens me. Your pursuit overtakes me.  Your song enchants my soul.  Your touch completes me.  Your will secures my being.  Your peace enhances my boldness.  Your joy gives strength to these bones.  Your wisdom reaches deep for my anchor.  Your love holds me, whispering delicate piercing truth to my heart, transforming my desires, my mind, my will, my emotion, my soul.  You keep me.  - i love you-khristen 
 

Joyful Anticipation

I am so grateful that God has given us his Holy Spirit to walk with us.  When opportunities arise to shine i pray that we take them.  Opportunities like smiling in the eye of hardship.  Laughing when everything is falling apart.  Singing something nice instead of profanities :) lol Choosing to change your perspective.  Looking past the temporaries of a circumstance and seeing the richness "crap" brings long term when it's used in the proper way in the proper place.  

Read this in Romans this morning.. it's one of my favorites and like the way it breaks it down in "the message" so again i'll share that translation :) 

 18-21That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

 22-25All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

 26-28Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

 29-30God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.

 31-39So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: 

   They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. 
   We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.


Thank God I don't have to WORRY ABOUT what's going to happen.  I just keep going. keep on. keep seeking. keep loving. SET MY EYES.  -khristen