of blogging. I am so excited to write now! Don't ask me why, but we'll call it divine inspiration. I am totally exhausted and have been all day, but God made me to go CCF tonight. I think I got my answer too, btw. God has been keeping me away to prepare my heart for tonight. He knew that if I had gone, my head would still be completely jumbled and I wouldn't have been as hungry for his words and as thirsty for his songs. Before tonight I was literally famished. And on the way out of my apartment complex, it started snowing. The frightened human inside me said "turn around, go home", but God said "you're on your way...you'll get home after". And guess what? He kept it a mist the entire two hours and I got home safely.
Tonight God told me to stop talking, running, jabbering, whining, etc. and just listen. The words are "have a tender heart and a sensitive ear". That came to me, I guess from Him. The speaker was a guest speaker from UNCC CCF and he was enthusiastic...it was so refreshing to have someone new (even though I haven't been in regular attendance recently). He spoke about how God said all He needs is a mustard seed to grow a tree taller than all the other plants in the garden. This tree provides rest and refuge for birds of the air (Matthew 13). This is me. I truly only have a mustard seed (look this up to see how small it is-about 1mm in diameter) of faith left in me because the devil has literally scared my faith out of me. But yet, knowing that I at least have a mustard seed of faith is enough because I know that God will grow me into a tall tree where his birds, his people, can come and seek refuge. They will come to me and know that I am a safe haven, a listening ear, a comforter, and a person to pray for them...but only if I let God work.
Something else the speaker talked about 
was the analogy of Jesus feeding the hungry. Going to the famous parable where Jesus fed 5000 men plus women and children with only 5 loaves and 2 fishes, it states there in Matthew 14 that Jesus "Blesses it (Hebrew also translates "to bless" as "to choose"), Breaks it, and Gives it. Then again two other times in Matthew, the analogy is used that break is Blessed, Broken, and Given. It is important to realize that God chooses and blesses the bread because it is what He requires. God then breaks the bread into pieces, sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands. What is significant about the breaking of the bread is that God does not simply 'poke' or 'injure' the bread, but He breaks it completely apart. Tying into all the significance we see that God the bread away. Jesus doesn't sell the bread or throw it into the masses for people to fight over, he givesgives it to each person. Meaning that He also chooses to whom the bread will be given.
The importance of the breaking of bread is an analogy to us and what God will do to/with us if we only allow Him. Jesus chooses us. The Holy Spirit chooses us to live in and us to do His will. Then if we submit even a mustard seed of faith, God will break us. He will shatter some plan, hope, or dream...or perhaps even something that is tangible that we have already built up for ourselves. But don't worry because even though it may hurt at the time and feel as if your whole world is crumbling around you, God will restore and rebuild, and the "glory of the latter church shall be greater than the former". Which means that even though He may break us into 1000 or 15,000 little pieces, He has a plan and He will put it all back together perfectly. After He has started restoring the brokenness with healing (His work on us is never finished), Jesus gives us to others. Jesus keeps only our hearts for himself. Not in a selfish way, but as a way to protect us. We are chosen to be broken and given to others. Perhaps this is the whole meaning of life. We are made to give. We give love, words, kindness, comfort, sympathy, joy, and sometimes even goofy looks to people. We give little bits of ourselves to everyone we come in contact with. The man who walked out his way yesterday to open a door for me got my smile, the client in the conference room today got my joy of playing with play-dough, my friends tonight got my hug. Everyone gets something-we are made to give and be given. When a family gives a bride to her husband, she is given from one caring family to another; her own. The bride is not to be sold or auctioned, but out of love, she is given. Out of love we are given to Christ as a bride as He awaits patiently to be our bridegroom. He is also our wonderful Father, Abba. The one who will give us to himself. Traditionally a father gives his daughter to the groom. In God's case, he merely gives us to himself (which I know, seems redundant, but it makes sense). You see, He wants all of our love in every possible way we can give it. He wants to be part of our innermost workings and thoughts; He knows our desires and longs to fulfill them if they are His plan.
So what I realized tonight is that I have the faith of mustard seed, and though it is so incredibly tiny...it is enough for God to take, grow, and make into something amazing and beautiful. Pray that I have sweet dreams, for lately I have been thinking of my daddy a lot. I have had dreams that he is still alive and is merely being kept from me and these are terrors to me because I know that he is safe in Heaven with his Creator. He is never held back from me and to reach him all I have to do is pray for God to pass the word along. Pray for me also that this mustard seed faith will grow. I cannot move myself, much less a marriage along with only a mustard seed-I'll need at least a watermelon for God to roll me out of complacency and a jumbo pumpkin to move both Ronnie and me. But He is faithful to us and He believes in us when even we do not.
-r.
(ps...not that it matters, but blogger's time is messed up so this was not published at 7:57pm, it was published at 11:57 pm)
This is totally a spin-off of the blog from ccf and the actual immersion last night. but it has really hit a spot with me for some reason! we talked about love. and not the mushy or sexy kind of love that hallmark tends to run toward this time of year (btw...anyone paid attention to how many valentine's cards are geared toward sex this year?! it would be safe to say about 1/3 of all the cards i looked at were!) .
anyway, last night Ed talked about love in comparison to a garden. he said that the kind of love that is the mushy hallmark-y type can be best compared to a chia pet. Chia pets, as we all know, are an idiot-proof plant that is basically kill-proof. But! They don't have roots...they're just pretty to look at. Love relationships like that (and i'm not talking just boyfriend/girlfriend, i'm saying friends, parents, everyone!) are based in "nothing." you may talk or have common interests, but you never really SHARE with each other. Relationships like that are like a chia pet...no roots...no real foundation and prone to wash away when the rains come.
but love as a garden (more specifically i will use a dandelion becuase we know how stubborn they are to get rid of in the yard), is deep-rooted. in the case of the dandelion, the grass and dirt must make way for the deep roots and yellow flower or breezy white top of the dandelion. they must "SHARE" the space they have been given. let me just go on a tangent here and say that i am not saying that in a deep-rooted love, you should be the kind of dandelion that takes over the entire yard and chokes all the grass out...i hope you get the connection there. lol. what i am saying is that we, like the dandelions, must share with each other in order to have a deep relationship. we can share about how we feel about certain subjects (political, spiritual, emotional, family, personal) and i don't just mean TALK about them...i mean share excatly how we feel about things. The idea is to get personal...to feel intamacy with someone.
something else that has been getting to me is the sense of family that we should be embracing as Christians in our communities. I am specifically talking about Christian to Christian love here, becuase i feel that as a non-Christian it is very difficult to grasp this concept (i know, i lived without understanding it until not quite a year ago myself, and i WAS/am a Christian). now i have a boyfriend (Ronnie), and i love him very much...in a romantic kind of way. our love is like chia growth and dandelions intertwined...we "love", but we share so much of our lives with each other. sometimes i struggle with what i am about to say because i'm not sure that Ronnie totally "gets" the concept...he understands it, but it is easy to not get. It's not that he's ignorant-he has simply not had much of a chance to experience it himself, and it is something that has to be experienced to understand. But my point! I have always grasped (well for as long as i can remember) that my girlfriends are my sisters. i have treated them all as my sisters and loved them as such. but brothers, oh brothers! they have given me a fit. maybe it was just being too young to see boys/men as only someone who was cute or i would like to date or, if i were dating someone, boys were the ones i was supposed to stay away from! and i have felt that very much up until even this past semester.
This past semester however, we had a day on the fall retreat when the speaker sat us all down at long tables with loaves of bread and large cups of grape juice. he told us to eat and drink and talk with one another as if we were a family having dinner b/c in fact, that was pretty much what we were doing! It hit home with me that guys could show brotherly love to a girl when Charles reached over and put his arm around me and prayed over me. i was in such shock (stupidly) that i couldn't even pray for him back! lol. i don't know why it surprised me so much but it did. he truly cared for me as a sister. and although i have felt that before with one of my best guy friends, Rickey, i was too young to really get it. and then after that, i was hugging everyone-i hugged all the girls i think and a couple of the guys (i still didn't know a lot of them too well). And now, every Tuesday night, i look forward to seeing my family. i look forward to hugging and chatting with all of my sisters, even ones i don't know! and i look forward to hugging my usual brothers, Charles and Josh, and to seeing who will hug me next! haha...i have really grown to like this love because it makes me feel that i am appreciated and cared about by someone other than my sweetheart and my biological family.
i don't mean to embarrass anyone by mentioning names, but i though it was important. and again, this is no way de-valuing the love of my biological family or the constant loves i get from Ronnie, it is simply a new experience. it makes me want to say to all of my friends "i love you because you are my friend and thank you." so i hope you know who you are :-)
*hugs* -r.
was the analogy of Jesus feeding the hungry. Going to the famous parable where Jesus fed 5000 men plus women and children with only 5 loaves and 2 fishes, it states there in Matthew 14 that Jesus "Blesses it (Hebrew also translates "to bless" as "to choose"), Breaks it, and Gives it. Then again two other times in Matthew, the analogy is used that break is Blessed, Broken, and Given. It is important to realize that God chooses and blesses the bread because it is what He requires. God then breaks the bread into pieces, sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands. What is significant about the breaking of the bread is that God does not simply 'poke' or 'injure' the bread, but He breaks it completely apart. Tying into all the significance we see that God the bread away. Jesus doesn't sell the bread or throw it into the masses for people to fight over, he givesgives it to each person. Meaning that He also chooses to whom the bread will be given. 