A City Starving

So I've been going to downtown Oregon City a lot in the mornings before I go to work. I like to just go down there and pray...or sit in his presence. Oregon City has been my home for 15 years.
I never used to think the town was all that spectacular...A small city with a small people...going about life in insignificant ways...not too poor, not too rich. You'd never notice her face in a crowd. With the natural eye, there is not a lot to see...Nothing there that could possibly grab your attention.

But in these past few months, the Lord has started to draw me to Oregon City...to cause my sleeping spiritual senses to perk up at the new aroma floating through the city. I've begun to look with new eyes and have come to see that God is there.

I feel him brooding over that city...his eyes searching too and fro looking for hearts that will be completely His. He comes to drape himself over these people like velvet sheets on sleeping bodies...To hold them tightly...To let them feel his heart...And know that He sees them and wants them. You'll find him there in the early morning and even the middle of the night. He never leaves...

I sat behind a building next to the railroad tracks, guitar in hand. I began to meditate on Luke 4:4. It's talking about the temptation of Christ. Jesus had been fasting for 40 days and nights and satan temped him in 4:3; "The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread." 4Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone.'" Jesus is referencing back to Deuteronomy 8:33; ...man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

As I meditated on these verses I started to sing "I cannot live on bread alone....I cannot live without you..." CANNOT LIVE. This isn't just a lovesick cry of "Baby, I can't live without you." This is a real cry of "I WILL DIE without you....and so will everyone else." We spiritually, physically, emotionally, intellectually cannot live apart from God and His Word. The end is near. Nobody likes to talk about it, but it's Heaven or Hell...

We cant live on earthly food alone...I'm talking about literal food and anything else we feed ourselves with...entertainment, posessions, people, etc. We need to feast on Jesus and the Word of God in order to live.

Luke 4:23 Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.

It's time for the people of God to weep between the porch and the alter...Time to ask for tears to cry out for mercy that our city might be spared. Our city is sleeping in a state of spiritual starvation which ultimately leads to death. We need to understand that this is real and our people WILL DIE if they do not wake up and eat of the Word of God.

So here we are, the Joel 2 army. Are we hungry enough for ourselves? Are we hungry enough for our friends? Are we HUNGRY ENOUGH for a city? We need to get hungry. We need to get desperate. We need to feel reality. It's like back in Genesis when God wanted to destroy wicked Sodom. He is looking for 10 righteous who could act as living intercession, saving the City.

Genesis 18:23 Then Abraham approached him and said: "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

Genesis 18:32 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?" He answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it."

He is looking for just 10 righteous. TEN who will cry out for mercy and who will dare to get close enough to the heart of God to feel the pain and urgency he has for this people. Do we want to care? Will we allow ourselves to become vulnerable and love these people? To care enough to consume ourselves with intercession and tears for them, crying out day and night for them to be saved?

Holy Spirit this is not a trait of our nature in the natural. It's going to take your teaching, your power, and your zeal to change our hearts. Make us living intercession. Press us to be bold enough to want to care and to see what God sees.

I'm frustrated that I don't care enough. I don't have the love to care about people I don't know, who don't effect me, enough. I feel just fine living life...completely content in my work and relationships moving toward a better life for myself. Where is your heart Jesus? I know you're inside of me. Your spirit lives inside of me. Help me to get deep inside to the inner courts. To let your Spirit overtake me. Jesus I contend for the Spirit of Prayer. I want to want this.

Take Knitting Needles to Our Hearts

Proverbs 3:3
Let love and faithfulness never leave you
Bind them around your neck
Write them on the tablet of your heart.

Unity....my spirit is crying out from the inside...praying with groanings that I don't even understand...

To see a unity....an unbreakable bond of love knitting our hearts together with His.... unbreakable....unstoppable....like the Joel 2 army of God. The greatest army that has ever been or ever will be...

(Joel 2:7-8)
They charge like warriors
They scale walls like soldiers
They all march in line
Not swerving from their course
They do not jostle each other
Each marches straight ahead
They plunge through defenses
Without breaking ranks

An army that lives the kingdom of heaven on Earth in an authentic way. Image brearers of Jesus....Carrying the name of the One who lives and knows every heart. We walk in our ultimate destiny, bound by the love of Christ. Instead of tearing one another down or growing weary of relationships we burn with passion for God's house and a zeal to love one another. Like Hebrews 10:24 we constantly consider how we can spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

The power of unity....where two or more are gathered....There is power in unity whether it be good or bad. If many are united in evil, the evil is overwhelmingly powerful. God had to divide the people by making them speak different languages at the tower of Babel because their unity made them powerful.

Genesis 11:5-9
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The Lord said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." 8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel--because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

But if we got together to form a unity of righteousness and love...the power would be absolutely unrestrainable and we would start to see the will of God carried out on the Earth...

How then can we get this kind of unity? I've spent a lot of time fantasizing about it lately. If only, if only... And from the natural eye and my own understanding, it seems impossible. It seems the division of the body of Christ is just too strong and our sinful natures just too unforgiving. We are easily affended, selfish, fearful, jealous... There doesn't seem to be an easy way around those things in order to unify...Clearly our only hope is Christ and His Holy Spirit within us. Actually.....I THANK GOD He's our hope because I know that when it's up to Him, it WILL happen.

Jesus I thank you that your will is to unify your body. Holy Spirit we need your help desperately and we cannot do this on our own. We need you to put a vision in our hearts and a hunger in our spirits. We need a drive toward unity that outweighs our sinful desires and tendencies. We need a love and faithfullness so strong that it is bound around our necks and written on the tablets of our hearts. We need a meekness and humility that allows God to come in and do his thing. Father I ask you by faith and with an expectant heart. I thank you for what you are about to do.

My Baby

Now I know not everyone knew this, but I have a baby. Her name is Molly-Sue but I call her Tink for short. It's not easy being a single mom but the strong can do it. Here are some pictures of my little darling and our life together. This is when we first came home from the hospital. Here she is, catching a meal. I slaved 2 hrs in the kitchen to make this.
Tink with her kitty. She plays with dolls.
Tink showing some 'tude. She's very sassy. She gets it from me. What can I say.
Here's her cute little rear. Watch out boys, she'll drive ya wild! But stay clear. She's only 3 1/2 months.

Convictions From a Good Friend

Is it possible....to love conviction?

Lately I've recognized that conviction isn't really something mean or taunting like I've subconsciously thought it was. It's not a punishment. It's not condemning and it definitely does not mean that God is angry with me...or even tired of me and deciding to keep His distance.

I've come to realize that conviction is actually the double-edged sword of Jesus, asking for permission to cut whatever darkness I've blindly been holding hands with...to separate me from an enemy that seriously wants to hurt me, stab me in the back, kill me, and destroy me.

You know, the enemy really is serious. He seriously HATES us. This enemy is the same enemy that murders millions of innocent babies each year before they even come out of the womb; the enemy that causes fathers to molest their children and mothers to neglect them; the one that caused Hitler to torture and kill countless innocent Jews in order to completely exterminate their race; the one who invented cancer and depression and suicide; the one who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy.

Yet it's this enemy that appears in the most appealing of forms, offering us comfort, pleasure, and excitement. He asks us to come out to play, and we go....We numb our convictions, take his hand, and go for walks, round and round in circles. And it's only a matter of time before this "playmate" really nails us and we see the brutal truth of who he is and what he's done to us.

Jesus, on the other hand, is SO righteous, SO good, and SO in love it hurts. He is so passionately jealous for us. He's jealous for those that don't know him, yes. And I believe there is even a special longing for those that do know him and are denying him. And what's worse, is we deny him for his enemy, the one who hates us with passion. Jesus desires to save us and is calling us. Our spirits are screaming and all of Heaven is watching to see what we'll do. And Jesus' love never weakens or wavers. It is beyond sin. It is beyond death. There is a war raging for each of our hearts.

And so I've found that I need to see the voice of conviction as the voice of a desperate lover, calling out to me; warning me against a serious assault. It is the call for my heart to be fully His and to receive all that He has for me, undeserved.

Proverbs 3:11My child, don't ignore it when the LORD disciplines you, and don't be discouraged when he corrects you. 12For the LORD corrects those he loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.

Oh God, let your Holy Spirit become my most faithful BEST FRIEND... let me love his warnings as well as his exhortation and direction. Let me be so sensitive to Him. Tune my ears to His voice and direct my eyes toward His visions. And let Wisdom be a sister to me. An intimate friend who needs no boundaries. Let my walls fall and Wisdom flow freely through my land.

Proberbs 8:34 Blessed is the man who listens to me,
watching daily at my doors,
waiting at my doorway.

35 For whoever finds me finds life
and receives favor from the LORD.

36 But whoever fails to find me harms himself;
all who hate me love death."

A Thing of Beauty

I can't see the sunset from where I sit but I know its happening. I can feel His beauty all around me. He is glorious. I love to meditate on how beautiful he is. As a woman, I am facinated with beauty. I love to see and touch and smell beauty in all its forms and long to be beautiful myself. Made in the image of God, I want to represent the beautiful parts about him and to know all the beauty he has created and is. I want to know what is beautiful in me.

Here are some things I just found that he thinks are beautiful:

15 How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves.

It is beautiful to have eyes that do not look side to side, but are focused straight ahead...like doves...looking at Jesus.

2:10 My lover spoke and said to me, "Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.

It is beautiful when we rise, leave everything we're doing, and come away with him.

8:5 Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?

It is beautiful when we lean on him, giving him our hearts in total abandonment. This way we start to look just like him, and He IS beauty.

What's really cool though, is how he gazes at us with focused eyes like doves too.

5:12 His eyes are like doves by the water streams, washed in milk, mounted like jewels.

He invites us to come away with him by luring us with his own beauty(scent counts as beauty).

3:6Who is this coming up from the desert like a column of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and incense made from all the spices of the merchant?

And he sees us as beautiful, even when all we see is failure to make the mark.

4:7 All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you.

And finally, I just wanted to include this verse because I think its a really cool picture of him to visualize.

6:10 Who is this that appears like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession?

How's everyone doin? I'm logging in from my desk at work. Things are slow and I'm just waiting for the phone to ring so I thought I'd start a blog! I'd like to start by posting a picture of myself.

This is me at lunch today. I was in a hurry so I got a little on my face. Sorry, I'm not very good at first impressions.

My job is the coolest job ever. I'm an administrative assistant for Express. I'm pretty happy with it. Good hours, good pay, nice people...what else can ya ask for? Although I had to quit my wonderful job at Fossil. (No more %50 discount!! :( )

I start school tonight after a long break. (Not long enough). I'm hoping that getting into the swing of things isnt too painful. I developed a few bad habbits over the break. For one, I go to bed way too late at like 2:00a.m. Then at like noon, I roll out of bed in the morning and do this:

And no, thats not water my friends. That's an accident due to lateness and bad habbits. So I strongly suggest to anyone, going on long breaks from school or work to maintain a nice, tidy sleeping schedule.

As you can see, I'm very good at giving advice. Ask me anything, and I'm sure I can come up with something. Anyways, time to go! Talk to you all later!