{2 weeks of prayer}

1st - No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall confute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. (Isaiah 54:17)
2nd - He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.(Psalm 18:4)
3rd - All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. (Isaiah 54:13)
4th - The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. (Job 1:21 and 22)
5th - Whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse. (Proverbs 28:27)
6th - Remove far from me falsehood and lying; Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny You, and say, "who is the Lord?". Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. (Proverbs 30:8-9)
7th - Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in Heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. (Ecclesiastes 5:2)
8th - Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools. (Ecclesiastes 7:9)
9th - My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6)
10th - Let us press on to know the Lord (Hosea 6:3)
11th - Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2)
12th - That is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. (Romans 1:12)
13th -  Making the best use of the time, for the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:16)
14th - But I say unto you, walk in the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. (Galatians 5:16)

Throwing out the Shopping List

About the time I hit 15 "shopping lists" were in. The idea was that if you didn't know what you wanted you would never get him. I had my paper and pen out. What did I want in a spouse? I jotted down some notes about wanting a Mexican who wasn't a firefighter and made enough money to buy me coffee, or something like that. It was a pretty self-centered deal to be honest.

But now I'm not sure I want a shopping list. Here's why:

1. Shopping Lists ruin trust ~ They encourage you to trust in human reasoning. As though if he makes a certain salary and goes to Church every Sunday, he's the one for you. What happened to trusting God so much that you would say, "This guy looks nothing like what I was expecting, but this is the adventure that God is leading me to"? It seems to me that it would be rather arrogant for me to decide that I know more about this matter than my God does. It would be wise for us to remember that heart is deceitful.
2. Shopping Lists are self centered ~ They focus on what I want, rather than on what God wants. As a Christian, this is not a liberty that we get to take.
3. Shopping Lists take your eyes off what is important ~ Singleness is a season of preparation for the future. Whether that be marriage or selfless service to the King. Either way, God is using today to shape you into who you should be, not to critically analyze others.

-Lukewarm-

"What concerns me is that you are lukewarm and you want it that way. You planned your life out this way." - Francis Chan

One of my greatest sins has been the fact that I have been unwilling to share the Gospel. I want to be comfortable and sharing the Gospel is not comfortable to me. I've often been lukewarm and unrepentant. I've considered my comfort above Christ's command.

And do you know what disturbs me? I can realize all of that, and tomorrow I'll still want my desires. I'll be selfish and unbroken. My sin stands in the way of me loving God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength.

Do Not Be Weary In Prayer

I remember way back in the day when I was a little kid riding on my grandpa's shoulders. Those were the days when I didn't have a care in the world. Later we would go camping at Lassen - the campground that enthralled me, but nobody else in my family likes. On my birthday he let me drive his boat across Eagle Lake and we would fish. If something needed to be made, he could make it. If something needed to be fixed, he could fix it.
There was just one thing. My Grandpa Ken didn't love Jesus.
I remember praying for Grandpa Ken. I remember Parkinson's Disease weakening him, his heart failing and him being diagnosed with cancer. Time was short.
But that's not the end of the story. The end of the story is that my Grandpa Ken repented at the "eleventh hour". Even though he was weak and losing his ability to think clearly, he would talk about Jesus.
Tonight there's somebody else that weighs heavy on my heart. I don't know whether God will save her. But I do know that we can not become weary in well doing. We can't grow weak in prayer. We must continue to spend our days on our knees. And I know that what He does all things well.

Lessons From the Wait

May 18th 2011. I don't remember anything about the day. I doubt that all that much happened. But I know that I was crying that night. In a bright pink journal I wrote my first entry. It was a prayer. But before the prayer I penned:
But slowly I'm realizing that you need to be dedicated to Him and His Kingdom work. You are on His mission, not mine. Accomplishing His goals, not mine. I'm praying that you will be faithful now and in the future. That you will have His heart and His mission. That your heart would be explosive with His love, alive with His power, driven by His passion and dedicated by His spirit.... with or without me.
Almost a year later the bright pink journal is almost complete. It's full of struggles, prayers, and letters.
There have been lessons learned about waiting. A few of which I thought I would share:

1). I'm not waiting for him

You read it right. At one time I was and it was a really stupid idea. It was a scheme where you wait so that you can get a really good one. What if you don't get anyone?
Waiting is not about finding a really good catch. It's about honoring God no matter what. Yes, if he does ever come, he will have the joy of sweeping off her feet a girl who waited for him, but that's the blessing not the point of it all. The point is, God must be first and God must be glorified.
This doesn't mean throwing out the idea of waiting. By all means wait. It does mean that the motivation should be for God not for a guy.

2). None of this is his fault

This brings me to another journal entry:
I feel like I need to apologize to you. I need to say I'm sorry for being bitter. I'm sorry for being impatient. I'm sorry for blaming you for my lonliness and pain. I'm sorry for judging you.
You see, as a girl who is waiting for one man it is easy to be brutally judgmental of him. To be bitter and cynical over not being loved.
None of this is his fault. It really isn't. If he is a man of God, he is doing his absolute best to honor God in all relationships, including marriage. He isn't trying to make life miserable, he's simply doing what He feels to be best according to the light that God has given him.
I prayed that there wouldn't be many... sometimes I prayed for one. But I'm not sure that God will grant that. But I prayed that there wouldn't be many. It would only be an ego boost. Perhaps the lonliness is an answer to prayer.

3). Nothing changes at the altar

If you can't trust his good judgment to not pursue anything right now, how are you going to trust his leadership later on down the road? Seriously, nothing changes at the altar. This is the first step in whether or not you really want to trust this man's leadership.

{expectations}

As Pastor Mark Driscoll said, When your identity is rooted in Christ, you get to stop using people and start loving them. Primarily, expectations come from a heart that is not rooted in Christ. It's a heart that claims some allegiance to Christ, but in reality views that relationship as a math equation. God + the praise of men is what this heart longs for. It doesn't know the realities of being so rooted in Christ that they don't need other people in order to find fulfillment. It's hard for them to understand the realities of the fact that they are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. They have a hard time realizing that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to seperate them from the love of God because in their day to day lives, the love of God isn't enough for them.

Resolutions

1. I resolve to daily come before the Throne of Grace, never letting go of or losing sight of the grace that is extended to me for each breath of life here upon this earth.


2. I resolve to live the life that has been given me, looking neither to the unfathomable riches of Glory nor the lives of others as a replacement to the life that God has called me to live.


3. I resolve to embrace scars as a sign of God's glorious healing, realizing that God not only trusted me with the pain but that He held me through the process.


4. I resolve to let go of my own understanding of my weaknesses, so that God can be glorified through the weakness... confounding and putting to shame those that are strong.


5. I resolve to embrace impossibilities as faith builders, as tools to help me let go of myself and realize that I serve a God who is bigger than that.


6. I resolve to not let impossibilities define my purpose on this earth, but to leave that defining up to the God who created and can overcome those impossibilities.


7. I resolve to by God's grace wait on Him to mount me up on wings as eagles, to walk in His truth and not faint, to run towards His goals and not grow weary.


8. I resolve to praise and worship the Lord with a new song, ever rejoicing in His presence.


9. I resolve to gladly take the lowest position, the position with no applause, no reward, and no glory, that He might have all the glory.


10. I resolve to run as long as He has called me to run, to fight for as long as He calls me to fight, to bear as much pain as He calls me to bear, and to wait with patience until He calls for me.