Battle

Silence. 

I have been silent lately because i felt as though the Lord was being silent.

I came to a realization this weekend, after the Lord graciously allowed me to see my sin...

He was and is not silent,

I have selective hearing. 

When I set my pride aside, I was able to hear what He was saying.

It was hard.

I didn't like it.

But He is making me new.

His love for me is so deep, so profound, that He will not leave me where I am,

despite how much I think I may want to stay here.

When I chose to listen, He taught me a marvelously painful lesson: 

So often as Christians, we assume our job, our purpose even, 

is to 'have it all together,' to be joyful and content and patient in affliction.

And while these are fruit of a relationship with the Lord,

we are never called to ignore, diminish, or hide 

areas of sin in our life for fear of being less than the 'good Christian.' 

In fact, I am beginning to believe the Lord loathes this common trend amongst Christ followers.

We will never be transformed to the likeness of Christ if we put all of our time and energy into "having it all together."

So I am here to say that I don't.

In fact, the Lord is beginning what I have no doubt will be one of the most painful reconstruction projects in my life that I will ever endure.

But I am not avoiding it any longer,

and if that means I don't fit the "good Christian" mold,

so be it.

I am a work in progress,

I am dependent on my Savior,

I am safe in His arms,

and I don't think He would have it any other way. 

What area of your life has pride not allowed the Lord's transforming power to permeate?

Give it up.

I believe it is far more honorable, noble and courageous to honestly lay your sin and burdens at the foot of the cross than it is to attempt to conceal them.

Let Him work, beloved. Let Him move and transform.

It's His speciality. 

Standing in a restaurant yesterday, 

I noticed a quote by Theodore Roosevelt hanging in a frame on the wall 

that really gripped me...

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

I want to be one who is in the arena,

who is marred and has battle wounds, 

because we are in a war. 

My cause is Christ and my loss is gain. 

The victory has already been won,

but I want to that victory to reign true in my own life. 

Let us battle. 

Vanished

In a recent post, I spoke about my burden for modern day slavery and human trafficking,

with an emphasis on the need for awareness and action.

Since then, I have continued educating myself on these issues 

and have honestly been broken over my findings.

One book that has greatly opened my eyes is Half The Sky 

by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. 

I highly encourage you to take the time to read it for yourself, 

but I want to share a view portions that have furthered my zeal for action. 

Below you will find a few facts extracted from Half The Sky:

39,000 baby girls die annually in China because parents don't give them the same medical care and attention that boys receive - and that is just in the first year of life. 

In India, a "bride burning" - to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry - takes place approximately once every two hours, but rarely is found to be news worthy. 

In Pakistan, Isalamabad, and Rawalpindi, 5,000 women and girls 

have been doused in kerosine and set alight by family members or in-laws - or perhaps worse, been seared with acid - for 

perceived disobedience just in the last nine yeas. 

Amartya Sen, the ebullient Nobel Prize - winning economist, has developed a gauge of gender inequality that is a striking reminder of the stakes involved. 

"More than 100 million women are missing."

Did you catch that?

100 million women are missing.

Think about the profound impact that your 

mother, wife, sister, daughter, and so on have had on your life.

Now consider your life without them,

as if they had just completely vanished from the face of this Earth,

because that is what has happened to 100 million women.

100 million world changers.

100 million nurturing mothers.

100 million loving sisters.

100 million wise grandmothers.

GONE.

You see, women statistically have a longer lifespan than males, 

so in much of the world there are more females in males. 

However, in places where girls have a deeply unequal status, they vanish. 

2 million women disappear every single year as a result of gender discrimination.

Successive research on gender discrimination has proven that in India, 

a little girl dies from discrimination every four minutes. 

How is this so? When a little boy in India is in need of medical care, He is taken to the hospital. When a young girl is in the same situation, her parents often times choose to wait it out, eventually resulting in the child dying a preventable death. 

More girls have been killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century. 

This is the reality of the world that we live in today.

Prior to reading Half the Sky,

the weight of gender discrimination did not resonate with me at all.

In America, gender discrimination is typically confined to issues such as

unequal pay and a crude gesture here and there in the workplace.

I acknowledge that these are problems,

but America will have truly reached the pinnacle of a nation without virtue

if we are at the point where we would rather spend time

 fighting for equal pay amongst men and women,

rather than working to end maternal mortality, sex trafficking, and gender violence,

which are direct results of gender discrimination. 


Better yet, where is the Church in terms of these issues?
We serve a God who came to this Earth to proclaim a radical message of
freedom and liberty for those held captive,
a message that swam greatly against the tide of society,
by proclaiming that 
"In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female."
We must get out of the pews, out of our million dollar sanctuaries, 
out of our state of comfortable Christianity, 
and do something. 

Please hear me out,

the 50 cents less that women in America earn in comparison with men

is a form of discrimination,

but this is not a life or death issue.

To women in China, Pakistan, Istanbul, and countless other foreign countries,

gender discrimination demands their life.

In fact, every year, gender discrimination will claim 2 million female lives. 

Women's ministry has been my passion for some time now,
but I never understood the weight of this call until I opened my eyes to the plight of women today.
Satan is after women, and I firmly believe that He is
fighting with the full force and fury of hell to see to it that 
gender discrimination continues on the path which it is currently taking.


John 10:10 says that "The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy," 
but Christ has come that "they may have life, and have it to the full."
Modern day slavery and the extinction of millions of women
marks the success of Satan's goal and desire:
to steal, kill and destroy.


May we embody the will of Christ as we act out of 
His strength and for His glory to 
bring the abundant life in Christ
to the modern day slaves who are begging for you and I to speak and act on their behalf.

Joy

I had one of those moments today where I was just overwhelmed with joy.

With my favorite winter Starbucks drink in hand,

(tall skinny peppermint mocha for any of you wanting to know the key to my heart)

being subtly serenaded by the beautiful voice of Brooke Fraser,

watching the sunset on a cool fall afternoon,

I could not help but smile.

No, this Earth is not our home,

every day we are at war with our very selves,

but there are subtle reminders of goodness all around 

and constant opportunities to choose joy.

The Lord longs to captivate our hearts and very lives.

But we must open our eyes to His presence and stirring.

And in those moments, I believe the peace of His presence brings an assurance of joy.

1 Peter 1:8-9 reminds us that "Though [we] have not seen him, [we] love him.

Though [we] do not now see him, [we] believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

Here is the realization I came to:

Joy in a world fixed with such sorrow points to someone worth being joyous over.

Joy turns our focus heavenward and glorifies the Father. 

Choose joy today.

Rejoice in salvation, rejoice in knowing that your Heavenly Father delights in you.

Set The Captives Free

Isaiah 61 became a passage of refuge during a season of my life where I needed to constantly be reminded that the Lord desires "to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty, and open the prison doors to those who are bound." 

During this time, I learned that the heart of the Lord is freedom. 

He desires that His children live life unencumbered and unfettered.

Time and time again, Isaiah 61 began to show up after I came to Samford.

I thought it was just a wonderful reminder of the place the Lord had delivered me from,

but it has become so much more.

I remember sitting at Brook Hills one Sunday morning, the first time I heard this passage applied to a subject area that has since captivated the core of my being: human trafficking.

Over the years, I heard tidbits of information about those 'extreme' scenarios in foreign countries where a young girl would be abducted and sold into a life of modern day slavery, being used and abused for sex.

This was a harsh but distant reality for so long, 

until the Lord brought me out of the darkness of my own naivety. 

Literally every day, one piece of information after another has bombarded my comfortable reality to the point that I simply cannot passively sit back and act as if I do not know that which I now do.

Human trafficking is not a distant issue or something of the past.

It is taking place in the very airports that we fly in and out of,

as a result of the products that we purchase,

in the restaurants we dine in,

as well as in foreign countries.

My heart is so broken over this issue, because it could not stand in any greater opposition to the gospel.

The gospel brings light, this is darkness.

The gospel brings freedom, this is captivity.

How can we as Christians proclaim the freedom of the gospel to people living in physical chains?

Freedom is a foreign concept to them.

There are more than 27 million people in modern day slavery.

There are currently 2.1 billion people who proclaim to have faith in Christ. 

We can bring an end to modern day slavery.

Here is what we cannot do:

We cannot remain uninformed. Choose to educate yourself on the realities of human trafficking.

We cannot remain inactive. Do something! So often we question "what the Lord's will is for our life."  He undoubtedly desires freedom for these slaves.

 "For I the Lord love justice; I hate robbery and wrong." 

These are the words of the Lord.

Human trafficking is unjust and wrong,

and therefore the object of the Lord's hatred.

By actively doing nothing,

we are no better than the pimps exploiting young women in Africa,

or the factory owners overworking boys in China.

With this one voice and this one life I have been given,

I will not turn a blind eye to this issue.

I will speak and act on behalf of the 27 million in bondage,

because I know what it is like to be a slave set free.

In fact, every Christian can resonate with the concept of bringing brought out of captivity.

Join me in the effort to end modern day slavery.

If you would like to begin acting to end human trafficking,

here are a few resources that I have found quite helpful:

Organizations

http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/

http://www.ijm.org/

http://www.traffick911.com/

http://www.wellspringliving.org/

http://www.tinyhandsinternational.org/

http://www.polarisproject.org/

Books

God in a Brothel by Daniel Walker

Not for Sale by David Batstone

Passport Through Darkness by Kimberly Smith

Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof 

The Slave Next Door by Kevin Bales

Action

Before purchasing products, research to see whether the company is itself perpetuating the slave trade or is engaging in fair trade.

Buying products from a company that utilizes slave labor in its supply chain is 

only furthering the prevalence of human trafficking.

http://www.free2work.org/home

Broken

This is a season of brokenness.

These words are bitter on the tongue still,

but this is my honest condition right now:

I am broken before the Lord,

but I am beginning to better understand the heart of some of my greatest faith heroes,

 like Paul, as a result.

The faith that could rejoice in suffering, trial, and great affliction was once foreign to me.

In my comfortable world, comfortable Christianity was just about all that fit.

But comfortable Christianity, is no Christianity at all.

I know this because I have lived it.

I know this because when I sit in His lap, in shambles, my veneer is exposed and all hope of faking it is lost. But it is here that I find the face of a Father saying, "Here is my dream for you, my daughter."

There is no condemnation in the arms of Christ,

no loneliness, 

no unmet need,

no cry unheard.

He is here, in this season of brokenness. 

As Christians, we are not meant to live in a perpetual state of brokenness,

but these seasons will come,

and there is so much beauty to be found in realizing your complete and utter dependence on the Lord.

So whether you are in a valley or on a mountain top right now, 

sit in His lap today, strip away the veneer, and hear His dreams for you!

"I have called you by name; You are mine."

Isaiah 43:1

These are the words of a Father,

who in every season of this life,

longs to prove His faithfulness to You.

He is not far, draw near to Him!

We Are Overcomers & Co-Heirs

Here's Why...

Since beginning college, I have found myself frequently asking, why I do a lot of the things that I do.

I have found that I often act out of habit, cultural norm/acceptance, or routine. 

The beauty of reflection, has therefore become ever real to me. 

Why, you ask? (good - you catch on quickly)

Because, if we are not careful,

routine, habit, and cultural norms will permeate into and define our spiritual lives

and before we know it,

little that we do will be a result of spirit-led communion with the Father.

Lately, I began to ask myself why I keep this blog going,

whether or not I am writing to myself.

Here is what I have determined:

I am committed to pouring my heart out in this way for two main reasons.

1. My Heavenly Father has called me out of darkness and into light. 

Clearly, the things I post here are not top secret or classified facts. 

Yes, they are personal, but it is one way I bring my struggles and tests to light.

There is freedom in light, in truth.

Satan's goal for Christians is isolation and to me, this is one way of breaking that bondage.

I am laying my heart out, being vulnerable.

Which leads me to reason number two...

2. I am committed to this because if even one person finds one glimmer of hope from one word in one post, every bit of it will be worth it. 

I journaled throughout high school, but I never would have thought to share those entries with anyone.

Why? (You're getting good : ] )

That would mean they would see that I'm not perfect...shocker.

Well, now I am here to tell you that I am not.

And if knowing that there is another young follower of Christ out there, wrestling with the flesh and struggling to die to myself daily, helps even one person, then there has been purpose in this blog.

I am learning the beauty of community, the beauty of sharing in our struggles, of being vulnerable.

So rather than keeping another journal all to myself, 

here are the open pages of my heart and life.

My story is still being written.

Day by day, I am watching as the Lord illuminates the path to which He has called me to walk.

It is painful, hazy, confusing, frustrating, captivating, and glorious all at the same time.

I do not have the answers, 

but I am free to admit that in Christ.

My security is not in having the answers,

but in He who answers when I call to Him.

I do not trust in the plan,

but The Planner.

Broken to beautiful, 

That is my heart's cry.

So in the good and the bad,

I am here to proclaim that my God is forever good, just, and righteous.

In Him I find life and freedom.

Anything good in me, is Him.

He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

And I yearn for my lifesong to sing His praises till the moment I see Him face to face,

and am able to embrace Him forevermore.

Until that day, 

I will struggle through this life,

with my eyes fixed on the prize.

I am a servant of the Lord

and here is my journey Home...

Follow

Lysa TerKeurst is a hero of mine in the faith. 

She is zealous to live as a women of God, 

despite what the culture around her says.

And this morning, when speaking on how to know the Lord daily & intimately,

she gripped me.

I thought I might share...

If we want to know God, we have to follow Him.

Follow His instructions.

Follow His heart.

Follow His example.

Not just follow along as we mindlessly repeat the words of the Jesus songs and scribble some notes during the pastor’s sermon.

No.

Really follow. Follow hard. Follow passionately. Follow fully. Follow with engaged minds and willing hearts and open hands and ready feet.

Follow Him today.

The words of Jeremiah promise that when we seek Him, 

we will find Him.

A Burdened Heart

This Friday evening, I had the privilege of attending Secret Church at Brook Hills.

It was honestly seven of the greatest hours I have spent during my college career.

But the events that transpired after Secret Church have had the most profound impact on my life.

The day after Secret Church rolled around and I began to process all that I had learned the night before.

I agreed to nanny for a family going out of town later in the day, and I felt so burdened to put the Word into action, as Pastor Platt had challenged us to do throughout Secret Church.

Yet, the enemy caused me to question how this could be done with young girls.

The topics we covered were heavy: marriage, sex, homosexuality, polygamy, etc.

Not issues you want to bring up with children.

That is, if you have any intention of continuing as their nanny.

Nonetheless, from the moment I walked in the door, I felt so burdened to share my heart with them.

Not knowing how to proceed, the Lord blessed me with open doors of opportunity.

The girls began to share about how they hadn’t ever really gone to church and when they had, they thought it was worse than school because it was so boring and you couldn’t even talk.

My heart broke.

The Gospel is intriguing,

The Bible is arguably the best ‘story book’ of all time,

But children are neglected in the Church.

Their potential is overlooked

And therefore their Church experience is nothing more than non-engaging and boring.

Our God is creative, unique, beautiful, captivating, personal, and worthy of being portrayed as all of the above and so much more!

I began to tell them about my faith family here, and what we had done just the night before.

When they asked why we studied the Bible for so long,

I explained the correlation between that and the underground churches across the world.

One of the girls, who is almost in high school, got wide eyed and said, “people are killed for going to church?”

In turn, I got wide eyed, because she had never heard, but more importantly, because of the realization that I assume everyone knows, that everyone has heard.

But friend, that is far from the reality.

Just as these girls had never heard that there are places in this world that people cannot worship or express their faith freely,

They had never heard of the Gospel.

There are 302 churches within driving distance of their home.

Yet they had never heard.

What is the church if not a beacon of light for the saving power of the Gospel?

In light of what I have learned this weekend,

Never assume that anyone already knows.

Please, for the sake of their eternity!

Redundancy should not be our concern; fear cannot be a hindering factor.

So no, I did not get into the ins and outs of Biblical divorce or abortion with these precious girls, but it is my prayer that at least a seed was planted in their hearts.

Plant a seed today, and in faith know that the Lord will cultivate that seed. 

Home

I had a moment of awakening the other day as I was filling out a general information card for myself.

I stumbled over what to put as my address.

North Carolina/Alabama?

Sometimes I feel like a displaced person, in-between homes.

It's really an odd and even unsettling feeling. 

In essence, the issue I had with my address is only a reflection of the overarching question of this season of life. 

Where is home?

In college, you aren't quite on your own completely, but you are definitely not under the wing of your parents as you once were.

It's almost like being in limbo.

And to be honest, some days it can really throw me for a spin.

After wrestling with this concept for quite some time, 

I received a devotional that I have been clinging to lately.

I'd love to share a summary of the truth that I learned just incase anyone else out there is struggling with the concept of 'home' right now too.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

"He has planted eternity in the human heart..."

As humans, our hearts are restless when we are far from home, 

our home is taken from us, or when there is a rift within that place.

So what are we to do when tragedy strikes, 

college comes,

seasons change?

We are to remember that Christ is at home in us.

We carry our eternal home with us each and every place this life takes us.

There is so much safety, security, and fulfillment to be found in that.

Christ has brought His presence to dwell exactly where you are this very moment.

Your heart is His home.

And in Him, you are home.

Despite whether your earthly home is 

near or far, broken or beautiful, 

steady or uncertain,

God dwells in you!

Rest in knowing that you are His dwelling place.

That, my friend, is security defined.

Now, I have challenged myself:

Allow Him to make my heart, His home, a happy dwelling place.

A heart undivided. 

I've asked Him to renovate and redesign until the day I enter my eternal home.

If you haven't yet to join the journey,

take that step today. 

He is seeking you.

Your heart is His earthly address.