Part 1

Throughout the years of teaching I would always ALWAYS almost throw up before I taught...I was so nervous. I was so scared that I would get up and it would be Jenny speaking and that the Holy Spirit would not show up. Anyway, I had several precious girls over the year meet me in a closet to pray. We would get down on the floor in our dresses or skirts and lay prostrate before God and beg Him to meet with us. I have often heard that I would get over this trembling and nervousness. I would sometimes reply...no, I don't ever want to get comfortable with this. I don't ever want to feel like I have this thing down. I don't ever want to show up to teach and it be "Jenny in the flesh". So, on Saturday nights I would stay up half the night and beg God to speak to me. I felt that if He was not speaking a fresh word to me that I had NOTHING to say to anyone else. While curicullums are good and they have their place I could not contain what God was teaching me personally. Some of the things that I would beg God to do would be to bring people who were stuck in the trenches of sin and that they would come to the waters without money and drink deep. I would ask God to bring people that would get a hold of His word and that He would change their lives...and I saw it time and time again. There is nothing like it. Seriously, I have goosebumps as I type this...you have no idea what the Word has meant to me (also, before I get side tracked...I get the same nervousness when I open up a blog post to share). You can not imagine the desperation that I had for someone to want me and to have unconditional love and in a world of lies...I wanted truth. I am sure you have felt the same. I was reminded yet again that there is nothing money can buy that can satisfy the deep longings of our soul like the Holy Spirit will for believers in Christ. Yet so often...we refuse to come to Him. We heap sin apon sin in our efforts to chase down the wind of satisfying our own souls and don't you think that sometimes each one of us have gone to a place where we slipped from the joy and satisfaction that abiding in Christ brings (if we have indeed tasted and seen that He is good). I have been to that place where I just got worn out and decided to take things in my own hands and try to meet my own needs...it's a scary thing...and a miserable thing.

Two days ago, I was sitting still (not sure where Morgan was since I had a minute to sit still) and I heard in my inner man the words from Isaiah 40: but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. I asked the Lord to confirm that this was a word for me along with a verse in Colossians...and I opened up a book I was reading the next day and turned to the page I was on for that day and guess what treasure was on the page...those verses from Isaiah and Colossians. Please don't believe the lie that God does not care about the details. He is into the details...He knows every hair on our heads and every hair that has ever fallen to the ground. He knows our hearts when we feel like our sins are more than the number of hairs on our head. I like the King James Version better:
31But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Here is the context it is to rich to leave out:
28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

The word for wait in this verse means what you think: Qawah: to expect, patiently wait for, hope.

Why do you think that you and I are so quick to quit believing God? Why do you think we decide to take matters in our own hands and strive to go at this thing on our own? I think that we so often trust in our limited sight and better yet...how we feel or what comes natural to us. Just to be honest, I have really been taking a certain matter in my own hands. I in essence, with my actions said you know what God you are taking to long and I am weary of this so I am going to do and say what I want here. Then guess what? I was sinning against God. My friend Jessica and I were talking about how easy it is for us to do what is natural but when we choose what doesn't come natural we experience freedom. Case in point. I was in an argument with Rod over the weekend and instead of blowing up and saying things to cut I got in my car to go to work and I prayed about it. Guess what I saw the power of God show up in that small matter to remind me to literally go to Him first! I was talking to Rods mom about how I will do real well and then default back into going at it my own in defending myself or stating my case instead of entrusting it to the Lord. She said she did the same thing when she was younger and that I just can't choose the natural way at the moment. There really is power in exercising self-control and not sinning in the moment. Galatians is dead on when it talks about biting and devouring each other...it really will destroy your relationships. I can still remember words that were said to me when I was younger that damaged me.

Another thing that I have been so invaded by this week is Hosea 14. It is prophecy but I believe that these verses are as applicable to us as they were to the Israelites. It is God's promise of blessing to the repentant. Also, the last verses state that God is right. Right indeed He is. He can not be anything other than truth and in Him there is no darkness at all! I think that we can get in such a pattern of sin and disobedience that we can't even imagine getting out of the ditch. We look at other people in the faith and think that they are just "other" than us and that we could never be walking in the liberty that they are...that is a farce. It is just sins entanglement and lie. I was struck by the Amplified version of Hebrews 12:1-2 this week...please take it in: 1THEREFORE THEN, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us,
2Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection].

The Lord in His infallible word tells us that we should look at all who have gone before us in the faith (Hebrews 11 is such a good picture) that bore testimony to the truth and that we should run in the same way. Run free of encumbrances...whatever is encumbering you may be different for me, but you know what it is. So, we need to be stripped of those things by letting God have His way in us and by having a steady diet of the Word. I was listening to Beth this week and she was talking about Psalm 37:4 and how we don't just need head knowledge we desperately need God to write His word on our hearts.

There is going to have to be part two to this because I hardly got out what I wanted to say...