An Unexpected Journey....A Changed Heart

After much preparation, continual prayer, and a new journal, I set off a journey that would change my heart. I had always heard people say they had a heart for this nation, but it was hard for me to completely comprehend and relate to that. I grew up hearing about things on the news and saw stereotypes in movies, and although I loved hearing about other people's passion, I felt as if I would never experience that same affection...or so I thought. But the Lord is sovereign. He sent me to be immersed in this culture for 10 days, and I came back with a heart so burdened and changed for this people group that I can't imagine a day where my prayers will not cover these people in love and beg the Lord for their salvation. I have faces and personalities in my mind that my heart literally hurts for. And that is what has been missing in my life the past 19 years. Sure I have always known people who do not know Christ, but I have been missing the key to spreading the Gospel daily and that is knowing and truly acknowledging the urgency that the person I'm laughing with, eating with, and starting to love will one day not be in Heaven with a Sovereign and loving God who has created them and longs for them to spend eternity with Him. Why would I not want to tell them where the joy that I have comes from? Where the peace that I live with, go to sleep with and wake up with that continually surrounds and comforts me is rooted in? Where the hope of the future that I have abides in? And where the love that is so easily shown to others is so perfectly modeled? Why would I not tell them about a Creator who made them, loves them, cares for them, walked this Earth for them, died for them, and raised to life for them taking their place and washing their black sins white as snow? All these years...and I have been missing it. My heart has not truly ached for them. But now, I don't know if I will see a day when it does not... and oh how life is different. How time on my knees is so much more precious. I see the faces and hear the laughs, I know the names, and although I don't know their hearts, I long for their hearts to know Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Not only in this culture, but people that I live life with daily. As a follower of Christ, this is what I have been made for. To love Him and pursue Him, but to point every single person I meet to Him. I pray that my life will model that. That my prayers and my conversations would truly glorify Him, and it would not be me, but the Holy Spirit who lives in me and who is continually leading and guiding my thoughts, steps, and words. It doesn't seem feasible to take for granted the salvation that I have and the grace that has covered me any longer... what a precious gift that is and how I long for every single person to know and experience the way we were created to comprehend and embrace the life that was so graciously given to us through the Son. 

A New Year - A Clean Slate

Why does the first day of the new year always feel so refreshing? Every morning the sun rises and we have new mercies and a God waiting for us to bring Him glory. But it seems through the mundane day-to-day routine, we begin to take that "refreshing new slate" for granted. Until of course that clock strikes midnight and the calendar turns a new year. Sparkling grape juice overflows as glasses "cheer" to what seems like a completely new start...free to choose and change, free to make your life anything you desire. What if we woke up every morning and acted like it was the start of a new year, a new day, free to make choices and love people the way Christ commands and the way He loves us? What if we woke up each morning and had a resolution, a resolution to pursue Him with everything we had and everything that was in us? What if when our feet hit the floor in the morning, we were thanking Him for the blessings and trials of the past, but looking forward to what He was going to bring next? What if we woke up each morning and had a willingness to serve in whatever way we could? What if we woke up feeling refreshed, ready to conquer the day and start something new? What if we woke up every morning with a clean slate? The amazing thing is is that we do. And how often I take that for granted...

"The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning."
Lamentations 3:22-23