Desires of your Heart

"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of  your heart." Psalm 37:4

I used to think that this verse meant that if I was a "good girl" and followed God and obeyed his commandments and spent time with him, then he would give me everything that I wanted.
He would give me my hopes and dreams and desires, and allow them to become a reality.
But you know what? I've come to realize that I was wrong. I've realized that it's not about
God making my dreams come true, but instead it is about God changing my heart and
turning my dreams into HIS dreams for my life. & that makes me so excited!
I'm excited for God to take my heart and desires and turn them into his and to make
my heart completely his.....it's not going to happen over night. It's going to be
a lifelong process of learning to seek and follow God and watching him transform
my dreams & heart, but I simply cannot wait, because God's plans are always WAY better
than mine!    :)  

Quick Post

Sometimes life gets busy....and posting gets shoved to the back of the to-do list. So for now here's a quote that I've been loving lately!

""What gives me the most hope every day is God’s grace; knowing that his grace is going to give me the strength for whatever I face, knowing that nothing is a surprise to God."

& we got to spend the past weekend watching our friends 4 little kids!   Me & my Oliver :) Isn't he such a cutie?

God in the Everyday

Recently I've been learning to see God in the everyday moments of my life, because he's there, but too often I miss him! However, the other day God really blessed and provided for me in a small, but meaningful way. I broke my iPod touch  (dropped it on the driveway and the screen cracked). So i obviously needed a new one unless I wanted to be constantly cutting my finger on glass, but with getting ready for college I don't really have the money to buy a new i-pod....so i was looking at used ones online and I found a couple that I liked, they are still a little expensive, but I had enough extra graduation money to make it work. But then I noticed that people were selling iPods with cracked screens as well! I thought hmm....maybe i'll sell my old iPod so that I can get a new iPod. So I put mine up for sale and within 4hours it had SOLD! It was crazy! I got almost enough money from my broken iPod to buy a new one! :) AND on top of that, the same night I was able to buy a new iPod and it was even in the color that I had wanted (the new white iPod touch)! It was so neat to see how God provided for me in such a little way. To see how he cares about the little cares and desires of our hearts and how he seeks to bless us! I want to learn to continue to see God in little moments like these and be grateful and amazed and I watch him provide for and bless me! God is so good and too often I neglect to see how he is working in my life! So grateful for a God who not only cares about the big important things of my life, but also the little insignificant ones like an iPod.

Importance of Christ's Life

“For by the on man’s disobedience the many were made sinners. So by one man’s obedience…many will be made righteous.” Romans 5:19

Christ’s perfect life and obedience was important. His obedience included a life in which he obeyed God’s law in all things at all times. Every day was perfect. Our savior lived in perfect alignment with God’s will and law.

Jerry Bridges says it well:

“For the most part Jesus’s life of perfect obedience has

been seen only as a necessary precondition to his death.

The truth is, however, Jesus not only died for us, He also lived for us.

 That is, all that Christ did both in his life and death,

He did in our place as our substitute.”

We as humans have double guilt. We have the inherited guilt from Adam and then on top of that our own guilt and debt to condemn us. Jesus came and took care of the problem of the debt that we owed.

Even the absence of sin is not a ticket to an audience with God. We need more than a removal of guilt we need a savior who can give us the perfection that we can never attain. An absence of sin seems impressive compared to the dirt in our hearts, but God requires much more than a blank slate, he requires righteousness and perfection.

The death of Christ is what removed our debt and returned us to a balance of zero, while Christ’s obedience is what put unimaginable wealth in our bank account; it is because of Christ’s life and perfect obedience that we are granted perfect righteousness before God

Justification by faith alone means that we’re justified by the works of Christ alone.

So yes we should be very grateful for Christ’s death on the cross, but we need to be just as grateful for his obedient life as well! 

Don't replace God's word

"Absalam stole the hearts of the people of Israel."  2 Samuel 15:6

We need to be careful to guard our hearts and make sure that God is the only one who owns our hearts. It is easy to slowly let other people and books become as important to us as God and the Bible. There are so many amazing christian leaders like John Piper, Francis Chan, Singclair Furgeson, CJ Mahaney, John Piper, Beth Moore, Mark Driscoll etc... the list goes on. These people are a gift from God, and a means of grace, but as awesome as they are we must be careful never to confuse their teachings, doctrines and books with God and his words. I love John Piper and I listen to his messages often and have read many of his books and as helpful and packed full of truth as they are I know that Piper would never want me to confuse his words with God's. We must not let the words of christian leaders become our truth, God's words is the sole basis of truth. These leaders are meant to be catalysts in helping you to think and teaching you, but ultimately they should be pointing you back to God's word and drawing you into the Bible, NEVER replacing it, because once we hold someone's words with the same weight as God's and see them as just as valuable than it is a slippery slope. Listening to God following his word should be of primary importance, not listening to a theologian or learning about their new revelation.Soon that person maybe be the one who is leading your heart instead of God.  just like what happened to the Israelites when Absalom led them astray.

Weekend Quote

"the role of the beauty of the gospel is: to be the object our affections, the purpose of our identity, the reality of our existence, and the joy of our salvation. It draws us in like a beautiful sunset, puts God’s glory on display, and challenges us to realign everything. In discipleship, we are simply pointing people to its beauty, asking them to find happiness there."
Jason Garwood

Lyrics....

Worship music is an amazing gift from God to be able to praise him and enjoying listening to the beauty
of the music as the truth penetrates your heart, but we need to be wary of the lyrics. Just because they are "christian" and the song is being played on a Christian radio station doesn't mean that everything in the song is right. I have a habit of just singing along to songs and not even realizing what I'm saying and then all of sudden I stop and am like "whoa is that really what this song is saying?"

That happened to me the other day except this time it was a Christian song and as the chorus was playing it says "I want to believe, Jesus help me believe that I am someone worth dying for."



I was getting all into the song and then I thought about it for a minute and was like wait a minute! This isn't right. Because you see, I'm not someone worth dying for. I am a wrethced sinner who despised and rejected God and rebelled against him. No matter how hard I try even my best deeds are like filthy fags! I'm selfish and prideful, I want everything to be about me and I want to be the ruler of my life. Does this sound like someone worth dying for? You know what? I'm even way worse then I could even imagine (that's pretty bad). The Bible says that we don't even know the sinfulness of our own hearts. that's how bad it is. If that's the case, I am not even close to being someone "worth dying for"! In fact it's the opposite, I should die!

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” Romans 3:9-12

But you see this is the whole beauty of the gospel. Because we are so sinful and wicked yet Christ still loved us enough to come and save us. You see if I was "good" and Christ saved me, then it wouldn't be so amazing now would it? Because I would have in a sense deserved Christ's sacrifice. and I would have felt like I had earned it through my "goodness", but because we didn't deserve Christ's sacrafice for us in the least bit that's what makes it so astounding! That is what shows you the depth of his love for you, so no you may not have been worth dying for, but that didn't stop God from lavishing his amazing love and undeserved grace on you! Revel in the beauty of the cross today!

Romans 5:7-8 - For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.