Currently Listening Mighty to Save By Hillsong Days of Elijah see related

REST

He has been waiting and calling to me

Come here my child, and sit on My knee

You are weary, worn, and sore

Life has become such a tiresome chore

Yet I am here—offering my embrace

Come and hide your tear-stained face

Grab hold of Me for what you need

Upon My words & truths daily feed

For I am your Father—you belong to me

I am the only One who can truly make you free

My child—call to Me and you will find a sweet release

Become lost in the embrace of your Prince of Peace

Rest in My plan and what I will do

To make Myself fully known to you.

Jessica Hughes

March 29, 2008

Wow.  This thing is so techy I can barely figure xanga out anymore!

So for those interested, I've updated my regular blog and cleaned it up a bit:

www.restingandrejoicing.wordpress.com

Hope you enjoy!  Anyone can comment!

Fighting to Remember

It's that time of year....

Finals Hit
Seeing Family both immediate and extended
Celebrating with more parties than you have the rest of the year combined
You hear the same specials songs enough times to scream
This fluffy white-stuff starts appearing everywhere whether fake or real
Illness hits the world in an ironicaly inconvenient way
You have to wrap up all the odds & ends from the past year
You begin to wonder what the next year will hold
Everything can cram in and you find yourself forgetting...
Forgetting what it is we're celebrating...
Not wanting to reflect on what we're celebrating...
Wanting wait for the madenswss to end before you begin to remember...

Remember what we are celebrating or should I say who are celebrating.  Christmas time was given to remember.  Remember that God Himself came down and was incarnate as a man.  He demonstrated His perfect love to us while we were yet sinners.  This is why the story never grows old.  It is the story of perfect love bestowed upon imperfect humanity....Please, let us fight to remember.  Fight to focus on the One who is what Christmas is all about.

"Glory to God in the Highest and on earth, peace and goodwill toward men upon whom His favor rests."

"Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
(Eph. 3:20-21)

What else can y ou say when God works so miraculously on your behalf???  I asked for a chance to say, "I love you" and God gave me a friend!  I asked for wound to be healed & God provided supernatural salve. ...

It has been a LONG time since I said anything on xanga.  A day over a month to be exact.  It's rather odd.  SO much has happened.  SO much I have learned, yet SO much I have yet to learn.  I feel as if I'm in a fog of learning:

There is something that has been greatly and at times almost unbearingly pressed upon me as of late.  This is the issue of how we as believers are to unconditionally love and trust those who are created in the image of God.  A shorter version–how do we love and trust others when trusts have been broken?

  I confess that I do not really know the answer to these questions.  Never has my understanding of trust been so challenged as this year.  Trust of those whom I love–both in authority over me and those whom I’m called to love.  In ministry we talk so much about loving the unlovable or those who do not even want our love.  But the sad reality is we also recognize that there are people who we shouldn’t pour into.  Is pouring into someone different than unconditionally loving them and expressing that love towards them?

  He poured Himself into these men unconditionally–yet He knew they were qualified.  But this is God Himself.  How can we, as fallen man, properly know or understand what people we are to pour into?  Yes, we’re given some guidelines in Scripture, but how does that fit with unconditional love?  Take for eample the straying sheep whom you cry over, pray over, and have nightmares about for months on end.  Finally, oh what a miracle! this little sheep comes back to the fold.  Did you bring that lamb back?  Ultimately, no.  But did God use you in the process?  If you were faithful to pray and do what you could, He did use you.  Was it wrong for you to continue to be so spiritually involved with that individual?  To wrestle with God so continually for that person’s soul?  Now they are coming back and what should you do?  Pour into them again?  Or is that a waste?  Did they only have one chance and blow it?

  An underlying question to this whole thing that can and should be asked is–did you ever stop loving this person?  Because that is most definitely something which should be repented of if that was the case.  We should never stop loving those around us.  But what should that love really look like?  What is unconditional love??