Arise, my love

Arise my love
The winter is gone
And the seasons are starting to change
Arise my love
My beautiful one
The time of singing will follow the rain
In the city I looked
And found you not
The one my heart and soul loves
I have not a name
And not a good way
To find you my Lillie my Rose
I heard a knock
And I leaned in to hear
Listening for the voice I sought
But I waited to long
And by waiting wrong
I opened but I found you not
Arise my love
The winter is gone
And the seasons are starting to change
Arise my love
My beautiful one
The time of singing will follow the rain
So where have you gone
And why did you leave
To look I know where to start
For I am all His
and He is all mine
Two worlds but one in heart
The fire consumes
Sweeping all before
Torrents of rain can't drown it out
For love is not bought
Love is not sold
And love burns best in a drought
Arise my love
The winter is gone
And the seasons are starting to change
Arise my love
My beautiful one
Time for singing and dancing again

My Psalm

Sweet Jesus, Let me wait on Your love.
Give me patience to rest only in You.
There is no one more worthy.
I am complete in no other.
Your word is my lamp I love Your laws
They are for my good You are for me
I give all I have to be near You
You are the foundation and finisher
You are and will always be

One day You will reconcile me.
I will carry Your name on my tongue.
I will enter Your kingdom by grace
I will not soon forget Your unfailing love.
Oh how You love me. It's more than I can know
It’s wider than the sea.
Oh when I wake and when I sleep
When I rise or when I fall You are with me.
You are and will always be.

Guard my heart and lead my mind
Show me Your heart teach me Your ways
Be jealous for me
Deliver me from other loves
The good that I won't flee from
Keep me from pacifity
In this world that has nothing to offer me
Protecter Healer Friend and King
You are and will always be

Pursuit

What are we pursuing? This question is answered differently for many people but as followers of Christ we should all answer the same. Christ. He should be our number one pursuit. I have to constantly ask myself do I love Christ or do I lust after what he’s created and can create? Are my actions and time spent to glorify and know Him more or is it spent pursuing my own goals and dreams. These questions are important to me because for a long time Christ was only my savior from hell and God was just who I prayed to when I was in trouble or needed something. There was no real desire in between those two things to learn more about Christ or become more like Him. It stopped there. So I wondered away from Him and tried to fill my heart with the love of things and people created rather than the creator.  I didn’t long to be with, hear from, or do anything for the Lord. I had what I wanted but I had nothing.  At the time I didn’t realize that what was wrong was my relationship with the Lord. However, by His mercy and grace, over time and through teaching, He brought me to a place where I desired His presence. It was a slow process of Him speaking to me and revealing who He was and what our relationship could and should be. He changed my heart and now the more I learn and hear from and about Him the harder it is for me to be without Him. I never again want to fall away and put my hopes and faith into created things that were never meant to hold that weight. Asking these questions can sometimes be hard and reveal truth I don’t like to admit, but in doing so it helps to evaluate my heart and refocus, if need be, on what is most important. I am so grateful for His pursuit of me and learning how to be grateful and intentional in my pursuit Him. 

Fear

When I started to write today I had almost a page about non verbal communications and how sometimes things get lost in translation, but I scrapped the entire thing after I realized everything I was writing was true but it wasn't what was really on my heart and mind. Fear is what is really going on so fear is what I will write about. When I was in 5^th grade I used to read this book series for tweenagers called Fear Street. It was like Goosebumps but for an older audience I guess. Reading those books (which, by the way, were in no way beneficial to my education or my walk with the Lord as a young person) was exciting to me because of the suspense and the element of not knowing what was going to happen next to the characters. This is fun to read. In real life it is really just scary. I truly hate fear, worry, and anxiety. It robs you of the freedom and security you are supposed to feel in Christ. I want so very badly to live without fear. I really really do. The funny thing is I almost always work myself up to take care of my “fears” myself. This never goes well for me and at the end of it all I know it’s because I should be carrying everything to God in prayer. I know in Luke 12 it says to consider the ravens and that they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn and yet God feeds them and of how much more value am I than the birds! I read it and I find myself so thankful for the promise of his provision and care and yet I fall right back into anxiety over my own life. I want Luke 12 written in my heart in such a way that every care I cast on him, and in those moments my faith in his promise stands like a lighthouse in a storm. That my faith will guide my head and my heart even when the troubles arise and the darkness surrounds me. Like the father in Mark 9 my cry is “I believe, help my unbelief” I know that this prayer will be on my heart for awhile. I hope that if you are struggling with fear in any part of your own life that you will read the following verses and they will resonate in your heart and spirit as true, that you will see the love God has for you and believe in it, and that by His grace watch as His perfect love cast out all your fears.

In Luke 12:6-7 Jesus says:

“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.    Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

first things first

A couple of months back we had a new subscription to our cable company and with that came the free so many months of movie channels. So as most people do I suppose, I looked up any and all movies I could possibly want to watch in the future and set them to record so that when the free trial ran out I would still have free movies. Most were movies that had come through theatres that had caught my eye but not enough for me to fork out the 8 almost 9 dollars to see it. Some of the movies were old movies like Rocky IV or Dirty Dancing, but there was one movie I had never heard of. It must have stayed saved in my DVR for a couple of weeks before one night I decided to watch it. The whole movie was a mockumentary about this girl who doesn’t believe she can fall in love but eventually does with Michael Cera before they break up over her inability to admit and let herself be in love. It was pretty sad but I found myself relating to her. In a weird way I understood her. I began wondering why she was like that. The deeper problem was not that she couldn’t love but that she couldn’t trust anyone else or herself. Trust was really the issue

The movie really impacted me and I wrote a song inspired by it using its same title, Paper Heart. And as I sit here trying to think of what to call this blog and why I want it, the movie and the resulting song is all I can think about. My whole life I have always looked for someone I could trust. I am talking about really trust where both hearts are opened and shared. The kind the world has deemed impossible, irresponsible, or imprudent. And it is sad to me to watch people my age walk through hurt and betrayal like it was scheduled on their daily calendar, just another part of the week, or like they don’t even feel it. It’s like they have found the secret to never getting hurt in never investing or caring enough to get hurt to begin with. It’s sad and lonely and numbing. The Bible says we have someone who sympathizes and relates to our struggles and pains in Jesus Christ. He can relate to us not because he went through disappointment and pain and wasn’t affected by it, but because he suffered well knowing that His father in heaven was worthy to trust. He laid down His life trusting in the Father’s plan all the while experiencing rejection, pain, and heartache. We experience no trial of pain or heartache that Christ can’t hold our hand and comfort us through. As brother’s and sister’s in Christ we share in suffering not so we can become embittered and numb but so that we may become more like Christ and become empathetic to our fellow man.

I have not walked through this world without being let down and I know that chances are I will be let down by the people I love the most. But, I hope those experiences will only bring me closer to the side of my Lord and never one brick closer to a wall around my heart that keeps others out. I have found the one I can trust in Christ and I want to show how He holds all things together, that He will meet you right where you are, and where He is there is liberty. It is for me like everyone else, not an overnight transformation from numb to feeling or chains to liberty, but a progressive growing and learning of His love that reveals the freedom and security I have in him a little more every day. So this is my Paper Heart. In him it is held together and through him it is given away …