Perfect, Never Changing.

Hey blog, Hey!
I just cant find it in me to finish this blog. I began by writing about the past, about going through old letters and cards last night and about going through old pictures tonight, but honestly- none of it seems or feels relevant so I erased it all. Yes, its true, I tend to look back on the past a few days before my birthday every year, and yes my birthday is in a few days -GET IT!- and I'd love to tell you all about the past two nights of reminiscing on ma vie!....but not on this blog. This blog isnt for rambling...which is what I'm currently doing...so I'll get on with it. ;)
God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. The Bible tells you that over and over again, He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end- compare 1 and 2 Kings to the Gospels and you will find many similarities. Praise God for His word, written right before our very eyes, BUT also praise God for being the same in our own lives. Look around you, God is there. Look at your life, really look at it. The ups, the terrible downs, the crazy fun ups again and yet the downs one more time. God was there, every single time- always loving you. He never stopped, He loves you now, and He's going to love you tomorrow. Does that give you hope? It sure gives me hope. I certainly dont know what tomorrow will bring, or the day after that or really what my life will look like past going to bed here in about an hour or so, HA! BUT I dont have to worry about it because Jesus isnt going anywhere. Praise Him for leading us in this life and never leaving us.
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39
Sidenote: being in this place of uncertainty concerning my future might be one of the most blessing filled times in my life because, as a planner, not knowing what in the world I'm doing --well for the rest of my life at this point, quite frankly scares the heebie geebies out of me BUT it has caused me to rely so much more on Christ step by step, day by day- literally in all things that I cant help but be joyful about it! And honestly- I've now begun to bask in all this uncertainty with pleasure!- Thats right, I said it! Number one planner extordinaire just told you she is uncertain where her life is going and she's ENJOYING IT but its because I know Jesus is the one leading it! I once asked Jesus to take me on the rollercoaster ride of life with Him--and well He's doing it! ha! But Praise Him for orchestrating circumstances that draws us closer to His heart!!! What a glorious God that wants us, all of us-even with our ups and downs.

Finally, I want to close with a poem that sadly, I did not write because its great! And interestingly, how perfect does it fit into this blog?!

PERFECT, NEVER CHANGING
One time you told me
That you feel God is just angry at you
But I wanted to tell you that is not true

I know what you mean
I feel it myself too
How could God love me
In spite of all that I do?

Yet His love is perfect, never changing
For He has always been and will be
The Sovereign God of great compassion
Forever showing mercy to you and me

He gave His One and Only Son
To take away our disgrace
To bear every sin
To stand in our place

Great and small all our sins are forgiven
Every wrong we have ever done
What an amazing gift received
By believing in God’s Son

Friend, you are His
His beautiful child that is now grown
He has always been with you
He will never leave you all alone

He will never not know you
And never be too far away to know
You are His child
Through Him washed whiter than snow

He desires for you to have everything
That is why He has given you His All
His Son, Jesus Christ
Salvation to all who call

For this life is so short
And eternity so long
Our days but a whisper
And then they are all gone

But God has chosen to love you
He has given you this day
Every morning full of new mercies
And every evening talks and prayers to say

-Anonymous

Happily Uncertain,
Kate


-And for everyone who reads this and is still up late at night- and you know who you are- I just want to say: I'm still praying for you. God is making me- :) Hopefully this was a little encouraging in some way.
GoodNight All.

James 5:13-16
"Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in FAITH will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is POWERFUL AND EFFECTIVE."

- the word speaks for itself. It doesnt need my thoughts to go along with it. Praise God for His words and thoughts written to us.
- more later. If you read this post please pray for a friend's dad's healing. God is sovereign in all things. Praise the Lord for His is the glory and the power Forever!

Breathless with praise, prayer and petition with thanksgiving,
Kate
(Phil. 4:6-7)

Its not about me.

Hey there, it’s been a few weeks. Summer has officially began for me! PRAISE THE LORD! I want to begin this post with a quote that I think is incredible.

"The Christian life can be explained only in terms of Jesus Christ, and if your life as a Christian can still be explained in terms of you- your personality, your willpower, your gifts, your talent, your money, your courage, your wisdom, your dedication, your sacrifice, or your anything-then although you may have the 'Christian life', you aren't yet living it."- Ian Thomas.

-If your life isn't 100% completely and solely centered on Christ, if He isn’t your everything, the One you run to when times are bad, the One you rejoice with when times are good, and the One you talk to til’ you're blue in the face when there's a lot on your mind- then you're missing it, you're missing Him.
-We can say all the right things, we can do all the right things, but the ONLY thing that matters is Jesus Christ. He's it. He’s the only reason you’re even here. To know Him and to make Him known.
He's our everlasting hope, and our ever present help in times of trouble.
Do you know Jesus? Have you met Him?
He is powerful.
He is the ultimate healer.
He is in control.
He is abounding in love for you.
He is honorable and full of integrity.
He is forgiving and merciful.
He is full of grace.
Jesus is the ultimate rescuer.
He is the Prince of Peace.

Jesus, my God, my Savior, my Father, my Best Friend; He is all that and more, more than I can even comprehend. In the following weeks to come, I want to study the nature of our Savior. Who He is, in depth and up close. I want to know more about the man who sacrificed Himself- bloodied and ripped to shreds, to die for me and for my sins; all for the sake of the most perfect love relationship I have ever experienced, or will.
Don't you agree that this beyond our comprehension love from this man, the Son of God, deserves more than just a passing acknowledgement on Christmas and Easter when we tell His story? And I'm not even just talking about hanging out in the gospels- although they are a great place to start, knowledge of our Savior, the Holy Spirit, and God our Father- the Trinity, is found throughout the Bible. Jesus is the physical representation we are given here of God on Earth- He’s His Son.
Anyways, I want to end this post with a story I read about a week ago. It’s about Elijah.
"Elijah went before the people of Israel and said, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him."
But the people said nothing." 1 Kings 18:21

-No one I know of worships Baal anymore these days, but what if we replaced the word "Baal" with the word "you." Then the verse would read, "If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if you are God, follow him."---take a look at your life today. Would you find yourself standing in front of Elijah in silence? Is your relationship with Christ centered on you? or on Him? Are you daily dying to yourself, to your wants, to your fears, and dropping everything in favor of His presence and His abundant grace and love? It’s time we stop wavering between the two options, we don’t have real true life to the fullest without Christ pumping through our hearts and our thoughts moment by moment, every day.

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Galatians 2:19-21

"If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing." John 15:5


It’s all about Him- and not about me,
Kate

P.S. If you don’t know how the story with Elijah and the people of Israel ends, you should check it out. I mean we’re talking straight fire raining down from heaven, aka = stinkin’ awesome God smack down over His people. Get it!

Facebook Fast

Hey friends! I just thought I'd tell y'all, I'm fasting from facebook for the next few days...a week to be exact. I hadn't planned on it until I got home tonight and God just struck me with this umm call? I guess you could say. How many times do we get on facebook or maybe some other site to just "check" it but end up spending hours engrossed in "stalking" and the like, dont deny it- we've all done it.
God struck me with this thought- and I use the term "struck" because God literally stopped me in my tracks- but I thought, "What would my life look like if I took all the times I looked at facebook and instead, spent time with Jesus?" -I'm not a big "stalker" and I dont spend hours on facebook in one sitting, but I do check it frequently and I bet if I added up all the little times I checked it- it would be an hour or so.
Also though, a second thought I had was, does facebook encourage me with Christ? You know, God can and does use social networking sites for His glory- I 100% beleive that, BUT currently, for me, I just dont feel as if its encouraging me enough- if at all, to keep me from this fast, that God has called me to in the first place.
Anyways, I wanted to tell y'all whats up.
Oh, and can I tell y'all one last thing? Maybe this will be a bit of encouragement to some of you out there, and it ties into this "fast" I'm embarking on because God's timing is always perfect, but let me just tell y'all this last thing God spoke to me tonight.
GOD IS ON THE MOVE!! HE IS AT WORK IN THE HEAVENLIES RIGHT NOW AND HE IS ON THE RISE!! GOD IS KING OVER ALL AND NO ONE CAN MATCH HIS MIGHTY POWER AND STRENGTH!!!! CHRIST IS SHINING HIS LIGHT IN THE DARK PLACES OF THIS WORLD AND IS EXPOSING THE EVIL THAT HAS ENSLAVED MANY OF US. HIS WILL AND PURPOSE WILL NOT BE HINDERED! HE WILL LEAD AND GUARD HIS PEOPLE THROUGH THEIR TRIALS AND CAST OFF ALL EVIL THAT TRIES TO BLIND OUR EYES AND DEAFEN OUR EARS TO HIM!!!!! BE ON YOUR GUARD, KEEP WATCH AND STAND READY FOR HIS COMMAND!- HE IS SPEAKING TO EACH OF YOU- HE IS HEARING EACH OF YOUR PRAYERS, HE IS READY TO MOVE AND HE IS ABOUT TO SHAKE THIS WORLD WITH HIS GLORY!!!
PRAISE HIM! HE IS LORD OF LORDS AND KING OF KINGS!

"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.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
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." Isaiah 40:28-31

I encourage all who read this to take a few minutes and read Isaiah 40 today. God is the ultimate encourager.


Boycotting Facebook for the next 168 hours haha! =)
Kate

Jumbled lines of Poetry

So.....I write a little poetry here and there- its never planned and ALWAYS impromptu/ and I'd like to think, lead by the Spirit, and well, I felt as if I should blog tonight but the words just wouldnt come. So this is what I ended up writing. Think of this as a blog post in poem form.....with each stanza representing a thought/paragraph I was going to write about. :)
If anyone is reading this blog for the first time, please refer back to older posts...I promise I'm not a weirdo.


My heart is full
My life is free
He reached into my world and carried me.

When my world was threatening to crash around me
while gripping to all those fears
I clung to His promises, knowing He'd never leave me here.

I may think my problems are big
I may think I'm broken beyond repair
but Jesus is the ultimate healer and all my burdens, He'll bare.

Though life gets tough and heavy
though life feels like more than we can take
We can hold fast to His purposes because He died for our sake.

God is who He says He is
but satan will try to hide
every light that shines before him
be it ever bright.

Yet, Jesus is my redeemer, my Father, my best friend
No one can shut Him out of this world
He'll be here til the end.

Next time you hear that threatening voice
you know, the one that brings you down
bring it into submission, remembering the One who wears the Crown.


Thats all I have. No, this is not a regular thing.
Goodnight.

Not a poetry slammer,
Kate :)


**Note: Poetry Slam= a place/time where people read their poetry to one another.
Also, I'm not hatin' on anyone who likes to write/read poetry, Beth Moore writes poetry. "Further Still" is book of poetry she's written...for anyone who wants to know.

Selfish Christianity

A last thought of the weekend before the work week offically begins tomorrow. Really, I guess I'd call it a warning and a call to action to all followers of Christ.
-Selfishness. We know all about it. We've been told that its bad and wrong and that the world doesnt revolve around us since most of were about two years old, but theres a new concept I've recently learned about and its called 'selfish Christianity'.
The definition, as explained to me, of 'selfish Christianity' is to use God as our own personal source of good fortune and in your relationship with Him- its very one sided/all about number 1 with the person treating God more like a genie than God. I beleive this is something every Christian fights daily- because of our inherent fleshly nature. But let me sound the alarm now, this way of thinking and interacting with Christ is wholly unrighteous of us- as real Christians seeking to constantly be more like Him, we need to rexamine the very nature of our Savior. He was the most unselfish human to ever walk this Earth. He bled and died for us, yet do you know who He was praying for as He hung upon that cross? Amist all His pain-which is usually when we are the most selfish- He prayed for us. "Father, forgive them for they know not what they have done." Luke 23:34
*disclaimer: Jesus does care about us and what is going on in our hearts and lives, I'm not saying to not talk and pray to Him about yourself. I'm saying Jesus doesnt want ourselves be our only focus- He can handle our problems, and other people's too. :) *
However, the most important point I want to make tonight is that I think this form of "selfish Christianity" is yet another scheme used by Satan to blind us to other hurting people. You see, his plan is brilliant, because we never have to take our focus off ourselves and yet we can rationalize our self-centered perspective by throwing God in the mix. You see, when praying for only ourselves and praying for others in ways that benefit us we end up taking ourselves out of the fight and off the battle ground of the war against satan. There are injustices occuring around the world right now that must be stopped, but the powers of darkness wont vanquish themselves- we must come together as Christ's church, raising up our hearts and our prayers and calling and crying out on the behalf of the oppressed to the One who covets our prayers and can destroy satan with the stroke of his finger. Dear reader, whoever you are, Jesus is pleading for us to follow in His footsteps to stand in the gap for the sex-trafficked, the hungry, the lonely, the hurting, the dying, the violent, the abandoned, THE LOST.
They are all around us, the battle is all around us. You have a choice reader, no longer allow yourself to be taken out of the battle- we cant act as if there aren't millions of people who need Christ with every fiber of their being. We have righteous and powerful prayers that the Father can barely wait to answer on their behalf- the same love abundant love that He has for us, He is yearning to pour over the wounds of the millions of other lost on this Earth. And dont let the vast need for Christ discourage some of you, our Savior has OVERCOME THE WORLD (John 16:33)- no we personally cant reach every person on the planet, but Christ can- a million times over, and the best part is, HE's DYING TO DO IT! Your prayers are urgently needed.-if I knew a more desperate term for "need" I would use it.- Have you seen the state this world is in?! THE WORLD NEEDS JESUS AND WE'RE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN GIVE HIM TO THEM!
We must turn daily from our self seeking nature and pour our hearts out to the One who can bind up the wounds of the many victims of evil. Who are we church if we aren't loving others as Jesus loved us?

"By Our Love"- by Christy Nockels

Brothers, let us come together
Walking in the Spirit, there's much to be done
We will come reaching, out from our comforts
And they will know us by our love

Sisters, we were made for kindness
We can pierce the darkness as He shines through us
We will come reaching, with a song of healing
And they will know us by our love!

The time is NOW
Come Church arise
Love with His hands
See with His eyes
Bind it around you,
Let it never leave you,
And they will know us by our love

Children, You are hope for justice,
Stand firm in the Truth now, set your hearts above
You will be reaching, long after we’re gone,
And they will know you by your love!

"The prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective." James 5:16

Battling in prayer,
Kate

Trials, Faith, & Praise- You know, the Usual :)

OK- is anyone out there experiencing a time of waiting or just experiencing a time where you are in need of great faith in our Mighty Savior?! Is anyone else just crying out to the Lord for not just more of Him but for a Holy anointing of His presence to blanket you and fill your every thought!? Is there anyone else crying out for our Father to set you free of different strongholds in your life?! If so dear friends, YOU ARE NOT ALONE! I'm with you 100%.
This song has been particularly on my heart and on my lips this past week.

"You'll Come" by Hillsong

I have decided I have resolved
To wait upon you Lord
My rock and redeemer shall not be moved
I?ll wait upon you Lord
As surely as the sun (or Son) will rise
You'll come to us
As certain as the dawn appears
You'll come let your glory fall
As you respond to us
Spirit reign flood our hearts
With holy fire again
We are not shaken we are not moved
We wait upon you Lord
Our Mighty deliverer my triumph and truth
I'll wait upon you Lord
Chains be broken
Lives be healed
Eyes be opened
Christ is revealed

-I am praying that everyone who reads this blog post is filled with divinely righteous faith and trust in our Savior to heal, to move, to be in control and to consume each and every one of you. We need it. Our city needs it. I have always felt that the best place to be in my relationship with the Lord is smack-dab on my face in desperate need of Him. I never want to forget the depth of my need for Him and to never stop crying out to Him with my whole heart. Forget being in control, forget walking through the valleys of life, I prefer to be ever climbing the mountain and praising Him for every big and small step He fills me with strength to take. I hope this post is meeting some of you where you're at right now and I want to tell you- I'm there with you friend. This is the place you want to be, this is the place where Jesus is refining you into the man/woman He desires you to be, to look a little more like Him and to give you faith to walk out on the water before you.
You know the "mustard seed" parable? Well, the Holy Spirit keeps replaying this verse over and over again in my mind for the past few days. "He replied, 'Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20
And then it hit me, I want that mountain MOVED! No more talking about it, as we have for the past few DECADES- lets put some action to our worn out words and MOVE IT! But where is this faith that can move mountains? Well, its right in the palm of Jesus' hand- waiting, just waiting for us to humble ourselves and ask for it. He's the best sharer. I'll leave you with Philippians 4:6-7 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
- I think God is most pleased when our prayers match up with His desires and often I pray that if my prayers and my desires aren't matching His- that He would change me to desire what He does. As I've been praying this- faith has been a huge topic on my heart, and my friends- He will give you the amount of faith you ask Him for. It most certainly pleases Him that you are praying for more faith and trust. He's in total control and He would love for you to realize it and stop trying to do things your own way. HE IS IN CONTROL. HE CAN MOVE THE MOUNTAINS WITH ONE BREATH. IF YOU DESIRE TO GLORIFY HIM AND YOU ASK HIM FOR MORE FAITH, EVEN FAITH THAT WILL MOVE MOUNTAINS- HE WILL TURN YOUR WORLD UPSIDE DOWN AND DO IT!
Praise the Father who desires us to be more like Him! Praise Him for always being in control- even when we feel like everything is in utter chaos! Praise Him for moving mountains in our lives EVERY DAY! Praise Him for listening to our prayers and loving us above our understanding! He is the God of the universe! He holds every star in His hands, in fact- He's named them all, He doesn't need us, but He sure does want us. PRAISE HIM!
Praying for everyone who reads this blog. Let us all just take a second and PRAISE HIM today, in this very moment, HE IS SO WORTHY OF AFFECTION!- I can barely stand it!

Breathless with Praise for our Magnificent Savior,
Kate