Knowing God, desperation for God!

I've been thinking today that somewhere over the years I've stopped truly being desperate for God. I love Him and my faith is in Him, but I don't really spend time with Him that much anymore, seeking His face, getting to know Him more. That makes me super sad:( And strangely I don't know how to get out of this pit. I feel like I've created this flesh monster that is just living for myself and what I want. But my spirit man is crying out inside "I want GOD! I need Him! Seek His face and you will find Him"!. Oh man, I need to get back to seeking His face and being desperate for more of Him. Because frankly, everything else is worthless. I can remember the days when I use to decline hanging out with friends so that I could stay in and spend time with God. He was all I wanted! I was so hungry for Him. And somewhere along the way I got too busy for that. And that makes me sick:(

Lord, please help me to get back to seeking Your face. Cause a hunger for You to rise in me again. Cause me to hunger for you like the deer pants for the streams of water. I need You and You alone!!! Cause me to seek Your face!

New Ramblings from me:)

Well, we have been in our new house for a week and a half now and we are loving it! So much more room, and I honestly don't have a negative word about it. It's fabulous! I'm so grateful to God for our house, I'm thankful for 3 bedrooms, for finally having 2 toilets, for having a utility room so that my washer and dryer are in the same place. We love the town we are in now as well, pretty quiet out here with loads of green grass for the kids to run about in plus a brand new playpark that is a stones throw from our house. I just can't stop thanking God for our new house. He has been so very good to us, He has provided for us in amazing ways. I have seen God move these last couple of months in ways that some people never experience. He is such a loving and faithful God!

We go to Italy in 6 days!!! I can't wait! My brother and his wife are having their Italian wedding and I'm so excited!! It's been a dream of mine since I was a little girl to go to Italy and I think I'll have to pinch myself just to realise that it's coming true. I can't wait to see my mom, brother, and sis in law. I haven't seen my brother in almost 4 years. The kids are so excited too! This will be their first time in an Airplane, their first proper holiday. I'm too excited to sleep and I still have 6 more sleeps haha.

Do you ever miss someone so much that you are on the verge of messaging them to tell them you love them and miss them and then talk yourself out of it because you know it wouldn't be well received? Sometimes I just wish I could get over some things easily but my mind and heart just won't let me. I have come a long way though and I know one day I will get over it and forget and it'll be easier. Just wish that one day would come a lot faster. God has gotten me this far and I know he'll get me through the rest. He alone is faithful and true. Praise you Lord for your lovingkindness to me and my family. Thank you for loving us when others didn't. Thank you for providing for us, blessing us, and loving us.

The reality of the flesh

A few years ago during some time with God, He held a mirror in front of my heart (not literally lol) and showed me what was really inside. Ever since then I have been totally disgusted with my black heart and so long to be more like Him! I hate the things in me that aren't conformed to the image of Christ yet, I hate my flesh and the character flaws/sins that I can't seem to get rid of. I don't know how many times I've cried out to God to change me but He doesn't seem to be doing it fast enough for my liking hahaha. I can't stand my flesh yet can't seem to kill it enough. Oh to be in glory with Him, worshipping Him for all eternity, finally able to meet the love of my life face to face, and finally be free from this flesh of mine. To be perfect and not be able to have an angry thought, or some pride. Man I can't wait! I love my family more than words and am forever blessed that God has allowed me time here on earth to spend with them and love them and teach them about God. And I desire more than anything that my kids come to Christ and never depart from Him! But I can't help but feel like a pilgrim on this earth, a stranger. This is not my home and the more I go about in life the more stranger I feel towards it. This narrow road is such a lonely lonely place, full of pits and hardships yet through it all I have learned that there is One that sticks closer than a brother and He is my hearts desire! He is my love whom I wish I could just kiss His feet. To behold Him! Why can I not devote more time to Him? I find it so hard to make time to read my Bible and pray, and that in turn makes it feel like He's a zillion miles away. Oh if only I could crucify this flesh once and for all! To be able to say with Paul "For I am crucified with Christ. For it is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me". The reality is that I live far too much and don't give Jesus enough room to live in me. I must decrease and He must increase. Oh to be completely rid of this flesh so that Christ and only Christ lives in and through me and His will be done!

My hubby posted something on Facebook that has challenged me and sort of brings my lack of seeking God into light. It's this quote "The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking Him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day." - E. M. Bounds

I know the start of my problems is that I don't seek God first in the morning. I know I have small children and that makes things a lot harder but that is basically just an excuse as I could get up before they wake up and seek God. And thus comes the battle with the flesh. My flesh wants to sleep, my spirit wants God. My flesh is currently winning but I need to crucify it again and again so that my spirit man will be stronger than my flesh. I'm determined to get back to that point of extreme closeness with God! I'm setting my face like flint and am going to crucify this stinky flesh! Lord have mercy on me and help me to seek your face with all that is within me!

Just Before Victory by David Wilkerson

This is something I've been thinking about for the last few months. I used to believe and say things like "If it's God's will then it'll all work out smoothly and everything will fall into place". But you know, I'm not so sure that's completely true. When you look at the Bible you see so many examples of God giving someone a promise and the next minute that person is thrown into a time of confusion and stuff going wrong! Take Joseph for example. God gave him a dream and then the very next minute his brothers threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery. Then he was eventually accused of something he didn't do and thrown into prison. And it wasn't until after all of that that the promise of God was made a reality. I think we as western world Christians just associate God's will as blessing and ease. But I think that is pretty far from the truth. The persecuted church in China and other parts of the world suffer much and yet I would say that God is so close to them and pleased with them and they are more in the will of God then we are. Anyway, those have been my thoughts as of late, and then today I read this on David Wilkerson's blog and it just confirmed everything I've been thinking. I love when God does that. Anyway, I will link you to it. Please read it! It's truth and it has truly blessed and encouraged me today.

http://davidwilkersontoday.blogspot.com/2011/05/just-before-victory.html

You might have to copy and paste that into your toolbar thingy, I don't know how to do it otherwise lol

The Monkey and the Wire

I've been meaning to write this post for a few days now but am finally getting a chance to. I've been reading "God's Smuggler" by Brother Andrew about a man from Holland who smuggles Bibles into communist countries. I was reading a chapter and a particular part really spoke to me and I gleaned much from it. I start by writing the story he's telling about his pet monkey that he bought when he was in the Phillipeans in the war.

I hadn't had the monkey many weeks before I noticed that his stomach seemed to be hurting him. One day while carrying him I felt what seemed like a welt around his waist. I put him down on the bed and told him to lie still. Carefully I pulled back the hair until I saw what it was. Evidently when the gibbon had been a baby, someone had tied him with a piece of wire and never taken it off. As the monkey grew, the wire became embedded in his flesh. It must have caused him terrible pain.

That evening I began the operation. I took my razor and shaved off the monkey's hair in a three-inch-wide swathe around his middle. The uncovered welt was red and angry looking. While the other boys in the barracks looked on, I cut ever so gently into this tender flesh until I exposed the wire. The gibbon lay with the most amazing patience. Even when I hurt him, he looked at me with eyes that seemed to say, "I understand", until at long last I was able to pull the wire away. Instantly he jumped up, did a little cartwheel, danced around my shoulder, and pulled my hair to the delight of all the boys in the barracks.

Man, God really spoke to me through this. You see, like this monkey we all have wires that have become embedded in our flesh. Ok, not physical wires, but wires of un-willful sin like pride, anger, unforgiveness etc. And throughout our Christian life and walk, God is sanctifying us, putting us in the furnace to come out more pure, and he's cutting into our flesh in order to take these wires out. And you can gaurantee it's gonna hurt. I feel like there are so many wires that are stuck in my flesh. And it hurts to feel them stuck in your flesh. You want nothing more than to be able to get rid of these wires but it will only take God cutting into our flesh and pulling those wires out. Over the last few years God has been doing this very thing, but He seems to have kicked it up a couple of notches in these last few months. It hurts when God shows you exactly what is inside of you, when He shows you just how black your heart really is, and how fleshy you really are. But praise Him that His desire is to perfect us, to make us more like Him, to cut away these wires and areas of us that aren't good. But we have to let Him! We have to lay there like the monkey did, and trust His skillful hands to do this surgery and remove these things. Yes it's painful, but oh so worth it! To finally be free of these wires! To finally be free from pride, anger, resentment, unforgiveness! Have we gotten to the point where this wire has caused so much pain that we are totally sick of it being there that we cry out to God to remove it? Oh praise you Lord for loving me that you would first show me just what is in me, and then you would lovingly remove these things from me. I'm so sick of myself. I'm so sick of my black heart. I'm sick of my flesh. Lord have mercy on me and cut these things out of my flesh once and for all! Praise you through it all!

A tribute to David Wilkerson!

I woke up this morning and the first thing I heard was, "David Wilkerson died in a car accident". My hubby was relaying the story to me. I was in shock and deeply saddened that this great man of God had passed away so suddenly. He was my favorite preacher in these sinful days. He was an amazing man of God! There isn't one sermon of his that didn't encourage me and challenge me, that didn't give me a good kick up the back side and make me feel so loved by God. He was a man who sought God, hungered for God, loved God with all that he was. He preached sermons full of truth, undiluted, uncompromising, grounded in the Word of God. Messages of hope, mercy, and love. Messages that challenged you to forsake your sin, to live a holy life, and seek God with all that you are while doing away with all the things in this world that have no eternal substance. He had the perfect balance of justice and love, judgement and mercy, truth and grace. He was (in my opinion) like a modern day Paul the apostle. He was someone who always pointed you back to the cross, pointed you back to Jesus, and never set out to make a name for himself. He was an incredible man of God who I will miss and is a tremendous loss to the body of Christ. But he is now with our Savior. He is in the bosom of our wonderful Lord. He is in the promise land, where there is no more pain, no more tears, no more sin. He is in glory with Glory Himself! Brother David you will be missed by me and countless others, and I look forward to meeting you in Heaven for the first time.

The Psalms strike again!

You know those times where you just open the Bible to a random spot and the very page you open it to speaks right to you? That doesn't happen often to me but it happened tonight. I wasn't trying to randomly turn to a page, just happened to open and it look down at the page it opened to and Psalm just grabbed my attention. Anyway, thought I'd share it as my blog post as it's very fitting for how I feel.

Psalm 30
I will extol thee, O Lord; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me. O Lord my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me. O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the rememberance of his holiness. For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled. I cried to thee, O Lord; and unto the Lord I made supplication. What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth? Hear, O Lord, and have mercy upon me: Lord, be thou my helper. Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.