{Alive in Christ}

Exactly one year ago, I attended a Christian conference in Atlanta called Passion. It was an extremely eye-opening experience for me and God showed me a lot in four days that I will never forget. So here I am once again, January, the beginning of the new year of 2012, and I just got home yesterday from this same conference. It was once again life-changing, and I want to tell you all a little bit {but knowing me it will probably turn into a lot} about my experience this year, and what God showed me these past four days in Atlanta at the Georgia Dome with 45,000 other college students.


First, before I start telling you what happened the past four days, let me tell you what occured the days preceeding Passion. Lately, I have been asking God a lot to show me what love truly is. Last year at Passion I really felt the complete love of Christ in my heart, but there's a difference between feeling something and knowing it. I wanted to know it. I had also been asking God to do some major work within my heart, I didn't really know what specifically that would intell, but I knew something needed to be done. I feel as though this summer and first semester at school I had lost some of the passion that I had previously in my life. I felt just a little dry, and in need of some major refreshment from Christ in my heart and soul and life.


1. I realized how weak my worship has been. God is powerful, sovereign, almighty, and His strength, compassion, forgiveness and love NEVER run out, and yet I barely give Him the time of day when it comes to worshiping Him for all His goodness and faithfulness and love. Most importantly, He brought me back to life when I was dead in my sin. The most reasonable response to that would be to give Him my life that He raised, and yet I've been doing a lazy job of trying to do what's expected of me as a Christian, not always with the heart that should be its motivation. As I stood there during worship the first night of Passion, I truly began to worship Him with all of my heart, letting go of everything else that existed but Him. It was then that He showed me, "This is what you're missing as My follower, as My daughter. You don't give me your all everyday." That began a grueling, necessary, conviction process for the week.


2. There's a line in the song "How He Loves" that says, "Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss, and my heart beats violently inside of my chest." I've always wanted to be so in love with Jesus that my heartbeat speeds up and I get butterflies when I spend time with Him. It happened. I finally felt what it feels like to be really in love with Jesus. I can't remember what song I was singing, who was speaking, or what day it was, but I fell in love with Jesus this week, and it's never going to fade away. God showed me that love isn't found in a marriage or in a feeling inside of you. Those are simply ways that God expresses His love for us and gives us a picture through those things of what His love looks like. Love is innocence and perfection dying on a cross for my filth. Love is forgetting that the world thinks He's insane in order that He may raise me back to life while I was completely dead in my sin. Love is that even when I fail, and do things that break His heart, He chooses to love me anyway. Love isn't a picture of a heart drawn by a little kid, or a piece on candy someone gives you on February 14th. Love is Christ crucified for the sins of the world and for the glory of God.


3. Actions speak louder than words. I've been using that phrase as an excuse to keep quiet about God my entire life. Using that as an excuse to simply listen to others when the topic of God came up in conversation, even though I had a ton floating around in my mind I could have said. I've used it as an excuse that my "living out the gospel" instead of speaking it would work just as fine to fulfill the Great Commission. God gave me a holy slap in the face this week. The Great Commission is not about going and hoping that your good deeds will shine brightly enough that people will know exactly why you act that way without any words being involved. The Great Commission is about going and making disciples. Romans 10:14 says,

 "...how are the to believe in whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?"

 The answer is that they can't. God calls us as Christians to PREACH the gospel, not only to live it. The preaching and the living have to go together, and it won't be effective with only one or the other. 


4. As Lecrae was rapping in worship on Wednesday night, he mentioned Romans 1:16,

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel..."

 With a broken heart I realized that every time

     "God doesn't call us as Christians to live comfortably, but to step out in faith everyday to do things for HIS KINGDOM and for HIS GOSPEL that are OUT OF OUR COMFORT ZONE. Our lives should be used for HIS GLORY, not our comfort."

I made a list of New Year's resolutions, they're all good and I plan on working on them. But now I have a life resolution: that I will fearlessly proclaim the gospel through my life in EVERYTHING I SAY and DO. That the only life people see when they look at me is Jesus, and that my life will bring glory to the name of Jesus. Elisabeth Elliot summed it up best in this quote: "I have one desire now- to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it."

"Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for You; Your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts."

{Isaiah 26:8}

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My God is so BIG...

I just got home last night from New York, where I had been since Friday. My parents and I went as my graduation trip/ spring break. But because we came back yesterday, that leaves me with the rest of the week to sleep late and get some stuff done like cleaning out my room and closet and washing my dirty, pollen-covered car. I can't wait. Here are some thoughts on what God's been teaching me lately.


-taye


. . . So strong and so mighty, there's nothing my God cannot do



Throughout this entire year so far, I can see that God has been continually showing me the same few things over and over and over again. Since January 1st, I have grown so much closer to God and taken my relationship with Him to such a different place than it has ever been before. Although that closeness with Him has not given me a free pass from sin. I see my sinfulness so much more clearly now that my mind is more in tune with His will for me. The more I see Christ's love for me and the depth of His affections for me, the more I am saddened by my rebellious nature. I have a tendency to run away from the things I fear. For some reason I have been afraid to let God love me. That sounds absurd, I know. I suppose that I feel like people I love tend to let me down so often, and so I fear that I will just be let down again if I trust to let God love me, or if I trust myself to love God wholeheartedly. But God is not a person, He is so unfathomably more. So, He has been showing me recently that I can trust Him, and I need to trust Him, because that is sometimes the only thing I can do.



Another thing God has been showing me throughout that past four months, is my insignificance. Compared to Him, I am so incredibly small. When I was in New York, I went to the American Museum of Natural History (The museum that inspired the movie Night at the Museum), and while there I saw the IMAX movie of "Journey to the Stars" narrated by Whoopie Goldberg. Although I did not agree with everything in the film (the mention of evolutionistic theories), the movie was amazing. The visualization of all of those beautiful stars! And to think that God created every one of them and knows each one by name . . . it bewilders me! However, I got to thinking: all of those stars are like people. There are so many of them and one huge, powerful God. Compared to God, we -I- am so immeasurably small and puny and completely incapable of doing anything significant . . . on my own. I realize my weakness and my inadequacy.



Though this is not nearly the final thing God has been showing me, it is the final for this post (because it's 12:06am and I am tired). For the past month or so, I have been reading off and on in David Platt's book "Radical" . . . WOW. My full thoughts on the book are so numerous that they are for an entirely other post (and I am only half way finished with it!), but two major things have struck me from the book.
First, that as a follower of Christ, it is my job -my duty- to proclaim Christ to the world . . . and that does not mean just to LaGrange, Georgia, or Jackson, Mississippi, or even just the United States, but it means to the whole world. That really hit me because I have always been one of those Christians who say that not everyone is "called" to be a missionary. But guess what: everyone is called to be a missionary, check out the great commission.
The second major thing that God has shown me through the book is that we are to live our lives serving others. Now at this you may be thinking, "well hold on, I thought we were to serve Christ, not people." And you're right, but, in order to be a servant of God, we serve others. Serving others is serving God. Putting others before ourselves is putting God before ourselves. This thought has changed me perspective of my life completely.