Friday, November 21, 2008

jesus,
i
need your holy spirit residing in my heart.
i need your life pumping through my veins,
reaching to the farthest extremities of my life,
bringing the nutrients your word and your truth supply
so
i can hear the intimate whispers of your hope and grace
when my spiritual muscles are aching and sore
from running this race.

i need your love to filter out all the infection of this broken body
i have sin cancer that
i've let take over.
but now, my
Yahweh creator
you heal and you mend and you sow
i'm letting the old go
jesus, will you transfuse my body with your life-giving blood?





"And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul" Deuteronomy 10:12

Friday, November 14, 2008

My confession.

The Eleventh Hour
by Jars of Clay

Trace the shape of my heart
till I become more familiar to Your eyes
I've been lost without you
Cold without your love
It's taken days and nights to make me realize

So rescue me from hanging on to this life
I won't give up on giving You
The chance to blow my mind
'Cause the eleventh hour quickly passed me by
I'll find You when I think I'm out of time

So take the place of my heart
Till I become a stranger to my life
I've been down without you
Cold without your love
In time will I be what you're thinking of?

This song has been my prayer of my soul for some time now. I always find myself coming back to it when the struggles of this life start to weigh on my shoulders, and I realize I'm letting sin take me under it's control.

This weight pulled me down particularly yesterday, and started to realize how truly overtaken with pride and selfishness and greed my inner thoughts and motives have become. I've even found a way to justify them in my own mind sometimes; that's the most sickening part. I play the part of a victim in my own mind, one who reacts only dependent on what the outside world does. In the end, everything is an attack on my identity, and I react with the same hatred and bitterness that I see attacking me.
My actions have nothing to do with love.
My thoughts don't have much to do with helping others or pleasing God.
I have become self-absorbed.
Perhaps it's not even visible to those around me, except maybe those closest to me, but it's such an easy thing to hide sometimes, especially in "Christian" circles. This is me being true, honest with what is really going on inside. I realize this is opening doors for me to be judged, and criticised, but I can't live the lie anymore.

Life was not meant to be lived the way I've been living it. I'm done. I want to move on. I need a heart transplant. Jesus died and conquered death so I can be set free from the slavery of this sin we all deal with. Paul explains to the Church, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

This song speaks to my soul because I'm still struggling with holding on to this life, wanting to plan my future, wanting to know where I'm going, trying to fit God into my plans instead of the other way around.

I need to trust. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight" Proverbs 3:5

I need to hope. "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." Romans 12:12
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time." 1 Peter 1:3-5

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

It's been a while...


In all honestly, over the past year and a half, I forgot I had this blog.

I forgot I love to write.

I forgot this was a part of who I am.

After a moment of pure crisis when I went back reading all the things I've written, those posts that seem so long ago,
a moment of mourning all the moments I could have poured out my soul on this blog. My insides screamed out to me, "Look what you've been missing! Return to me! Articulate your thoughts, get them out there!"

So, I'm back. Back to write about who I am, who I am becoming more accurately. I can't begin to describe the changes in my life in the last year and a half, so many things have happened, my eyes have seen so much, my hears have heard so many things. Its hard to reflect on in many ways, the way things have changed. But with this post, I'm looking forward, while recognizing the past.

Today starts a new Laura Rose.