"If you love me, you will obey what I command."

Our Lord never insists upon obedience; He tells us very emphatically what we ought to do, but He never takes means to make us do it. We have to obey Him out of a oneness of spirit. That is why whenever Our Lord talked about discipleship, He prefaced it with an IF - you do not need to unless you like. "If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself," let him give up his right to himself to Me. Our Lord is not talking of eternal positions, but of being of value to Himself in this order of things. Never interpret these words apart from the One Who uttered them.

The Lord does not give me rules, He makes His standard very clear, and if my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without any hesitation. If I hesitate, it is because I love someone or something else in competition with Him. My personal life may be crowded with small petty incidents, altogether unnoticeable and mean; but if I obey Jesus Christ in the haphazard circumstances, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God, and when I stand face to face with God I will discover that through my obedience thousands were blessed. When once God's Redemption comes to the point of obedience in a human soul, it always creates. If I obey Jesus Christ, the Redemption of God will rush through me to other lives, because behind the deed of obedience is the Reality of Almighty God.

-Oswald Chambers

It feels like a brand new day; open your eyes.

Two Hands by Jars of Clay

I've been living out of sanity
I've been splitting hairs and blurring lines
I am a house that is divided
In my heart and in my mind

I use one hand to pull you closer
The other to push you away
If I had two hands doing the same thing
Lifted high, lifted high

I have a broken disposition
I'm a liar who thirsts for the truth
And while I ache for faith to hold me
I need to feel the scars and see the proof

And if we just keep digging we
can reach the foundation
Of our souls
And if we just keep cutting all
the chains from our hearts
We'll lose control

And it feels like giving in
It feels like starting over
It feels like waking up, and
you know it's coming
It feels like a brand new day
Open your eyes

I've been living out of sanity; I've been splitting hairs and blurring lines

The other day a friend told me, "everything really is black and white, sometimes you just live so close to the line or fade too close to the otherside that you can’t tell the difference”. Although I'm not sure this statement is 100% true, it's way closer to the truth than I give it credit for being. How often is that "gray area" just our mode of justification? For me, wayyy too often. I like to believe there is an enormous gray area full of other people's opinions and feelings, my own lack of realism, happiness and acceptance. In all reality, God asks us to glorify Him, plain and simple. If it's not glorifying Him, I need to stop wasting my time doing it.

1 John 2:3- - “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.”

1 John 2:15-17 - “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world-the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does-comes not from the Father but from the world.”

I use one hand to pull you closer; the other to push you away

I've been made new. I no longer belong to this world and yet I constantly find myself giving in to temptation and sin. How much stronger would my relationship with God be if I was not living such a bold, blunt, ugly contradiction? I pray that God continues to make me like fresh water, like white snow, like a fruit bearing tree. That He keeps challenging me to become one strong force moving toward Him, eyes and arms open.

James 3:9-12 - "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water."

And if we just keep digging we can reach the foundation of our souls

The end of this song really hits the core of my heart. It doesn't always feel good to dig, to cut things away, to lose control. Giving in, starting over, waking up - so hard. It goes against everything I know. Everything I've ever learned I need to continuously dig up, sort through, test with scripture. Sometimes it hurts, often times I fight it, but always, every time, it's worth it. And each time my eyes open and I take that step closer to my wonderful, fulfilling, living God, I feel alive and amazing once again, and I remember just how freeing a life with Him is.

Rescued Yet Unmoved

I'm participating in Riverview's LT program this summer and we were given the following article. It really challenged me. I would suggest checking it out.

Who Cares? By General William Booth

Overflowing with His love.

My new favorite word is overwhelming.

And it describes everything about my world right now.

The people around me, the God inside of me, the conversations, experiences, and incredible change I've been through over the past couple of months can be described in no other way than overwhelming. And it is absolutely, incredibly beautiful. I wouldn't want it any other way.

Over the past 2 months I've felt completely stuffed full and overflowing with pain, confusion, frustration, anger, sorrow, trust, excitement, love, blessings, hope, knowledge, feeling, passion. I am ALIVE. And this is when life is good.

I'm not a big fan of the Old English or King James lingo, but the same words keep running through my head, and they seem rather applicable: "My cup runneth over." What exactly is it overflowing with? Grace, hope, community, countless blessings, trust, peace, love. I could go on and on. I am so in love with Him and I am so unexplainably grateful for where He has brought me today.

Change.

A recent combination of some crazy, insightful conversations and a bunch of life situations popping up here and there has my mind feeling like it was just hit by a tornado. This weekend, between conversations with my mom and Steph about Eastpointe and friends and life in general I moved back and forth between the emotions of anger, frustration, inspiration, and just complete sorrow. It’s hard to know what to really take from it. It has left me feeling pretty darn overwhelmed. Here, I’m going to attempt to break it down a bit. I apologize for it being scattered, long, and quite possibly difficult to read.

1. The world is far from perfect.

Being home in Eastpointe always makes me think. I see my old classmates, teammates, and friends who were at one point smart, talented, driven, beautiful, passionate. And where are they today? The same exact place they were in high school, minus any motivation, hope, or drive. They’re now pregnant, potheads, unemployed, uneducated, in the court system, in the hospital, living at home. What happens to them? How can I help but think we, society, have somehow failed them? These aren’t the kids who had nothing, who cared about nothing, who were unintelligent or ignorant or just plain bad. They were my co-captains of track, they were the basketball or volleyball all-stars, honor roll students and scholarship awardees. They were the ones who helped me study for my AP exams and encouraged me to get where I am. And now, my heart breaks for them. Because they seem so far gone that the gravity of their environment just keeps pulling them further and further down. Any glimpse of hope they have, any little step they take to get themselves back out of the lives they now lead seems to get squashed and then begins the downward spiral once again.

I’m in this mode right now where I feel like my eyes have been opened. I’m not as naïve as I once was. And although I continue to see the wonderful, amazing things and people of this world, I am also now seeing some of the fundamental flaws of how our society works. This weekend I heard the following quote. Think about it for a second.

If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish. (Jonas Salk)

That's not how it's supposed to be. What happened to us taking care of the world? What happened to being good stewards of the gifts we have received? It just seems like there's so much we can do, so much we need to do.

2. We cannot accept life how it is. We need to create change.

And we can. It sounds huge. But really, it’s not that bad. One of my favorite quotes describes just how I think we can do this:

“Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” (Gil Bailie)

We have to look into ourselves, into our world and figure out what really gets us going. Ask yourself what is wrong with the world. Ask yourself what you really want to see different. It’s changeable, you know? It really is.

At the LeaderShape Conference one of our core objectives was to make a list of our passions, and for every passion, we created a vision. This vision was a dream of what you would want to create for the future. Below is a short summary of my thoughts.

Passions:
1. Youth seeing and reaching their full potential.
2. Travelling: challenging yourself, your life, and your perspectives.
3. The opportunity for a second chance, a changed life.

Correlating Visions:
1. I want to see a future in which high school students always have someone to turn to.
2. I want to see a future in which every high school student lives/volunteers abroad for 2-3 months during one of their high school summers.
3. I want to see a future in which any first time offender/criminal/etc has the opportunity to really see who they can be and what they can really achieve and the resources available to turn their life around.

We went on and chose one of these visions to carry out into actual goal setting, networking and possible project or program creation and I chose the first. I’m in the process of contacting existing peer-to-peer programs, hoping to learn about the implementation of different types and possibly working to apply this research in the future.

What are your passions? Why not dream big?

3. I need to love those around me.

A simple smile goes a long way. But even more than that, an encouraging word. An act of kindness. A beneficial talk. A valuable friendship. A joyful life.

If we are to change the world, we have to start small. Start close. As I was attempting to think through the incredible mess in my mind, a friend reminded me: If I let the negatives overwhelm me, it’s going to be harder to see the positives. And this will become a burden, a barrier preventing me from not only changing the world, but changing a world. If I can change just one person’s world, I have already begun to change the world as a whole.

My challenge to you is this: choose 5 people whose lives you are going to change. Through prayer, a smile, an act of encouragement, or a lifelong relationship. Let's begin to change the world.

I was LeaderShaped.

This past week was one of those amazing weeks in one's life. One of those weeks where you witness something incredible and unexpected. When you are able to step outside of your everyday world and learn something new, develop invaluable relationships, and challenge yourself to grow in a way which is beyond anything you would be able to do on your own.

This past week I spent every waking hour with an incredible group of diverse Spartan leaders at the Kellogg Biological Station on Gull Lake. The leadership conference is called LeaderShape and with the help of some amazing facilitators we grew into a family while learning about and practicing leadership skills. There is no way I could explain everything I learned throughout the week in this blog, but here I wanted to share some of my highlights. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to go more in depth on a couple of them when I have a bit more time.


A few things I picked up:
1. It is possible to create a passionate, vulnerable, diverse environment which fosters growth, loyalty and genuine love. I want this to be a part of my everyday world.
2. Sweet analogy: When a bird is on the ground, it's wings fold over it's body in order to protect it's heart, the most delicate and valuable part of the body. However, in order to fly, to do exactly what it was meant to do, it's wings must open and make vulnerable the heart of the bird. We must do the same.
3. "For those who don't hear the music, the dancers must seem crazy." (Old African proverb) We need to do our best to help others hear the same music as we do.
4. The day you stop questioning yourself is the day you stop growing.


And I want to leave you with the lyrics to this amazing song that was played on our last day...

The Call by Regina Spektor

It started out as a feeling
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word

And then that word grew louder and louder
Til it was a battle cry

I'll come back
When you call me
No need to say goodbye

Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never
Been this way before

All you can do is try to know
Who your friends are
As you head off to the war

Pick a star on the dark horizon
And follow the light

You'll come back
When it's over
No need to say good bye

You'll come back
When it's over
No need to say good bye

Now we're back to the beginning
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can't feel it too
Doesn't mean that you have to forget

Let your memories grow stronger and stronger
Til they're before your eyes

You'll come back
When they call you
No need to say good bye

You'll come back
When they call you
No need to say good bye