During my workout, I was listening to a song called "Stolen" by Brandon Heath, and as my mind tends to do, it wandered onto the deeper meaning of what the song means.
It's such a romantic term, to steal one's heart. To steal means to take that which is not yours, to have it in your possession, to take without permission. "How does one steal a heart?" I thought to myself. "Why don't we just say you became dedicated or decided to single out one person for your affections? No, we say stolen.
As I thought about it more, it started to become clear to me. When you fall in love with someone, it's not by any choice of yours. You don't line up a bunch of people and pick out the one that would be best suited to you. No, rather you get to know someone, their strengths and weaknesses, their flaws and their perfections, and then you begin to fall in love with them. Never has one picked out the perfect person based solely on rational thinking and consideration for what their present and future self requires. It's always a general acceptance of a completely random person. In other words, they steal your heart. They take that which is not theirs.
Then I began to think of this on a grander scale, that is, love between man and his Creator. God's heart wasn't "stolen" by us in the way I just described, but He still chose to love us despite how messed up we are. When you meet someone and fall in love with them, you might tell them about a lot of your flaws, and they might see some of them first hand. But God KNOWS every single screwed up thing about you, and He loves you anyways. That is the most amazing type of love I have ever heard of. Even when you've done something so horrible that you hate yourself, God still loves you. When you keep making the same mistake over and over, He still loves you. He doesn't love you because of what He might get out of you now or later.
Turn things the other way around, and things become a bit more complicated. The song's main focus was the love we as humans have for God. This is where the whole heart thief thing comes back, because falling in love with God can be the same process. God doesn't have any flaws we have to look past or learn to love over time, but being a Christian does come with a lifestyle, a label, a rejection from friends and family, and rejection from the things of this world. You can have peace, fulfillment real true love, but you'll have to deal with living in a world that hasn't experienced the love you have. You have to let God steal your heart, to have full possession of it no matter what sort of crap you'll have to deal with later. Fall irrationally in love with Him and give Him your whole heart.
I believe God made the human emotion/act of love so we can understand what it is He feels for us, and what we should feel for Him. When I love my boyfriend, my siblings, my parents...all these different kinds of love give me a glimpse into the love He has for me. It's truly amazing to think I have a God like Him.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
Haiti Podcast Part 1
Good afternoon all you lovely people. Thanks for coming to my blog, today is a special edition of The Sckpanhead Blog, if only because I have advertised the crap out of the video below. As some of you know, I will be going to Haiti on a mission trip this summer, and I felt now would be a good time to let you know some more details, and for me to make a personal appearance. The video below is the first in a series of podcasts I will be doing about Haiti and how YOU can help me this summer without even leaving your house. So....enjoy the random, and I'm sorry for mumbling, I felt a little odd talking to myself in my room.
Friday, April 6, 2012
God-Sized Easter
“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”
~2 Timothy 2:15
~2 Timothy 2:15
One thing that keeps coming up in church and my personal study is “God-sized mission”. It’s when God gives you a task that seems impossible or too hard for you to accomplish on your own. It’s when you know you’re supposed to be doing something but refuse to do it because you’re afraid of failing or being humiliated in front of people. A good example of this is my church’s new children’s ministry. They wanted to raise a ridiculous amount of money to give the kids an amazing experience every Sunday when they came to church. It would make kids excited about coming to church. It would be awesome. But the money…it was a God-sized mission for sure. Still, I remember every Sunday they would encourage the church to give to this new project. The expected launch date was Easter Sunday 2012.
That Sunday is two days away, and I’m proud to be a part of that launch. Somehow, even though the church fell short of the money goal, they pulled it together, and as someone on the inside, it’s going to be incredible. I’m excited, and I’m not even one of the kids! It was inspiring to see so many people volunteer their time and money to help this thing come together. It’s something we as humans could have never done on our own, but God’s power is, was, and will be, shown through this ministry for a long time.
That’s the point of this whole thing, the focus of God-sized missions. They’re things you could never do on your own, things that take a heck of a lot of faith. But when it’s done, you and the people around you can see that there’s only one reason why this mission worked: the power of God. God-sized missions are your chance to let God work in you and through you to accomplish something that will bring glory to His name more than anything you could have done on your own. It’s a time for us to lay everything at His feet and say, “Okay God, this looks pretty impossible, but I know You are much more capable than I am.”
I like to think of the day that Jesus died when Good Friday comes around (dur). The disciples must have been pretty bummed out. They had just seen their God, their leader, their teacher, and their good friend murdered in a horrible way. They must have been confused. Jesus had promised them he would be with them for a long time. What were they supposed to think of those promises now? Jesus was dead!
Jesus could have left it at that. I mean, he spent a good deal of time showing God’s power to thousands of people doing things that could only be explained by the power of God. But he had something greater in mind. Sure, dying in front of his disciples and all these other people seemed like a pretty bad thing. But after three days in the grave (days I’m sure felt like a bazillion years to the disciples), he made the ultimate display of power by coming back to life. He defeated the one thing no man has ever been able to get away from. He defeated death! THAT is a God-sized mission for sure, where God’s love and power were displayed in the most incredible way I’ve ever seen.
This of course, all ties to my upcoming trip to Haiti. I tried for months to ignore the call of God to go to a different country. I was scared. What if I make a big deal out of it and don’t raise enough money? What if God calls me to be a missionary permanently? What if I get sick and die? What if this, what if that? And then all this stuff about God-sized missions started coming up. In church, in my bible study, in the home bible study I go to, pretty much everywhere I was hearing those exact words. I knew God was giving me one of those missions, and it was time for me to respond. I’m trusting God to do something greater and bigger than anything I could plan and put together on my own. He’s just using me to bring glory to His name in a crazy way. I’m simply along for the ride.
Hey, God freaking raised Jesus from the dead. How could I think for even one moment that He couldn’t send me to Haiti? That’s like, insanely easy for Him.
Have a great Easter.
That Sunday is two days away, and I’m proud to be a part of that launch. Somehow, even though the church fell short of the money goal, they pulled it together, and as someone on the inside, it’s going to be incredible. I’m excited, and I’m not even one of the kids! It was inspiring to see so many people volunteer their time and money to help this thing come together. It’s something we as humans could have never done on our own, but God’s power is, was, and will be, shown through this ministry for a long time.
That’s the point of this whole thing, the focus of God-sized missions. They’re things you could never do on your own, things that take a heck of a lot of faith. But when it’s done, you and the people around you can see that there’s only one reason why this mission worked: the power of God. God-sized missions are your chance to let God work in you and through you to accomplish something that will bring glory to His name more than anything you could have done on your own. It’s a time for us to lay everything at His feet and say, “Okay God, this looks pretty impossible, but I know You are much more capable than I am.”
I like to think of the day that Jesus died when Good Friday comes around (dur). The disciples must have been pretty bummed out. They had just seen their God, their leader, their teacher, and their good friend murdered in a horrible way. They must have been confused. Jesus had promised them he would be with them for a long time. What were they supposed to think of those promises now? Jesus was dead!
Jesus could have left it at that. I mean, he spent a good deal of time showing God’s power to thousands of people doing things that could only be explained by the power of God. But he had something greater in mind. Sure, dying in front of his disciples and all these other people seemed like a pretty bad thing. But after three days in the grave (days I’m sure felt like a bazillion years to the disciples), he made the ultimate display of power by coming back to life. He defeated the one thing no man has ever been able to get away from. He defeated death! THAT is a God-sized mission for sure, where God’s love and power were displayed in the most incredible way I’ve ever seen.
This of course, all ties to my upcoming trip to Haiti. I tried for months to ignore the call of God to go to a different country. I was scared. What if I make a big deal out of it and don’t raise enough money? What if God calls me to be a missionary permanently? What if I get sick and die? What if this, what if that? And then all this stuff about God-sized missions started coming up. In church, in my bible study, in the home bible study I go to, pretty much everywhere I was hearing those exact words. I knew God was giving me one of those missions, and it was time for me to respond. I’m trusting God to do something greater and bigger than anything I could plan and put together on my own. He’s just using me to bring glory to His name in a crazy way. I’m simply along for the ride.
Hey, God freaking raised Jesus from the dead. How could I think for even one moment that He couldn’t send me to Haiti? That’s like, insanely easy for Him.
Have a great Easter.
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