Sunday, 16 December 2012
Grace chases me.
It runs after us, this love that sprints so fast
My little legs are meant for this, theyve been created not to last.
They can only run so long until your giant limbs outrun me,
you embrace me as I struggle and cry; fiercely binding me to thee
Your heart pounding, unrelenting mercy won't let me to go any further,
I'm "stuck" here in this place of unwanted grace looking into the face of an all knowing accomplisher.
"Daughter why every time do you run from it,
don't you know yet that this is my favorite part in the romance I have with your heart; I savor it".
His tears say "I'm always faithful even when your not,
This is the promise I've made for you and me since before forever, the battle for your heart has already been fought.
Grace is the conquerer, its all of Me, and since you are IN me, you in IT is all I see.
There is so much to savor and enjoy when you let me,
All you have to do is receive me, it's that easy.
My love is inexhaustible, I won't ever relent
And it's consistent!, permanent; solid as cement.
You will always be an adulterous in the deadness of your flesh,
But because of ME and My Son, You are worthy, you are my Daughter i have made you new and fresh! "
Monday, 10 December 2012
Moving past guilt and shame and into authentic obedience.
This past January, transitioning out of full time school at Tyndale and into full time work was really hard for me. Most of the difficulty that I struggled with was my fault and throughout that time I really realized that. I made the horrible mistake of not getting fully plugged into a church the four years I was at Tyndale because I made the excuse to myself that Tyndale was already in itself the only community I needed, and so I didn't go out of my way to really sow into a church and build community outside Tyndale. I have been in church ministry my whole life at home in Kingston and moving into my own new church in Toronto just wasn't comfortable for me because I knew I would have to commit to so many new things if I were to really plant myself into a church here. I did attend church throughout Tyndale but I went back and forth between churches, with no desire to commit, thinking I was already being fed and pouring out enough where I was.
Coming out of Tyndale really messed me up because I saw how much not doing that affected my current situation. Leaving Tyndale I didn't have a home church, I wasn't plugged into any other accountability outside the friends I had there and I was feeling so alone, and so miserable.
I struggled for months with this and the easiest thing for me would have been to get up and find a church. It was easier said to myself than done. I knew I was struggling with shame and guilt and I knew God didn't want me to be feeling that way about everything. The conviction from the Holy Spirit was " Kayla, commit yourself somewhere and find a church, plug yourself in" but I immediately took that conviction the wrong way and have struggled with committing to a church the past year not because of a fear anymore of committing but because of guilt and shame.
The past month was when the Holy Spirit spoke to me about it in a new way and really started to work within that area of my heart. At a church service a few weeks ago He told me that there were some places in my heart that were holding misplaced guilt and shame. It's crazy that we can become blinded to it and those areas that were once light that we knew about can become dark and forgotten when we choose to hide them and forget about them.
He reopened my eyes to that shame in my heart again for not being committed to a church for so long. He told me that He wanted to give me a church, a church community and ministry opportunity there, but He wanted to give it to me as a gift. A grace gift given to me out of His love for me! I had never seen it like that before and I was so confused and I didn't understand what He meant when He told me that. For the past year, the reason why I wanted to find a church ( if I were to be brutally honest with myself and Father God) was because I felt unfruitful and unproductive, I felt like I was unuseful and less than I was before while I was plentiful in ministry . I felt kind of worthless and like I had fallen down a few steps on this imaginary ladder of God's approval or something. I have learned so much within this dry season of learning myself in His love and my identity IN Him without doing anything at all and practicing how to just rest in Him without striving rather than just knowing it in my heart.
He has been showing me that that intention for wanting to find a church and all the things that comes with that was not out of authentic obedience but out of guilt and shame and condemnation. He wants to instead give me this opportunity for growth, ministry and whatever else as a gift instead of a "this is what you have to do", but He wants me to be in the place to be able to receive it the way He wants me to receive it. Instead of telling me "Kayla this is what you must do for me", I have been hearing it more as a " Kayla, I love you so much that I want to give you this to bless you and in you feeling and taking this love from me you will naturally just want to give back to me with it". As I was sitting in my room the other night telling this to a friend, she asked me " how does doing something you know you must do be a gift when it should just be an act of reverence and obedience?"
Yah, just learning from God as Father that He doesn't want us to love him out of dutiful service, he wants my heart to be full of love for Him. That's all, that's all he wants from me. Intimacy. And fruitfulness precedes it. If I am so in love with Him and focusing just on that, all obedience , submission and fruit will come afterwards and I guess I have just got so caught up in wanting to see the fruit that I have ignored seeking the intimacy first this past year. His grace gift to me with what I have been seeking in a church is His way of showing me how much He loves me and if I am seeing every opportunity to love Him, serve him and fall deeper in love with Him like that, I will be seeing His true Father heart for me instead of seeing Him as this mean demanding Father.
This is just a little bit of what I have been learning, the biggest struggle right now for me and how he has been teaching my heart through it. Hoping it speaks to redeemed hearts needing truth of His real Father heart in areas where obedience and submission are trying to come out of places of condemnation and shame.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Psalm 51:17
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1-4
Coming out of Tyndale really messed me up because I saw how much not doing that affected my current situation. Leaving Tyndale I didn't have a home church, I wasn't plugged into any other accountability outside the friends I had there and I was feeling so alone, and so miserable.
I struggled for months with this and the easiest thing for me would have been to get up and find a church. It was easier said to myself than done. I knew I was struggling with shame and guilt and I knew God didn't want me to be feeling that way about everything. The conviction from the Holy Spirit was " Kayla, commit yourself somewhere and find a church, plug yourself in" but I immediately took that conviction the wrong way and have struggled with committing to a church the past year not because of a fear anymore of committing but because of guilt and shame.
The past month was when the Holy Spirit spoke to me about it in a new way and really started to work within that area of my heart. At a church service a few weeks ago He told me that there were some places in my heart that were holding misplaced guilt and shame. It's crazy that we can become blinded to it and those areas that were once light that we knew about can become dark and forgotten when we choose to hide them and forget about them.
He reopened my eyes to that shame in my heart again for not being committed to a church for so long. He told me that He wanted to give me a church, a church community and ministry opportunity there, but He wanted to give it to me as a gift. A grace gift given to me out of His love for me! I had never seen it like that before and I was so confused and I didn't understand what He meant when He told me that. For the past year, the reason why I wanted to find a church ( if I were to be brutally honest with myself and Father God) was because I felt unfruitful and unproductive, I felt like I was unuseful and less than I was before while I was plentiful in ministry . I felt kind of worthless and like I had fallen down a few steps on this imaginary ladder of God's approval or something. I have learned so much within this dry season of learning myself in His love and my identity IN Him without doing anything at all and practicing how to just rest in Him without striving rather than just knowing it in my heart.
He has been showing me that that intention for wanting to find a church and all the things that comes with that was not out of authentic obedience but out of guilt and shame and condemnation. He wants to instead give me this opportunity for growth, ministry and whatever else as a gift instead of a "this is what you have to do", but He wants me to be in the place to be able to receive it the way He wants me to receive it. Instead of telling me "Kayla this is what you must do for me", I have been hearing it more as a " Kayla, I love you so much that I want to give you this to bless you and in you feeling and taking this love from me you will naturally just want to give back to me with it". As I was sitting in my room the other night telling this to a friend, she asked me " how does doing something you know you must do be a gift when it should just be an act of reverence and obedience?"
Yah, just learning from God as Father that He doesn't want us to love him out of dutiful service, he wants my heart to be full of love for Him. That's all, that's all he wants from me. Intimacy. And fruitfulness precedes it. If I am so in love with Him and focusing just on that, all obedience , submission and fruit will come afterwards and I guess I have just got so caught up in wanting to see the fruit that I have ignored seeking the intimacy first this past year. His grace gift to me with what I have been seeking in a church is His way of showing me how much He loves me and if I am seeing every opportunity to love Him, serve him and fall deeper in love with Him like that, I will be seeing His true Father heart for me instead of seeing Him as this mean demanding Father.
This is just a little bit of what I have been learning, the biggest struggle right now for me and how he has been teaching my heart through it. Hoping it speaks to redeemed hearts needing truth of His real Father heart in areas where obedience and submission are trying to come out of places of condemnation and shame.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Psalm 51:17
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1-4
Sunday, 2 December 2012
Love looks like something
Love always looks like something.
Hearing Heidi Baker speak, she always says "love looks like something" but what I have been learning the past little while for myself personally is that love doesn't always look like what we expect it or want it to look like. That is what makes us doubt and fear when a situation occurs where God is really requiring us to love because all of a sudden we start making assumptions as to what WE think it should look like and base every thought and action as we love on that.
This is when God tells us to ask HIM what it is supposed to look like.
People in second temple Judaism did not expect love to come the way it did, that's why they were so disappointed and went as far as to even reject it when it did finally come.
A while ago for even months straight, the Spirit inside of me would intercede for me saying " Lord I want more of Your love, no matter what it looks like"! And then he would always reply saying " then drink the cup of suffering". All of me would scream no, but my Spirit would say "Yes!"
And since then oh how he has been giving to me all that I have been asking for, but it has not come like I thought it would come or looked like what I thought it would look like. Love looks like something, and if we really say that we want more of His love, I think the next part of our prayer needs to be " Lord I want it to come how You want it to come for me, fill me up with Your perfect love and help me love with Your perfect love, get rid of what I think it should look like, I just want you".
I am a firm believer in that if we lay down all of our expectations of what we think love should look like and just ask for more of Him, love will bear fruit in our lives in such large amounts. We will start seeing love like He sees it and want it the way He wants it. We will start seeing a lot more of hope rather than disappointment in our lives and for our world. Heaven is invading earth by love, but the love sometimes doesn't feel like how we thought it would always feel or look like how we always thought it would look. It even sometimes makes us feel yucky and miserable in our flesh. God has just been really heart teaching me that the pain, the suffering, the hurt, it's the runway for the Kingdom. I know I have known this in my head for a long time but it hasn't started becoming real for my own life until now. I have always thought that the Lord's favor would look like such an attractive thing, like any gift would. But lately I guess I have just been learning that the suffering and hardship in this world is actually the richness of the Lord's favor. The spirit of the poor, the widow, the homeless= runway for the Kingdom. Lord help me WANT to share in the hardship of them all, what they experience, feel and see. Lord make us more lowly, take us deeper into love by wanting all this, its not about what we feel, but about what we know. It's about the kingdom invading earth. Take us out of ourselves to really want this and to really want to be used for this. Help us participate in this huge love invasion, work through the fear that is in us. Teach us through them, we need to know how to love from them, we need more love.
Hearing Heidi Baker speak, she always says "love looks like something" but what I have been learning the past little while for myself personally is that love doesn't always look like what we expect it or want it to look like. That is what makes us doubt and fear when a situation occurs where God is really requiring us to love because all of a sudden we start making assumptions as to what WE think it should look like and base every thought and action as we love on that.
This is when God tells us to ask HIM what it is supposed to look like.
People in second temple Judaism did not expect love to come the way it did, that's why they were so disappointed and went as far as to even reject it when it did finally come.
A while ago for even months straight, the Spirit inside of me would intercede for me saying " Lord I want more of Your love, no matter what it looks like"! And then he would always reply saying " then drink the cup of suffering". All of me would scream no, but my Spirit would say "Yes!"
And since then oh how he has been giving to me all that I have been asking for, but it has not come like I thought it would come or looked like what I thought it would look like. Love looks like something, and if we really say that we want more of His love, I think the next part of our prayer needs to be " Lord I want it to come how You want it to come for me, fill me up with Your perfect love and help me love with Your perfect love, get rid of what I think it should look like, I just want you".
I am a firm believer in that if we lay down all of our expectations of what we think love should look like and just ask for more of Him, love will bear fruit in our lives in such large amounts. We will start seeing love like He sees it and want it the way He wants it. We will start seeing a lot more of hope rather than disappointment in our lives and for our world. Heaven is invading earth by love, but the love sometimes doesn't feel like how we thought it would always feel or look like how we always thought it would look. It even sometimes makes us feel yucky and miserable in our flesh. God has just been really heart teaching me that the pain, the suffering, the hurt, it's the runway for the Kingdom. I know I have known this in my head for a long time but it hasn't started becoming real for my own life until now. I have always thought that the Lord's favor would look like such an attractive thing, like any gift would. But lately I guess I have just been learning that the suffering and hardship in this world is actually the richness of the Lord's favor. The spirit of the poor, the widow, the homeless= runway for the Kingdom. Lord help me WANT to share in the hardship of them all, what they experience, feel and see. Lord make us more lowly, take us deeper into love by wanting all this, its not about what we feel, but about what we know. It's about the kingdom invading earth. Take us out of ourselves to really want this and to really want to be used for this. Help us participate in this huge love invasion, work through the fear that is in us. Teach us through them, we need to know how to love from them, we need more love.
Saturday, 1 December 2012
His blood tastes sweet.
His blood tastes sweet
He doesn't see you in the sinHe sees You in His Son.
How many of you, when I say that, scratches the insides of you the wrong way?
I guess I just wanted to start off this blog with the revelations and heart awakenings I have been receiving from the Father over the course of this year, all being about His grace. I am struggling even writing this because i am thinking " oh my word, duh people already know this" Some of this may seem like a " yah.. That's the gospel Kayla.. Thats what we all believe. " but my heart is just wrecked and broken and I am sitting here crying as I type this write now because I really did think I knew this too, I thought I knew his love more than how I really did, i am heartbroken to how much I tried to spill out his love and love other people through what I didn't really grasp the full picture of. I still don't, I am still learning this, we always will be learning this and as we all still learn to recieve the gospel for ourselves, I just invite you into this as you participate in it with me, as we learn more and more the true meaning of the gospel, his grace and our position as sons and daughters of this inheritance.
The biggest question from our Father right now that has been spoken into my heart is "Are you accepting grace from me for everything you are and are enduring right now??"
And then from that He would say
"you will receive more than ever from me when you are needing my grace ; allowing yourself to need it, so that you can want it and ask for it that much more. Blessed are the poor in spirit! "Don't be afraid to be needy!
You are the most beautiful when all of you is needing, longing and accepting my grace"
This sounds so easy and of course we are all like " yes, that's what your supposed to believe if your a Christian.. Grace."
But for so long ( I have been a Christian since I was 9 years old)
I have knew grace in my head but there was a disconnect from my head to my heart.
It's crazy how much we can live so much of our Christian lives as orphans rather than as sons and daughters . Wow, we are sons and daughters of the promise! ( Galatians 4:1-7) When the Father sent his son to set us free, he really did want to set us free from everything! And he brought us from a kingdom of darkness where we need to strive to earn his love to a kingdom of light where we can know who we are in him, our position in heaven ( Ephesians 1)
If I know I am a daughter, it should be so easy for my Dad to constantly wash me with His grace, to know that even though I do sin because I am still in my earthly body and living in this world He sees me as if I am sitting right now up there with Him as I am IN his son.
But it's not. It is so hard to keep that continual picture of myself and understanding of my standings with the Father, especially when I am right smack dab in the middle of my gross sticky and yucky sin and that's all I see.
He has said these things to my heart and I hope from this he can affirm how he has been saying these things to you'rs:
"My blood is so sweet, it is supposed to taste so good, it shouldn't be a sword to swallow, it shouldn't feel like dissatisfaction or punishment, when you need my grace, it should actually feel like favor! The grace that I provide for you right now is the favor that says I am always proud of you, you are a son! I see you In my perfect Son. Well done simply for being in Him, those words are yours too. I can't love you anymore than I do right now because you already have RIGHT now the fullness of my favor, my affections; my love. You being healed from a sin or bondage or fulfilling any kind of dream or calling Isn't going to make me love you more or less. This covenant of ours relies on me an what I have done for you; about my faithfulness and not yours. "
Yes I believe God wants us to be healed of sin and he wants us to fulfill callings but what I am learning right now is how to know His love for me despite knowing or having those things. Those things will come for us because he is good! And he does what He promises! But I have been learning that the keys to breakthroughs are simply receiving the grace first. When we are receiving His love first, and accepting the truth into our hearts within that struggle that " I love you despite this and being healed of this is not going to make me love you more" that's when our hearts are just wrecked in His love and we just naturally fall more in love with Him and then in this reciprocation of more love for Him and more understanding of how much we are loved, those chains just fall off! Knowing his love for us loosens the chains and accepting his grace breaks them off!
The truth that has been wrecking me is Luke 7:36-50
"One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”
“A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him,“You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then those who were at table with him began to say among[h] themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
When I ask for more love from Him, to know it more.. What am I really wanting and asking for? I am asking for situations where I am going to need His grace more and more, I am asking for low, desperate times, I am asking for pain and suffering. For loves sake, just to know His love.
Lord revise in our hearts what we ask for, awaken our eyes to grace, to long for it, to be desperate for it, no matter what it costs us or what it may look like.
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