All I Am

I got Phil Wickham's new cd, and I am thoroughly enjoying it now that my cd player in my car is actually working! yippee! and this is probably my favorite song right now, and i think it just kinda goes with my last post and where my thoughts have been a lot recently. The song is called "All I Am" and these are the lyrics!



Take these hands
I know they're empty
But with You they can
Be used for beauty
In Your perfect plan
All I am is Yours

Take these feet
I know they stumble
But You use the weak
You use the humble
So please use me
All I am is Yours

I give You all my life
I'm letting it go
A living sacrifice
No longer my own
All I am is Yours
All I am is Yours

Take this heart
Set it on fire
Shining in the dark
I wanna tell the world of who You are
All I am is Yours

I give You all my life
I'm letting it go
A living sacrifice
No longer my own
All I am is Yours
All I am is Yours

I give You everything
To You I belong
Every beat of my heart
The breath in my lungs
All I am is Yours
All I am is Yours

I lift my hands up
God I surrender
All that I am for Your glory, Your honor, Your fame

I life my hands up
God I surrender to You

I give You all my life
I'm letting it go
A living sacrifice
No longer my own
All I am is Yours
All I am is Yours

I give You everything
To You I belong
Every beat of my heart
The breath in my lungs
All I am is Yours
All I am is Yours

sanctification

Lately, the reality that I have absolutely nothing to offer Christ...is really leaving me in a broken state. But right after that state comes the realization of God's amazing grace.
Christ gave absolutely everything, and how much do we give Him?!
we are to give ourselves as a LIVING sacrifice...daily dieing to ourselves and taking up our own cross.

my eyes are being opened to the utter selfishness in human beings, particularly myself. and this realization is making me hate selfishness so much more. It causes so much hurt and destroys people and destroys the glory of God. Yet we are all guilty of being selfish. And this will probably be a sin we will forever struggle with, but my prayer is that we may actually be stripped from selfish thinking and really learn how to put Jesus and other's before ourselves, before our own thoughts and desires. and to make our lives completely not about us, because we are not here to please ourselves, but to please our Loving, Holy Father above.

I think we also forget, in that Christ has given us everything and sacrificed everything for us (among many...He became a man...limiting His Godly attributes, He died the most the brutal death, He was beaten, He was misunderstood, He has given us His Holy Spirit and made a way for us to be with the Father, He has made us righteous...), He also demands a lot from us. Which is only right.
I think in the Western World, we so often (whether we realize it or not) take the words of Jesus, and commands, and somehow think that they are a choice for us to make...We think that what Jesus has commanded, is our own choice whether we act like or what He says. But the reality of it is...we have no choice in the matter of how we, who have accepted Christ as our Savior, live our lives. Jesus tells us how we are to live all throughout the New Testament. and His commands given, are just that...COMMANDS! (to demand, to order authoritively)

Obedience pleases our God.

So I ask the question, what are we giving to God?!
I have recently fallen in love with a couple songs...one is The Stand by Hillsong, and my favorite line in it is
"So what can I say, what can I do? But offer this heart O God completely to you."
Jesus deserves our whole heart. When the weight of all that Jesus has done and given for/to us realy resonates in our hearts and not just our minds, that is when we truly will be changed from the inside out and surrender all we are. and this is an on-going surrender.

what are we doing?

 

Do we realize how blessed we are?

This morning I have been reading my compassion international magazine. and im being reminded of how many privelages so many of us have, and yes God loves us, and in fact a lot of us are spoiled in Christ but are we grateful? and what are we doing  with all that God has given us, are we hording it or giving it back? and what are we doing about poverty?

Do we realize what the children we sponsor actually go through in a day, what they live like?!

We complain about getting up early, when some people in oppressed countries would die to be able to get up and have the freedom to read their bible. We complain that we have nothing to eat when our fridge and pantry is full. We complain about our living conditions, when there are people who live in a garbage dump.

the Old testament tells us numerous times to take care of the poor. the farmers were told to not take all of their crop, but to leave some behind for the poor to glean from. and James tells us religion that is pure and holy is to visit orphans and widows int heir affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world….
          i have to ask the question…are we really unstained from the world?!

here are some hard facts to take in:
naerly 2 million children worldwide are forced into the sex trade each year.

250,000-500,000 children live as prostitutes in Brazil (alone). Some sources place this number as high as 2 million.

40,000 annual birthds in Thailand go unregistered. Without a birth certificate, these children are denied health care and education, and are more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

1 in 5 women worldwide becomes a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.

 

http://youtu.be/EmZFVcONf2w

The least we can do is pray.

community

 

I was also reading, one of my favorite chapters in the Bible.

Colossians 3:16
”Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

I’ve read this verse loads of times, cuz it’s part of my favorite passage, but for some reason this morning, this one thought just stuck out to me.
      we are all, always teaching someone whether with our lives, our words, our actions…in someway we are always teaching…and vice verse…we are always being taught. and the majority of time, we don’t even realize it.

and i am one, who at times…can be quite stubborn and get an attitude of "’this person can’t tell me what to do…they dont have authority over me…’ but I was reminded that…

“i am not better than anyone.” and that goes for all of us. we are all wretched sinners. gloriously saved and made alive by the grace and mercy and love of God. We can learn from all people, and we are always teaching something. Good and bad.

but the bible tells us to teach one another, as we are dwelling in the word of Christ and to admonish (or to counsel, or reprove) one another in the same way…in wisdom, in songs…all with a GRATEFUL HEART.
 

my attitude, is the wrong attitude a lot of the time. I need to be willing to learn and to take counsel from people. I do believe though, there needs to be respect in it though, you can’t just go up to anyone and tell them they are wrong or teach them a certain thing…we are also called to respect and love one another…

it says that the word of Christ needs to be in us as we teach and admonish…in all wisdom…

 

So i was just reminded today to be more open and to check my attitude.

Mirrors

 

so i was reading my bible this morning, and just felt like sharing a few thoughts that ran thru my head and a couple verses.

James 1:22-25
”But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perserveres, being no hearer, who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

I’ve heard it said that the Word of God (the bible) acts as our mirror. For our Spiritual life, and our charachter our mirror is God’s Word. Yet as this verse says, how often do we read the Word, walk away, and completely forget what we read, or what Christ has said about us and our identity….

I know that I do this, all to often. i did it this morning as we were reading it…I forgot who I was in Christ, even as I was reading and being challenged by this passage. we need to apply the words of God to who we are, we need to compare our charachter to what Christ says about who we are in Him, our new life. We need to not just walk away from our mirror forgetting who we are. but walk away remembering who we are, and perservereing in that.

We need to not just hear who we are, but act and live in who we are!

You Are God.

 

i love the song Forever Reign. and my favorite line from the song is:

“You are God. You are God. of all else I’m letting go.”

As i was praying and thinking this morning, I just started questioning, do we really live that out?! Do we really believe that God is God, and that He will BE or IS God in our lives. and do we really let everything that hinders us go. Do we let all the things go that we like to have control of…

do we let our own will’s go, our own desires, our own wants, our worries, our fears…etc. the list could go on.

 

Do we truly believe and live that God is God, and of all else, we let go?!

The church, is the body.

 

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ…For the body does not consist of one member but of many….But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts yet one body.”
  (parts of 1 Corinthians 12)

Last night at church, instead of worship practice we just had a time of prayer for the church, and for the worship team, and the many different ministries of the church. We had our own individual time of prayer, and it was great. While I was praying, I was just reminded that we are the body. The church is the body of Christ. and this passage from 1 corinthians popped in my head, cuz in the body, there are so many different parts…in the church there are or can be so many different ministries. Yet all to often, you see them operating as something separate from the church, or on their own. But they really should operate, as the body of Christ, all minstries shoudl operate as if they need each other…they need all the other ministries to work together to make up the church, and the body. They are all just as important as another, and just as much needed.

I just wish and hope and pray that the church starts living that way, and that we see the importance of the body working together as ONE.

 

“But if we are the Body
Why aren't His arms reaching
Why aren't His hands healing
Why aren't His words teaching
And if we are the Body
Why aren't His feet going
Why is His love not showing them there is a way
There is a way “