Peace/Piece of Heart.

It's amazing to me how well the simple prayer of peace works.

Something like: "God come into this," "God grant us peace of heart," or "God, show us peace right now."

It's such a short prayer, but it is filled with so much meaning. It isn't just a prayer for peace; it is also an acknowledgement that we can no longer do it on our own. It is letting Jesus take the burden for us. It is giving up and letting God take power in a situation, an act of humility. Prayers like these force us to let go of our pride and our fight for control and when God is given control, he works. Why am I always so amazed?

When we ask for peace of heart, we are are also giving a piece of our heart to God. We can give him all those shattered fragments we collect from day to day and he takes those pieces and gives us back a piece of himself, the peace of himself.

I can't think of anything more fantastic.

No, Thank You.

Wake up. Get my kids up for school and go down stairs and proceed to pack their lunches. Feed the dog. Make the family breakfast. Kiss my husband goodbye and slip a note in his briefcase that tells him I love him. Drop the kids off at school. Go to work. Run errands. Pick the kids up from soccer practice. Help them do their homework. Make dinner. Go to a PTA meeting before I come home for family game night. Put the kids to bed. My husband contemplates fixing the hinges on the door of our white picket fence this weekend.

But before I get to this particular point in my life, I need to first take the steps to ensure I will be comfortableand sucessful. So...I go to college. Get involved in a couple of clubs. Become more involved at church. Get the "college experience" and a useful degree in something like business. I graduate. Get engaged. Get married. Honeymoon somewhere tropical. My husband and I buy a dog and name him "scooter." See above for more detailed everyday schedule.

If this is dream of the life ahead of me, I would like to respectfully say "No, thank you." That cannot possibly be the climax of a life I am called to live. Where's the room for God? Where's the room for His movement? If I live the safe and comfortable life above, I am living a life of obligation, compartmentalizing God, making him fit society's dreams and hopes. And the reality is, we are all fooling ourselves if we think God is totally fine with being fit into a Sunday service and maybe a Wednesday night home group and then maybe an added couple week missions trip one summer. I want to do something more with my life. And really, I guess I would be fine with only living the life of the first two paragraphs if my life was my own, but it's not. I want to follow Jesus radically so badly. I don't want to live a life of comfort and security and self-betterment that everyone seems to be condoning. No, getting a business degree is not of the devil, and having a picket fence in your front yard does not make you boring, and God bless you if you have found a husband that really loves you and kids that can create play-doh sculptures like no one else in their kindergarten class.

Truth is, I would actually like a couple of those things as well. But I do not want those to be my dreams. I want to dream and hope for bigger and better things for the kingdom of God. I want to see people healed, people come to know and love God with reckless abandonment. I want to see great things. I would absolutely adore having a family one day. But there has got to be more. The life I originally described in this post cannot be all I can hope and dream for. God has so much bigger plans for all of us than just getting a good job and snagging a spouse and the yearly bonus. That's all self gratifying. I want to see the greatest things of God. I want to gratify God.

Peace

You can't live like hell and expect the peace of heaven

Mmm Mmm

"Your addictions tell your identity you are not qualified to meet with God"

"God sees what we could be, not what we aren't"

Redemption.

Jesus speaks of redemption, of mercy, of grace, of forgiveness.

I want nothing, nothing, nothing more than to be able to show these to others to my fullest ability.

"Freedom reigns in this place, showers of mercy and grace, falling on every face, there is freedom"

Freedom Hangs Like Heaven

I've been thinking a lot about what exactly freedom means to us. In America, the word "freedom" conjures up a lot of ideas about independence and liberation. And to those of us familiar or interested in social justice, it brings to mind the oppression of millions and a freedom that seems so far from their grasps. People fight wars, give up their lives in pursuit of these freedoms. We've all heard spiels about both of these things. And I am definitely not discounting the heroism of such things. But I wish the Christian community talked a lot more about the complexities of freedom that rests in Christianity. Not the "you were born again in Christ and have freedom in Him" idea. While that is true, life with Christ, in communion with God, releases us to live above the absolute oppression of a sinful world, there's the other end of that that interests me so much more. We were born into absolute freedom. Absolute freedom to choose our own path, to choose to follow our desires and our wants, and freedom to follow a much narrower path in pursuit of something much bigger than ourselves.

Freedom is also what allows for sin and shame. Freedom is what brings us into the oppressions of the world. We keep ourselves from the freedom we so desperately long for by pursuing the wrong paths. My pastor has said on more than one occasion that "every single sin in our lives is an illegitimate attempt to meet a legitimate need." Well worded, right? The freedom we long for with God, the freedom that so many of us fall short of, is up to us. We can choose to grab ahold of the freedom we all were born with and pursue a sinful nature. Or we could take that freedom and willingly pursue the God of the universe. That is how far our freedom enables us to go, straight to the Creator of all things. Jesus was born into the same world as us, He had the same freedoms we do. The difference was in what He chose to do with those freedoms. We are given an opportunity to live in community with the Father. Every action we take can bring us farther or closer to that. It is up to us. Are we willing to give our lives for that sort of freedom?