Come Out of Hiding

What is your biggest fear?  Where do you run to when you feel as if you have no where else to run?

In each and every heart, we long for home.  We long for a place where our soul can be completely well.  Yet, even when you go back home and sleep in your bed, your never satisfied.  We begin to idolize comfort and control for we want to feel at home but nothing on this earth satisfies.  Before long, we run into things we can't control.  Our anxiety and fear rages for we no longer can control everything.

This is where God is calling us out of hiding.  If we idolize control, we usually run away from intimacy.  Feelings can't be controlled and so therefore we don't trust others with our heart.

I don't trust others because if I do I feel that I'm out of control.  For once I trust them, they could hurt me or damage my heart.  That is a disaster.  Yet, if I'm hiding from people, then there is a pretty good chance that I'm hiding from God.  God told me last night that my heart needed to come out of hiding.  He had my mind and my soul, He had my love, but my trust and my heart was elsewhere.

I thought it was hard for me to trust because my heart was broken.  Although there has been many agents that have tried to break my heart, my heart is maybe just chipped.  Its still whole because I haven't let it feel.  I don't let many people in, because I feel out of control.  For once I give my cares to someone else, I have lost control.  I have lost control.  

Yet, God told me that I don't give my heart to others when I care about them, instead that He holds my heart and keeps it safe.  I don't have to worry about barricading it, or dropping it or letting it go astray.
So, it all goes down to trust.

Now, why I asked you your biggest fear, is it's a great way to find your idols as well as what your not trusting God with.  Fear comes from a lack of trust in God.

Last night, my friend talked about that God died on the cross so that we wouldn't have fear and shame. He died so that we could be free!!! Free from our fears and free from shame.   So why would we hold on to shame?  Why would we live in fear?  God really wants me to face my fears.  He has recently challenged a lot of my fears.  For example, I had a fear of change, so he put me on a pine cove team that traveled across the lower half of the U.S. where for 6 weeks, everything continuously changed.  I hate trying new things.  Not only was this new but I had people on my team who pushed me to try new foods and

experiences.

Fear can never help…it can only hold you back.

I repeat Fear can never help… it can only hold you back.

Yet sometimes, fear feels like your best friend.  Something you can grasp a little tighter when you have to do something out of your comfort zone.

Yet, I ask if you were to reach the end of your life and saw that you remained in your comfort zone your whole life, how would you feel?

We are called to have a trust without borders, a faith that walks on water.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."  Hebrews 12: 1-2

Let us throw off fear,  I know it's been entangling me.  It's hindered me from great experiences.  It's crazy how much food I've never tried, and how many roller coasters I've never ridden.  How many places I haven't been.  How many sleepless nights I've had.  How many days that have been filled with fear and anxiety, when they could have been filled with love and joy.  

So get tired of it!!! Lets get rid of it with God's help.  Yet first we have to trust God and give him everything and then come out of hiding and run to him.  Listen to the song "Out of Hiding" by Steffany Gretzinger. 

Yet the good thing is our faith is not our own, Jesus is the perfecter of it.  So let him perfect your faith.  We don't have to conquer our fear on our own, Jesus Christ perfects us.  

So, in short,  come out of hiding and run into his arms.

God was active, You were passive

So, we are talking about God and that how we view Him is the most important thing about us.

I find that a common misconception is that God is a passive God.  He sits it heaven and watches.  Some people believe that God is like a clockmaker.  He created the earth, and now he is just  watching it do it's thing.

Yet, this is not true.  Not if, we believe in the gospel.  The gospel speaks of an active God.   God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten son" John 3:16  He loved therefore He gave.  Jesus died and rose again.  These are all action verbs.  It doesn't say that He sat and watched.  It says that He came.

Now, we have talked about grace before.  Yet did you do anything to deserve God's gift of His son? No!! We were completely passive.  He lived the life we should have lived and died the death that we should of died, so that we could raise with him from the dead.  He lived our life, died our death, and rose again.  Sounds pretty active to me, but We sat and just took the gift, if you've become a Christian.

You were passive and He was active.

So, if you get on a plane and fly across the world to The Vatican and step into the Sistine Chapel this is what you see:

Now, I think I've talked about this before.  Yet, my whole life I thought that the gap between God's hand and Adam's hand was because of our sin and because of our sin, we were separated from God and God couldn't get any closer.  Yet, in reality it's because of Adam.  God is active; He is reaching down and seeking to touch his wonderful creation.  Adam is lackadaisical and could care less.  Adam is passive.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  Ephesians 2:1-10

Yet, the moment we were born we were dead, dead to our sin and objects of wrath.  Last time I checked,  a dead person couldn't really be an active person.  A dead person is a passive person.  Yet in Verse 4 God comes to the rescue and saves us by his love and mercy.  God made us alive.  

When someone can't breath and you do CPR.  The one that can't breathe is totally unconscious.   If it doesn't go right are you going to blame them?  No! your going to blame the one giving CPR.  They are the ones active.  

So, lets go on today believing that God is actively involved in our salvation and our lives.  He isn't just a clockmaker; He is the creator, redeemer and friend. 

A Glimpse into Heaven: "Kenady, just wait!!!"

As I talked about in the previous blog, the most important fact about you is how you view God.  So, the next few weeks I'm going to talk about who God is.  I know, I know it seems like we learned this in sunday school.  Yet, I can guess that we have many wrong perceptions of God, even if we spent our whole life in church.

So, I'll keep this short and to the point.  God loves you and loves to give you gifts.

This past week, God has blessed me in many ways.  I really wanted to be in this thing called the music business showcase, and I thought I didn't get into it.  I was kinda frustrated and sad, because I had worked really hard to get in.  Yet, a couple days later I found out that I got in!!! That being said I can just imagine God up in heaven, when I was sad, going "Oh Kenady, just wait!! Just wait till you find out!"

My best friend Grace has this really adorable flannel and her mom bought one for her best friend to give to her at christmas.  One day, Grace's friend complimented on the flannel and told her how cute it was.  Grace in her mind at that point was saying, "Oh, just wait!!! Just wait till you open your presents."

When I imagine God sitting in heaven excited to bless me that is much different than the picture that Satan puts in my head which is God sitting in heaven waiting to punish me.

Yet, when I see God like this, it's kinda easier to be patient.  It's easier to wait, when you trust God is going to bring you something that is beyond your imagination in the future, and that he just can't wait to give it to you.

Last story and then we are through,   I've been looking for a good friend for a long time.  One that could be my bridesmaid and one who I could be myself without being ashamed.  There was many days where I thought I'd never find one and there were many friends that I thought I'd found, but they weren't what I was looking for. And I know God was like "Kenady, just wait!! You're going to meet her in college and her name is Grace.   Kenady Just wait!! You're going to love her!!"

What more can I do? I just don't want to disappoint you!!

Some people would call me a people pleaser.  Others would say I'm too stubborn.  Yet, that doesn't change the fact that I don't want anyone to be disappointed in me, especially my elders and the ones that look up to me.

So…I can't make mistakes, that's just the way it has to be.  I can't make mistakes.

I grew up thinking this way.  I wanted to please my father and would cry at the slightest sign of disappointment.  Imagine how learning how to drive went.   When I messed up, he would tell me and I would think he was disappointed, and I would cry.  Yes, I would cry and I was almost 16!!

I didn't want to disappoint my dad.  I love him and want him to be proud of me.

Yet, this is how I viewed God.  I love God so so much and I don't want Him to be disappointed in his daughter.  I want to please Him, and I want Him to be happy with me.  These are all good desires that satan soon corrupted.

Spiritual Warfare has hit me hard this semester, and I say this not to give glory to the enemy,
but instead to give glory to God because He has saved me and restored me and has given me tools to fight against it.

Yet, satan kept telling me what worthless crap I was doing.   If I studied, I didn't study hard enough.  If I was busy, I couldn't handle it.  He would whisper and say, "Kenady, ugh, you are horrible at managing time, and I can't believe you have to do you homework tomorrow during lunch, ugh that's so despicable" "Your parents aren't going to be proud of you, and God is not going to give you this many responsibilities ever again, because you obviously can't handle them"

After I was in this storm for a while, I couldn't sleep at night.  I was so stressed out, and I didn't know how to have victory over it for it seemed every time I got something done; I had more to do.  It was this never ending cycle of things to do and satan made me believe that my head was spinning and that there was no way out.

Then, satan started corrupting my view of God.  He started telling me that God wasn't pleased and I started seeing God more like a drill sergeant who couldn't be pleased rather than my loving father.

Yet, I was sitting in chapel on wednesday and the speaker told us that the most important thing about us is how we view God.  He also said that God could never be more pleased with you than He is right now, because as a Christian I am in Christ.  God loves his son more than ever, so therefore He loves me more than ever.

So, I would like to dispel the lies of Satan for a moment.

In Christ,

We are loved
We are the righteousness of God, that's right we are righteous
We are valuable, for the value of something is showed by what someone will pay for it.
Jesus died for us and we were bought with that price.
We are worth dying for.

God is so pleased with us.
He delights in us.
He sings over us.

He could never love me more and He could never love me less.

So, readers, let us walk throughout the day knowing that we don't have to earn God's pleasure, that He could never be more pleased.

He hurts you a little, to save you from hurting a lot.

Who knew that I could glean from the TV series house!!!  How crazy is that!

There was an episode where there was a young teen who was sick and they didn't know why…yet there was one problem.  She was set to start sailing in a few days to break the world record and she had been training for it for a long time.

Yet, a few days in House's team found out she had cancer in her arm.  This cancer was fairly curable, as long as they amputated her arm.  Yet, if they amputated her arm, she couldn't set sail and break the world record.  So, she stubbornly said that she was going to set sail anyway, because she had been working for it her whole life.  But, if she did set sail, it was very likely the cancer would spread and she would lose her life.

Long story short…while she was in a medically induced coma, the parents signed a wavier to amputate her arm and basically save her life.  When she wakes up, she sees her arm and is furious and all she can think about is how she can't sail and that she has lost her arm.

The parents, however, are just glad that their daughter is alive.

I think this is how we are sometimes with God.  He knows best and He has oversight and wisdom.  He knows more than we even do.

So, sometimes He might hurt us a little, in order to, save us from hurting a lot.

He did this when Jacob wrestled with God in the bible.  He pushed his hip socket, to humble Him.
God could have totally won the wrestling match but He knew it served a purpose, so He only hurt him a little in order to save him from hurting a lot.

Yet, a lot of times when God is doing this.  We find ourselves angry and confused.  In the House episode,  the girl couldn't stop saying my arm, my arm.  We often get so focused on what we have lost, instead of, what we have gained.  She may have lost her arm, but her life was spared.

So, let us start believing that God is in control and it's a good thing too, because He sees what we can't, understands what we don't and has wisdom above us all.

Love can't be earned….it is given.

So…this past week God has turned over tables and revealed a major lie that I had been believing.

I wrote a blog a while back about grace and how hard it was for me to understand grace.  The fact that it can't be earned always has boggled me.  Then, I won a car and God used that car to help me understand his grace a little more.  If you haven't read it…check it out here. 

So, this whole time I've been trying to work this out with my relationship with God.  Yet, it was revealed I had been believing similar lies when it came to relating to people.

I've had a lot of friendship problems in my life.  I would get a friend and then we would fight and no matter how hard I tried we would seem to not ever be the same again.  There was a season of my life where just about every friend and I had broken up and I didn't know what was wrong.  Every situation was different, and every fight was different.  Yet, the only common denominator was me.  It was then I started believing how much of an awful friend I was.

I also would let my friends blame me, because if I was such a bad friend then I must have done something wrong.

To this day, I would never mind taking the blame because I'm so hard on myself anyway that one more negative thought about myself isn't going to hurt right?

Then, I started dating this guy.  I wasn't the most perfect girlfriend, but I tried a lot of things to be a good girlfriend.  I wrote him notes, gave him gifts and spent as much time with him as I could.  I was forgiving and loving.  Yet, the only reason why I did have these things was because I was trying to earn his love. I had made lots of mistakes in the relationship and so I would try to earn his forgiveness or earn his love by doing all these things.

Yet, even after all this He didn't love me.  So, we broke up.

After, the break-up we had a heart to heart in which I confessed that I blame myself…just like I had always blamed myself before.  I told him that it was easier to blame myself and just believe that I could have done more and should've done more rather than believe that it was his fault and that he just didn't love me.

Then, he did an amazing thing.  He told me that I couldn't earn love, but instead love is given.

It's not my loss that he didn't love me or forgive me, it's his loss!!

That statement has sense reverberated in my mind as I play through the years of my friendships and realize I was trying to earn their love the whole time and that's why in the end I had always seen it as my fault.

I remember standing outside someones door with a bucket of ice-cream trying to earn their forgiveness.
Asking for forgiveness but nothing changed.

Nothing that I did changed the way things ended.  Yet, love is not about what is done, it's about the heart of the matter.

If they don't forgive me, it's on them.  Not me!! It's not about what I did, it's about what they didn't do.

I know this may sound harsh, but I'm tired of taking the blame for things that aren't my fault.   I know I'm not perfect and there are things I can work on but I can't earn their forgiveness and I'm tired of trying.

Love is a gift and that's why I'm so thankful for my roommates now.  For even though, I don't always clean my room or keep quiet while they are studying.  They have chosen to love me, and that gift means more to me now that I know it could have never been earned.

I've been lying to myself.

So…We all know the verse Whatever is true, whatever is…wait a minute lets start there.  Everything we think must be true right? We have thought it, it came out of our minds.  No, everything you think and feel is a real feeling and real thought, just it is not necessarily true.

Yet, if we lie to ourselves isn't our whole perception of reality off?

If you tell yourself that nobody likes you, then your going to walk around believing that no one likes you and every time someone is busy and they can't talk to you, your going to use that as support for that belief.  If someone is having a bad day, it's suddenly your fault because they are having a bad day because no one likes you.  

You may laugh, but to be honest that's been me for a while now.  I hate lies, and I don't like when lies are told to me and yet ironically I've been lying to myself for a long time.

I have told myself over and over that I'm not a very good friend, so every time something happens where I argue or something with one of my friends, it becomes my fault.  For it must be my fault, for I'm not a very good friend.

I'm not saying never take the blame, but I'm saying make sure your not taking the blame to further prove to yourself the lies your telling.

If you have ever seen the movie inception, I find it to be a good illustration.  Whenever the dreamer creates a dream they have to be as realistic as possible or the person having the dream's subconscious will start attacking them.  It senses an intruder and begins to attack it.

The first time we tell a lie to ourself we can sense it as an intruder and the trick is to catch it then.  Yet, when we keep telling it to ourself over and over again and we use actions of others or ourselves to justify it.  We start to believe it as truth.

Then, when it is revealed through God and others that the statement we have believed for so long is a lie.   We suddenly sense an intruder and try to attack it, when it's really the truth in the first place.

Lets take the body for example.  We have white blood cells who job is to identify foreign substances and then make antibodies to go and attack them.  Yet a lie is like a virus which hides itself in a body cell to make it harder for the white blood cells to identify them.  Since you are lying to yourself, your brain has diquised its thoughts to look like truth.

Yet, when your trying to replace the lie with truth.  The one thing that is helping you feels like it's hurting you. It's like host-graft disease.  When people have an organ that isn't working sometimes they are lucky enough to get an organ transplant.  Yet, sometimes when an organ is placed in the body, the white blood cells see it as a foreign substance and start attacking it.

Yet why have we trained the white blood cells in our brain to see lies as truth and truth as lies.  Why do we even lie to ourselves when it gets us all messed up like this?

We lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better or to explain things that have hurt us in society.

I have had many friend break-ups and I've realized that it made me feel better to take the blame.  Why you ask? For if it was my fault, then that just means I didn't do enough, and I'm just not the best friend in the world.  Maybe I can do next time and fix that.  I'm in control of that.  Yet, if I choose to believe the truth maybe that they weren't a good friend and they don't love me.  That's something I can't control and it makes me sadder to think that someone doesn't really love me then believe that I just need to be a better friend.

Yet, this is just an excuse not to cope with your feelings.  I lie to myself so that I don't have to feel the pain of coping with the truth.  Yet, if you give your hurt to God, He will patch up the pain, yet in order to give it to God you have to be honest with Him that it is there.

Yet, I don't want to do this anymore, because it has gotten me nowhere.  So, let's tell others what we say to ourselves because sometimes we will recognize the lie better when it's said out loud.   Also, let's pray and ask God to change our thoughts and show us the beauty in truth.  Let us think about whatever is true..