I want to share something that has been very heavy on my heart lately in hopes that the ache in my heart will stir something in yours. My intensions in writing this need to be very clear because I don't want this to be a post that makes anyone feel picked on or judged but instead I want this to be a call for change. A change that is so needed and has always been deeply needed but that has been ignored.

Julie De Waroquier

I set out on a little mission that the Holy Spirit placed on my heart and I didn't know how important it was until now. I was simply spending six weeks refueling my pastoral team through little gifts and prayer cards. The gifts I happily provided but the cards I wanted to be from the people in the church. My thought on this was, how great will it be for our leaders to see how dearly loved and supported they are. As I set out on this the feedback I got was so disheartening. It was so rare to find anyone who was actually excited or even supportive of the idea of writing these simple prayer cards for our pastors. I had a really hard time with this the first day and left filled with a lot of anger and disappointment in our church. I realize that there are so many more people in the church who I didn't talk to but I really felt in my heart that we are missing something as a church family. We are falling short somewhere.

I am completely aware of the fact that writing is not something everyone is gifted with and that this task made a lot of people uncomfortable. Not to mention that to most of these people I am sadly a stranger and it seems that church is a place where we go and try to keep our head down. But this is so wrong and this is so saddening to God. Church is supposed to be something so different and so much deeper.

I know this isn't a feel good topic and you probably want to close the page now especially if you are feeling convicted about this but please keep reading. The church in not a building run by mighty men and filled with worker bees. The church is US! We have the power to change this and the power to make our "church" a home, a safe haven, and a family.

Church

And this is where our pastors come in. They have been put in a place of leadership by God and that is a huge task. I think we are so quick to think that it is there job to make "church" what we want it to be and to fix it when it falls short but I am starting to really understand how flawed that is. We hold these leaders on a pedestal and we are forgetting that they are the same as us. They need prayer, encouragement and they run dry and become broken just like we do. They cannot carry the weight of our whole church on their shoulders. It is our job to make this house of believers into a church and it is us, the "worker bees" who are supposed to fix it when it's broken.

It is you and me who show up on sundays asking to be filled and comforted who are supposed to be giving our love, our souls, and our lives to every single person walking in that door. This sounds daunting and like it's much too big for us but we are here to live like Jesus did and that is what Jesus did!

So if you're sitting there and wondering what does that mean for me or what am I supposed to do next? I can help you and it's so simple where to start.


First we need to change our attitudes when it comes to caring for others and when it comes to praying for our pastors especially. The bible is very clear about this.

"Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality." - Romans 12:11-13

"Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!"- Psalms 100:2

We are called to be joyful and passionate when it comes to serving God and praying. If you don't know what this looks like or if you lost this then pray my dear friends, pray with an urgent and believing spirit. God will give us anything we ask for when we pray His will and I stand here with full confidence that  feeling joy and passion in our faith is most definitely a part of His will!

"Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching."- 1 Timothy 5:17

Where do you think this "double honor" comes from? We are supposed to lift them up and treasure them. We are called to give them "double honor".

"Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you." Hebrews 13:17

They are "keeping watch over our souls" and we are letting them down. We are hesitant to pray for them and to encourage them and they have been given this huge task. All we are asked to do is make sure they are doing it with joy. They are running dry because we aren't helping lift them. You might think they should get this from God because it's true that we are supposed to get all of our joy and fulfillment from the Lord but what if God sent us here, to this church, to be his hands and feet to fill and uplift these leaders who are called to "keep watch over [our] souls".

"Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches." - Galatians 6:6

This is not a subtle requests sisters and brothers. We have a job to do and we are not doing it. We are walking through those doors sunday morning and we are being filled and then we are walking right back out and continuing our lives. It is time for a change in our church and not just the building I go to in my town but in all of our churches. Let us start a new revolution, let us take this simple call and let's blow it up. Let's pray with fervent spirits for our pastors, let's encourage and love them with joy and with urgency.

Come together

Let's stop asking for a church to be something better but let's be the church that's better! 

Let's bring glory and tears of joy to our savior's eyes because we are walking through those doors on sunday morning just like He would! 

Let's stop being the christians and the churches that the world is accusing us of being!






I want to help you make this real in your life. I want to help you start and it's so simple. So if you are struggling with the words to pray or just need a helping hand here are some verses that you can pray for your pastors.

Psalm 31:23- "Love the Lord, all you his saints! The Lord preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride. Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord."

Galatians 6:9- "And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up."

Ephesians 2:10- "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

Hebrews 13:20-21- "Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, though Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever, Amen."

2 Corinthians 9:8- "And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work."

1 Corinthians 3:6- "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth."

2 Corinthians 2:14- "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal possession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere."

Deuteronomy 28:2- "And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God."

Dear Heavenly Father,
I come to you now with an urgent spirit. I have fallen short and have failed the leaders you have blessed me with. They are running dry and I have let it happen. I come to you now asking for change. Change in my own heart and in the hearts of all my brothers and sisters. May we have a heart that deeply desires to do your work and a heart that finds overflowing joy in coming to you in prayer. I lift our pastors and elders up to you now. I pray that they would be filled with a new sense of love for you, that they may be strengthened and that their hearts would be courageous for you. I pray that they would find joy and peace while waiting for you and that their work would be out of love for you and not out of pride. Please keep them from growing weary in their work, in their faith, and in their home lives. Help them to walk in the workmanship that you have created for them and show them that their work is bringing joy to you. Equip them with everything good and everything from you so that their work and their lives may be pleasing in your sight and that it may bring you glory forever and ever. Please make grace abound to them and I pray that they may have all the sufficiency of you that they may do your good work. May they take rest in the knowledge that they are planting and watering seeds but you alone are making them grow. Spread the fragrance of your knowledge through them everywhere they go. May your blessing come upon them and overtake them and may they have the support they need to continue to obey you and hear your voice.

Print this if you need or want to and carry it with you. These leaders our God has blessed us with NEED us! They need our prayer, they need our love, they need our encouragement, and they need to see, feel and hear of our passion and joy. My dear friends, we are failing and that is a very hard thing to face and to admit but God's grace is sufficient and we can change. I am here emptying myself to you all and am fully admitting that I have been failing for so long and I want to be different for you, for my leaders and for my God. This will be a constant struggle and we will have to start over time after time but let's start now. Let's start changing our church and our family now by taking care of the people God has given us to lead and guide us.

dependent

I was sitting reading through common quotes on Pinterest. There were more than I could count on the importance of independence and happiness and fulfillment through putting ourselves first. I'm sure you have read some posted on Facebook or even shared some of them. They definitely draw us in. The idea us finding this amazing inner strength and depending on it and finding this purpose and joy from it. Sounds pretty awesome.

As Christians we see the flaw in this or at least we are supposed to. For me when I sit and think about depending on this inner strength or finding fulfillment in my independence I am pretty freaked out by it to be honest. It only takes me a second to see how weak I am on my own and to see my history of messes flash before my eyes and then to think of having to only rely on that is the scariest thing I can think of.

On my own there is nothing I can do. Sure I can buy into the hype and buy a bunch of books and go on a bunch of retreats to better myself or strengthen myself but in the end the outcome is always the same. We were made to be dependent. We were made with a burning desire for intimacy and relationship and all of that is a reflection of the desperate need to be in unity with Christ. To become fully dependent on Him. I see how scary that is for a lot of people. The idea of relying on a being who you can't see or touch and if that's where we leave it then I can see how that wouldn't be very appealing but if you really take the time to get to know this God then you will see it so differently.


My life has been a spiral of disasters and messes most of which I've made for myself and a lot of which were done to me and you might think, "well you seemed to turn out ok, or you made it out ok" but the truth is I never made it out. I got dragged out of it by that same God that you think you can't see or touch. While this dependent life seems so daunting and powerless if you take a chance with it you will see that it is quite the opposite. Since I've surrendered my independence for a sweet dependent life in Jesus it is still a bit messy but I'm not making as many of the messes anymore and they aren't as big and they don't leave be broken anymore.

Hebrews

With this new dependent life I have a clear path and very clear purpose. I no longer have to trust in myself to make it through, only knowing that I will fail myself in the end. There is a bigger picture and the greatest part is that I am no longer walking this alone. There are times where I am walking with God, there are times when I am barely following behind and there are times, more often than not, that I am being carried along by Him. The false sense of power I had before is now replaced with the power of an all mighty God in me that cannot be broken or turned down. I am now strong because I finally saw that I am so weak.

What's the alternative? Sure you get to walk through your life thinking your in charge of it. Thinking you're making your own decisions and your own plans but what happens when you make the wrong decision? What happens when your plans turn out all wrong? What happens when it all seems great until you realize that you are doing it all alone? There is a bigger picture, a bigger plan. And the coolest part of all this is that you are already put into it. God has already planned this beautiful and rewarding path for you and he's just waiting for you to choose it. A plan that leads to pure joy, everlasting peace, and a true sense of purpose and direction for your life. No matter how much you mess up or fall short.

I've always walked through parenting with the slogan that I am raising adults not children and this has greatly molded the way I have parented. I intend on keeping that slogan in my parenting but the most important thing I want to teach my children is that we are called to be dependent. It goes against everything they will learn from this world but it is the greatest gift I will ever give them. To send them off into this world with it pressed onto their hearts that their life is meant to be dependent on Christ. If they can walk out my door at 18 with one lesson learned I pray with all my heart that it is this. Because when they get let down by themselves, by their friends, by someone they fall in love with, or by me they will look inside and remember that they don't have to lean on themselves or anyone else but all they have to do is lean on God. A God who in unmoving and a God who will never ever let them down. A God who will chase them with an aching heart or wait with the most patient open hands. A God who will hold them when they are too tired to stand, a God who will cry with them, a God who will wipe their tears, and a God who will love them more than they will ever understand.

I have one chance, one goal as a parent and that is to point these tiny little souls to rest in Jesus Christ and I intend on doing it right. No matter how hard or how wrong it seems to everyone else. These little gifts that God has trusted me with will not leave my arms without seeing the full beauty of a dependent life in Christ Jesus. If I teach them anything less I am failing them completely.

“In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. (Ephesians 4:26-27 NIV)

"Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced;...
For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is YOUR Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.

For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit..."
Isaiah 54:4-6

Amy Osaba

For the weary and "storm-tossed mother"
This is for you.

my heart is aching for you today.

my heart is aching for myself when I am in this place.

but lovely and beautiful sisters, there is relief. There is a place to go to find rest, to find peace, and to find hope. There is love and comfort at the tips of your tired and over-worked fingertips.

You are never too old, too lost, too broken, or too tired to be carried. To be lifted in your sorrow. There is a place to be held and tenderly and deeply loved and filled.

weary sisters it's time to lift our messy homes, our fragile marriages, our unruly kids, our sleepless nights, and our long forgotten identities to the Lord.

We are real princesses whether we are 18 or 99. We have a daddy who is a king, the one true king, who is waiting with open hands that have been scarred wider and with a heart that has been broken deeper than we will ever know. Finally a safe place, a home, that knows where we've been, that has felt what we've felt, and that is waiting for us!

All we have to do is surrender it to Him. He wants it all. All the mess, all the pain, all the fear, all the loneliness, all the anger, all the tears, and all the empty spirits. He takes it all and replaces it with His love, His hope, His peace, His joy, His perfect purpose for our lives and HIS HOLY SPIRIT.

Photo

"This is like the days of Noah to me:
as I swore that the waters of Noah
should no more go over the earth,
so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you,
and will not rebuke you.
For the mountains may depart
and the hills be removed,
but my STEADFAST LOVE shall not depart from you,
and my COVENANT of PEACE shall not be removed,
SAYS THE LORD, who has compassion on you.

Oh afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted,
behold, I will set your stones in antimony,
and lay your foundations with sapphires.
I will make your pinnacles of agate,
your gates of carbuncles,
and all your wall of precious stones.
All your children shall be taught by the Lord,
and great shall be the peace of your children.
In righteousness you shall be established;
you shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear;"
-Isaiah 54:9-14

These promises are real and they are for us! There is nothing too messy for God. I know this because of how he's been so faithful to help me clean up my messes which have seemed much too big and were much too big for me to handle on my own.

So what do we need to do to receive these gifts, these promises?

NOTHING! 

Here's the beauty in all of this.
It has all been done. There is no more work, no more fighting. The price has been paid and the work has been completed. Because of Jesus all we have to do is receive and surrender. So here it goes.

My dear Jesus,
Thank you for your gift, for your life, and for your sacrifice. I'm a mess, my life is a mess, my heart is all jumbled and bruised and broken. I have no more fight left, I have no more tears left, I have no more me left. So here I am asking you to please fight for me, fill me back up, and replace this empty hole with YOU. Help me clean up my mess. I surrender it all up to you. I can't carry this load any more and if I'm being honest I've been dropping pieces along the way and was never really ever able to carry it. I need you now, I need you tomorrow, and I will need you forever. Take the onion of my life and peel back each and every layer until you start to see only you. I want your steadfast love, your promise of peace, your compassion, and I want my children to be taught by you. Change me now. Make me new. Make me more like you. One of the hardest parts of this for me is believing and accepting your love. I've spent my life completely confused and lost when it comes to love and I need you to teach me how to see true love, accept it, and then give it. Help me to see that this beautiful love is for me. I am yours. Thank you for waiting, searching, and above all dying for ME!

,your weary daughter

Source

 Intimacy-"A close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group."

This is dictionary.com's definition of the word intimacy but what does that mean when it comes to my relationship with God? This idea of intimacy is something we all crave and there is a reason why. As Christians the most beautiful aspect of our faith is the fact that we get to have a intimate love relationship with our God. Our God is not some untouchable spiritual dictator but is a God who actually seeks after us for an intimate relationship with Him!

So what does that look like? I mean we all know that most of us think of intimacy as something physical most of the time and that's not something that really applies here but once we start to understand the kind of intimacy God has for us we start to see how much deeper and satisfying it is.





"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."-Deuteronomy 6:5

"Oh God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, 
my body longs for you... My soul clings to you..."
-Psalm 63:1, 8

"As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God."
-Psalm 42:1-2 

These verses scream intimacy to me. Is there anything that we even love with ALL our heart or do we even know how to love something with all our heart let alone our souls and our strength? The way David talks about God and the way he "thirsts and longs" for him blows me away. I love God, I love him so deeply it hurts sometimes but I honestly can't say I have an intimacy like David's. Not yet at least! The most amazing things that I take away from passage like David's is that I can have that too! And so can you! David figured it out and we need to too. I think the first step in understanding how we can have an intimacy with God like that is looking at God's love and desire for intimacy with us.

What does God's love look like?

"The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying ' I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with unfailing kindness." - Jeremiah 31:3

"And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered."- Matthew 10:30

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget. I WILL NOT FORGET YOU."- Isaiah 49:15

These verse show so much of God's love for us. First he tells us how much he loves us, then he tells us that he loves us enough to know us more than we even know ourselves and then he compares his love to that of a mother's love and says He loves us way more!

"And a voice from heaven said, 'This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well please." 
-Matthew 3:17

photo by punkrot143

In this verse God is talking about His love for Jesus. None of us can doubt how much God loves Jesus. But read the verse again and then read the verse below.

"I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."
-John 17:23

How amazing is that when you put those two verses next to each other?! John 17:23 is about us! Jesus says right there that God loves us as much as God loves Jesus. God is so obvious about his love for us and yet it so easy for us to make ourselves believe we are not loved. Once we start to believe that we are loved we can truly start to understand what intimacy is through that love.











Understanding Jesus' intimacy with God and how we can have that too:

1. Jesus found intimacy with God through prayer:

"Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you."
-John 17:1

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed."
-Mark 1:35

"...Sit here while I go over there and pray...And going a little farther He fell on his face and prayed."
-Matthew 26:36,39

This is so very important! Jesus prayed and he didn't have to. Jesus was God in the flesh and still he spent so much time in prayer. If Jesus prayed to God all the time imagine how much more we should be in prayer! We need to pray that our lives glorify God, we need to pray that we find intimacy like what David had. We need to pray and we need to listen! This is how we connect with God and this is how we discover intimacy with God.

2. Jesus found intimacy with God through obedience: 

"And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death- even death on the cross."
-Philippians 2:8

"Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered."
-Hebrews 5:8

"Even His coming to earth was an act of obedience to His Father."
-John 14:31

"For I did not speak of my own accord, but the father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it."
-John 12:49

Jesus was obedient to God in all things and because of this He experienced an unwavering intimacy with God. As Christians we are called to follow Jesus' example and that means that we need to take the time to listen to the promptings God has for us and obey them. There are ways in which this is the same for all of us, the ten commandments, reading our bibles, praying etc, but there are also so many ways in which this is different from person to person. For me I obey God when I honor my husband, when I work hard at my job and honor him with the way I use my words and so much more.

3. Jesus found intimacy with God through sacrifice:

"And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him to died for them and was raised again."
-2 Corinthians 5:15

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
-2 Corinthians 5:21

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.."
-1 Peter 3:18

Jesus' sacrifice was the greatest of all. He came down here as God in the flesh being as close and intimate to God as is even possible and gave that all up for us. He died on the cross and took our sins and because of that, he experienced the greatest suffering there is. Separation from God. We will never have to sacrifice the way Jesus did. We will never be asked to sacrifice our salvation. That is something that was bought for us and that can never be taken away but we are going to have to sacrifice. There will be times in our lives where God asks us to make sacrifices for him and when we obey him that brings us into a beautiful intimacy with him. There will be times when we feel as though our sacrifice is too much or it's more than we can handle but trust me dear friends the pay off is more than worth any of the sacrifice that we could ever experience.

Intimacy with God brings a love, a peace, and belonging like we have never known. Being with God in a loving relationship is all we even need. He will always be enough no matter what we have to give up or what we lose.

"But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst."
-John 4:14

Just like the woman at the well God seeks us and welcomes us to intimacy with him despite our messy and sinful lives.

I wanted to share my bible art worship with you. I'm so excited about this because I've spent years trying to figure out what works for me when it come to reading my bible and thanks to this new craze I am really learning how to fall in love with my bible.




 I'm sure I can speak for many of you when I say that a lot of us were taught not to write in our bibles. I grew up a in handful of strict churches and that seemed to be a very obvious rule. Because of that I feel like it set an invisible wall between me and my bible. It made it something that wasn't mine in a way, something that I couldn't fully call my own.


As I've been discovering my faith for myself and have been spending my time with amazing pastors and women of God one of the most amazing things I've heard is that we don't worship the book but the words that are written in it for the God who inspired it. This truly changed things for me. I started with little notes and scribbles here and there and now I am completely marking up my bible.
I really feel like God wants us to feel connected to him on a level that we will never fully understand and because of that I really believe that He wants us to feel comfortable in His word.

The Gifts of Life

Tao Okamoto