Called to Be Holy

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy." 

-1 Peter 1:13-16

This blog post is a little break from "Breaking Free" by Beth Moore because God is doing so much in my heart that I just need this time to process a bit before moving on. Sorry if this seems like word-vomit.

The Lord has been revealing hugely how much sin spews out of me each and everyday. As I decided to read in 1 Peter today, I just felt so convicted. I am called to be holy. I am called to show Christ in EVERYTHING I do. I am called to PREPARE my mind to be able to live out Christ's holiness through His strength. I am called to set my hope fully on God's grace. I am called to break free of ignorance I once had of God's mercies, blessings, commands, and His wrath. God has called me to be His child and because of that, I am PRIVILEGED to experience His holiness. So how do I truly handle this privilege?

I definitely do not show Christ in everything I do. I get frustrated about stupid things and instead of showing the kind of grace towards others that God shows me, I let people know my frustration. It is so hard for me to show love to certain people after being hurt by them or being lied to by them. This is not showing grace and forgiveness to them like Luke 6:36-37 commands me to. "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven." God, why is my heart so hard? I suck. I also fail so many times to actually prepare my heart and mind to see reality of situations but also trust the Lord has it all under control. I get so used to handling life like I have for the past 22 years that I forget to truly take time to process it. I spend time in prayer but am I truly focusing on using it to prepare my heart for the battle I have set before me? Not all the time. "Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance." There obviously was the time when I knew nothing about God--in fact, most of my life I knew nothing about God due to not growing up in a church. I knew nothing of His grace, nothing of His healing hands, nothing of His perfect promises, nothing of His deep uncomprehending love. I also knew nothing about the enemy and his grip on my life. I knew nothing about the devil's schemes and his lies that kept me from even desiring to know anything about the God I so deeply treasure now. I have learned so much about the One, True God that has saved me out of the pit and saves me from my flesh everyday. However, I still conform to fleshly passions that I learned so well for the past 22 years. God does not want me in these chains. He wants to bless my life and use my hands, feet, and even my ugly heart for His glory alone. God wants me to be holy because He is holy. God desires to break my heart for the sin in my life that hurts Him too often. God desires to heal brokenness in my life and my relationships with others. He wants to break down these walls I have built up for years using special people in my life to bring my focus back to Him alone.

God, You are so good to me and I just throw it back in Your face. Help. Help me use Your strength and not my own. Help my heart to be convicted each time I live in a moment that is not of You. Help me to see the blessings You are trying to give me and help me to trust that they are from You. Lord, I feel You wanting to do so much through this broken soul to show others how badly we need Your grace. Use my hands and my feet for Your Kingdom alone. Lord, help me to share my heart more openly with those You have brought into my life. You have brought them for a reason and I want to be able to take Your blessings with a heart of gratitude. Lord, You know my desires and I trust that what You are doing in life right now is to fulfill those desires that are of You. I do not want these chains anymore. I do not want to live selfishly, blinded from Your goodness. This is my cry out to You and You alone. I'm broken and I thank You.

Ancient Boundary Stones

Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers.

-Proverbs 22:28

An ancient boundary stone was similar to a fence. It was to show what belonged to the landowner and what was beyond legal limits when it came to trespassing. To move a boundary stone was to steal a man's real property as well as his ancestral heritage. Exodus 20 lays out God's Ten Commandments. These Ten Commandments are the ultimate boundary stones for our lives. Before God gives us all the commandments He says in Exodus 20:2, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." It is vital that the Ten Commandments are looked at as a plan to stay out of slavery to sin and wickedness. Not just the Ten Commandments, but all God's commandments throughout His Word are given to us as a blessing so that we may experience freedom from bondage. Thinking of ancient boundary stones, I think about property lines now. Property lines can't just freely be moved by anyone so that it fits our desires of how our yard looks or whatever. Ancient boundary stones were not able to be freely moved to fit neighbor's lifestyles and desires. God's commandments are the same way. We can't just move the lines God has drawn for us to fit our selfishness better.  Moving ancient stones and God's commandments would come with punishment and ultimately bondage. Bondage and sin go hand in hand. All bondage begins with sin and all bondage promotes sin. That does not mean that all bondage will definitely create sin but bondage highly intensifies the pull towards sin. 

I have been reflecting a lot on the bondage in my own life in my family. There are so many chains because of the lack of relationships with the Lord. So many of these chains come from a generational cycle of bondage and sin. At one point someone decides to move the ancient boundary stone to abide by his or her own set of rules and desires. This leads to bondage of self which leads to sin. Sin leads to more bondage. When bonded more deeply, there is more sin. More sin=even deeper bondage. Deeper bondage=more sin. You get the idea. This cycle is vicious and applies to generational bondage and generational sin. Alcoholism is not an issue in my family line at all but I will use it as an example. Within a family line with alcoholism, one person had to start drinking heavily many generations ago. After a time of drunkenness, he or she decides that he or she does not need to necessarily follow God's commandment because why would God be against a feeling that he or she enjoys? He or she continues to experience a drunken state and goes deeper and deeper into this bondage. Then, he or she starts a family and has children that are constantly influenced and are shown that drunkenness is acceptable and desirable. The children experiment with this lifestyle and become bonded. The children have children that get involved with this lifestyle and also become bonded and at this point, it most likely would be so normal to them to see most family members in the same bondage. This is a vicious cycle and it will not stop until someone has enough courage to move back the ancient boundary stone God ordained. Before I started writing this post as I read through this chapter, God pierced my heart with this truth. I heard a faint whisper that said, "Cara, look at the blessings I have given you and the strength that I have given you to turn away so easily from many sins and bondage your family faces. There is a reason for this. I am giving you the privilege of depending on Me to have that courage to move back the boundary stones. What are you going to do with this privilege?" The ancient cycles within my own family need breaking just as badly as any cycle of bondage. I have tried to break them on my own strength but in reality, they have only bent a little and can never fully break without God. How do I expect things to be rebuilt and restored without being fully broken? God doesn't ordinarily rebuild things that are not broken. I see so much truth in that right now in my life. God is literally breaking so many areas of my life but I am seeing restoration like crazy. There is peace within this brokenness that is so precious and humbling as God's strength is revealed. God is FOR us. We were not given God's commands to enslave us, but to set us free and keep us free. God's jealousy is even for us. God already knows all other "gods" and idols are nothing. They cannot offer salvation and only take away attention from the one true God. God is jealous for His children that they can experience freedom and peace unimaginable. Some may be confused by God's jealously. Godly jealousy is being jealous FOR someone, not OF someone.

God desires to bless us. God desires to bless me. God wants to heal my family line and heal me from the generational bondage. He is trying to give me the privilege of being the one with His courage to move back boundary stones that have been taken away from where God wants them to be. It is so often that I almost force God to hold back His blessing because I turn away from His giving hand to other "gods" and idols. My sinful heart can tend to desire earthly, material blessings. As I search for these blessings I am completely ignoring God's giving hand right in front of me as if I push God's hand back into him because it is not the exact things that my flesh desires at the time. That's a hard picture to imagine. God is a giving God and wants to bless you as well. Are you also forcing Him to hold back His blessings in a sense?

Ancient Ruins

First and foremost, I have been horrible at blogging the last week or so....especially the past few days. Partially because our internet was down, but partially because I always have too much in my schedule. I'm way too good at being busy....something I need to work on.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.

-Isaiah 61:4

The Lord's plan is to be constantly rebuilding, renewing and refining us. If you have been reading past blog entries, you can see how the Lord has already been doing this in my life the past couple months. I know that it is only a small glimpse of what He is going to continue doing. The Lord has been uprooting deep past pain like crazy and yes, it is painful. Most of the chains that the Lord has been working on have been deep family ruins in my life. In the past few days the Lord has really opened my eyes to how much I don't even realize how bonded I truly am with family chains of pain. It's so easy to just say, "well, this is the way it has always been and I'm already used to it so why do I need to make such great effort to change things now after 22 years??" Hmpf. How hard is my heart to not want to make things better? Pretty hard and the truth of that stings. This somehow reminds me of the Biggest Loser in a sense. At the end of a season, the contestants had to run a course with all the weight they had lost put back on them so they could feel the difference. Several had made comments that the chains of weight they had when they actually weighed that much was just normal. It was natural to them to carry 100, even 200, extra pounds on their body and live everyday life like that. They needed to experience the freedom to realize how un-natural those chains really were. This is what I desire to experience with my family chains. However, there is this constant battle and cycle of having this great desire and taking a few steps towards the direction of change but then not seeing change and going back to the mindset of things just always remaining the same and that's natural. As I talked with a good friend on the phone the other day, he really made me realize how much I suck. As he kept asking about how being at home was I found myself saying, "well, it's not getting better and I'm just getting used to it again because it is always like this." After reflecting later, I realized these chains are so much bigger than I thought and that just because I have adapted to them does not mean I still can go on living with them.

You can probably guess most of these chains have to deal with my sister. So many times I have tried to even have a 5 minute conversation with her (this is a lot for us) but she is so involved in herself the conversation does not go anywhere. My sin lets me just blow it off instead of really trying to figure out WHY she is the way she is. Why does she constantly need the attention from anyone and everyone? Why does never admit that she is wrong? What insecurities does she hold that I do not know of? I look at myself and my thoughts and actions constantly revolve around deeper issues and I have been learning more and more about them. Why do I not take the time to realize my sister is the same way? I also think about frustrations with my dad. Our family history has very high diabetes risk, especially on my dad's side. My grandmother had diabetes and 3 of her 6 children have diabetes now--including my dad. My dad was diagnosed with it about 8 years ago when it was very minimal but he does not take care of himself. It is kind of ironic considering he is a chiropractor, a type of doctor. Our family has had some pretty big scares with my dad's health and it had even come to a doctor asking him what he thought about death because the doctor's didn't know what was going on at the time. I find myself thinking selfishly, "why doesn't my dad want to take care of himself to be around for me in later years? Doesn't he care?" Of course he cares about me, the enemy uses these situations to tell me lies. But, instead of showing bigger love and the gospel, I get frustrated and keep to myself. I keep myself in this rut of ruins.

I need to remind myself to look at Jesus' life. There is a need to constantly look at how Christ loved others but I also need to be reminded of Jesus' family life as well. In Matthew 1, Jesus' family line reveals to us that Christ has positives and negatives as well. Christ was able to break chains of bondage when He gave His life for us. Christ takes our inherited bonds for us.  It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." -Galatians 5:1  When we belong to Christ we have the greatest inheritance ever given.  I cannot change the past but I can rely on God's strength to change what I am doing with it. I need the gospel just as much as any family member, friend, or stranger. When I am unable to see into my own family's own pain because I am focusing on what they have caused me, I am not truly experiencing the gospel. I am not allowing them to experience the gospel if my hard heart doesn't allow free forgiveness. I hate how frustration is easier than free love and forgiveness. This is definitely going to continue being a painful journey but I hope to experience the picture of the Biggest Loser contestants and be able to look back and see the freedom the Lord has set before me.

Philippians 4:6-7...PRAY!

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

-Philippians 4:6-7

Beth Moore uses this passage and paraphrases it from a negative standpoint to show the impact of when we DON'T do everything in prayer. She writes, " 'Do not be calm about anything, but in everything, by dwelling on it constantly and feeling picked on by God, with thoughts like 'and this is the thanks I get,' present your aggravations to everyone you know but Him. And the acid in your stomach, which transcends all milk products, will cause you an ulcer, and the doctor bills will cause you a heart attack and you will lose your mind.' " Now, this sounds absolutely ridiculous, right? However, there is so much truth in the fact our physical, emotional, and mental health are so closely tied with our spiritual health. God created us to not experience true peace, or any fruit of the Spirit, unless we are grounded in Him alone. Philippians tells us straight up that the peace of God will come WHEN we pray about everything and present our hearts to Him alone. It is SO easy to do everything BUT pray in certain situations. We have grown up in a society that causes us to be independent and we are constantly pushed to be strong individuals who can take the cares of our world by ourselves...otherwise, we are not strong in the world's eyes. The enemy experiences so much victory from our lack of prayer. We can go to church, have spiritual conversations, and even study God's Word for hours. But, those are meaningless without prayer. We cannot understand what is being taught to us by a pastor and we cannot understand what we are reading ourselves without the Holy Spirit. We cannot receive and be filled with the Spirit without prayer. Prayer is essential for understanding HOW to walk with our Savior and Creator. Satan knows this even better than we do. He wants us to do anything but pray. He would even rather have us read God's Word than be in prayer. Even our enemy knows the power of prayer....maybe even better than we do most of the time.

It seems like the world tries to water down pain in devastating situations. Anyone can say, 'this doesn't matter in the end so it's just small stuff we have to go through.' Not everything is small. I have gone on three missions trips the past three summers and I have the sweetest lady on my support team. I actually did not know her when I first sent her family a support letter for my first trip, I just knew her daughter very little. She has been my biggest supporter the past three years and it has been amazing to see how the Lord has bonded us in friendship. Just a couple months ago, her husband lost his job. She stayed at home with the kids and he provided for the household. This was devastating for them. As the family members went in for last minute doctor check-ups before insurance was lost, she found out she had to go through chemo. When she shared this with me, I cried for her. I cannot imagine dealing with these devastating circumstances that came about so abruptly. This is not "small stuff" to just sweat off. I am so encouraged by my friend as I hear about how she clings to the Lord in these hard times. I fully believe that it is only through prayer that she has been able to experience God's peace in the amount that she has. We are constantly in a war zone trying to dodge heartache and pain that comes from hard circumstances. The ONLY way we receive the continual, powerful strength we need is by staying close to our Comforting Redeemer through constant communication. Prayer matters. 

This past year, I had an amazing opportunity that I reflect on often. The Lord blessed me with being able to co-lead a prayer movement within our ministry on campus. Our vision was to give students opportunity to grow in having prayerful hearts and experience the power of prayer in huge ways. We started out with just having weekly prayer walk on Wednesday nights. The Lord used a couple of these nights to talk to students on campus and ask them how we could pray for them as we spent the hour praying for the campus as a whole. People were surprised but grateful that people wanted to take the time to pray for them. Our weekly prayer walk interest grew and the Lord completely privileged us with being able to start a 24 hour prayer movement. We committed to the Lord that our ministry would pray for 24 hours every Monday in different shifts. We desired an actual place that students could come to and call upon the name of the Lord to come and overwhelm the place with His present. We prayed as a team and God did not let us down. Within 2 1/2 DAYS the Lord gave us a room, furniture, and an anonymous donor who gave us almost $200 for other supplies for "The Prayer Room." We were blown away. We started our first 24 hour prayer Monday shortly after, not knowing what to expect. Again, God blew us away by his promises. 60-70 students were in and out of that room during those 24 hours, and almost 20 students were crammed in this room for the last couple hours. This was an amazing opportunity and experience. Mondays continued to have every slot filled up with people wanting to pray. Big things happened in people's lives and students were truly able to experience power of prayer like most had not before! The Lord brought myself to my knees so many times in our prayer room. I fully believe that we will be set free from the pain, heartache, regret, anxiety, worry, and struggles of this world if we pray. When we constantly communicate with our Abba Father, we get to know God better. When we get to know God better, we are overwhelmed by His love and promises and we are truly able to experience how much better His peace is compared to our desires. Just look at how Jesus handled the most challenging time of his time spent on earth:

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."

-Matthew 26:39

Jesus literally fell to his face in prayer. The Bible continually tells us how Jesus truly valued prayer as he got up at early hours to spend time in prayer. We were created in God's image and called to live a life reflecting the life of Christ. Do we truly value prayer as Christ does? 

Finding Satisfaction in Him Alone!

God purposely created us with a need that only He can meet. 2 Peter 3:9 says, "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." God does not want us to perish. His will for us is to come to Him in repentance so that we can experience His love, forgiveness and a satisfaction that exceeds our earthly idea of "satisfaction." So many humans constantly experience the inability to be completely satisfied. Even when it comes to our relationship with God, we are not satisfied. Many people come to Christ because they are searching for something that is missing. But, after receiving His salvation, they still seek out further satisfaction. Why do we still feel the need to find further satisfaction? We reject having a daily, personal relationship with God and we cause ourselves to still feel dissatisfied. God gives us so much to offer but we just choose not to take and enjoy it. We just reject God over and over and it just brings more and more dissatisfaction. This is part of God's plan as well, though. He is not going to have us feel satisfied until we are completely satisfied in Him. However, we allow ourselves to settle for some form of satisfaction with anything but Him. Idolatry. 

As an American, idolatry is huge in my life and God is allowing me to see it as bigger and bigger. I idolize being in fashion over saving God's money and allowing it to be used for missions and saving people in third world countries from death by lack of daily essentials. I idolize time with friends over true, deep time with God sometimes. I idolize being respected by others over God's approval of me. I used to idolize food as something to satisfy me over God's character of perfection. There are so many things I put before God whether it is for a minute or for years. God is the only truth that can set me and you free from the idols that us further away from our Creator and Perfecter. Isaiah 55:6 says, "Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near."  As the Lord has captured my heart and has been showing me what rejoicing in this divine romance looks like, I seek how quickly the enemy can use idols to draw us away from our true love. It is so important that I continue seeking the Lord's face because He is near. He has pulled me so closely to Him. It has been hard and full of heart ache but the Lord is revealing to me how much I truly do put above Him. I'm opening up these white knuckles and letting go. I feel as though I am diving head first into the unknown some days but experiencing the feeling of being carried is amazing. Knowing I do not have to worry about where the Lord is leading me, or even how I'm getting there. The Lord is definitely pruning my heart, uprooting the "weeds," and I am experiencing the beginning to a fully satisfying life with the One who will never leave and never breaks His promises. 

What do you need to let God uproot in your heart? What is the Lord showing you as more important than Him? Let it go, beloved. Surrender and trust in Him! 

Take some time to listen to this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CuYDZDrrao
Divine Romance by Phil Wickham


Can you truly sing these words to your Father?

Pride

The path of the righteous is level;

you make level the way of the righteous.

In the path of your judgements, 

O Lord, we wait for you;

your name and remembrance

are the desire of our soul.

My soul yearns for you in the night;

my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.

-Isaiah 26:7-9

Today, I am blown away by the privileges God has given me as His child. Seriously, how can THE perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful God bless me with the privilege to glorify Him. I am so imperfect and yet, He has chosen me to carry His message of Salvation and love to so many people. He has chosen me to reveal Himself through. I am in awe. Any child of God who has repented and expressed belief in their need for Jesus Christ has these privileges as well. So what do we do with them? I can tell you that I do not always take these privileges for what they are worth. The obstacle of pride gets in my way all the time. Pride is like having something lodged in my throat that causes destruction if not taken away. Hear God's warning about pride in Jeremiah 13:16: "Give glory to the LORD your God before he brings the darkness, before your feet stumble on the darkening hills. You hope for light, but he will turn it to thick darkness and change it to deep gloom." Verse 17 goes on to tell us that the Lord's flock WILL be taken captive because of pride. I am in captivity because of pride. The pride in my own life that keeps me in captivity is actually my mindset that God is not big enough to take away my sin or problems. More often than I would like to admit, I find myself thinking that God cannot change the relationship with my sister or my parents or even past friends. I second guess God's power all the time. Pride definitely affects how I love others. I have a hard time loving certain brothers and sisters in Christ when I see immaturity even though I know they know the Word of God but choose to disobey God in such huge ways. It is so hard for me  being around people that need to act out for attention. However, this is my pride setting in that they are not "following the Lord as well as I am at times." Gross, gross, gross. I can't believe I think that--even if it is rarely. I am just as sinful as any other person on this earth. Pride can be so vicious. Proverbs 11:2 actually says, "When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom." My pride brings God disgrace. Those are piercing words, especially when I think about the relationship with my earthly father. I love my dad and respect him SO MUCH. He is a person in my life that I never, ever want to let down. The few times I have let him down have come with a great deal of sting. It hurts to bring disgrace to someone you love and respect so incredibly much. My heart just hurts right now thinking about letting my dad down. Bringing him disgrace would even be greater than just letting him down slightly. The definition for disgrace is "the lose of respect, honor, or esteem; ignominy; shame." Experiencing the sting and pain of letting my earthly dad down, I can't even imagine bringing disgrace to our Abba Father. Although, my pride brings disgrace to Him all the time. Proverbs tells us that pride brings disgrace...even a hint. We need to view humility as strength, even when our society tells us that being humble is a sign of weakness. Our society just sickens me sometimes. Being filled with pride comes so easy and naturally. Humility takes God's strength alone and this strength is only for those who are strong enough to admit their weakness. We need to humble ourselves before God--bowing down to His majesty. We must choose to humble ourselves by submitting to His plan and power every single day, moment by moment. The thought of what true humbling looks like overwhelms me but in Daniel 4:37 God makes us a promise that is so precious: "Those who walk in pride he is able to humble." God IS able to humble us through His power and His strength! I hope that you are able to walk in that truth today and everyday.