“Abba”
You are a son, and you have a Daddy - Papa, Father, Abba.
Hi. This is me. Welcome to one of the biggest breakthroughs of my life, thus far.
For those of you who’ve known me - for the past year, three years, decade - I probably look super different. You know that I have never pulled my hair out of my face, and putting it up was unheard of. You’d also know that any time anyone ever tried to pull it up for me, or even asked me why I never did so, I would quickly recoil, verbally and physically. And you’re probably wondering: chick’s cray, what’s the big deal?
The truth is, I haven’t pulled my hair out of my face in public since the sixth grade. I’m guesstimating that has been about half my life so far. (Now you’re really thinking I’m crazy…) But this had been one of the aspects of my life that I never had the heart to compromise, and following this fear was all that I seemed to know. Last year, I would probably have told you that I would get married with my hair down and in my face. It was no joke, my friends.
Until this year. Holy Spirit - along with many other people - had been bringing up the issue more often, and this completely terrified me. And one critical night, I finally brought it up to Jesus; He told me that I didn’t have to do it, I didn’t have to do anything - but that He did have a breakthrough here waiting for me. He asked me, Do you want it?
And for the first time in my life, I found myself agonizingly answering, YES! I was terrified. Mortified. I wanted to curl up and cry in some corner. But with that “yes,” God began revealing to me the roots of my fear - that it had stemmed from years of deeply believing the lie that I wasn’t “pretty” or beautiful enough, especially as a little girl. And I know that so many women struggle with beauty and confidence issues, but it totally makes sense; satan hates anything God has made, and we just happen to be God’s most beautiful creation. For me, believing such a lie had translated into me trying to cover my face, and looking back on it now, this thing had totally imprisoned and stolen from me my femininity, sense of power, enjoyment of life.
But Jesus had so repositioned my heart to even want to say “yes” to Him, and when I finally did, He showed me that He and all of heaven had been rooting for me all along, that He’d been pursuing my heart nonstop - because the conviction was so strong in my heart that I pulled up my hair the next day. Cue life change. He had been telling me everyday of my life that there was no flaw in me, that I’d captured His heart with just one gaze, and that I was brave. And I finally aligned myself with all of what He’d been saying about me. The truth.
Obedience is so powerful. With your yes, His YES! is even greater, and what follows is the raging flood of strength and grace to propel you over every mountain, reminding you who and Whose you are. And what results is freedom - because that’s what you get to have in the Kingdom.
So, yeah. Hi. I have a Daddy who loves me, and I look just like Him.
"Seekers will be finders; finders will be sought."
— Bobby Conner
the wonders of
nutella
The original hazelnut spread best to bed your taste buds as you write your five page paper one of five late night fees for which you will pay per evening thank Jesus He conquered death meaning you won’t die when you say you’ll die from this teth because you can’t say your s’s as the buttery spread bench presses your tongue to the roof and makes you coo-coo for cocoa poofs of hazelnut madness there’s so much gladness about the badness of the badassage of nutella.
Welcome back, finals week! You’re always five extra pounds of fun!
Ray Bradbury, on his books being taught widely in schools:
“Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things like Daniel and the lion’s den, and the Tower of Babel. People remember these metaphors because they are so vivid you can’t get free of them and that’s what kids like in school. They read about rocket ships and encounters in space, tales of dinosaurs. All my life I’ve been running through the fields and picking up bright objects. I turn one over and say, Yeah, there’s a story. And that’s what kids like. Today, my stories are in a thousand anthologies. And I’m in good company. The other writers are quite often dead people who wrote in metaphors: Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne. All these people wrote for children. They may have pretended not to, but they did.”
Ray, you have taken the words right out of my soul.
“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
- Eric Hoffer
It’s interesting to notice that God called David a man after His own heart - not after God’s word, but God’s heart. In his passionate pursuit after the presence and heart of God, he did things way before his time, things such as making available to everyone 24-hour worship inside the tabernacle, things actually against the scripture of his day. How did God respond to this? As Solomon testifies, “God did not choose a temple to live in; He chose my father David. It was in my father David’s heart to build Him a temple.” In his friendship with David, God is rebuilding in the last days the tabernacle of - not Moses, which was God’s idea - but David, that which was David’s idea.
David looked to the future and saw on the other side of the cross a royal priesthood, a holy nation that would worship God and become his temple; he took something for another age and pulled it into his own. How? He was a friend of God and after His own heart.
God’s looking for dreamers. He isn’t on a hot chase to find people who will be content with being slaves to Christ; He’s looking for those who will accept His invitation to the next level of relationship, to friendship - where you can actually think and have new and creative ideas, where you can sit in heavenly places and get eternal perspectives, where you can see things not as they are, but as they’re going to be. God wants you to know His heart. God wants to become your friend.
morning time
Morning light has always played second best
to you
So bright-eyed;
you litter matchstick fires in your wake
When the dusk dims my eyes and
the streetlights are talking to the curtains
You are the one to make my bones
glow
Hm
How can you afford to have thoughts in your head about yourself that God doesn’t have in His?
What I’ve come to realize is that the only way we can position ourselves to see our promises fulfilled (those promised to us by God) is by refusing to define ourselves according to anything but what God has said about us. Jesus Himself says you “make the Word of none effect through tradition which you have handed down…” (Mark 7:13)
As in, you nullify the Word by defining yourself outside of it - aka human interpretation, practice, or experience.
Scary, no?
Come into heavenly agreement with the words that proceed from the mouth of God - those which promise: 1) adoption and sonship; 2) every spiritual blessing; 3) holiness and blamelessness; 4) wisdom and insight to the mystery of His will; 5) the Holy Spirit; 6) complete access to your INHERITANCE as a SON or DAUGHTER.
Or, at least that’s what it says in Ephesians 1….
And when we’re given a promise in Scripture, it is meant to spur us to seek the One who both promises and fulfills His Word. The Word of God was a Person.
The Truth is a MAN, A RELATIONSHIP.
relationship > religion
dear saints,
Yes, you. Don’t you know who you are?
on melancholy
In the quiet hour between hiccupped breaths and blooming lanterns, she lays her head down. The silent room, with the wooden drawer next to her bed and the tea kettle atop it, is not so silent, she notices; if she strains her ears to the right enough with her lips pursed tight, she can hear the walls talking, telling each other the secrets that they have collected over the midnights. The secrets are many. She particularly enjoys the one in which the Rabbit scolds the boy for ever loving, and he cries a bellyful of tears - bellyful because he has been swallowing his tears for seven years and three months, and his stomach has now become too fat that he has to let them out. She thinks, how strange that he is fat, shouldn’t the saltiness have shriveled him up from the inside out, like a snail? She turns over onto her back now, the blanket drawn up and her tiny hands folded upon her chest. And as she falls asleep to the backdrop of whispered drivel, she wonders whether she will ever meet the Rabbit, or the crying boy, and the jelly jars inside her heart quiver more violently with each sleepy breath.
