Regrets

It started off well. I wanted to be bold, not afraid. Share all that Christ is doing in me. But then I lost all confidence. If indeed, as John Piper says, all things exist to magnify Christ, and I believe that, and I know especially in the lives of His children all things happen to glorify the Father, then I should be confident. And it is my sole desire to glorify Him.

I am zealous, but lack time. I now regret deleting & editing entries, miss ordering events, and not writing all the things I have wanted to in the last month, for they have been GREAT things, and continue still, each day and each moment, and I never want to forget. Holy Spirit please help.

Forgive me Father for being afraid, for you have not given us a spirit of fear, but of boldness.

I don't want to hide this crazy me. I was told on Sunday that I was a deep well, passionate. I cried "It's a gift!" they said, "most call it a burden," and I said "I wouldn't have it any other way." My writing may not always be clear, for thoughts come much too quickly and are deep and have limitless rabbit trails tied to them. But the message is there. And if it's true that circumstances don't make or break us, but reveal us, then it must be that He created my personality to be just the way it is, and we are not products of our surroundings. So if I am fearfully and wonderfully made to glorify Him, I don't want to hide it. Pride, please don't get in the way. Humility, please be with me always.

I am really writing to myself, for He doesn't call me a lamb for no reason.

I am learning, I am changing, I am walking. I want to run, but He says I just have to finish the race. So I will learn patience and contentment in this too.

It becomes harder and harder to spend 10 hours a day, 50 hours a week trying to focus your mind on the "things below" while at work, when I have an insatiable desire to seek out the mysteries of my God. Can I learn the contentment I had not so long ago? To know that He is molding me too in that place and has entrusted me to a stewardship for the building of His kingdom. And to rejoice as Paul did that others were preaching the gospel, and I add, growing in their knowledge of Him. But I am rejoicing and guess what, He's growing me too and has given me opportunities to share continually, I just have to recognize it and obey.

I have been given many stewardships, many desires, many callings. Foolishly I have only recently begun to ask for wisdom, and finally I have begun to make the changes people have been telling my I needed to for years. Whenever there was a need I wanted to fulfill it, but a friend told me "the need isn't always the calling." The heart of why I did what I did was put best by John MacArthur in a sermon I listened to today, wish I could remember what it was that he said or which sermon it was... was it in the introduction to Ephesians? Anyway, I have been pondering these things (God has been giving me much instruction through many on this subject in the past few months) and I have sought to be content to ask each day what to do with my time, and then be content with what I did do and didn't do, with some evaluation of what priorities should be altered. I recently listened to some excellent sermons of his on "The Art of Self-Discipline." Beautifully and amazingly instructional and motivational directly from God's word. They're are helping me greatly with handling life right now.

Okay so I was re-reading this entry from the start to retrace my thoughts and remember where I was going from the last paragraph (since I paused my train of thoughts to look up the John MacArthur sermon on gty.org, which I will take the time right now in this aside to say YOU MUST LISTEN TO THE FOLLOWING SERMONS: "Our Resources in Christ" "Coming Alive in Christ" "Rejoicing Always" "Praying Unceasingly." These caused me to come to tears of joy this Monday while in my office, because God was confirming and furthering my understanding of all that He has given me, which then turned to screaming (when I got in my car at 5) in prayer of shock and thanksgiving and wonder that He would reveal such glorious things, it was everything God taught as lightly recorded in "This is the Beginning." But I don't want it to take 9 years for others to get it. Oh no I just remembered that was going to be a whole other blog... back to this one).

And so re-reading my first few words (of this blog) and saying "I don't have enough time," I am ashamed. Wayne Burrows asked me not to long ago, about my desires to go to the mission field. In that hour long conversation on point he brought up was "What if you were diagnosed with a disease and only had a week left to live? Wouldn't that be great because then you wouldn't care about anything but sharing Christ, right?" "Yeah!" "What if they gave you two months to live, wouldn't that be better?" "Yeah!" "What if they gave you two years?" "What about 80?" I hung my head. But we do preach the gospel everyday with our own lives. Oh to exhaust that one, I've only scratched the surface.

So I come today, back to this blog (which I have wanted to write in multiple times a day since I started it) because I heard that a man of 27 with a wife and 3 children died of cancer last Friday. He was bold to the end, preaching the gospel and writing on his blog. And guess what he had joy.

No, your blogs won't be perfect, Jen, but let he who boasts, boast in the Lord. In my weakness may His strength be shown that HE BE GLORIFIED!

this blog published without editing or reading through for errors or readability... I don't have time... I have more to write... and much much much more to learn