I came so close to losing everything that truly mattered because I was the most self absorbed person. People things, ministry opportunities they come and go, they are temporal, but that love relationship with Jesus Christ...that was something I almost lost until God got ahold of my life in a very real way. I struggled and fought the process, not wanting to give up the wants of my sinful "flesh", because I wasn't truly in love with the ONLY person/thing that can change lives. 

I don't even know where to start, but I got so off track because my heart wasn't in the right place for a long time...maybe if ever...and the choices I was making and "seeds" I was sowing took me further away from Christ then I had been since before I started attending Crossroads. I thought if I kept going to church, "serving", trying to do better and still try to live right my wicked heart would eventually catch up to my want to be in the will of God. I didn't "want" to be so far off of where I should have been, but I took my eyes off of Jesus and what He did and decided to live for me and my wants even though it took me further from where I wanted to be then I ever thought I would go and eventually "my" world I created crashed and burned and fell apart, as my loving Father in Heaven knows better then I do and put a stop to it all.

This horrible downward spiral I was on was so deceiving as I thought I was ok, that I could turn it all around and get back on track and still keep doing what I was doing. Basically I thought I could have my cake and eat it too, but wants of the flesh can't ever exist if we want to follow Jesus and love Him with our whole hearts. 

"And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell." (Matthew 5:30 NKJV) 

In this verse Jesus is talking and he puts it very plainly. If something is causing you to sin CUT IT OUT. Don't try and continue and over come it, don't try and justify it, don't make excuses that you need it, or you have to, or you will stop or change over time. CUT IT OUT. Whatever is causing you to be away from the one you love the most CUT IT OUT. That is a lot easier said then done in a lot of cases, however if we can grasp how GOOD Jesus is, and how much He loves us and what he did for us it's an easy choice to cut off/out and get rid of whatever is causing you to be further then you would ever want to be from your best friend, your brother, your savor...Jesus Christ. 

I finally took a look around and saw what I almost lost and the choice to cut out what was causing me to stumble was easy. It doesn't mean I have over came and that I won't always want to keep going back like a dog to its vomit, as there is an enemy who wants me to lose it all, but it does mean I finally grasp what Jesus did for me, how much I love Him more then this world and the temporal things that are in it. I have finally stopped trying to be my own creator and putting my hope in false things and works that have no guarantee. 

My matrix has been reset to the ways of The Father in Heaven and I pray I never stop understanding how profound what Jesus did for me was so I never choose to be my own god ever again. 

Thank you Jesus for grace for today and hope for tomorrow as you are good and only good. 

going around the mountain again...lets stop this cycle once and for all!

A year ago I wrote this blog...where did this girl go? I need to listen to myself and take my own advice...

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Have you ever kept hitting the same wall over and over and over again? You can’t seem to use the tools God’s given you to overcome it once and for all? You get frustrated that the empowerment you once had is now gone and you are on the backside of yet another desert? I have felt like this time and time again; I think I have finally concurred that mountain but in reality I was just running around it again never getting over it. You know what it was that kept me from defeating that mountain? MYSELF!

I heard an amazing speaker this past week talk about the power of God and he said the war has been won, we don’t have to fight the war and the only thing keeping us from a full life with God is between our ears. All the battles we face are won and lost in our minds. The only thing keeping us from God is ourselves! When we don’t feel Him in worship, when we don’t feel a peace we think it’s God keeping a distance but God is always there…ALWAYS, what keeps us from him is our minds and our lack of understanding of who we are in Christ, our lack of authority and our own prideful sense of self. It is so much easier to gain our full potential as God intended if we don’t let ourselves get in the way. It says in the Bible that we need to die to self and live in Christ and I can say with great confidence if you do this you will over come that mountain! if you don’t it’s almost a life time of mountain running…it’s a feeling of brokenness, depression, loss and self pitty. It’s an unattainable peace and reliance on your self. It’s a constant battle of up and down, fighting with the Holy Spirit and almost a life time of alter calls and rededication’s. It’s a lot of missed purpose and I am done done done…beyond done with it so now I die to myself, face my issues head on, deal with it all it and give up my everything for God’s everything. I just keep moving forward facing it all to over come and not go back to those places. All this surrender has been working and I have made some amazing leaps and bounds in my walk, and progressive work God is doing in me! And it’s all because I have faced the process head on!

Now…my test will be, as I climb my mountains that I don’t put Jesus back in the corner. He is a prize fighter, the ultimate guide and I am a lowly girl scout with a pocket knife…I know nothing, so why should I take back over? Once we get to the top we tend to now feel so on top of everything as Jesus has dug us out of the pit we were in we put on our brave face and say “thanks Jesus, but I got it from here” and we don’t even know we do it until we are back again facing the same mountain. Stop doing it on your own once you hit the top, Jesus is in charge ALL the time not just when we need Him to help us get out of our messes once again. If we continue to allow Jesus to lead, build and reveal in you what He wants, praise Him always, humble ourselves constantly, eat The Word daily, pray without stopping and you surrender to Him you will always continue to be powerful and have authority to over come your mountains! The point of surrender I am at right now came from years of learning the hard way, of being too “self” focused to see how much I needed go let go and embrace the good and the seemingly bad that comes from God’s lessons in life. It’s all good as God does nothing bad and in the short amount of time God has done a work in me on something major from my past I have seen the fruit come from it. It hurt so bad to face all the past, the old, the broken and let God heal it, use it and restore what was broken into something whole again. I have now, in return of all that hurt I faced doing what God asked me to do, have become someone God can use to show others that our pasts don’t define us, and we can’t use what happened to us as an excuse to stay the way we are…I have over come some big hurdles and so can you if you let go and let God.

I want to conclude with a vision I had the other night that paints a picture of how I know I need to work on this sense of “self” that keeps me in the same spot. In this vision I was surrounded by demons of my past, ugly, nasty looking goul type creatures that mocked me and taunted me into believe the lies from the enemy. I stood there in my mind rebuking these demons pushing them back further and further until they were pressed up against the sides of my skull and I could see clearly the good things of God and these demons seemed to be gone! They aren’t gone…they aren’t gone because as much as I was using the Word of God to battle these demons I wasn’t allowing Jesus to come help me. In my vision Jesus was nowhere to be found and it wasn’t that I was crying for help and he wasn’t showing up it was that I wasn’t letting him do what only He can do and it’s to truly defeat these demons. This vision made me so aware of my sense of “self” I have been working on my surrender, that I am truly nothing unless Jesus is in charge, since.

God is doing amazing things in my life that only He can do and if I get in the way it won’t last and I will be going around the mountain once more…and I am so done with that!