A little deeper

“Exploring the wilderness is like exploring a little deeper into your soul. Because it’s big enough, quiet enough and wild enough to find out who you really are.”

A little deeper into your soul -
God is big enough, quiet enough and wild enough to allow us to find out who we really are. It’s honestly an adventure no matter where you are! It’s so awesome to think of how amazing the Lord is. He is faithful to us, he is faithful to go to the depths of my soul, the places that I’m a little scared to go to. He knows exactly what we need and how we need it. I had a situation this past week where it was a bit hard, just with people around all the time and some people rubbing others the wrong way. That’s bound to happen when you live in community because it’s the beauty of learning how to do life together. Anyways, I prayed “Lord, I don’t want to be home tonight.” right after that my friend text me and said they were coming to pick me up to go hang out. They came, we hung out and then they dropped me home again. As I was getting out of the car, saying thank you for driving they said, “of course, we didn't want you to be home alone tonight!” I just stopped and smiled because the Lord is hilarious, he knows just what we need and he hears our little one lined prayers that we don’t think that matters but they matter to him. It was awesome and I had such a good night after a long day.

“It’s an exploration of where you’re coming from in life and, more importantly, where you’re bound to go.”

I love community it is like an incubator into more of the Lords heart. You learn how to live with people who can really rub you the wrong way and people who you would not normally hang out with, along with people who can become your lifelong friends. I love that in an authentic community we can call each other forth in love and out a heart posture that is being loved and filled by the Lord through different people. Everyday is an adventure when living in community, it’s even harder living with the people who you work with. The true test is when you can speak well of, love and laugh through the midst of frustration and suffering. That’s the point where the rubber meets the road.

“There are no boat motors here, or planes overhead, so all you hear is the earth itself. At night, when the sun goes down, you see the stars as you never have but the heavens are bright enough for all of us.”

This place which I create in my head is my quiet space. The place where only I can go and where only I know about. Whenever I need to get back to reality when so much is going on and I feel like a robot, I go here. I envision myself canoeing through a misty lake in the morning on a rainy/cloudy day. Where you’re not sure if it’s going to rain or not but there is a very good chance! (I love rainy days) A place where I can get out of the city world that I’m in and escape back to the place where I know the Lord speaks to me. A place where there’s no noise, no people, just you and the barrenness of the beautiful wilderness. The place where you really find out what you’re made of. Call me crazy I don’t care but I would rather be unreachable with the Lord than in the busyness of life that I don’t have time. Some people would go crazy but that’s the beauty of the Lord and how we are all wired differently! Love it, the complexity and simplicity when something comes together. It’s the same when you’re in community and you have some people who are complex and some people who are simple. Some are high maintenance and some are low maintenance. The most important thing is if you can love the person no matter what. Cultivating an authentic community is when you can love no matter what. We are called to first and foremost love one another as the father loves us. John 17 tells us that God loves us with the same love he has for his son. That’s crazy! The same love as the father has for the son he has for us. That’s a radical love!
It is hard to love no matter what but that is the beauty of life. Having a unoffendable heart is also key. When someone rubs us the wrong way do we stop and hand out the grumpy card or the patience card? Or do we get offended that they did that to us? We need to be a people who can look beyond what one another does and love. We need to look at how we can help one another, bear one another’s burdens just as Christ bore ours. He stood in the gap for us and took all our sin. We need to stand in the gap for our brothers and sisters and bear one another’s sins as well. When you slander that person that did something to you, have you ever stopped to think that they are a daughter/son of the living king? You are slandering on of the princesses/princes of the earth! It really puts the fear of the Lord on you when you think of it this way. I’m speaking to myself in this as well. The tongue is the hardest thing to maintain and to gain control of trust me.

My point in all of this is, that we need to gain our strength in the secret place with the Lord, through that it will be an overflow from our heart and our mouth will speak, by that we can love others with a free heart.

"Radically Ridiculous"

What can I say, this is the phrase that the Lord spoke this week. Because he is hilarious, we are allowed to be ridiculous. In the way of being undignified before him. Friday morning I spent that morning dancing in my chair to my music because I had the Joy that I hadn't felt in quite a long time. When I staffed the Snowboarders DTS back in 2011, I felt freedom that came through doing things to 'humiliate' myself in a good way. To punch through the ceiling of being 'Politically Correct' all the time and instead not caring what people think is a freeing thing. I remembered how I felt and went back to that. Because there is no greater joy than being free before the Lord. It's a sense of boldness that we all need to comprehend. It can be pretty scary at first but once you get past the awkwardness or the weird looks you find such a freedom. If we are trained in wildness, nothing can stop us. Hear my heart when I say wildness before the Lord is different from the wildness of the world. So Radically Ridiculous is the new reality that we all need to come to terms with.