Humility

Being a Christian requires humility and humbleness. This is the most difficult thing for me. I always am trying to one up someone or always trying to make sure everyone gives me credit for the good things I do.

Mark Driscoll did a sermon on this and I was watching his podcast on the way back from Camp KidJam today. Some of the things he said just hit home for me. I couldn't have watched it at a more perfect time.

He said, "Pride is the problem and humility is the answer," but that is one thing that is pretty difficult to achieve. He said it himself: " No one can make you humble. You have to humble yourself. None of us but the Lord Jesus can say that we are humble. All we can say is that we are pursuing humility by the grace of God."

We always are coming to Him with palms full of things that we have collected-things that we're proud of and we expect to be praised for our good doings, but what we are called to do is to kneel before the throne with empty hands ready to receive what the Lord has to offer. Instead of having such a desire to be praised, we need to praise.

I mean, when you think about it, God did things He did not have to do for US. He did these things because he LOVES us. Jesus was sent from heaven to earth which is a HUGE change. He went from worshiped to despised for us. Its not like He had to do this for us. Its that He is SO AMAZING to do it for us.

At the end of his talk, Mark gave 6 ways to work on this idea of humbling yourself before God and pursuing humility by the grace of God. I'm going to try and specifically focus on them for the next few months.

1. Be a humble learner. Accept those who teach. Don't close your mind to the knowledge that other people are willing to share with you.

2. Apologize. Acknowledge your sin and come to Jesus with it.

3. Humbly follow. He knows all and sees all. Open the word and submit to God's will for your life. Get direction and counsel.

4. Humbly depend on Him. Do not live your life independent of Jesus. He loves you, He knows you, and He cares. Let Jesus serve you.

5. Jesus humbly hears us. We should humbly pray to Him. Engage in constant communication with the Lord.

6. Jesus is humbly willing to be with us. We should humbly enjoy His presence and worship Him. In order for you to be more like Him, you need to be with him. Worship daily and freely in a way that is shameless and joyful.

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;

the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Our God is SO Good

There is something about actually getting up and being the hands and feet of Christ that is moving and beautiful.

This past week I had the AMAZING opportunity to serve with Camp KidJam for the 4th summer. Yes, it was kind of crazy and hectic, but Jesus revealed himself to so many kids (and even me). There was a moment on stage when I could do nothing else but lift my hands in worship. So many kids got to experience the same thing and I feel so blessed to be able to be apart of it.

"10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen."

1 Peter 4:10-11

Because of Him, we are alive and free and because of that, we glorify Him in all ways possible, using the talents and gifts that He has blessed us with. Why WOULDN'T you want to glorify such an amazing God?

Thank you Jesus. Our God is SO good.

Being a Child

I stayed up all night November 26th (well actually, it was November 27th) and I, thankfully, stumbled upon the video that showed Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros recording "Home" on NPR:

I quickly became intrigued with this group of people. I started looking up interviews and music videos. Anything.

I was watching an interview and Alex Sharpe was answering questions. One of them was about how people can't help but to be moved by their performance and how does it effect the goals of their performance. She asked if it altered it at all.

His response was amazing. It was surely something I'll never forget.

He said 'to be like a child' is all he needs to remember and as soon as he remembers that everything is wonderful. He's completely free.

He said, "Its not about posturing or performing or posing or manicuring my performance... If its real, they'll feel the realness."

Its not hard to be real with your own music and your own expression of music and I believe its something completely beautiful when someone is real with their expressions. It makes me excited and happy to be making music.

I love the idea of freedom (especially freedom from sin). We age and grow up and get more responsibility thrown onto our shoulders, but we are able to almost walk blindly through this life and have complete faith and trust in our Lord. Once we indulge ourselves in this free way of thinking, people will feel the realness.

Here's what to take from this: I get to be free, like a child, every day and for all eternity and there is nothing else I'd rather be.

Psalms 1

I'm going to start posting a psalm almost every day starting with 1 and ending at 150.

The book of Psalms is a full book of hymns and prayers of all human emotion.

Wikipedia says that "The word psalms is derived from the Greek Ψαλμοί (Psalmoi), perhaps originally meaning "songs sung to a harp", from psallein "play on a stringed instrument".

So here's the first:

¹ Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.

² But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

³ He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

⁴ Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff (the husks of corn or other seed separated by winnowing or threshing) that the wind blows away.

⁵ Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

⁶ For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

New idea. I'm just going to go through the whole chapter and "Git-R-Done". Let me know your thoughts!

Colossians 1

¹Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

²To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father.

Thanksgiving and Prayer

³We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints— ⁵the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel ⁶that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth. ⁷You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, ⁸and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

⁹For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.¹⁰And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully ¹²giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. ¹³For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Paul wrote this letter as a opposition of paganism and what better way to remove those ideas than speak of the truth. I especially love verse 12-14. It never ever ever EVER gets old hearing that our Father in heaven sent His only Son to die for us and our sins. "He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness". MM!

Even though we KNOW this is true and we KNOW this is awesome, we still forget it and take advantage of it and put the idea in a box for when its convenient for us.

HELLO!!! We aren't worthy to have the comfort of convenience! We are sinners and God gives us constant and unfailing love. Why would we ever want to stray away from it?

The fact of the matter is that sin is fun. Drinking is fun. Doing drugs is fun. Lying is fun... But why waste the time when you have such an amazing God who loves you and who has an amazing life planned for you and an eternity of Him waiting for you?

The Supremacy of Christ

¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. ¹⁷He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

²¹Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. ²²But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— ²³if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

He has removed every blemish. We are free from accusation, and because of that we serve Him entirely-living a life worthy of Him.

That is such a difficult task sometimes. The world is going on all around us and we are moving against it because of Him, but because we are moving against it I'm joyful. I'm ecstatic. Why be of the world when you could be of Christ?

Paul's Labor for the Church

²⁴Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. ²⁵I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— ²⁶the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. ²⁷To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

²⁸We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. ²⁹To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.

As followers of Christ, its our calling to call others to Christ. I love how Paul says it. "... that we may present everyone perfect in Christ".

That we will reflect Him in all good ways and be a light in complete darkness. That we will love our neighbor and show them the love of Christ. That we will not be of the world but still love it.

Take a big sigh because its going to be hard, but God will give you the strength and energy necessary to do these things if you 1. ask for it and 2. have faith that He will do it.

WHEW! That was a lot, but I'm excited to see how one chapter of God's word inspires and sets motion to the body of Christ.

Let me know what God is doing in your life and email me at kayceah@yahoo.com

Today I decided that I'm going to share with you my bible studies. Recently, I've been reading through the New Testament and I read through Colossians. I'll pick out a little each day and highlight it. I want to dig deeper into God's word and, to be honest, love the idea of posting my thoughts and I encourage you to share your own! If you'd like to read with me, let me know!

Here's todays verse:

"... All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heart it and understood God's grace in all its truth."

Colossians 1:6

That was such a refreshing verse to read. Within the christian religion there are so many different denominations and traditions connected to them. One thing is constant. The truth. Truth is not personal. Truth is not something different for different people. There is only one truth, and it is so comforting to know that and believe that.

What do you think? Email me at kayceah@yahoo.com

September 7, 2010

Personally, I fall into sin so easily. I'm easily influenced and was often tempted by the things I had once surrounded myself with.

I've been sick for the past two weeks which means I got to stay home from school and just sit around and do nothing for a few days. I always watch the Style channel and old Clean House re-runs kept playing when I was sick. Its a show where they get a group of people to come to your house, clean everything out, sell everything at a yard sale, and THEN they use the money to redecorate your newly cleaned house.

Everyone needs to clean house every once in a while. Not just their actual homes, but their lives too. I realized this in my lowest of lows. I had to do some clean house and remove the things that were tempting me. I had to stop socializing with the people that encouraged the sin in my life.

I cannot tell you how wonderful it feels to finally remove those things, and I guess this is my way of challenging everyone who is struggling with sin to do some cleaning in their lives. With prayer and a little effort, you can get rid of the temptation. With prayer and self discipline, you can keep it away.

(Its the perfect time, too. A new school year gives us a sense of a fresh start. Make it truly refreshing!!!)

Sorry for such a lame post. It was just something on my heart...