Life goes on

My siblings left summer camp this morning. It's the strangest, almost a sad feeling to be the one left behind. This is my first year not attending RBC's summer camp. I hope I can go as a leader next year, but money's kind of short right now, and every hour I don't work I don't get paid. I feel lonely right now, the fact that I'm home instead of counting people at Sr. High youth group just reminds me that I'm not going. You know, right now that's probably the worst part of my life right now, trying to be an adult and working full time for little pay and paying off a wonderful car so I'm home from summer camp this year. God has greatly blessed me, and I know He'll lead me on in the years to come.

I wish so much that I were on my way to the camp with the rest of the youth group and leaders, but when I think about it, I wonder if I would be able to praise God the same because it makes me angry that they have forbidden us to worship the way we have been, because they didn't like the music. So I guess it's better that I'm not going this year because I don't want that to fester throughout the week, every morning and evening being reminded of it and ruining it for myself and for God. I don't think it's right to judge someone's worship by the instruments or beat that are used or whether you are dancing or standing still, raising your hands or letting them fall at your sides. But it's not right to hate someone or bitter towards someone for wronging someone with that judgement either, especially not a fellow brother or sister in Christ. After all, the Bible says that if you hate your brother you are liar if you say you love God, and I want to love God. Even if it means changing my attitude and heart towards those I don't agree with. Hehe, this'll take a while, or a miracle, because my mind wants to declare that I'm right and they're wrong in a self-righteous manner and that...yeah, that would just be using the very judgement I disagree with in return.

Undeserved

“In Christ alone my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This corner stone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My comforter, my all-in-all
Here in the love of Christ I stand
In Christ alone, who took on flesh
Fullness of God in helpless babe
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones He came to save
‘Til on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live
There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world, by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious day
Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His, and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ
No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life’s first cry, to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny
No pow’r of Hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hands
‘Til He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand”

Through Jesus Christ the wrath of God was satisfied…The wrath of God was satisfied. Because of Jesus we are pardoned and saved for eternity. Why? Why? We don’t deserve to have a way to Heaven, why did He give us a way? We curse His name, try and boss Him around, break His commandments…we stand before Him in defiance, rebellion in our eyes. We stand before Him and say, “No, God, I’m better than You.” If you doubt me, just ask yourself this question: how many times have you been upset or angry with God because He didn’t give you something that you wanted? How many times have you been upset, angry, or bitter about how God allowed things to happen in your life? How many times have you thrown that temper tantrum: “No, God, no, no, NO! You can’t do that, that’s not fair! I thought You loved me!…I HATE YOU!”? Why should He give us anything? We curse His name, try and boss Him around, break His commandments…we stand before Him in defiance, rebellion in our eyes. We don’t deserve His love, we don’t deserve His grace or mercy…we deserve to be required to be perfect in order to get to Heaven, we deserve to need to drive ourselves into the ground, trying to be good enough, and fail. We deserve to fall before Him stripped, broken, shamed, and condemned…because we curse His name, try and boss Him around, break His commandments, and tell Him, “No, God, I’m better than You.” But we don’t need to. God…He made it possible for us to not only approach Him, but to approach Him with confidence. He made it possible for us to stand before Him covered, healed, unashamed, and redeemed. John 3:18 says that “He who believes is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” We don’t deserve it at all. But on that cross, when Jesus died for me, for you…the wrath of God was satisfied. We don’t have to pay for it anymore. Because of His love, His mercy, and His grace, we who believe are not condemned; because of Jesus we have a way to spend eternity with our God, our undeserved Lover, and Savior of our souls. How dare we ask for more? Especially when we have failed to stand before Him in awe, respect, and humble, genuine thankfulness for what He has already done.

“Why, why are You still here with me
Didn’t You see what I’ve done?
In my shame I want to run and hide myself
But it’s here I see the truth
I don’t deserve You

But I need You to love me
And I, I won’t keep my heart from You this time
And I’ll stop this pretending
That I can somehow deserve what I already have
I need You to love me

I, I have wasted so much time
Pushing You away from me
I just never saw how You could cherish me
‘Cause You’re a God who has all things
And still You want me

And I need You to love me
And I, I won’t keep my heart from You this time
And I’ll stop this pretending that I can
Somehow deserve what I already have
I need You to love me

Your love makes me forget what I have been
Your love makes me see who I really am
Your love makes me forget what I have been…

I need You to love me, and I
I won’t keep my heart from You this time
And I’ll stop this pretending that I can
Somehow deserve what I already have
Somehow deserve what I already have
I need You to love me, yeah"

God

"First God. God is the subject of life. God is foundational for living. If we don't have a sense of the primacy of God, we will never get it right, get life right, get our lives right. Not God at the margins; not God as an option; not God on the weekends. God at center and circumference; God first and last; God, God, God." -The Message

But we don't think He's worth our time. We have more important things to pay attention to, humans we'd rather associate with. God's just not good enough, not loving enough, not open-minded enough, we deserve so much more than He could ever offer. Like that cute jerk in class who's bound to break our heart. Hey, we'll just tape our heart back together and give it to the next jerk who rolls around, hoping he's a little less of a jerk than the other one so maybe he won't break our heart. Or the praise of those critics who don't care. Or that alcohol that solves everything -- for a few sickening hours we can forget everything and act like idiots, hey we don't remember it anyway. Or those one-night-stands that give us that passionate feeling, and then it's over and we're empty and alone and unsatisfied.

What we want is a Genie, not a God, because a Genie does everything we tell it to, makes our lives what we want them to be and keeps bad things from staying in our lives, God does not. All He offers is a better life, love, worth -- that He more than repays what you give Him, a companion, and the ability to make it through those hard times better off than you would have been without Him or if you had simply gone around them -- it's just not good enough. It's not worth our time, money, or affection...

So. Why don't we think He's worth it?

You see the depths of my heart

"But what hurts the most
Is being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away
Never knowing
What could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was trying to do."

O the battles that can rage inside the large and small alike. You know the saying, "Big things come in small packages"? Well, it applies not only to amazing things and big hearts, but also to wars. Bloody and violent wars, the soldiers at each others' throats.

Stubborness. Why must I have the stubborness that fights against God instead of with Him? I am stubborn when I should comply, and I comply when I should be stubborn. And yet, I have no doubt that God knows that He still means more to me than anything else in the entire world; because if He didn't, He'd be long gone by now because I'm sure He wouldn't be able to tell.

For the past year-and-a-half or so I have been frustrated with some guy because he said I was worth so much and now is just...removing himself it seems. He thinks he's lost me and he's not trying to keep me and I'm like, "Well, apparently I'm not worth that much or you wouldn't let me go that easily." And so God taps me on the shoulder and says, "You're worth that much to Me, I'll fight for you, I'll fight anybody for you." And I just wave His words away, not really even hearing them because I'm so focused on what should've been a gift from God but has become a curse because I won't let myself be completely satisfied with Him, even though I know He can and will satisfy. I keep limiting His power and love in my life without even realizing it. And yet He's there, sword drawn, ready and willing and able to fight for my love, my life, my heart. To Him, I am worth it, I am worth fighting for, even if I never am to anybody else.

"Come and hear, all you who fear God,
And I will declare what He has done for my soul.
I cried to Him with my mouth,
And He was extolled with my tongue.
If I regard iniquity in my heart,
The Lord will not hear.
But certainly God has heard me;
He has attended to the voice of my prayer.

Blessed be God,
Who has not turned away my prayer,
Nor His mercy from me!" ~Psalm 66:16-20~

A girl, her friend's dog, and their misadventures in the world, intro

Don’t know how many of you knew this, but for nine days (I’d say “the past nine days” but I’m a couple days late in writing this) I learned so many things about taking care of an active, two-year-old, big dog. In this case it was a black lab. A rather large black lab, actually. And for those nine days it was a battle of authority. Thankfully, I had gotten many chances to observe how Anthony handles his dog, otherwise, I don’t know if I would’ve handled it so well, or if I’d have been run off because I didn’t know what to do. The biggest challenge was teaching Ned that jumping on and grabbing me wasn’t an acceptable way to tell me he wanted to go on a walk. The second adventure was getting him to recognize me as the authority, so when I said, “off!” it meant “Off!” and when I said, “Give!” I meant, “Give!” etc. The third was keeping up with him on runs. He wanted to go out every day, but on a couple occasions I didn’t take him on a run because I wanted him to know it wasn’t a given that we were going on a walk/run, and attacking me wasn’t going to help. I learned to smack, wrestle, shove, cage, spray, and tackle Ned. Thank God that he finally started acknowledging my authority. Hehe, at first it was more of, “Ok, I’ll humor you this time.” Eventually I noticed that he didn’t completely take me seriously. I would shove him off of me and tell him, “Off!” and he’d jump right back up and kind of nip at my hand when I shoved at him again. By the end of the week, though, he would get off, give, and everything when I told him to! 20 bruises and about twice as many scratches later, we have respect. Maybe he even likes me some. I’m hoping to keep running with Ned a couple times a week. Maybe I’ll get a chance to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Lorenzini about it tomorrow. We’ll see. But running along behind or beside Ned, it made running really fun. I’ve never had fun just running before, but it’s a lot of fun with such and energetic companion. *laughs* That dog would’ve taken off if it hadn’t been for his lead being wrapped around my wrist. Hehe, he practically took off anyway. He was so excited to get out, no matter how long or not long we were out, he always had this satisfied way of walking back. He always wanted to run going, and hardly wanted to run at all on the way back, even if we were only going for 10 minutes. If I’d have thought of this sooner I could’ve told you more about the adventures we went on, the places we explored (not that Ned’s never explored most of those places before, but…). Course, I suppose most of you don’t care that much. But it was exciting. And now I'd really love a big dog that'll go on runs with me, and play with me, even though I'm sure I won't be as rough as Ani is with his dog. And I hope to get a husky, but we'll see where God leads that wish :-).

Camping Quotes

"Now I remember why I don't go camping very often: the ground is hard!" -Dan

"Stupid birds! They woke me up and I couldn't get back to sleep!" -Dan

" 'Did you sleep?' -me
'Nah, some bugs decided to call me lunch.' " -Philip

"I like it out here, you can hear yourself out here." -Leslie

"The pillow's where the head is." -Philip

"I'm sure everything in the world is located off of 7 at some point." -Philip

" 'I was going to rally a team to kill all the birds, and then water-balloon the neighbors.' -Joseph
'And then preach the gospel to them.' -Leslie
'You know the slingshot was invented in the morning.' " -Jim

"Fiotusa: Future Inovators Of The United States of America."

" 'Whose eyes are prettier, mine or Joseph's?' -Leslie
'Um...yeah, I gaze into Joseph's eyes every Sunday...' " -Joshua