Happy Girl

Acts 2:42-47

"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

What happened to this?
I'd go to a church like this... even S.S. :)

"Jesus, the One we are singing to, is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last (Revelation 22:13). He is the Final Amen (Revelation 22:21). He is the Bread of Life (John 6:48). He is the Chief Cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20), Christ our Creator. He is our Deliverer (Romans 25:26). He is our Everlasting Father (Isaiah 6:9). He is God (Jn. 10:30). He is the Good Shepherd (Jn. 10:14), the Great Shepherd (Hebrews 13:20), the Great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14), the Holy One (Luke 1:35), the Hope of Glory (Colossians 1:27). He is the Great I am (Exodus 3:14). He is the Image of the Invisible God (Colossians 1:15), the Judge of the Living and the Dead (Acts 10:42). He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev. 17:14). He is Majestic and Mighty and no one compares to Him (Jeremiah 10:6). He is the Only Begotten Son (Jn. 3:16) to the Father Full of Grace and Truth (Jn. 1:14). He is the Power of God (1 Cor. 1:24). He is the Resurrection and the Life (Jn. 11:25). He is the Supreme Sacrifice (1 Jn. 2:2), the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn. 14:6), the Very Word of God Made Flesh (Jn. 1:14).
Jesus is all of these things, but we have reduced Him to a poor, puny Savior who is just begging for you to accept Him. Accept Him? As if Jesus needed to be accepted by you (Acts 17:25)? Jesus doesn't need your acceptance. He is Infinitely Worthy of all Glory in all the Universe (Rev. 4:11). At this moment, there are multitudes of creatures surrounding Him-one of whom whose beauty, if it were in this room, would startle us all (Rev. 7:9-12)-and they are all doing His bidding and singing His praises (Psalms 103:20). He does not need your songs. He doesn't need your prayers, your church attendance or your bible study. He doesn't need you at all. You need Him. You are desperately in need of Him (Psalms 142:6). You need Him for every breath you breathe (Acts 17:25). Every person in this room. The only reason your heart is beating at this moment is because Jesus Himself is giving it rhythm. Where did we get the idea that Jesus needed us to accept Him?

I am convinced that multitudes of professing Christians have been sold a lie when it comes to their Eternal Destinies. In our contemporary efforts to spread the Gospel to as many people as possible, I believe we have so maligned and manipulated and misrepresented the very Gospel we have wished to spread. We have formulated the Gospel as a "plan of Salvation" and forgotten the Gospel as the Power of God for Salvation (Romans 1:6). We have paired it down to the minimalist picture, smallest picture, and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller, into a shrink-wrapped presentation, that if one delivers it and gets someone to say the right things back to them, and even pray the right things back to them, then we pronounce them Saved and move on. And multitudes of professing Christians have been told that as long as they prayed that prayer or walked down that aisle or signed that card that their Salvation is complete (Philippians 2:12). The result is a host of professing Christians, including many people in this room, that think they are eternally Saved from their Sins when the reality is, they are not. The reason is because we have taken the Gospel, the very Life Blood (Jn. 6:53), out of Christianity and we've put Koolaid in its place.

What haunts me as a pastor, what keeps me awake many nights, is the thought, the idea, that sitting in front of me Sunday after Sunday, not just sitting in front of me, I, myself, could one day stand before Jesus and have Him look at me, or multitudes of you, and say "I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers (Matt. 7:23)." Do you think Jesus could say that to you?"

-David Platt

"then the time came when the risk it took
to remain tight in a bud was more painful
than the risk it took to blossom"
-Anais Nin

... I heard that.

I think it's weird when people only acknowledge God when good things happen to them. I don't know. Maybe I'm silly. But it just seems contrary to the whole "christian" thing... right? Only bringing attention to your love for God when God bestows good things on you? Or better yet, only bringing attention to God's love for you when God bestows good things on you. Either way, it just seems a little odd to me. Why don't we follow Him daily and acknowledge Him daily instead of acknowledging Him and following Him when we feel especially good about ourselves or life?

It just doesn't reflect what it means to me to follow God if you don't acknowledge Him in the good times, bad times, boring times, times when your walk with God is completely stagnant, times when you don't know, times when you don't care, times when you need, times when you want, times when you hurt, times when you're just surviving.

Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.
Deutoronomy 4:39

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6

I found out today from my psych professora that I, indeed, have hypnogogic hallucinations. "What the heck is that?", you might ask.

In sleep, there are different stages. One of these stages is REM. It is the deepest, most restful part of sleep. During REM your brain sends out a chemical to paralyze you temporarily so you wont harm yourself during the night (That brain's a smart one!).

Occasionally, while I'm sleeping, I'll wake up into what seems like a dream, but my eyes are open. I'm fully aware of my surroundings but I'm rendered completely immobile. I can't move anything but my eyes. It has a dream like feeling and sometimes it's black and white but what I see is complete reality. The hallucination part comes in when a dream aspect comes into play with reality. I've noticed mine are usually about bugs.

Example #1
It was in the early morning. I opened my eyes to see a mosquito net overhead with tons of crazy, bug, scary bugs on the outside of it. I couldn't scream or anything, but in my peripheral I saw My friend Mallory. After a few minutes in this "dream", "dream" me fell asleep and when I woke up, I was fine.

Example #2
One night, I went to sleep on my side with my unoccupied pillow in my field of vision. I starting having, what I thought was a dream. I can't move. I open my eyes and on the pillow next to me I see hundreds and hundreds of huge, ugly spiders crawling all over it. I'm laying there, completely unable to move, but trying desperately to move my arms or to sit up and get away. At the time of this "dream", I had had about 5 of these occurrences and I realized what was happening. I didn't panic, I just tried to go back to sleep.

I've had these for quite a while and I have at least two or three a month, but I never knew what it was until now. Hopefully it wont cause me any trouble. It's just extremely creepy.



PS- My cat left gaping slices on my leg yesterday. :(
PS#2- I'm moving.

I'm not sure exactly how I got here. Where is here? Here is a place of complete uncertainty, instability, loneliness, and pain. There are very few moments during the day that my chest/heart/spirit doesn't ache. All I can do is cling to God's faithfulness, really. He is faithful and I know that, deep down. I know He ALWAYS pulls through and I'm going to be okay.

I'm also really sorry for anyone that has been the object of my irrationality lately. I can't be held accountable for anything I say or do the past few days, and probably for the next week or two. I'm completely emotionally unstable right now, so forgive me please! I just feel like at any moment something could happen, that to any other person would be completely trivial, but would cause me to cry. I don't really know what to do anymore.

Yes I do. I'm such a dork. I know what to do. It's just doing it that I'm having a problem with.

Oh yeah, and I'm getting good at making a complete fool out of myself. No more talking for me.