zombies, vampires, & jesus

the east coast has swallowed me up in it's goodness.

last night was my first time down to the Ellipse where our tent is set up, and i had to take a moment to let it soak into my bones.
how funny that a bunch of cement and metal can be so surreal.

i could throw a rock from our tent at the Washington Monument, and to be honest, maybe i've thought about it. i'm not very keen to it's red eyes that blink down at me and it's cold body that isolates itself from the creation around it.
maybe it's just lonely. maybe the grass and i aren't tall enough to admire it the way we should.

as i walked around our space looking at all these historical buildings rich in stories, the sun set right above the Lincoln Memorial. right above the man i share a birthday with.
and i think maybe it was then that i fell a little bit in love with DC.
it was then that i realized i would call this place home for a little bit. 

downtown is a bit different from where we live. 
the window next to my bunk bed sounds a bit more like Chicago, cop cars & ambulances talking late at night, and people hollering into the wee hours of the night.
i was told not to buy candy bars at the corner store across the street because they melt and then remold and melt again. most everything is behind glass and bars, but the people are warmer than the buildings. i like Anacostia's character. it has culture i'm familiar with.

to all my pen pals and wanna be's, this is for you.
if you would like to send me a letter, it gets sent right to me at our house of prayer.
if you'd like to send me a package, you'll have to put down a different address because the mailmen aren't very keen to them here.

FOR LETTERS:                FOR PACKAGES:
1300 Good Hope Rd. SE       2340 Q St. SE
Washinton DC, VA            Washington DC, VA
20020                       20020

can i just say that i didn't know i was in the state of virginia?
i can't tell you where i thought i was, but lord knows i need to study my states a bit more.

we did our first night watch last night in the tent from 7pm-1am and for some reason i am feeling like a zombie. it's not much of a vampire schedule yet, but i think the cold and the long day we had calls for a nap.

all is well.
the new mumford & sons album is on my ears and hot tea is on my tongue. 
all is very well.

a new adventure!

What a year this has been.

With your help financially, emotionally, and spiritually, I was able to follow God’s call to Kona, Hawaii to be a student in Youth With a Mission’s Discipleship Training School.

The time spent in Hawaii and months later in Cambodia, changed my life.

God’s presence was so tangible and He spoke so clearly to me in that time. I was called out of comfort to live a life radically for Jesus. His love and grace has touched my heart in tremendous ways, and through faith I saw it radically transform peoples lives as I traveled.

I know Jesus as my Savior, my comforter, an incredible provider, and as my deepest friend.

Through worship sessions, hours spent in prayer, intentional discipleship, close knit friendships, hundreds of healings and salvations, and incredible lectures in class, I know that this is the life that God is calling me into.

I am overjoyed to tell you that I have been invited to staff YWAM this September. My heart is so full of life & joy to be able to have this opportunity. Through much prayer and confirmation, I have decided to accept that invitation and run with YWAM for the next two years.

This journey will be absolutely beautiful. It will be full of life, love, growth, long plane rides, challenges, friendships, visas, stamps on my passport, financial provision, music, and laughter.

The next nine months of my life will be spent in intentional leadership training, preparing my heart and mind to lead students further into their relationship with Christ & walk into the fullness of their destiny. Come September I will be spending forty days in Washington DC, leading, and managing 24 hour worship in a tent behind the White House leading up to the election. After those forty days, I will be traveling back to Hawaii to continue growing as a family in leadership and in the Word, working in the community, and on the YWAM base. After Leadership Track is finished, I will then staff the Fire & Fragrance Discipleship Training School from the months of January through June, where I will lead a team to another country to do missions.

Knowing what’s ahead, I am overjoyed to be laying my life down to be doing missions work for the Kingdom. With this commitment comes a lot of sacrifice, but so much life and an abundant amount of fruit.

None of this would be made possible without the love and support of my community. So firstly, I want to thank you for all of the love, encouragement, and support you have already given me. If you feel lead to continue walking with me through this journey God has given me, there are many ways to do so.

Firstly, I am living a volunteer lifestyle. I will be living day to day by the support of people who feel like God is leading them to financially support me. While staffing YWAM, I need to raise $600 a month for rent, food, health insurance, and other living expenses. If you feel like God is putting this on your heart, please let me know! Even If you spare your money on a meal once a month, a coffee a week, or feel lead to be a monthly supporter at any cost, it would be GREATLY appreciated & help tremendously. But most of all, I want to ask you to partner with me in prayer, for hearts to be radically encountered by the love of God, and for this world to be transformed through his grace and mercy.

All donations, letters, questions, and support of any form can be sent to my address at:

Ariel Frey

2641 Albert Dr.

East Grand Rapids, MI

49506

If you would like to donate online, my paypal email is:
ariel.jenae@gmail.com

Once again, I am so extremely thankful and full of joy to be sharing this journey with you and can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve already done for me.

I am truly blessed.

wildhearted love

okay, i'll admit it, i've been really bad at keeping up with my blog. but i guess that's pretty obvious, my last real post was last month. people told me it would be hard to do before i left & i didn't really believe them, but man, it is. i'm so sorry. 
whenever i have free time i just want to soak it up with reading, talking with friends both here & at home, or getting all the rest i can, so blogging has kind of hit the back burner. i'll try and kick it up a notch. i do have some competition anyways. if you guys don't read Gretchen Baldwin's blog already, you should. she's a dear friend i met at SpringHill Camps in the summer of '10. currently she's in Cameroon, Africa doing some form of God given political artistic wonders or something. check out her words here: gretchbaby.wordpress.com plus, she's a babe.


//


it's funny waking up to Koreans singing worship in the morning. you should try it sometime. not only does it make me giggle, it makes me so happy.
they sing to Jesus unlike anyone i've ever heard. they have such a freedom, such a joy & delight, and so much hope in every word. they praise Him because He's worthy, not because they feel like it. praise Him for such wonderful people. praise Him for them being my alarm. praise Him for the unity He's going to bring to their nation.


i also just need to thank the Lord for the overwhelming income of mail over these past three weeks. i can honestly say that i've gone maybe 5 days without a letter or a package the past 21 days. PRAISE HIM! He must have told you all that mail is one of my favorite things on this earth...
& i can say that i'm probably set on skirts for the next 5 years. THANK YOU SO MUCH! Cambodia here i come!!!
each one of you has shown me so much love over these past few weeks, just an abundance of it & i honestly don't know how to receive it all. on my birthday i seriously sat out on my porch and cried the most overwhelmingly-happy tears i've ever cried.
what beautiful people you are. thank you thank you thank you. (it was one of the best birthdays i've had, ps. 21 is going to be a very good year, i just know it.)


//


so just to let you guys know i'm not dead, i'm here & i'm learning so much.
every day is a new revelation. a new side of the unfathomable love God has for us.
that wildhearted love. 


it's opened so many things to me.
who He is
how He loves me
who I am
who He calls us to be
how to be a laid down lover
how to live in a culture of people who delight in brokenness. 
to live in joyful repentance. 
to hunger to live in humility, to want to have a starving heart, and to be addicted to loving each other radically.


because it's all about the Kingdom.
because who you are is the culture of Jesus, not what you do. 
it's all about your heart.
it's all about the Kingdom of the heart.


//


He's preparing me.
i can't wait to go to Cambodia.
I can't wait to go back to Chicago.
I can't wait to go back home.
to go wherever He leads me.


//


ps--prayer requests! this Friday is our DTS's last deadline for our finances. our team is really relying on radical acts of generosity in this time & know whole heartedly that God will provide the finances to send all of us as a team to Cambodia. please pray for this provision to come through! some people really have exhausted their options & are relying on miracles to come through. if you feel God moving in your heart to donate to our team, just click the donate button & it will go straight to them! please know that even the smallest amounts help!


pps--please be praying for health across the base! the enemy is really trying to counteract all of the goodness and fruit that is being bore here by making people incredible sick. we know that Jesus bore our sickness on the cross & we don't want our bodies to relent! please fight against sickness with us!

<< team cambodia!




















xoxoxoxox

the vision

So this guy comes up to me and says,

"What's the vision? What's the big idea?"

I open my mouth and words come out like this...

The vision?

The vision is JESUS: obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.

You see bones? I see an army.

And they are FREE from materialism -they laugh at 9-5 little prisons.

They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday. They wouldn't even notice.

They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the West was won.

They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations, they need no passport.

People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.

They are free, yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision?

The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.

It makes children laugh and adults angry.

It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars.

It scorns the good and strains for the best.

It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.

It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.

This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.

A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might one day win the great..

"Well done" of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.

They don't need fame from names.

Instead they grin quietly upwards

and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"

And this is the sound of the underground,

the whisper of history in the making,

foundations shaking,

revolutionaries dreaming once again.

Mystery is scheming in whispers, conspiracy is breathing...

This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed -young people who beat their bodies into submission.

Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.

The tattoo on their back boasts "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.

Winners.

Martyrs. Who can stop them?

Can hormones hold them back?

Can failure succeed?

Can fear scare them or death kill them?

And the generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond talking,with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and great barrow loads of laughter!

Waiting. Watching: 24 - 7 - 365.

Whatever it takes they will give:

Breaking the rules,

shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide,

laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,

laughing at labels, fasting essentials.

The advertisers cannot mold them.

Hollywood cannot hold them.

Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive inside.

On the outside?

They hardly care!

They wear clothes like costumes: to communicate and celebrate, but never to hide.

Would they surrender their image or their popularity?

They would lay down their very lives,

swap seats with the man on death row,

guilty as hell: a throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears,

with sleepless nights and fruitless days,

they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.) Their subconscious sings.

They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.

Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.

Don't you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdos!

Summon the losers and the freaks.

Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes!

They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow,

Mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.

Their prayers summon the Hound of Heaven

and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be.

It will come to pass;

it will come easily;

it will come soon.

How do I know?

Because this is the longing of creation itself,

the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is His today.

My distant hope is His 3-D.

And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great "Amen!" from countless angels,

from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself.

And He is the original dreamer,

the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

having things you don't need

i admit it, i kind of have an obsession with long skirts. the good thing about this is that Cambodia only allows me to wear long skirts, because it's disrespectful to show your knees. the bad thing about this is that i only packed one long skirt & the weather will be in the 90-100's, extremely humid, and monsooning the whole time i'll be there.

so i thought i'd write a little something on a few things that i'm in need of.

firstly, long skirts.

my friends, [especially you wonderful thrifters over there in chicago], if you come across any skirt that is below the knee & feel the urge to send it my way, please do!

these skirts are good examples, and very lovely.

another need clothing wise are tshirts/dresses that cover the shoulder. i should have thought more when i was packing, but once again, i only packed about 2 tshirts, and i only have 1 dress that covers my shoulders [but i still have to wear leggings because of my knees]! linen pants, or capris would be wonderful too. ha, i'm going to be sweating like crazy. so once again, if you find lightweight tshirts or tshirt-dresses in your closet or in a store, please send them!

these are just nice, shoulder covering dresses that i adore.

so if you are out & about thrifting, shopping, cleaning out your closet, or have that bag that's been  waiting to go to Goodwill, remember me! ; ) lightweight, linen, cotton, shoulder and knee covering clothes are my new favorite things [& would make great birthday presents]!

thirdly, please continue praying for us all on our journeys here. for myself individually, that i would continue to pursue Jesus with an undivided heart & a fire in my soul, for my team as we unite as a family and prepare to go to Cambodia, for safety, for financial miracles to happen with everyone here, for revival to come to the nations, and for Gods love to be spread like wildfire and welcomed with open arms.

here's my address:

Ariel Frey

Fire & Fragrance DTS #429

75-5851 Kuakini Highway

Kailua-Kona, HI 96740

[i'll post more soon about all of the revelations & teachings i've been experiencing & listening to. there's been so much! i'm exhausted, but it's been so good. be patient with me :D]


can't wait for my birthday! only 12 more days...

say yes

will you follow me without having to have it all figured out?

"come.

follow me."

Noah said yes. 

He built a boat for 100 years with unwavering trust.

Abraham said yes. 

He was willing to sacrifice his only son.

are you ready to follow without understanding?

YES.

this past week has been a full on free fall. 

let me just tell you that i believe my DTS family has fully heard the voice of God. we have heard that whisper. we have felt His heart beat for us. 

it is His call that has brought us together. He has brought us from so many different backgrounds, so many different journeys, so many sicknesses, so many accidents and trials, so many bankrupt moments, so much brokenness and met us there. He met us there and said child, come follow me. and he continued to pull us out, to provide for us immensely, and brought us together as one family with the same desire. to be on fire for Him.

and each one of us is a warrior. completely on fire for God. completely in love & hungry to know our Maker more. we have heard!  through simple obedience we have followed! and now we lay down our lives together, a complete surrender, because what else do we have!? He is our inheritance.

"come follow me. come. come trust me, come fall into my arms. let me love you. let me show you your true identity. come."

this past week has taught me a tremendous amount.

it's taught me humility.

honor.

the UNFATHOMABLE amount of love that He has for me. i've felt it. i've been completely rocked by it.

i've learned God as my Lover. that He cherishes me. that i am the apple of His eye. 

i am learning daily how to chose His love, & not the false things of this world.

i am letting Him consume me. i am understanding how to dwell in His presence. how to linger. how to stay a while. 

i am learning that He is everything i have ever desired. 

that I AM NOT DEFINED BY MY SIN. WE ARE NO LONGER SLAVES OF SIN. i am defined by beauty.

how to live without fear, without inhibitions because it's THERE that deep intimacy lies. 

how to live in the urgency of the hour we live in.

what i yield to is what i operate in.

i am a new creation.

& i will follow Him into the darkest places.

the big reveal...

& the outreach location is...

CAMBODIA!!!

so the winners are my lovely friends Kirstin & Hillary (and my mom)! send me your addresses and you'll receive a nice little gift from Hawaii :o)

& for those of you who were trying to guess the two i put down for my top two choices, they were Cambodia & Mozambique!

it was so fun to hear where all of you thought I would end up. i wish i could go to all them.

but in the meantime, I AM SO EXCITED TO GO TO CAMBODIA!!! I felt God's voice whisper Cambodia to me everyday in almost everything i did. I definitely don't know what's in store, but I am so excited to experience the beauty of this nation. SO EXCITED.

please be praying with me for the country of Cambodia. for the people, for their hearts to be stirred & hungry for the love of Jesus Christ. for a new revelation of Christ's love for them to overwhelm their hearts, their minds, their souls. for protection as we travel, for unity, that we may understand what a true family is among each other, for boldness, for forgiveness, and for everlasting compassion.

HERE. WE. GROW. thank you Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

following His call

today has had such an energy about it, there's been an electricity among the campus that's filled us with anticipation & so much excitement. 

today is the day that they released the outreach location options. 

because our DTS is so big, we can't all go to one outreach location. imagine about 120 people being dropped in a foreign country...so overwhelming! so the staff prayed well before we came for God to reveal to them places all around the world that are yearning for love, that are in a deep need for light to flood their nation and be overcome with God's grace and compassion.

so can you imagine all of us!?
we were freakin out.

i almost jumped out of my seat when they passed out the sheets in which we were supposed to write our top 2 choices. i think we all almost did, we were hungry to know what places God had in store for our group. to hear His voice lead us to one specific location, the intimacy in His call towards a whole nation! and we get to listen. we get to follow. He has placed a nation in all of our hands to surrender all to.

how beautiful.

& since we are so large, we had to choose two possible outreach locations, just in case there are too many people in one and we need to get moved around to create balance and unity among us.

so how about this.

i'll list the countries & you can take a guess as to where God will lead me. if you get it right, i'll send you a nice little package from Hawaii! 

staff is praying over each one of us & will place us in specific locations (based on the two we wrote down) in a few days, so hopefully i'll be able to reveal where i'm going by Friday! you can also try & guess the two countries i wrote down...here we go!

Japan
the East Coast of the USA

Honolulu

Turkey/Iraq

China/North Korea

Nepal

Cambodia

Amsterdam

Berlin/Poland

Mozambique

South Africa

i'll keep you posted!!! good luck ;)

day one

i'm in bed.

it's 8 pm.

i willingly embrace the bedtime of a small child due to the 15 hours of travel yesterday, one of the earliest mornings i've had since high school, the immense amount of excitement & socializing among hundreds of us students, the humidity that hates my hair & melts my Lush products, the belly full of hawaiian food, and one of the most energized worship sessions i've ever experienced.

this calls for one good nights rest.

but before i sleep the hardest i'll most likely ever sleep, i thought i'd share the things i've witnessed already (my apologies for the choppiness or lack of cohesion, i truly am exhausted).

i made it to Kona last night around 9:10 pm (Hawaiian time, for you who live in the midwest, i'm about 4-5 hours behind you). immediately upon arrival, i met two people who know a very good family friend of mine back in grand rapids, and one of my dear friends back in chicago. talk about a small world.

i've met tons of people, seen hundreds of faces, all of them representing a different place they call home. i think i was told we have about 92 students in my DTS, and we're still expecting more! we have the most students this quarter than any other in YWAM history. we are representing over 44 nations, and we are all in love and hungry for Jesus Christ. there are so many families here! i think they said around 72 children are on campus. & they are all so BEAUTIFUL! a gorgeous little girl named Rosaline sat next to me tonight at the Luau and clapped, sang, crawled, laughed, ate crayons, and smiled at me with her big brown eyes as we watched the Hawaiian woman dance & men breathe fire. 

i learned of the speakers to come in these next three months. i can't contain my excitement:
andy byrd, taylor stutts, amy sollars, loren & darlene cunningham, heidi baker, tom & donna cole, jon & kinsey thurlow, charles stock, jonathan helser, corey stark, brian bennt, sean feucht, lou engle, susi childers, michael & angela pinkston, and tom osterhus.

seriously, my world is about to get rocked.

i also learned my address. if you'd like to send me letters, photos, packages, anything! please do! postage is the same as it is anywhere in the US. 

Ariel Frey

Fire & Fragrance DTS #429
75-5851 Kuakini Highway
Kailua-Kona, HI 96740

this place is alive. 

everyday we greet one another with a kiss, with an "aloha".

alo means: front, face, presence. ha means: breath.

so when you give someone an aloha, you are acknowledging the mahalo, the divine blessing and presence that dwells and breathes life inside of them.

so you touch your forehead and nose to "kiss" the other person, just long enough to give them a breath & praise to our God above.

there is so much beauty there. may we acknowledge the breath of life in everyone daily.

here we grow.

my heart is full

i'm still trying to wrap my mind around it
trying to grasp the reality of the life i'm living right now
because what's going on is pretty unbelievable.
& what is to come is pretty unbelievable.


i think i have a tendency to want to understand it all at once, so i can hold it all in my arms and just sit with it for a while. but i've come to realize & accept that's not possible. i've come to understand that's not even what i want. i don't want the big picture, i want to purely exist in these moments that are so alive and are given to me. these moments, these breaths, these people, these emotions are gifts from God. i'd be missing it if i had it all. i wouldn't be able to appreciate the tenderness & intimacy of every experience and creature in my life. & that's why right now, i'm able to just sit in excitement for the journey ahead of me.


i am going to hawaii. 
i will be there in less than a week.


i'm going to meet beautiful people with beautiful souls
i'm going to smell & taste unfamiliar foods
i'm going to see things that will make me cry
i'm going to read things that will breathe new life
i'm going to experience things i'm not even ready for
i'm going to follow Jesus.


& my heart is so full.


so, i'm going.
i'm leaving. 
& because i don't like the sound of that,
we'll say i'm going on a little voyage. 
i'm just going off for a bit & i'll be back soon.

and i couldn't have done it without any of you. your words, your wisdom, your encouragement & crazy amount of support, your love that reaches to the moon, your prayer, and your faith has helped make this possible.
thank you. forever. for always. for everything.


He can move mountains.

living close to You

Stir up our hearts, O LORD, that our trust in YOU would speak of YOUR SON. Grant us, YOUR people, the wisdom to see YOUR purposes today and the openness to hear YOUR will, that we may witness to CHRIST’s coming and so prepare HIS way; through JESUS CHRIST our LORD, who lives and reigns with YOU and the HOLY SPIRIT, one GOD, now and forever.

Amen

this prayer rings so true, the words are exact for the desires in my heart towards my time in Advent & also my journey towards YWAM.

there's selflessness that comes with this, humility, an act of surrendering your life over to be open to the call of our Father. a willingness to be the hands and the feet of our God here on Earth.

for He is coming and we were created to live for Him.

this holiday season has been the first time where i've really understood what it's supposed to be about. what being thankful looks and really feels like. what Advent means & how it should be reflected. 

it's not about the crunch time to find perfect gifts, how much money is in my bank account, what date everyone is coming into town, or all the times of parties and dinners and shows. & although i already know that's not what the Holiday season is about, it's what seems to be the consistency of the conversations and actions leading up to the arrival of Christmas day. we have this eagerness and anxiousness during Christmas season. we want to finish finals and have a breath of fresh air, we want to get home and spend time with our families, but this isn't the right anticipation in our hearts.

there's stillness, bountiful amounts of joy and excitement, tender moments that are alive with beauty that could only come from our Father and a deep understanding of what God is doing in the weeks leading up to Christmas. do we experience this everyday? or do we experience stress?

we need to slow down

to quiet our hearts & minds and sit with the Lord

to ask for wisdom to see His purpose in today 

to prepare the way for the Lord for HE HAS COME, HE IS HERE, AND HE IS COMING.

what could be a better time to live this out than now?

it's so evident how shackled i was, even weeks ago!, with doubts and fears of my future. I was not still. i was not meditating on Him. my mind was racing through every possible option of what could happen in the future, believing that I needed to have everything figured out and I could do that all on my own. I was not trusting.

BUT GOD HAS RELEASED ME. there has been a transformation in my life (isn't it amazing how He keeps renewing & restoring!?) i am listening. i am surrendering my doubts, my fears, my desires, my life, over to Him and my mind is refreshed! i am ALIVE and only breathing in excitement. 

He has been making all things possible for me, from giving peace & acceptance to my friends and family, to delivering incredible amounts of income overnight. i am going. & i give SO much of my thanks to all of you who read & are moved by what God is doing, He is showing tangible pieces of his love through your donations and kind words. He gives so much encouragement through them & it's so evident how supported I really am. thank you. from the bottom of my heart. for reading, for giving, for praying, for loving.

He gives and He gives and He gives and He gives.

living close to You

we shall see Your hand

Your purpose

Your will through all things.

-St. Ignatius

may we all continue to live close to Him

to be fully present in the work He is doing right now

to be open & willing to hear Him

to let Him use our hands & feet for His Kingdom

to be a strong warrior 

& to forever give glory and praise to Him

for a daily piece of meditation this Advent season, check out Beautiful Advent & soak up the good Word of God. He is coming.

stillness

i have a choice. 

everyday i am confronted with a decision. either to fall into worry & disbelief that the journey ahead of me will happen, or to trust, wholeheartedly, that God can do all things. that He can provide. that He can make YWAM happen.

& i have to remind myself this. daily. 

it's as if my mind tries to destruct all of this strength I have. as soon as I get up on my two feet, right as things are clear & i finally understand and believe, my mind finds every possible excuse, lie, or worry to replace all of the goodness and trust that was just planted.

but God is an intimate & all knowing God. this is when He does really beautiful things that just make me laugh at how silly my thoughts and actions are sometimes.

it's seems only right that i am experiencing these emotions right now, it's as if God has this witty little sense of humor reminding me that this is the time of Advent.

I need to still my heart.

stillness

do you know this word? have you experienced this in your heart?

there have been pure moments in the past few weeks where this tangible peace, this overwhelming sense of stillness has come over my heart. just a little reminder to quiet the thoughts in my head. to fully trust Him.

"remember, there are two things which are more utterly incompatible then even oil and water, and these two are trust and worry...when a believer really trusts anything, he ceases to worry about the thing which he has trusted. & when he worries, it is plain proof that he does not trust." Hannah Whitall Smith

"Jesus has come, Jesus is here, Jesus is coming"
i believe this.

I need to live my life acting like I believe this.

watching for Him.

living for Him.

being radically obedient for Him.

He has called me to go forth. to be a disciple to the Nations.

once struggling with a burden, my dearest friend Frances said this to me: "in that moment, when you choose other than to follow Christ in that decision, you are saying that He is not enough."

when i give in to worry, when i give in to fears and lies and deceptions, I am saying that my Maker is not enough. The one who made me. the one who sacrificed His whole life for me. so that i, a worthless sinner, could live. 

I need to make the choice.

to fully trust in Him.

i'm 1/3 of the way there financially. God provided an immense amount of money to me within a matter or two days last week to get me to this point. i'm 1/3 of the way there.

i can do this.

we can do this.

i will trust him.

i will quiet my mind.

i will still my heart.

i will be like Phillip & radically obey Him.

i will follow Him.

take heart

"isn't it a great thing to feel the indwelling of the Holy Spirit permeate your entire being? and then follow his guidance into the unknown?

it is a ball of fright, passion & humility.
it is something that will impact the rest of your existence here.
don't forget about the journey it took to get to this point. Don't forget about the actual experience, the sentences you'll be living will end in a chapter. And don't forget to continue to let the Holy Spirit guide you as you heed his call -- even after this chapter is complete, you still have a whole story to live."

may the Holy Spirit guide your thoughts and actions. may you fully trust in the one who made you. may you relinquish all control to experience the freedom that openly awaits you. may you find joy and peace. may you die to yourself so that you may bring true life.

all things are possible through Him who dwells in me.

take heart, oh child.