Barefoot Easter | Samaritan's Feet

Barefoot Easter | Samaritan's Feet

You'll Come!

I love the song "You'll Come", by Hillsong. If people can have a personal anthem it is definitely mine. As I was flipping through my Bible this am I came across a Dove chocolate wrapper I had stuck in there while on a missions trip in Kenya last summer. The wrapper says "Go Against the Grain". In our society today people want what they want when they want it. No one wants to wait for anything anymore. We definitely live in a world of instant satisfaction. The passage I had the used this chocolate wrapper to mark is Psalm 62. Verses 5-8 are my favorites..."My soul wait only upon God and silently submit to Him; for my hope and expectation are from him. he only is my Rock and my Salvation; He is my Defense and my Fortress, I shall not be moved. With God rests my salvation and my glory; He is my rock of unyielding strength and impenatrable hardness, and my refusg is in God! Trust in, lean on, rely on, and have confidence in Him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts before Him. God is a refuge for us (a fortress and high tower). Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!" (Amplified version) When I turned to this passage this morning I was reminded of my "anthem". It has been a comfort to me when I felt as though I could not wait any longer. I ahve felt the call to live on the missions field for several years now, but there are things that God has made clear I have to complete before that time will come. For a long time I was retless about the impending future and had a difficult time living in the now and completing things God was asking me to do. I was always thinking, dreaming, and praying of the future. God revealed to me while in Kenya last summer that I needed to be completely surrendered to Him and His plan in order for all I was waiting for to come to pass. I realized a peace in my waiting that I had never had before, and fully surrendered to wait on God. As of late I have felt that restlessness, building inside of me again, but not about His plan for the future. I have been restless waiting on Him to provide the money we need for our trip to Kenya in June. I have realized that I need to continue to wait on Him. He will provide if we are obedient and if we trust Him. The money will come in His timing not in ours!! I had forgotten that! I have felt pressed and felt like I needed to hurry up and raise the money. The first line of "You'll Come", is "I have decided, I have resolved to wait upon you Lord!" I need to embrace that....and go against the grain! If I do, He'll come!

Back Down Devil, and Get Off My Back!

The Devil is on my back! I have had a hard time with a fear of failure almost my entire life. Recently, while on a missions trip in Haiti God revealed to me that it was time to let that fear of failure go! I have always been worried of what others would think, and if I would be accepted. God reminded me recently as I shared with some of the women at church of Jeremiah 1:5-10. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew and approved of you, and before you were born I seperated and set you apart, consecrating you; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." (verse 5, Amplified version) In these verses Jeremiah is realizing the call that God has placed on his life as a prophet and he is telling the Lord he can't do what He is asking of him. Wow! How these verses speak to me...how often have I been there having a similar converstion with God. I have realized that God created me and that He knows what I am capable of; if He asks me to do something He will equip me with the instruments I need to succeed! I have been fooled for so long by the devil, into believing that I could not do, was not worthy to do, or was capable of doing. Thank the Lord that He has shown me that with Him I can do all things. "I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me." (Phillipians 4:13, Amplified version) I like how the Amplified version puts it, that Christ empowers me. He makes me able to do, ALL that I do!

I have been thinking about obedience, and what it means to me to be obedient. In life each of us finds that we have to be obedient to something. Yet, the world looks upon obedience as submitting and giving in to authority. As a believer of Jesus, I feel as though my acts of obedience are not giving in but surrendering to God. I want more of Him and less of me and in order to do so, I have to be willing to give my self wholly to Him and allow His will to unfold. It is not a matter of self-sacrifice, but of giving of myself for something bigger and better than me. In 1 Samuel 15:22, Samuel responds to Saul as he boasts of all the sacrifice he has made for the Lord. "Samuel said, Has the Lord as great a delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken better than the fat of rams."(Amplified version) When God asked me to go back to school and become a nurse, what would have happened if I was not obedient? I may never have received my calling to missions! Granted God may have used a different situation to speak to me, but who knows? I can tell you, until God changed my heart towards nursing I had no desire to be a nurse. I was not one of those little girls that put my dolls in the "hospital" and bandaged them up. I could not even stand the sight of blood. But, it was actually on my first missions trip to Guatemala that the Lord began to speak to my heart about nursing. I love being a nurse and know now that it is part of the calling that God has placed on my life. I am so thankful I surrendered and submitted to that call. If God is speaking to you today, listen to Him and be obedient to whatever it is you feel He is asking you to do. You have no idea what bearing that may have on your life and of those around you.

It has become apparent to me over the past week that God REALLY wants me to trust Him more in all I do. My husband and I are in the preparation process for a missions trip to Kenya in June. We have quite a bit of money still to raise, and I have often wondered where in the world this money is going to come from. God keeps on reminding me to trust Him and only Him. I have been reminded that the measure of faith I have, can have a bearing on how God answers my prayers....meaning the more I am surrendered to Him and the more of myself I am willing to give Him, the more He will give me.
I have also been reminded of the fact that if I am willing to step forward and say, "Here am I, send me!", that God will honor my willingness to be used by Him. In, Isaiah 6:8 the writer sees the Lord and God is asking him who would go and minister to the people and Isaiah says he will go. "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for Us? Then said I, Here am I; send me." (Amplified version) When your heart is willing and true God will use you. You do not have to be perfect, or sin free! He just wants you to take the opportunities He places in front of you to be used by Him. It is very simple, and yet somehow we complicate it. (I could go on, but this is a subject for another post, on another day.)
"Look at the proud; his soul is not straight or right within him, but the just and the righteous man shall live by his faith and in his faithfulness." Habakkuk 2:4 (Amplified version)