God's Temple, God-prayers

This morning I was reading through chapter 8 in 1 Kings and it is when King Solomon finished building the temple. I love what he prays...

verse 54:
When Solomon had finished all these prayers and supplications to the Lord, he rose from before the altar of the Lord where he had been kneeling with his hands spread out toward heaven.

How beautiful to have a place where the Lord dwelt after many years of prayer and waiting. How beautiful to see the fruit of answered prayers.

continued in verse 58:
May He turn our hearts to Him to walk in all His ways and to keep the commands, decrees and regulations he gave our fathers.

verse 60:
so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God and that there is no other. But your hearts must be fully committed to the Lord our God, to live by His decrees and obey His commands as at this time.

Sometimes, God answers prayers quickly, sometimes years and years go by without a sign of Him hearing, but time to God is not as time is to us. So trust and never stop praying a prayer that is a God-prayer.

The more you spend time with God the easier it is to distinguish His heart and knowing how He wants us to pray. The more time we spend on our own without acknowledging and giving God every part of our lives the more confusing things get and our prayers become frantic and scattered and selfish. Let God's heart beat strongly in your heart and shape your prayers and desires. Then you will be filled with His peace and joy that passes all human understanding.


Psalm 16:11
You have made known to me the path of life,
You fill me with JOY in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.

love.

why is it so easy for us to love some people.
harder to love others (at least fully from our hearts)
and yet even HARDER to let Christ fully love us.

i have been realizing lately what a grinch i am when it comes to letting myself be loved by God and Jesus. like really understanding and being excited about their love for me. how they adore me - their creation, sister, daughter and friend. how they long to spend time with me and hear my heart and walk and enjoy things with them.

i think if i stopped and let Jesus love my heart instead of block His love He wants to shower me with it'd be alot easier to love those people it can be hard to love at times. and it'd make our love for people easy to love even MORE full. Christ's love does that.. sooo powerful. and...

it casts out all fear.
fills you with joy.
covers you with forgiveness for yourself and others.
peace that passes understanding.
patience in trials.
kindness and goodness.
kindles faithfulness in all things.
controls yourself in out of control situations.
brings gentleness to wrath.



i set the fire-alarms off in our house today. :)

blizzard thots.

When you end up inside for a few days you have alot of time to think. And wow, has God been moving my heart lately!

The school year has started strong for me - I am teaching 6 classes for Hearts in Step this year. 5 of those 6 classes are 3-5 year old age classes and I LOVE them! Some classic quotes so far this year have been:

"And God, help my grandma's bad breath to go away..."

(after a little girl finishes twirling across the floor.."
"Whoah.... I'm SOOOO busy!"

But then there is also the really precious comments made by students. I had been sick one weekend and hadn't slept well and then Sunday night I ended up sleeping great for the first time. Well, I arrive at my Monday morning class to have one of my little angels inform me that she prayed for me last night, and she prayed I would sleep good! :) What a blessing knowing children are praying and God ANSWERS those prayers! We can learn about prayer (and so much more) from children. I think it's partly why I love them so much - I never want to stop having that child-like faith in Jesus!

Narnia

It has been quite a while since I've gotten on here! It's been such an incredible season month or so. Let me try to sum up with words and pictures! :)

I completed and performed in my first full length ballet I choreographed, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." It was an incredible time. Let me tell you I lived, breathed, slept, ate, everything Narnia for a few weeks leading up to that day. It was amazing and after it was done, I just felt like God had just taught me so much and provided. I think that was the key theme for that event was God's provision. Everything from randomly driving out of my neighborhood and finding the "wardrobe" one day to the facility being basically given to us for free, a ton of costumes randomly given us a few weeks before the show, Kelsey writing a few songs that went precisely with the different parts of the ballet. (She wrote a song from the trees perspective and all the girls in the chorus of Narnia were trees for half the ballet.. what?!) :) Even just providing the right dancers and behind the scenes crew. It was amazing! Really the Lord worked through prayer. I remember one rehearsal where we were going to choreograph the Stone Table scene and I was anticipating it taking at least an entire rehearsal. This was to me the most climactic point of the ballet because it is a depecition of what Christ did on the cross. We all gathered before we started rehearsing it and literally that scene came together in 5 minutes. This whole production was SO focused on prayer... I remember some rehearsals we spent literaly an hour to an hour and half praying over details and it was awesome seeing the Lord answering specific prayers and unifiying our hearts through the Holy Spirit. What a joy to be a part of such an incredible thing! So many people donated so much so that we could give everything to Open Arms for Asia - an incredible ministry to the children in India! Ahh.. Praise the Lord! Here are my favorite shots from this production...

I loved every part of Narnia and will hopefully be able to do it again sometime in the next few years... God knows when I will enter into the world of Narnia again but I have a feeling that just like in the books it will happen when I least expect it. Untill then it holds dear memories in my heart. :)

Easter

I have an amazing awesome, crazy family! This was my mom's idea!

Make s'mores with peeps! (It was disgusting by the way.... but very funny!)

And then my lovely sister and I enjoyed taking pictures out at my grandparents...

Sunday Afternoon Ramblings

"Man's true freedom does not consist of the unfettered power to direct his life...it lies in life with God, lived as it was originally intended by God for man. He only gains this as he denies himself." Brown

^ I love that quote. ^

God has been speaking to me about beauty alot lately (obvious from post below). What is beauty - the power it has on us in our lives - the lie that it is etc. So I decided to wear little or no make-up lately. I don't know how long this will go for but it's been such an awesome learning thing. I have never been a huge make-up person so it hasn't been too hard but I do wear a little bit pretty consistently. The other day I was in the mall and I was walking by all these girls who were dressed "perfectly" and had "perfect" hair and make-up and it was really eating at me. I was feeling so less than. And then I was thinking about it and why it was impacting me in the way that it was. I have Jesus in my life who is ALL beauty and these girls were so perfectly dressed and in some ways living their lives for the make-up clothes and "perfectness." And it was making me feel less than. How does that work?? I have Jesus inside me and that is where the beauty matters and yet the power that the lie of beauty has is so powerful that it was making me feel that insecurity etc. I was really impacted by how that works... It's so backwards. Lies are so scary like that. They twist things so easily. Then I just got burdened to pray for them and that they would feel their beauty where it matters most which is from Jesus and that that would be their source of peace and not in their outter appearance. I just don't want those kind of lies to eat at my time - it is so useless and self-focusing which is gross. Self-focus is Satan's way of stealing us little by little.

Jesus' beauty is so un-comparable.

Beauty is a lie

So I was told that ^ the other day and really started thinking about it. Beauty is such a lie. I've been challenged lately also about the fact that to me make-up can be such a crutch. I guess not like it can be to some girls - like I don't HAVE to wear it but I do rely on it for how I feel about myself too much.

Last night I was reading on Leslie Ludy's blog about self-esteem and how all these Christian ministries are promoting girls having self-esteem and being comfortable in your own skin and how that really is SO backward for what Jesus did. He must increase and I must decrease. But self-esteem can be such a lie because you can only feel good about yourself for so long because we make mistakes and should not be self reliant for our happiness. The only thing good in me is Christ... so being confident in Sarah Grace isn't going to fix the problem long-term only cover it for a little while.

I must decrease.

He must increase!!!!

That is what God has been speaking to me about in regards to beauty and self-esteem. Lessons I may have to be reminded of and learned more than once but pray that God will continue increasing so that I may decrease more and more.

"Beholding is becoming so as You fill my view - transform me into the likeness of YOU!"

March Madness

So this is the reason that I have been kind of lacking in posts lately. My beautiful pink cast! :) At least it's a good story that involves back hand-springs.
I spent a good part of last week with these two lovely ladies - Nicole and Patti! They work with Bring Me Hope which is a ministry that runs camps for orphans in China. It was awesome hanging out - we had alot of laughs and fun times. Definitely two sisters after my own heart! (Heart you girls!) <3

Life is interesting at times with my broken hand - it has definitely slowed me down but that has been good.

I was reading some of my old writings earlier tonight and it just stirred some old feelings and reminded me of things that God has taught me and how different seasons in my life have such purpose. How my intimacy with Christ was deepened through the hard seasons - and all that He has taught me. I long for that deeper intimacy with my Savior and so often I settle for mediocre faith and relationship and Jesus is always there waiting for me to run to Him.

Me and my adorable youngest cousin Gabby at a Hockey game last night. ;)

<3 You!

So I've spent the past week pretty much with a couple girls from Bring Me Hope and loved it!!! :) This resulted....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoTbwoDW7WA

<3 You girls!

Also - I broke my navicular scaphoid bone in my right hand - which has made updating difficult but I've been staying pretty busy despite it. Getting ready for Narnia, teaching counting the days til I get to Germany (87!) :D

2009 so far in review

1. Got pulled over driving for the first time. (Probably cried my way out of a ticket, pretty traumatic for some reason.)

2. Pierced my own cartilage - didn't hurt and no infection.

3. Travelled to Indiana for a dance conference (amaazing!)

4. Finished choreography for my third musical with HPA

5. Started the process of attending Midwife school next year

6. Was a guy and wore a tux for a night

7. Got my back-handsprings again (still working for them on the ground though)

8. Went rollerskating for the first time since I was probably 10

9. Went to the best concert of my life with Jon Foreman and Sean Watkins

So that's all for now -more thoughts and some pictures to come soon!