Need to Know Basis

Recently the founder of Aggie Sisters for Christ came to talk to us about 10 things she wishes she would have understood and lived out in college. What a beautiful and hilarious Christian woman she was! I left convicted, inspired and most of all anxious to start the adventure of starting my own stories of reflection for each of the ideas she implanted last night. Thank you Dinah Thomas, the Lord spoke through you in many ways to those girls last night and I will pass it along.

1. Men are visual: Men are created to be visual beings, I'm not sure how many people realize the extent in which they contribute to a man noticing them. Ladies, you are beautiful! You can love your legs, your chest, or other assets without consciously causing a brother to stumble in seeing and loving these body parts too. Where can you help your brothers? What choices can you make to avoid doing purposeful things to draw attention to physical aspects of what makes you unique? Imagine the impact of letting Christ be the beautiful thing about you instead. Imagine the difference you may make to your Christian brothers, or even more so, the unbelieving men.
Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way. --Romans 13:14


2. The things you do today will effect tomorrow: This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you choose to put off studying until the last day for a class exam -- you may not get the grade you hoped for. If you go around kissing random boys in your hometown -- your sister may marry a man you have kissed and you'll have to tell her. Ultimately, you will pay for the choices you make sooner or later so be smart about what you're doing and love the Lord, being undivided in your attention and focus for Him.
Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth, give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. --Pslam 86:11-12


3. Building a foundation- Planning for the future: Living now you are making goals and have ambitious hopes you're reaching for. It starts today. Today is your life. There is no promise of life until your 80 or 30 or until tomorrow, let God build a foundation that a future may stand sturdy upon.
Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. -- Psalm 119:18


4. Discretion is the better part of valor: Be prayerful in all things, do not rush into things. Use discretion when making decisions, for your life may depend on them. Imagine the generations coming up behind you and imagine the legacy you are going to impact on them. Living purely is a lifelong battle, if you are seeking the Lord's truth in each turn in your path you are going to be rewarded for bringing glory to Him. Allow Christ to be the center of all your choosing. "You are who you worship."
My love to all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen. -- 1 Corinthians 16:28


5. Be Intentional in Relationships: Seek out a same gendered partner to be your encouragement, accountability partner,  mentor. Start prayer meetings. Being intentional means to commit to each other as far as picking a friend off the floor in hard times, no matter what --> ask God for a person like this in your life and take advantage of the fellowship between you. Make time,  be available to opportunities for Godly chatter, payer, discernment in choice improvements. You can get no more than you give. Love all and find ways in which you can be a light in others lives.
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. -- 2 Timothy 4:7

6. Love whoever He brings: Work to love those you have a harder time loving, pray for or about those relationships that could potentially be formed through having a good Godly attitude or outlook toward meeting new people. Ask God to put people in your path purposely and for you to have the words or patience or gratitude to care for them in a Godly manner. You don't know if you will get to share Jesus but you should be asking that He is there to be alive and evident either way.
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. -- Romans 12: 10


7. Truth is not about how you feel: There are no excuses! God is stronger than all of your emotions. No matter the kind of day you are having or what crud you are facing, you need to live out the truth and radiate God's love through interactions you are blessed to have in order to flourish something for His glory. Advice: go to bed and start over again in the morning because each day in a brand new start.
My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. -- James 1:19


8. Obey & thrive in God's timing: Although we tend to make our own timelines of what we think our lives should look like, it is important to trust that God's plan will be done in His own timing, despite ourselves. So while you may think you need to be married and settled down by a certain age, it is important to be forming Godly relationships as friends for support in the mean time and to trust that God is enough and you do not need the things on your list in order to feel happy or complete in Him. Focus on having qualities of Ruth, while it all happens in the Lord's timing.
It is written: No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him. -- 1 Corinthians 2:9


9. Take advantage of your resources: Parents are you allies. God placed you within your family to be a missionary to them, likewise to other relationships that have been precisely placed into your life. It is important to thrive in these and to take advantage of what you have been given so that when one day you stand in front of the Lord and are asked, "What have you done in my glory with what you have been given?" you'll have a worthy answer.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him. -- Romans 8:28


10. Only God can satisfy: As long as you say, "if only" and yearn for things that are ungodly or not to His best intention for your life, you will not be satisfied. Don't look to anything else to be refreshing in your life, only God can fill that role. Grow in the Lord: Loving God and loving others.
May the God of hope fill you with all the joy and peace as you trust Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. -- Romans 15:13

Redeeming God's Girls, Starting With Me

Jesus, you are better

I give you all of me.

Jesus, I surrender

I lay down every dream.

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend a women's conference held especially for our Aggie Sisters for Christ Spring Retreat where Marian Jordan pleasured us by speaking about Radiating as women of God. She shared many many things that hit heavily against my heart. Struggles were revealed to me that have been unaddressed, wounds that have not been mended but forgotten but are making a comeback to my attention.

Take into account that going into this weekend I had just applied to be in a leadership position within this sisterhood and had been rejected. Now, thankfully, I haven't had to face rejection very frequently in my life, which actually makes the "no's" I do get even harder. This particular rejection saddened me -- not because I truly wanted the position but because I had not prayerfully considered it at all. I honestly woke up one morning, threw together a letter I thought would tell the panel exactly what they wanted to hear and thought, "It might be fun". And now that I have been denied of this opportunity that I had obviously not been called to fulfill, I am humbled. I am reminded that it is not my plan, it is His. I am also convicted of making my priorities the top of my 'to-do' list rather than giving priority to the list the Lord has written on my heart. I am thankful for being turned down and I thank God from the most genuine place inside of me for putting the people He needed in those leadership roles and even more than that, for putting me back in my place and letting me find peace there and hope to overcome this apathy.

In addition to the lovely rejection notice I received this week, I also gave a notice of my own. A notice of eviction that read something like the following:

Dear boyfriend, 

I am evicting that slightly off-beat heart of mine out of your hands 

after over two years of it finding comfort there.

Why?

Because I feel like this relationship is potentially painfully destructive

and I feel called.

Love, 

Can you still keep me company and save me from the loneliness of a new town on the weekends...?

Actually, it was a lot less productive than that. The real scenario was this: we had been crunched under major stress of finals, group projects, the financial strain of college life, moving and many other things that I could make excuses for. We were arguing, which seemed to have become a frequent occurrence lately (sadly, I can't even remember the petty things being debated) and in the midst I just paused whatever harsh words were spilling out and calmly said, "I want to break-up" and that was the end of it. We had our troubles in the past that led us to take a 'break' for the summer to pray about things and see where we felt led to go in this relationship or beyond it that had eventually led us back to each other but back then we had both decided that the next time would be the last time & being well aware of this, I broke it off anyway. Immediately I felt as through I had given so much of myself away that I was completely empty now and had absolutely nothing to fall back on. I felt abandoned, alone, sad, angry, hurt and I was lashing out in all the wrong ways. 

When two people come together, they bond & when that bond is broken there is an emotional destruction that begins happening there. Over time, the more that bond is broken, the less that person has the ability to bond. Those words rang in my head. I felt ashamed, like a failure. After seeing the marriage of my parents fall apart I always promised to fight for the people I love and not let it wither away like they had. I failed to keep that promise and I failed to be different, patient when things got hard. I wasn't living in the love that the Bible explains, I was living in the love of the world and filled my life with lots of worldly accessories to keep my worldly relationship company. 

I prayed for the first time in a long time that God would take all this pain that wasn't of Him and replace it with joy and relationships with Godly encouraging women. I prayed that I would be redeemed and made new in Him again. 

God brought Marian Jordan to speak to us at the retreat I had the weekend after the toughest week of my semester.

Marian spoke about many things that touched my heart.

• You are a girl worth fighting for!
• You are the bride, you've been picked by the groom (God) & the whole world is watching you walk down that aisle, wishing they radiated like you do
• Matthew 5:14-16
• Exodus 32, 33, 34:4-8
• Prayer: "Lord, show me your glory"
• You have as much God as you want
• Revelation produces Transformation
• Give your shame to the cross and be a redeemed girl
• That in which divides your heart is of the darkness and destroys your destiny in its struggle
• We are trying to live out God's power without being plugged in
• There is a battle between old and new self
• The Holy Spirit is what convicts us and what wants to bring glory to Jesus
• We aren't called to be right, we are called to represent
• Discernment of the Holy Spirit- Is it glorifying to God? Is it consistent with His word?
• You should be treated like a treasure
• "You can't but I can!" -God
• Whatever fills you, controls you
• There will be seasons of life in which you are called out to deal with your junk (college)
• The Holy Spirit will not flow where there is no access
• Brokenness is beautiful to Him because it brings us to the brink of ourselves to find His truth
• Unconfessed sin acts as junk in our flowing rivers
• Do not ignore the call of Jesus to "clean your crap up"
• If you have unforgiveness in your heart, it will be the only thing to overflow
• Take an honest inventory of the overflow of your life
• Ripple affect of radiance
• Your life MATTERS: who will look back on your legacy and say they have been saved because you lived?
• feelings follow actions
• Every single person will stand before God to be asked, "What have you done with what I have given you?" -What will you say?
• Your legacy determines what's to come
• The Lord gives us trials as additions to our stories in ways that we can relate to others to bring glory to His name
• Remember how amazing grace is

I realized by the end of Marian's time with us that I had a divided heart that was trying desperately to balance a focus on two relationships: my relationship with this guy and my relationship with the world: neither of these was a pursuit toward God and that's why I truly felt empty. I still hadn't found what I was looking for because worldly things are never fulfilling to us. I first saw myself as a sinner in need of a Savior at my lowest point, and again at the breaking point I came back to Him. I realize now that my life is in desperate need of His mighty love. Lord, give me a passionate, seeking, loving heart to seek you and find you.

Don't try to choke out the words, "Jesus, you are better" from your life.

So, I will be a redeemed girl: and my legacy will be determined by God. Because Jesus is better, it's a fact and no longer my opinion, I will live accordingly. This will be a long road of healing and seeking but it starts here, with me, today.