My God Doesn't Live in a Box...does yours?

Everyday God reveals to me in numerous ways how I am to be involved in children's and youth ministry. Sometimes He places people in my life to mentor. Sometimes He assures my gifting through encouragement from someone. Often times He places huge visions in my head for the sorts of things He is going to use me to do (Christian drama, world changing children's curriculum, etc.) Without a doubt I am here for a reason. We all are. So this little rant is only spurred by the fact that I am SO passionate about this subject. It hit me after church tonight and was encouraged by a lyric in a Francesca Batistelli song which I also heard coming home. The lyric is:

You said the foolish
Would shame the wise
To put my faith
In what’s beyond my eyes
And to believe You
I have to come as a child

So help me to rest in the mystery
Of what I can’t understand

"To come as a child"....that is such an important part of that song for me and for my ramblings tonight. Matthew 19:14 says-But Jesus said, "Let the children come to me. Don't stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children."

DON'T STOP THEM! Some translations say DON'T HINDER THEM. For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children. Ok so this rant starts with how AGAINST prayer requests I am. I know this sounds so silly but hear me out. Of course I am a HUGE fan of praying for people. But it bugs me to no end that we teach our children to take 20 plus minutes out of a class time (meant for learning God's word, character, and will for our lives) so that they can make a list of who to pray for. The reason this bugs me is because the intention behind it is who has the most sick friends, how large can we make the list, hey I want to talk out loud so I am going to raise my hand and ask prayer requests for people I don't even know--"my brother's girlfriends dog walker's cousin has the flu" I'm SORRY if I am stepping on toes here, but that is NOT what prayer is about. I repeat, NOT, what prayer is about.

Prayer is INTIMATE time talking to our SAVIOR! A Savior who is not a stinking GENIE!! A Savior who lives and breathes in the same room where we vacantly read names off of a board and make it absolutely NOTHING about Him!! Again, hear me say that I am not against praying for people. But teaching our kids that this is what a prayer life is, IS WRONG. We are teaching them to be robots. They will grow up robots, putting God in a box, and the vicious cycle of a generation of people who do not truly know the Lord will continue. How are we as Christians supposed to bring the kingdom of Heaven on earth if we are only teaching our kids the same CRAP that we learned growing up in church?

I have said this many times, and I will say it again, how often I PRAISE GOD I did not grow up in a church. Sure, there have been many hard times because of it. But one amazing thing that happened was there was absolutely no robotic mindset to get me out of-to tug of war my heart in a million different directions, wasting much valuable life-time which would have taken away from the ways He is using me. I don't at all believe that those who were brought up in church are all putting God in a box and training their kids to be robots, that's not the point here at all.

The point is we who work with or have children have this AMAZING and UNBELIEVABLE opportunity to bring the next generation of Christians up in an environment where they DAILY learn to seek God's face. Where they know that worship goes beyond singing hymnals in beautiful 6 part harmony but that God is breaths away from your face and you are getting to BLESS Him with worship. We get to bring children in from the outer courts of the spiritual tabernacle and into the Holy of Holies where they SEE God!! They get to learn His character, learn to be LIKE God, and most importantly fall in LOVE with our Lord!! This is a goal for me and ANY child's life that I get to encounter, because it's not only POSSIBLE to raise children this way, it is the way we were CREATED to come to God. AS CHILDREN. With the faith and unconditional innocent love of a child! But instead, grownups strip all of that away and raise them to be robots because that is how they were raised. It's time to break the mold. They have the capacity to love God in this way because we were created to come to God LIKE THEM! Isn't that so beautifully refreshing!??

This "rant" isn't out of anger by any means. Maybe righteous passion? Regardless, I know when I have kids I will want SO SO SO much more for their life then the kids I see today. And in order to do that I don't want to be the only person on board with how this should happen. I need their surrounding teachers and friends parents' thinking in this same way! Anyone who has influence over my child will have to have this passion or they won't have access to the heart of my kid. That's just the way it will be. And I hope parents today feel that same way about who is teaching their child and what they are teaching them.

I am sure that being everywhere as a parent is ridiculously hard. I teach in many places and in many forums. Of the say 100 kids I have taught in some avenue or another over the past year, I MAYBE have met and talked to 15 parents who were genuinely concerned with how they were doing, what they were learning, their behavior, etc. That is sad to me. So heartbreakingly sad. GET INVOLVED people. Figure out what you want your kids to learn (about God, the world, love, sex, drugs, rock n roll, the whole dang thing) and PUT people in their lives who are going to be your second and third and fourth voices in sharing those values and ideas. If you don't do it now, then when the day comes they're going to think they have it all figured out. Like how we think we have God all figured out, and that's the way we come to Him and teach our kids to come to Him...? Pretty soon that will not be enough and they will FIND the answers they're looking for....but where?

In Him,

Meg

To Love, or Not to Love....

Some times...people are not very nice. It's just a fact of life. Some times they cut you off in traffic, they talk about you behind your back, they break promises, they call you names, and the list goes on and on and on. There are so many ways that people are not nice to one another. It hurts worse though, when it is someone we love, right?

I have had on my mind recently the notion of loving as God loves. A very big concept huh? To love as God loves. To sacrificially and unconditionally love those around me. I am only human, so I will probably never get this right, but it has been deep in my heart lately to at least try.

Sometimes as the loved one of somebody, you have to put up with a lot. You become the sounding board sometimes, for all things negative going on in their life. Or maybe you are simply not always treated as respectfully as you wish you would be, due to the nature of your relationship with that person. I don't think we, as Christians, are called to only unconditionally and sacrificially love those who have the capacity to do it back. I think we are simply just called to do it. Regardless.

When I think about unconditional love I think about a child. Children throw fits, and temper tantrums, when their BIG HUGE emotions are just too BIG and too HUGE for their little bodies to handle. And it manipulates their behavior in specific ways. When their issue manifests into a fit, who do they typically direct their rage at? Their parents. Why? Because deep inside of us somewhere, we believe the lie that it is "ok" to treat the people who love us the most, the worst. Because they love us no matter what, and will be there before the fit starts, during the fit, and after the fit is over. The practice of loving unconditionally then becomes a discipline that is too much to take on by ourselves. It requires the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, or else it will never genuinely happen.

When I think about sacrificial love I think about those dramatic movies and tv shows where person A takes a bullet or something for person B by pushing them out of the way last second, and jumping in front of the gun themselves...then you see "to be continued" and you find out next season whether person A lives or not. ( I watch a lot of Grey's Anatomy by the way haha) Honestly though, sacrificial love can show up in the SMALLEST of ways in our day to day relationships with people. Specifically if you are married to someone, I would think one way to sacrificially love them daily would be to wake up every morning asking the question "what can I do for you today, what do you need out of me today in order to make this relationship function as best it can?" It seems easy enough, yet it's a question that does not get asked near enough. Or maybe for relationships of love such as family or friendships, we "take the bullet"--we remain quiet to avoid conflict, we never defend ourselves to remain classy, we let defensive or hurtful remarks slip through the cracks, we simply do what we have to do in order to remain in peace and harmony within the relationship. And it isn't one sided, there should be times when both parties in the relationship are doing this, it's just the natural ebb and flow of it all.

We are called to love others, the way God loves us. It's hard isn't it? It's hard to offer grace when it's easier to offer judgement. It's hard to remain faithful when we are being cheated out of something ourselves. It's hard to stay, when the other person's treatment of us makes us want to run. But just like a parent with their child, it is so important to try. To stay. To remain faithful. To be there. To LOVE. Because if we, as Christians, aren't showing God's love to others then who in the heck do we suppose is going to?

I think of the book Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, based off of the book of Hosea in the Word of God. God shows His love to His people in that story by using a faithful man of God to continuously pursue the heart of a prostitute who keeps running away from him. We do this as children of God, CONSTANTLY. We kick, and scream, throw fits, and after it all, He is faithfully still there and still loving us, as well as chasing us and pursuing our hearts. If we can remember this kind of love, when putting our own love for others under the microscope, I think we can better see how to handle situations and in turn, better know how to LOVE.

From the humble and probably useless ramblings of Me :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

If you read the title of this blog you might be thinking to yourself, "hmm, Meg...you're a little late on the Happy New Year blog." Actually, I had SUCH a busy December I did not get a chance to really have a holiday break. Things were busy, hectic, and crazy until New Years Day. So I decided to give myself an extra week in 2011 mode and wait to celebrate 2012 on January 9th (Monday). This means that I got to pig out all week, do some shopping, do some lots of nothing, hang out with friends, pig out some more, and not let myself stress about planning classes or booking private lessons or scheduling photo shoots or ANYTHING! I got to BREATHE. Resolutions took a backseat and I had space to truly meditate and pray about the things I wanted to truly accomplish over this next year. So this blog is dedicated to my New Year Resolutions. A new year that starts for me soon, and I am very excited for the chance to have deeply thought about them and the break to prepare how I might carry these out (some of which are being carried out without my effort but in large part to being a piece of God's plan for me). So if you care....here they are :)

1. Run a 5k

2. Run a half marathon

3. Read 20 books over the course of the year (and actually finish them)

4. Create daily and weekly schedules for myself (to help with the even larger resolution of better time management)

5. Start following blogs of people I find inspirational. (I have read many blogs of people I find so motivational, but time slips away and I never read them again. People I will follow include singer/songwriter Bethany Dillon, my friend Lindsey Little, continue to follow my friend Katie's blog while she is in Spain, singer/songwriter Francesca Batistelli, and so many more)

6. Carve out a time each week to purposefully listen to more online sermons. (I am needing to be "fed" more in this way and am seeking out minsters like Matt Chandler, John Piper, etc)

7. Keeping a running prayer list and making a point each day to legitimately pray for those on the list, adding to the list each time someone asks for prayers. So often someone says "hey will you pray for me", "sure!" we say as we text them driving down the road or while shopping in the mall, and then we never do it. I will carve out a time to do this DAILY.

8. God has laid many a vision in my heart from things like teenage Christian drama, Christian monologues and short plays, to developing an entire children's ministry curriculum that taps into the creative and performing arts as well as developing an atmosphere where children are hungry to know God. This is something I will work on this year.

9. Create curriculum for the ministry of young girls (developing more my princess curriculum) as well as things like VBS curriculum for childrens ministry. I may not use these things for 10 years or more but God has put them on my heart as crucial things to be done and I will obey.

10. Play guitar more often (and get better!)

11. Save money (I bought a princess piggy bank from Target last night and fully intend on fillin her up!) I am saving to get out of debt, take a trip, and invest in better equipment for my photography business!

12. Grow even closer and more intimate with God by truly learning His character. Having more faith and trust in Him.

13. Save a life.

14. Learn to cook (Anna is teaching me this right now and it is WONDERFUL!) as well as eating better in general-to keep all toxins out of my body!

15. On midnight of New Years Eve I had the pleasure of toasting with 4 amazing women who are devoted followers of God, all who are passionately in love with Him too. We are all single, and laughingly toasted to "Finding a husband!"--but honestly, my calling is to be a wife and a mother. And I know how important the sanctification of marriage is, and although it will be the hardest job I will ever do, it will also be the most important one. And by impacting and affecting the lives of my family I can then in turn help to change the world-which has always been a little dream of mine. So I DO toast to finding a husband. Maybe not this year, maybe not next, I don't know...but I will continue "toasting" and hoping and wishing and praying for him until that moment....we meet :)

One year after New Years my sister, aunt, cousin and I made Vision Boards-cutting out pictures and words from magazines of things we wanted or wanted to accomplish and taping them on a board. After looking at the board everyday for a month we then put the boards away, to then come back to them say 6 months later and find SO much of the board had been accomplished. I will do this again this year with the resolutions above, but I wanted them in writing to encourage you guys as well as to be a constant reminder to myself!

If you have suggestions or encouragement I would LOVE to hear them! Wish me luck!

In Him,

Meg