Potted Plants

Just a random thought God has been speaking to me about lately. I have several friends who are at Master's Commission this year, and a few others that are planning on going to Portland Bible College next year. For some reason God keeps sending me out into the world, like right now at PCC or next year at PSU, even though I would love nothing more than to go to one of those good Christian places. I was tossing it around in my mind when God brought an analogy to me.

We are like potted shrubs.

When we are out in the world, exposed to the elements we grow slowly and steadily, bit by bit through each experience. Our bark gets thicker, our roots dig deeper, and we learn to depend completely on our Gracious Gardener.

Sometimes, He knows that we need shelter or recovery or fast growth and so He'll remove us from the world and its harsh environment and place us inside a greenhouse. These greenhouses are places were we are continually fed a steady diet of Bible, basking in the warmth of the Holy Spirit at all times, and can grow much faster. In the greenhouses, our branches and our dreams grow higher, our wounds heal, and we start becoming what our Gardener intended us to look like.

However, the greenhouse is not a permanent place of residence. A greenhouse is there for a period of growth, then we must be acclimated to the harsh world again. If a healthy plant is kept in a greenhouse too long, it can't grow higher, or dig its roots deeper. Disease begins to spread from the stagnant air, and eventually a place of life can become a place of death if change doesn't occur.

But if we do get removed from the greenhouse, and endure the conditions of the world, we can then thrive like we would never have been able to in the greenhouse. We reach higher pressing in closer to God. Our roots dig deeper as we cement ourselves deeper in his Word. And we move from being a small shrub to a mammoth tree. We start doing the job God made us to do, changing the atmosphere of the world.

BIG BIG BIG NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!

So for all my friends who don't know, I just received my Work Authorization Card in the mail. It means I can now legaly work in the US!!!! Its almost like a Greencard, except that it doesn't give me permenant residency and it only lasts for a year, but by then I'll have my Greencard so praise God!!! Seriousely not to sound cliche but it's really thanks to God. We have been in the system to get our Greencards for 8 years now. When we finally entered the last step, we were told just 6 months left, but then the whole system backed up and we were basically sitting dead in the water for 8 months. At that point I almost fell into depression, but God brought along a really good friend to teach me about patience, persistence, and perserverance. I pressed through and started interceeding again for the Greencard. My friend also started interceeding, and unbeknownst to us, several other people were also praying hard this last week for the Greencard. Last night at GC, I laid it on the alter before God and gave it into His hands. And when I got home, there it(my WAC, not my Greencard) was.

Now, for me this is miraculous. I have been in a place the last year or so where everything has been an uphill battle. Prayer, worship, Bible study, church, counceling, everything just seemed to be flowing against me, no matter how hard I pressed in. I had resigned myself to the fact that the rest of my Christian walk would be like this and had decided to grit my teeth and endure life, but now it seems that after all this uphill pressing, I have finally made it to the Mountain Top. I am reminded that "the Lord taketh away" but that He also "giveth". So many times it feels to me like life is sucking the Holy Spirit out of my faster than God is filling me, and that God just closes doors but doesn's open any new ones. But the Bible says that God has given us "life and life more abundantly" and that "rivers of living water" will flow up from within us, and that "he who drinks of this water will never again be thirsty". We are here on earth not to survive but to thrive, because greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world. I thought I'd wrap up with one of my favorite quotes:

"When God is all you desire, you will never be disappointed."

-Donna Lasit

Some Bus Poetry

This morning on the bus, I noticed their poetry in motion signs that have small excerpts of poems on the bus walls. I decided to write a poem based on what I heard on the bus. I came up with several first lines that rhymed with 'sound', and then realised I could put them together and make a whole poem. So here it is in its unedited rough draft:

The noise is endless, never a moment can be found
Without the ceaseless cacophony, ringing all around
The air is thin and harsh, as many voices rebound
And join the choruses of cars, that threaten to surround
The faintest hint of silence, that's so easily bound
By the growing orchestra, of ringing cellphones and barking hounds,
As flashing sirens pass, with perception dawns the profound,
And in the face of eternity, there is no sound.

Think about it....

On Writing and Why...

So, most people don't know that I'm a writer and most on top of that don't know that I have a series that I am working on. Most of the books are in various stages of unfinishedness, with the majority being only a few pages of concept and main points while there a couple who are almost finsihed. They tell the entire history of a world that exsisted before our own, before the flood, but with no real biblical figures included.

Basically, ever since the first "world" of Eden exsisted, there has been a repeating cycle where mankind starts small, grows larger, becomes evil and corrupt to the point where they can no longer be tolerated, and then the world ends. By World ends I mean that there is either some kind of catastrophe in which only a few survive or the entire old world is sealed away, trapped in limbo, awaiting for teh day that a deliverer will come and offer them a way to salvation. None of this back story will ever be told, but this is what teh entire series is grounded on in my mind. All that my readers will really know is that it happens in a world where an ancient civilization was sealed away because of its evil, and that there are repeated attempts by one of my two main villains to release the evil world once more. The final book will probabaly end with the flood of Noah, heralding the final world, our own.

So that's the general idea. Anyway, I'm writing part of the stories to be published as books and the parts as scripts. You see my brother is into 3D and video game design and approached me with the proposition of writing a script for one of his games. It was from this original script that the entire series, dubbed the Siren's Song Series, was born. Because of this, some of the stories are more geared and engineered towards video games. The project that I am currently working on is for the first official gane he will release. Its gonna be for the Wii, a first person archery based shooter, so think Halo meets The Legend of Zelda...

So why do I write? I actually heard this question phrased to several peopel recently in different ways and I have to say for me, I have to write for teh same reason I have to sketch, or I have to sing (or at least hum or whistle) because that's what God created me to do! No really before you dismiss it think about it. We are created in God's image. God is a creator and we as His special creation and we have a special relationship that no other part of His creation has and that is the fact that we emulate Him, we create. Nothing else does that. No other creation that we know of creates beauty for a reason. Now can this become perverted and twisted by the enamy. Yes! He wants to make that reason we create about us or about art itself, but we as Christians should be creating, whether it be prose or poetry, song or painting, to bring first and foremost glory to God and after that to bring peopel to God.

Thats the reason I write, because I am created to write and be an influence. I know how words have power whether written and spoken and thats why my target audience is middle to high schoolers, because through these books and games, I want to speak life, and joy, and hope into their lives. Instead of reading Harry Potter or playing Resident Evil, I want to be able to read books whose main themes are of purity, integrity, and truth. or play games in which there aren't scantly clad figures running everywhere doing and saying inappropriate things. I want to be a light, and while this isn't my main area of ministry I am convinced that since God has given me this gift and these stories I will persue this as a hobby until God directs me otherwise, whether to focus on it more or stop completely.

Sweet! aka my first devotional post

So this is pretty cool! I'll try and blog a bit just for the heck of it. Not that there's really anyone who will read my blog...

I guess that I should start my blog off on the right foot. God's been talking to me lately about Gideon. Gideon starts off as the youngest in his father's house. He is therefore a consumer. But at the same time, because of the attacks of the enemy (mideanites) he had to rise up and become a producer. That is why in Judges chapter 12 we find him threashing wheat behind (or in, depending on your translation) the wine press. God talks to him and tells him that he is producing and he has surplus, but God wants him to rise up to a new level and take the mantle of leadership and become a person of super-surplus, having a continual flowing in and out of the Holy Spirit in his life and into the lives of the peopel around him, meeting the needs of not just few but many.

Lately Pastor Ben has been talking to me about becoming a leader of leaders. I started meditating on that concept and it occured to me. There are so many diffrent kinds of leaders and places that they are all in that you need to have a super surplus in order to meet them all. There are some people who are born leaders and want to lead, but they have no place to lead and they need a leader of leaders to help them facilitate their leadership takents. A good biblical example would be Paul. Other people want to lead but don't have the skills needed and so they need guidance from more experianced leaders. Then there are the ones like Gideon, who are called to leadership but don't really want it. They need to be led out, trained, encouraged, etc. and that is anotehr function that a leader of leaders would have to provide.

On the other hand, being a leader of leaders doesn't mean adding more stress to an already stressful position. By leading leaders, I think you actually lessen your stress because leaders, you would hope, are responsible or at least more so than followers. This in itself decreases your worrying about tasks being finished or done right. Again this is just speculation, I think a leader of leaders does have to work harder but at the same time God will provide them with more strength, more energy, and more wisdom. I know from experiance that on Wednesdays when I am on my way to church I am exhausted after a long day of school (7:30am-4:30pm). But as soon as I see the church, its like seeing your house after a long vacation. Literally the second I step into the building I feel the presence of God energizing and restoring me for the night and really for the next few days that energized feeling will stick with me.

In the end, by saying "become a leader of leaders" Ben may have simply meant something like, "Get a couple of guys in the cafe that can do what you do and delegate." But from what God has been speaking to me, especially in a Gideon sort of way of stepping out of my comfort zone, rising up a new level where I am not just producing for thsoe around me but for everyone that comes in contact with me, and becoming a leader that God has called me to be, I think its time that I start picking up the mantle that has lain in the dust for so long. Right now, I don't feel that I have the time to increase my boundries as Jabez said, but I think that God works that way. He gives you a small area to work with, and just when you have gotten to the point where you are barely using 100% of your resources he takes you up another level and gives you even more I think that way you never do what you do out of your own strength or resources but know that you are always doing it all simply by God's grace and provision. If God calls me up higher, which I feel he has been the last month now, then I will rise up, and trust him to give me the time, the energy, the resources, the strength, and the wisdom.

So thats my deep thought of the day, er week. I will probably only be posting on Mondays and Wedesdays so yeah until Monday.