God of Transformation

God is so AWESOME.

This post is just one of thanksgiving. God has been breaking down things in me and refining me. And my satisfaction, increasingly, is in Him. The song I will Exalt You by Hillsong is becoming a greater reality. God is shaping my faith and redirecting my steps so that He is my refuge and my hiding place... my treasure. And this going back to God is different from than in the chapel days. In the chapel days, I did not have a desire to go back into the world. But now, I understand that I am to go back out, that I am to be a light in the darkness. My quiet place is to be a time of rejuvenation for the purpose of going back out into the world. In '09, I had a burning desire for others to know Christ, yet I did not know how to take what God had given me and share it with others. When I was going to all the different churches during my senior year of high school, I wasn't going with the mentality of How do I take what God has taught me here and blessed me with back home so that I can be a representative of Christ at 100 Alcott? I treated church as an escape rather than as a refilling of oil in my lamp to be a light at home. I was not even thinking like that. I just wanted to get away and church and the chapel were just that.

And you know, maybe I needed to be at that stage for a while. For God was training me and teaching me as I hopped from church to church. Teaching me so much -- I will never fully know why I had to go through the experiences that I went through or why I had to learn things the way that I did. But God in His wisdom just... did it all. I was thinking the other day of how much God has to transform in me but then it hit me... He has already transformed me. The person that I was when I accepted Christ for real at the altar that Sunday in November 2006, is sooooo different than the person I am now! I am bolder, I am more enthusiastic, I am more passionate, I understand my faith and Christ's relevancy and character on a much greater level (I did not fully grasp much of that stuff when I was starting out), I love God more and God has deepened my understanding of what it means for Him to love me. And YES, I have a much MUCH longer way to go. But God has brought me far already. This is significant and noticeable change from Janell 2006/2007 to Janell 2011. All the work of God. Hallelujah. Thank You God for being a transforming God, not one who is content with me as I am but who wants to change be for the better. For the honor and glory of Your Name. Show me what that means Lord. And may I be on board with bringing glory to Your Name and not my own. Hallelujah!

Thank You Jesus. You are truly great and wonderful. Thank You SO MUCH for loving me! You are the greatest love story ever told, the greatest love ever known. Thank You for being constant and perfect in character. Thank You for being reliable and true to Your word. Thank You that I lack nothing in You! Thank You that though so many things will fall away, YOU remain, and that is enough. Hallelujah, Lord You are too good! Blessed be the Name of the Lord! May You be lifted up in every season of life, exalted no matter what. Though I waver, You remain the same and You are always worthy of worship. Thank You Lord! How great is my God!

AMEN.

God is the Most Organized Being EVER

So!

Ever feel like you had a failed witness moment?

Well, I wonder if there even is such a thing. God is so cool that He even uses our blunders.

Anyway! What is this journal entry about?

The CRAZY AWESOME ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS OF MY GOD!!!

Well, that and His cool wisdom and amazing planning abilities.

Between 2 and 3 months ago, I got a letter calling me to do my duty as a citizen and serve as a juror.

Yaaaaay.

But I decided not to run away from it. I filled out the letter withing the week that I got it (Mom was so vex, it was annoying). I decided to do as I've heard the Bible says, which is "obey the laws of the land" and the law says that citizens have to serve as jurors (Ah ha! Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-17 -- obey them laws!).

So this week (yesterday actually) I began my day as a juror. So really, after the orientation, you just sit in the room and wait for them to call you. It's quite boring. I took the 5 train there and ended up getting off a stop early (3 Av-149 St) by accident. As I took the long walk to the courthouse, I met a man who was homeless sitting in a lil' bench area. His name was James. I gave him a bag of chips (Cheetos I pretty sure) and some information on the Bowery. I asked him if he'd heard about the Bowery and he said yeah. He was asking if they help you get an apartment and I was telling him that they provide him with food and a place to sleep, job training, and they help you find a job. I went into the whole 6 month detail and stuff. I think I was trying to be politically correct/not insulting, so I ended up rambling a little bit. But it was all good. I asked him if he had any prayer requests and he said for an apartment. Then I asked if I could pray with him and he was like "How long is this gonna take?" Lol, I said "Not long." And we prayed and I left him.

I am grateful to God for that opportunity and that I had something to give to him, even though he was not asking for anything. And God blessed me, because I was late to jury duty by like 40 minutes (I was supposed to be there by 9) and they closed the doors about 5-10 minutes after I arrived. Haaaaalellujah.

I was called along with 19 other people and put aside as a prospective juror for what they call summary trials, also known as 1 day trials. Basically, trials they try to get done in one day. So I got out early yesterday. Today, I was not selected, or even interviewed to do the trial, but they were done with me for jury duty so I got my proof of service and was out. $80 for two days, or as Nicky put it, "for being obedient."

Anyway, I am rambling. How does this relate to God being organized? Well, today, I went looking for James on my way back from jury duty. I had peaches to give him, but he was not there. Anyway, God did not let my extra steps go to waste (because it was indeed a walk). When I got to the 3-Av-149 St, there was a crew of people around available for prayer. I get encouraged whenever I meet people like that. Anyway, the guy I prayed with was Randy. I asked him to pray that I would trust God more than my fear. He gave me this awesome booklet that presents the gospel similar to the way that the circle diagram does but with colors, it's really cool. With the booklet, I got a bracelet with colored beads representing each color. Real dope stuff.

Anyway, after I parted, I went downstairs to swipe through the turnstile, just missing the train, wasn't rushin' it though. I ended up siting next to a woman. I was reading through the booklet and God was nudging me to give it to her. I saw her wiping her leg with an alcohol swab and asked her if she fell and she said no, it was a mosquito bite. I went back to reading the pamphlet and gave it to her when I finished. She was reading it so intently! And I was praying that the seed would fall on good soil, that birds would not snatch it up, not thorns choke it or the Satan take hold of it. It was a beautiful thing.

Anyway, she commented that the booklet really beautiful. I gave her the bracelet and explained it. She asked me if I go to church in the Bronx and I explained that I did. Also said that they had a Spanish speaking service. I was about to pull out a pen, but she had to get off! And I was sooo tight later on because it dawned on me that I should have gotten off with her to write it down for her!!!!! I wasn't in a rush to go anywhere. This is where I felt like I failed as a witness >.< And I didn't but man! She asked me what street my church was on and I was like "227th Street, Bronx Bethany Church of the Nazarene, 227th." Man, I hope she remembers/I get to see her somehow again. She was so interested! She said she reads the Bible and stuff too.

I need to pray for her and trust that God is tending the soil. It's so hard for me to not be like, I failed! I should have gotten off the train! but this is something that I need to trust God with and give over to Him completely. I guess part of me just wishes that I could see her again and hear her testimony. In my head I was like, I said 227th street, but there's maaaad churches on 227th street. Oh yeah, I need to let this go.

?

So how does aaaaalllll this translate to the organized/incredibly planning of my God? From meeting James, to looking for him the next day, not finding him but God blessing me with prayer and a gospel tract on my journey and giving me the opportunity to give it to a woman who was fed and most definitely blessed... and this is all 'cause of the jury duty that I was called to do 2-3 months ago.... how awesome is God! Not saying that all this was predestined, because God does not need me to do anything. He could have used another, or met James and the other woman through another means. God would have done that. But He chose to use me with each of them. Thank You Lord for the boldness and lack of fear. And thank You for doing it step by step. God equipped and prepared with the tract to give to the woman. And now I have to lean on Him to do the rest. How wise and prepared You are God! This chain of events just awed me. I was saying "Wow" over and over again after she got off the train.

Lord Jesus, I thank You for being such an organized and careful God! And I thank You for having Your light shine through me through interactions that I've had with people these past two days. And I thank You for being with me through it all! Thank You Spirit for being gentle with me and for bettering my understanding of You. Thank You for the $80 for being obedient and that jury duty is over. Lord, even though I wanted to have a chill summer without much challenge, I thank You for saying no to that and challenging me anyway. Blessed be Your Name Lord God. In the Holy and Powerful Name of Jesus I pray with gratitude, Amen.

10:27 PM

♪ I-Need-To-Learn-How-To-Loooove ♪

*Note - The title is to be sung to the hook of the song "Find Me Somebody To Love" by Queen.

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."
Thomas Merton

I re-learned today that I don't love people. And I do not allow them to love me. I do not allow people (not everyone anyway) to be totally themselves when they are around me, and I am not totally myself when I am with other people.

I am overly concerned with how I seem to other people. I want to be liked by all. When I reach a certain level of comfortability and security with a person, I begin to lax a bit and a different "me" emerges. A rough, stubborn, sour-faced Janell. Yet, should those things be hidden? And if so, why don't I hide it from those who know me best (humph... maybe because they know me best...)? Better question, why do those closest see the worst side? Not even a less put together version of the outer me, but a different person all-together?

What's the next step? Bring the Nelly on the outside, inside or bring the Nelly inside, outside? Nah. The next step is to redefine-- nope, not redefine-- seek my identity in Christ. To pray that He would transform my heart so that there would be visible changes in my attitude-- a transformation from the inside, out. And the visible change is not for my own praise and need to draw people to me. This visible change is necessary so that people, in my family, among my close friends, and on the outside, can experience Christ's love through me in a more genuine and consistent way. Authenticity and consistency (such an important word!) are only possible by the Spirit; these things I cannot accomplish in my own strength.

By the Spirit meaning that He does a transforming work in me, transformation of my heart and transformation of my character so that the things that appear on the outside are a direct reflection of what's going on inside and so that it also does not feel like I'm putting up a front. It's all natural because it's who I am: Christ.

Lord, please do it. Please teach me how to love and please teach me what it means have my identity in You Lord. Hallelujah. Amen.

I Will Exalt You God.

I will exalt Thee

I will exalt Thee

I will exalt Thee

You are my God.

Today is the day Lord. The day I tell this kid what I feel for him. Bleck, lol. The tears want to come out of my eyes. Jesus, I don't want to do it. And there is a sadness in me, because I cannot pretend anymore. Spirit, in my brokenness, would You please speak anyway? Lord, I am sorry that I resisted for so long. But in my obedience to You, would You bless me? May I not fear.

Because You're with me

Because You're with me

Because You're with me

I will not fear.

I am still like, why do I really have to do this? But Lord, who am I to question Your plan? You have proven Yourself faithful to me in the past. In that moment when You told me to forgive Jeremy and DeShana, I could not imagine the good that would result from that. I thought that it was something that I was supposed to do for them, that it wasn't fair that I had to stop holding against them what they did. But God, I am the person that I am now because You told me to do that and because I listened! I could not imagine in that moment the change that would happen in me, or the beauty of mending relationships after so much pain resulted from them. And all You did was tell me to do one thing: let go. And even that wasn't something that I had to do on my own. You were with me through it all. Through it ALL.

So Lord, I pray that even in this situation, I would trust You and obey You. I pray that even though I have fear, I would do what You have called me to do, even with that fear. May I understand what fear really is; a shadow that can do no harm. The shadow that makes it look like there's a monster, when really there is just a cricket. Praise Yahweh. I thank You for calling me to be strong and courageous and that You promise to be with me wherever I go. May I be so aware of Your presence with me. Always, not just in this situation. In all things, not just with this talk.

I will exalt You

You are my God.

I love You Jesus. And I pray that I would love You through obedience. I pray that You would begin to change my heart for G. That I would love Him deeply with Christ's love and that my feelings would soon fall away. I pray for a contentment and thorough satisfaction in the greatest love story ever told, the greatest love ever known. I have no idea what Your plans are with this conversation, I only hope that I am not too late in carrying out what You have called me to do.

I pray for peace and boldness. I pray for an awareness of the victory. I pray that I will be ever-aware of who I am in Christ-- what can man do to a daughter of God? What man can tamper and taint the person I am in Jesus the Lord? In His Name, I can do all things. In the character and person of God, I CAN DO ALL THINGS. Etch that into my heart Lord.

Be with me as I go Lord. Be with me in the pain and the hurt and the tears. In the past, I have experienced such joy in the morning, such peace after the storm. I look forward to Your blessing of peace and thank You for it. Thank You for loving me Lord, may I be ever aware of Your deep, wide, high, long Love for me x).

My hiding place

My safe refuge

My treasure Lord

You Are.

The Words of My Heart

This is the story of my love life yo! I concur with every word. Every every word. Thank You God for Poetry.

-Salmon

Praise God for the Beauty in the Broken!

So every now and then, I g'o through old blog posts just to see how I used to be/think/feel about something. My conclusion

Oh my gosh, I'm so cool.

Okay, let me re-phrase that. Jesus has TRULY done a transforming work in me. One day, I will compare my Xanga with my Blogger and observe the differences in me. Obviously there is a change in a person when they come into a relationship with Christ, but there is also great change from when I first became a Christian to now. Even from the beginning of my college life to now, less than a year! I guess all this is a "duh," that's what you call growth.

Anyway, I'm reading these posts and from December 28, 2010 and onward, and I am just so amazed at my heart for God. The way I pray, the way I talk about wanting to know Him more... it inspires me. And I think, Have I pursued the Holy Spirit like I expressed I wanted to on January 22, 2011? Or been aware of prayer's great importance/been praying patiently and persistently like I wanted to on January 11, 2011? I hope that my desire for God and passion for Him has not dampened since those times.

And you know what my surprise might stem from? I'm not aware how much I love God in the moment. It is only looking back at these posts that I'm like "Wow, Janell. You said that, that is awesome!" I always felt kinda weird when people would talk about my fire or my spirit and regard it highly. In my head I'm like, what the heck are you seeing? I mean, I know what you see but it ain't nothing that great. And now I'm beginning to see what they see. It is truly a beautiful thing when someone, especially someone who is young, has a heart to please and serve God and give their all to Him. That pure desire for God is something so captivating and inspiring.

On January 3, 2011, I was giving thanks to Jesus for refining me. And I said "... I am realizing how far from You I actually am. I had this obnoxious thought that being a Christian meant I had arrived... Then You showed me how broken I am and how much hurt there is in my life."

'Tis so true. When I entered college, I had a very naive view of who God was and where I was in my walk with Him. I only saw Him as a God of Love and I thought that I was at an okay place with Him. But through this college experience, God has shown me how WRONG those notions are. He is Love, but He is Justice, He is Sovereign, He has wrath. More recently, He has been showing me that He is ever-faithful and worthy of my trust. He also showed that I am NOT OKAY in my walk with Him. I am okay in the sense that I am saved by the blood of the Lamb and God is abundant in grace, but not okay in the sense that I have done a lot for God and I love God so I'm good. Far from it. I have become so aware of my depravity and how much I need Him and how I am a total failure without Him. I don't follow Jesus for my health but because He is my lifeline. I am legit nothing without Him. And even that truth can be ingrained in me even more. Please do it Lord.

I say aaalll that to say that what is amazing about the words of these past blogs is not the fact that they revealed how awesome a Christian I was or that I was faithful and faultless. Hah hah hah hah, blasphemy and straight up lies. I am a faulted human being. What was so awesome about me then was that in my failure and in my doubt and in my pain and in my frustration, I still looked to God. I still prayed. I still wanted more of Him and I still blessed His name. Hallelujah.

I wonder if I have fallen away from that. I read these words and I'm like Okay, that was January... how have those desires manifested since then? Or maybe I don't know because of the blindness that comes with living in the moment. I hope, though, that I am not just saying these things. It's so easy to get caught up in the passion of the moment but not follow through. Sometimes it's something as simple as not remembering. But what would my faith look like if I pursued the follow-through of the desires that I expressed to God? The desire to be intune with His Spirit, the desire to be a prayer warrior, the desire to be completely and thoroughly satisfied with Him alone? (Def. want the last one). Lord, have Your way in me. May I never lose my desire and heart for You.

Another thing that I have realized as I am reading these blogs is that busy-ness makes it incredibly easy to lose sight of God. BUSY = Being Under Satan's Yoke (Acronym heard from a sermon preached by Sir Shane Burt-Miller). Maybe my amazement at the words of these past entries is due to the fact that I don't really remember being at places of great desire for God. Not clearly/that far back anyway. Wait, that's a lie. Not that I don't remember being at places of great desire, but I don't remember the depth of the desire. And then that is soon forgotten with the next IV event to plan for, or IV meeting to go to, or CBF meeting to go to, or prayer meeting to attend. So much all at once that I am here and there and everywhere and I am not even spending time with God. At the end of last semester, and def. at Basileia, I was surprised at how disconnected I felt from God. I was doing all these things for Him; no one could tell me I was not involved enough in InterVarsity. And yet God could care less about all of that. It means nothing if you are not spending time with Him and investing in your relationship with Him.

So next semester, and even for this summer ('cause there are days when I utter the words "I'm bored" at least 10 times and I don't even crack open my Bible once), I will invest in my relationship with God. And for the school year, that looks like limiting the ministries that I am in in IV, and not busying my self, even with my friendships. Lord, remind me and please create in me the desire and give me the will to see this through.

Wow, major ramble. But is all good. If this entry could be summed up into a few statements, they would be:

Christ has truly blessed me with an incredible heart for Him, to know Him and to be in relationship with Him. I am so aware that the awe is not for the generally faultless, blameless life that I live, for that life does not exist. I do not want busyness and forgetfulness to stop me from pursuing God or pursuing the desires that I express to Him.

Lord, though it is currently 5:17 in the AM, I thank you for this time to look back and see my heart for You then. And Lord, would my heart ever increase! I thank You so much for the eyes to recognize the beauty that You have blessed me with. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, I am so grateful to You Lord! May I be aware of my depravity and how much I need You and forever know that I would suck without You but may I also be just as aware of the beauty that I am in You. You make beautiful things out of the dust. Thank You for making me beautiful, Lord. And may I know that my beauty comes from YOU; may I not become conceited and lofty, because You have not gifted me for that at all. Humble me and keep me humble. Please keep the balance between awareness of depravity and awareness of beauty. Continue to refine me Lord and give me the courage to trust You. Deepen my heart and fire for You, may I not become lukewarm. Correct me when I am wrong, even wrong in beating myself up because I feel I have failed You. God, there is so much I want to be! Help me to be patient as You refine me. I pray for genuineness and authenticity in my prayers and in my blog entries, fo' sho'. Have Your way in my heart, may my journey with You be pleasing to You. Be with me in all, may I give You all, and may there be no fakin' along the way.

I ask You all these things Lord, in the Powerful Name of Jesus the Christ, who died and rose again so that I would be adopted as daughter of God. Thank You so much Jesus,

Amen.

5:43 AM