all in the same cup

I was just reading a blog post titled "a furious longing" (having to do with loving God) on my friends moms blog. It struck a chord in me... it made me ask " Am I in love with God?" "do I often view Jesus as more than a friend or a King?" "Am I cheating on my lover?" " Do I tell people "were just friends"?" "Do I lust after God instead of loving Him?"

obviously God loves us, more purely than we can imagine. more than alot of us even acknowledge, He is the perfect father, no earthly father can even compare. God is love, so we can let Him love us. At first encounter with God we often are like OK God I'll let you love me and you know save me from my sin, we'll leave it at that. We start this "repentance" thing where we feel so ashamed of ourselves, that we dont even let God free us from our guilt. we wait for freedom, until someone tells us its already here God whispers "if only you knew". we struggle with our logic, doubt eats away at our passion, we gain this false humility thing "I have no value" its here where our honest repentance needs to start. Father God I am a sinner, I am not righteous by birth, But you sent your Son Jesus to the earth to teach about your love and live it, and ultimately sacrifice Himself for me, pay the price that I couldnt pay, It is accomplished and I want to live my life like it is. We come to a place where we adore God for who He is, we want to know Him more, we date Him passionately, yet we fall back satan tempts us to spend less and less time with our God we make excuses "oh well im sure your busy God, im doing this over here though anyways". we think were getting away with something, passing one by God. we need the truth to set us free, take away worry, hate, fear, shame, guilt, etc. the truth is that If you accept it God sees you as holy, righteous, beautiful, and worthy. His bride. How much we long to be in heaven where this is much more clear, But God has brought His kingdom here, and wants us to know He loves us, now will we fall in love? choose to let go of our insecurity and embrace Him right now. A line my friends mom likes to use is "dance with the trinity" I like it alot too. As a Christian Its like I'm engaged to Christ, I got a ring on my finger. now do we let the security of having this ring make us take our fiances love for granted eventually leaving us apathetic towards Him, eventually giving the ring back, or do we passionately chase after the lover of our soul, bask in his affection, love Him back, share in His purity . I ask the Holy Spirit to breathe the passion into us so that we will repent of our wrong thinking, and embrace our King, our lover.

when your sitting at the computer and the hours just seem to fly

haha well ive been sitting here for a good almost 3 hours without even knowing it, at first i was talking to a friend from alaska, the whole time change, makes things usually end up lasting a little later. then I was determined to figure out how I am getting from the train station in seattle to the airport 12 miles away without totally ruining my savings from taking the train. After researching buses, shuttles, trains, and taxi's(many more systems than ol winnipeg has) I finally found the metro system, all i have to do is walk across the street and hop on another train. In this world of technology sometimes you have to be very careful, in november when i picked up my brother from the train station in Grand Forks google maps gave me the total wrong address and directions, made me take a right somewhere when i should have taken a left. well i had to follow the tracks that were nearby and look for a station, it was on the other side of the highway, got there in time but it was a little interesting. So I spent some extra time making sure my stations were infact where they tell me they are.

Why am I taking the train? I've been asked this quite a few times already, my first answer is that it is cheaper, and my second answer is it is adventurous, who doesn't want to go on a cross country adventure by ground. It may add some variables that I dont really enjoy like what if my train is late? but i choose not to live in fear of that. my train arrives at approximately 10:25am I walk over to the metro station takes 2 minutes metro runs every 10 minutes so hopefully i get on pretty decently 30 min trip my plane leaves at 1:05pm should be enough time. and heres where my late nights on the computer have really blessed me, not only have I gotten to talk(facebook chat) to people I dont normally get a chance to talk to, and minister to some hurting people but I found the ride from anchorage to homer I was looking for( i wasnt even openly looking for it), honestly it works out so good I'm pretty sure its a God thing, my plane arrives at 3:47 and my friend gets out of school (hes a teacher) at 3:15 and can get to the airport at 4:15 and he needs/ wants to go south anyways.

and now I'm looking at laptops, which is one of the things that really I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. I'm thinking of getting a netbook, but its like should i just go all out and get the real deal. its a hard decision used, or from a big box store, small store. what to do, all i know is that after this week i dont really want to spend alot more money for a while.

but anywho i should go to bed

happenings... and not happenings

well as I have been out of work these past couple weeks, Ive had quite a bit of time on my hands, I have seemingly changed my sleep schedule to Alaska time stay up three hours later and wake up 3 hours later too, which has resulted in me feeling like a lazy bum when it comes to productivity. some things that i really want to do next week or this weekend, go to union gospel mission, do anything that they have there to do, me and Jeremiah handed out cookies there last weekend, still warm. maybe try to find a list of seniors from my church who could use some visiting, or cookies.

I took my car to see if i could get a saftey on it but they had a bunch of work they wanted me to pay them to do and it was a little out of my budget to spend on it. but that took my mobilization away today so that kinda sucked. But I had my last pioneer clubs( kids club at my church) and said goodbye to some of my kids, its hard for me to leave in the middle of something good but I know that God is in control, He has showed us that we are doing His work. I'm going to miss my boys and girls, all of the ones I have are from the community. ill be praying for them, and maybe even have a skype date with them once im in alaska.

So I got my train and plane tickets, train leaves january 7th I get to anchorage on the 8th. While it is really hard to leave, I know im called to Alaska, infact i think i missed a opportunity to go back earlier. honestly there have been some internal frustrations, and i know that ive been strengthened as a individual. One of the things I really look forward to when i get back to alaska is the community and atmosphere that comes with it, and ive been thinking that thats a weakness of mine dependance on a "christian bubble", but I dont think of it as a bubble, more of as a body, so while something may be a weakness of mine it strengthens the body, a body who has an amazing brain. I love the community i have around here but it doesnt seem as full time as in YWAM. I'm going to miss my church here, all the people who mean so much to me.

vancouver 2010 olympics, I'm going to be there. and I'm pumped. I get to evangelize to the masses and also the streets.

If anyone wants to go out for coffee during the day I'm definatly up for it this next week.
my sched is getting pretty full for the evenings and after christmas.

Ramona

where you are now we can not see, its too bright in a sense. however we can take a glimpse into what your seeing, and we are walking closer and closer to the light in which you live. your road like ours had flowers but also had thorns. I can smell the fragrance of goodness, that ever so sweet taste that brings new mercy, that delivers us hope. there were many storms these past years, lots of rain but you stood firm in your faith, you knew that the sun was above those cloud bursting at the seams, and its shine lit your face up.

purity

went to something at southland community church in steinbach called the watch last sunday the topic was purity Jesus vs everything else ( a picture of general media).

Sin is something that I've struggled with (Hope that's not too shocking for you(I could go into more detail about it but i wont ) and there seems to be a lapse of time from the time that I said yes Jesus I want you In my life to the time where sin didn't seem to control my life. Here's where purity comes in, you see I struggled hard, harder than I theoretically needed to, but you see it took me time to harden my heart and God wanted me to understand (as much as you humanly can) the things that hardened my heart so I could work through them with Him instead of me trying to cover up and make excuses for my short comings.

Like a bad toilet sin has a way of coming back up if you dont plunge it completely, and any attempt at doing this yourself is feeble at best. Here's where Jesus's blood comes in, its like the drain- o of eternal life. So what we have is a answer to our problem of sin, our purity comes straight from God. Here's where the battle seems to take place, we understand with our minds "sin is bad but Jesus came to take this sin and end sin for those who believe in him" but we dont understand that this purity comes from obedience, listening to the word of God and being recklessly dedicated to follow it. I just started reading through the old testament from beginning to end and I am in exodus 25-30 area, and honestly I have a hard time not just skimming over all the rules and regulations of how the tabernacle is supposed to be built, how the clothes are supposed to be made, how the animals are supposed to be killed, etc.. but it paints a very clear picture of what purity means, God has given moses exact measurements, exact process and while i still have a few chapters to go to see if they actually do it exactly as told I think they do.

So heres where our purity comes into play, the trap of wanting to make a golden calf because you havent heard from God in a while. If we want this purity we have to hear the voice of God, and one of the worst things i could tell myself would be that He's not talking, because more often than not we arent listening (I'm really bad at this). we surround ourselfs with t.v., music, facebook(now if only God had a facebook page and chated with us on facebook chat), and while we can hear God speaking to us through these things, he wants a much more intimite relationship. we often view Jesus as the garbage man, He comes and knocks on our door and we say "hey I put my garbage out last sunday, why are you here" or we see Him as our pastor or ministry leader he comes to our door and knocks we say " hey ill see you on wednesday, when I get to help you with your work". I hate watching this generation of Christians being dulled to what is sin because they like watching the latest TV show, and not caring about God enough to let Him have some input to what we input. this is my struggle, I've let myself be dulled so that I dont have to be the one who says enough is enough. we hate the sin yet we love the sinner, its often a hard balancing act. And my prayer is that we can live purely and wholey abandoned for the one who is making us new creations.

Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJyW55AXJAk

sorry my next post is taking longer than i thought it would to post

well ill just give you a update of my life.

the past week has had its ups and downs mostly up, time seems to be going so fast yet so slow, my days have been pretty lazy to say the least, as my job has to do with snowfall and snowfall alone, i have only worked 3 days in the past 3 weeks which has really sucked for my morale but ive been able to get alot of stuff done, but not as much as i would like.

as for my future plans I am going to be leaving winnipeg on the 7th of january and arriving in anchorage on the 8th taking the train from grand forks to seattle then taking a flight from there. I will be up in Homer alaska thats where the YWAM base in alaska is, I am so glad to be going up but also sad to leave behind all my people here, expecially the kids and young adults i get to minister to through my church and camp, I mean i guess my friends and family have a different kind of missing. I am going to be in vancouver for the olympic outreach www.morethangold.ca which is sweet, im so pumped to be working at something so big. from there I really dont know what ill be doing with ywam but I definatly will get to go back up north and thats really what i feel called to.

Its crazy how blessed I am, before I go to alaska I get to go to mexico with my family for a week, my first real vacation since i was a young kid. and despite what my mom thinks I dont believe Christians are called to take poverty vows (though some possibly could) i am excited to go on this trip.

things you can pray for
-ramonas funeral is tomorrow, i thank the Lord for her life
-I'm trying to get my car ready to sell
-pray that i will be able to communicate well this week
-pray that as i take a small step of faith in going into ministry where I have to pay to be there, that funds will come
- most of all i thank God for all He has done all that He is doing and all that He will do He's so good

learn from your mistakes

some notes from my first congregational meeting.



-there are some very dedicated members of my church who have served very diligently. I applaud not only their effort but there faithfulness.
-the holy spirit is definitely at work creating something new, birthing something, the test that i see is whether or not we will put that something new in new wineskins
-policy isnt a word that i really like yet i understand a need for some sort of policy
- just because you want to hear more opinions on a motion doesn't mean you(me) should second something and not really know what your talking about when you try to explain why your seconding it.
- I am very glad that kinks seemed to get worked out, things made sense in the end, biblically
- I am excited that the elders are starting to understand the need for this next generation to take some responsibility, though i hope that it will become a collaborate effort because we all need to be a part of this.
- end off being very encouraged