God in my sorrows... God in my joy....

As some of you know someone in my family died on Tuesday. I found out Wednesday morning. I don't want to publically state the details but it was a very tragic death. And this is hard for my entire family. I didn't know this person very well but my mother grew up with this person and they were very close. Normally I would not be so upset. Because as I explained in the post before this one, I never allowed people to be too close to me: i didn't want to ever be hurt. Even when my grandfather died on my birthday a few years a go I did not shed a single tear. NOt because I wasn't sad, I just couldn't. I was very emotionally guarded and empty inside. Now because GOd is changing my life my heart hurts because his heart hurts. I am so close to God that when his heart breaks my heart breaks also. It says in psalms 116:15 that

"the Lord cares deeply when his loved one's die."

And so my heart was grieving in a way that was not possibe before. MY heart goes out to this person's immidiate family and everyone in my entire family who has felt the pain of this death. But even in these hard times I know the Lord is still good, and that he loves us. This is hard to say or understand but I believe it and I know it to be true. I am blessed and even more in love to know that when this hard time came GOd was still with me, he didn't leave me but comforted me and held me in my sorrow. And even in this time there is still joy. Today one of my closest friends accepted Jesus into her heart! I am so happy for that.

IN luke 15:7 it says "IN the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven't strayed away!"

It also says in verses 8-10 that "suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, 'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God's angels when even one sinner repents."

how cool. all of heaven stops and rejoices when one person comes to know Jesus! He cares that much about everyone of us individually- can you believe that? There are some 6 billion people on earth at this moment and God cares for each one and even knows the number of hairs on your head?!?

WOW... so i love that the Lord is with me in sorrow and in joy. He is with me in every season of my life. And he can be with you as well :)

why start a blog?

so.... i have this prayer journal right... on the first page I wrote "prayer unites the soul to God." A quote that i really like.... Only i wasn't praying often, maybe ocassionally if i wanted to do well on a test, but even then I didn't really believe that I needed God. To be even more honest I didn't believe that I needed people. Like i have friends of course I just didn't care about them like I should, or want them to be too close to me. I didn't want them to matter too much. Why? because i wanted to be completely independent. I never wanted to be hurt. I wanted to rely on myself alone. well needless to say, that kind of affected any relationship i used to have with god, you can't really get to know jesus if you don't believe that you need him.


well god has turned my life around from what i just wrote. there were lots of moments in my life when it became obvious that even though i was "fine" on my own, I didn't have my world as together as I thought I did. There were moments when i became so depressed it felt like i had this gaping hole inside of me. And this expression has been used often before, i only repeat it now because it most accurately describes how I felt. In some moments I felt as if my soul was so hollow you would find absolutely nothing there. In those moments I knew that the show i put on for everyone was false,a lie,i wasn't the person who people thought i was... i didn't even know who i was when it came down to reality. So little by little things started changing. At the beginning of this year I started attending a church in College Station, where I go to school, called Antioch. This church is radically different to say the least. It was something I felt when I walked into the service- somehting I now recognize as the Holy Spirit of God. (look it up... concept of the trinity in the bible) oh and just as a side note: the bible has a lot of really neat stuff in it that i had no idea was there! don't assume you know what the bible says, just read it! the stuff jesus did and said was radical, and it points to the fact that he was absolutely not just a man but God's son in human form....
that's enough of that though, cuz im not here to give an intellectual debate for jesus, i'm simply wanting to recount my story of what god has done in my life. So back to Antioch... I started going to this church and i started going to this thing called "life group" that they had, where you meet in some one's house and basically hang out, and talk a little about the bible. What i began to notice was that these people were DIFFERENT... i mean different. To be honest I didn't understand them at all. i thought.. why are these people so passionate about Jesus? I believe in moderation, balance, and I absolutely applied that to christianity. So i wondered why these people didn't have any moderation regarding jesus, like why didn't they keep them as just small part of their life instead of letting jesus literally consume who they were. You know i was one of those people at that time who said i'm a christian and i believe in jesus- it was logical to me... I just didn't believe that I needed Jesus. Well I started going and it was really hard at first for me to go to life group because there were A LOT of people there and I felt akward at times. Sometimes its hard for me to get to know people, I felt like it was too much effort to be around them. They were just too happy and i, well -- i just wasn't.
Through a serious of different events, my feelings started to change. For example, one night they were singing songs to jesus and I was thinking.... these people are really great-but-I just don't belong here. I'm not like them? I don't even think i belong with Jesus- I'm just too different. As I was thinking this, literally, this girl (whom I do not know and who does not know anything about me) taps me on the shoulder. She says, "I think God wants me to read this verse to you..." it was Isaiah 40:11 and I didn't really know what she meant... but then she said I think "God wants me to tell you that you DO belong here, and you Do belong with Jesus." Seriously? that blew my mind... how could she have known thats what I was thinking about? Believe me I was not obviously looking like I felt uncomfortable or something I was just thinking this to myslef. So that kind of shocked me. And then every single week that I went people kept telling me things Jesus told them to say to me... and they were right on target! they could not have made these things up!
So I started to become a lot more open to what they believed about Jesus and how they related to him. So Antioch was doing this mission trip in College station where I live, even though everyone else was leaving for Spring Break. I wasn't sure about it, but I signed up for it anyway. I didn't really feel like I could tell people about Jesus yet, but all I knew was that i wanted what these people had, I wanted freedom, happiness, joy. I think... what I wanted was Jesus.

Anyhow more to be posted later.... LOTS MORE... god continues to do amazing things in my life every day... only because I said "yes." He died for my sins! In romans 5:8 it says "while you were still sinners Christ died for us." So even when i told god... " i just don't love you anymore.. I know that i should- but I don't." Even at those times in my life when I loved just about everything else in my life more than god-- he still loved me! He loved me then even as much as he loves me now that I love him too! I mean seriously... i used to never read my bible.. I just had too many other things i wanted to do. NOW I CAN'T STOP! haha. Everything has changed now and continues to change (I still have much to learn, God is still healing my heart, and teaching me more and more). I'm a new person. Its not logical, the change in me is a miracle. I couldn't cry for years even if i wanted to, because i was so emotionally guarded- and now i can. so many things in my life like insecurity, doubting myself and my abilites-- these thoughts that used to constantly be in my head, they're gone! I used to be so depressed all the time, and now i have more joy then i ever knew was possible to have! Its seriously miraculous. and now i would give up anything for jesus. yesterday he told me to tell my friend she could pick out anything in my room and have it-- so i did. she picked one of my most favorite rings, my ring from spain. but yall, it wasn't mine to begin with. Everything in the world belongs to god- we just don't realize it. Now i understand what it means to long (yearn, desire) for god. To be "in love' with him, and i understand people who just seem a little crazy... thats what jesus does. Everyone who doesn't feel this way- doesn't really know Jesus! even if you look in the bible, after people encountered jesus they were so excited they had to tell everyone they knew. thats how I feel! i can't hide it, i don't care what people think about me, i'm too happy to care. This is for YOU to. its a free gift: you just have to admit that your a sinner, separated from God, and then you accept that jesus died for your sins so you could have life: and then you recieve the gift of salvation! thats it: and then you will really begin to know jesus. If you ask jesus to reveal himself to you- he will. i promise.

so ya... now i talk to god all the time, i don't even called it prayer because prayer gives off this idea of talking to some being far far away. but my god is inside of me, ALIVE IN ME... so i just talk and he listens. And he actually talks back! (in different ways and forms, but he talks back!)

" i love the lord because he hears me. He hears my cries for mercy and he bends down to listen. I will pray as long as i have breath" Psalm 116:1-2

when you pray... god hears you: he focuses ALL of his attention on you! You!!


so needless to say i have so much to write in my journal now, i have to buy a new one. and i started this blog because its easier to type then write. so i will do both. i will shout as loud as i can and tell the world that JESUS SAVES.. because he does. and he saved me, so how could i not?