Journal Entry.

Remember when you were a kid and you would fall on some sort of gravelly, dusty, dirty surface and cut your knee open? Did you just slap a band aid on that muddy, dirty knee with pebbles imbedded in it and hope it would get better? OF COURSE NOT! (Well, maybe you did, but that probably didn't last long. In any case...) You probably washed it off with soap and water and maybe your mom even got out the hydrogen peroxide and scrubbed it for you (Fun, right?) And that bit usually hurt some, right? Scrubbing out all the dirt, pulling the splinter out, rinsing it with hydrogen peroxide... it almost hurt worse than the cut itself! And yet can you imagine what would happen if it were left untreated? If you thought it hurt when you fell, you'd be in excruciating pain when it got infected. It would be swollen, there would be stuff coming out of it, and it would hurt like none other to touch it. Imagine trying to scrub it then. Ow. You'd much rather get it clean as soon as it happens, right? Of course!
It's the same with life's wounds. They have to be cleaned before they can begin to heal, and sometimes, well, really all the time, that hurts. A lot. But you wouldn't rather let the hate and anger fester and grow and spread like poison, would you? Or don't you know that those things are like a deadly disease, sneaking up on you seemingly without warning and suddenly attacking and overtaking your life? Better to let the Great Physician clean your wound right when it happens. Let Him scrub out the dirt of hatred and pull the splinters of anger. Let Him pour his healing love and grace on you and lead you through the next stage of your journey.
A lot of times, even after out storm has calmed and the sea has settled, we still go back. It's like ripping the scab off an old wound. Even though our body is trying to heal, when you keep continually ripping the skin off, that healing can never happen. If you keep doing that, the only thing that's going to be left is raw, partially scarred skin-even more painful than before.
It's the same with our hearts. A lot of times, God is trying to do a healing work in us, but we keep peeling the skin off, reopening the wounds and allowing out hurt and emotions to once again run like blood.I think a lot of times, part of the reason we keep doing that is that we still have questions that we had going through that time that we feel like we didn't quite get an answer to. And so even thought it's over and the healing has begun to take place, we go back, looking for answers. We feel like somehow, the healing cant really happen until we get all our answers to our questions and sort everything out in our heads. And therein lies the problem. We think that we need the answers in order to heal. But see, thats a lie. God doesn't give us answers. He gives us promises.

"God, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING!! IMTS SO AWFUL! WAAAAHHH!"

and God says: "I will never leave you"

Ummm. not what i was lookin' for, God.

And so we keep peeling.
We think that somehow we've been deprived and we can never move on unless we figure everything out. I think that what we don't understand is that when God begins to heal us, a pig part of that healing comes when we lay all our questions down and rest in Him to take care of it. But that part of healing can't happen if we're constantly reopening the wound. What we end up with instead is an ugly gash that's partially healed, but theres raw, bare flesh in the center and ugly scar tissue around the edges that becomes hard and often insensetive. Sound familiar? This can happen to our hearts too, if we don't trust God and allow him to do His healing work.

peace

Don't Act Like a Christian

02-08-11 (hey.. this only took me a couple hours!! woot woot!)
Yeah, you heard me right.
I said that.
DON'T ACT LIKE A CHRISTIAN!
Now before you become convinced that I have completely lost it and am surely headed to hell... let me explain.

I feel like we as Christians are always trying so hard to follow this mentality that

'you need to get your act together to be better for God, get out there and love the world the way you're supposed to, and for goodness's sakes, you need to act christian around those who aren't saved!"

Which sounds good enough, right?

But what do actions really mean if our hearts aren't really right?I mean, why else do most of us constantly struggle with 'acting christian'? Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that its OK do go and do whatever you want to because to do otherwise would be hypocritical; what i am saying is that our actions don't really mean a whole lot if they're not from the heart.

Maybe instead of struggling and fighting so hard to ACT christian, we should just BE Christians. What if we just let the light and the life of Christ change us and mold us into who we are truly supposed to be? We wouldn't have to act anymore! Remember, Christ never been gave the name christian to his followers. They were named that years later, because of who they were: followers of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.

so that's the challenge: Ask Jesus to begin o change you into who he made you to be, so that you can stop acting like a christian, and just start being one.

happy snow days!!

angie