Dance

Psalms 149:3-4

Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to Him with the tambourine and harp. For the Lord takes delight in His people; He crowns the humble with salvation.

Today I stepped outside and let the rain soak my skin for a few minutes. I don't know why, but this is something that always soothes my soul. It makes me smile just to think of fat raindrops exploding on my skin as the trees around me dance and bend to the sound of thunder. I danced along with the rain and the trees for a moment, like the childish five-year old at heart that I am.

As I danced in the rain, I thought about how I used to long to dance with a boy in the rain, a boy who would sweep me off my feet and make me whole. I would dream about this boy as a young girl, and my expectations kept getting bigger as I grew older and waited for a prince charming who would take my hand and dance with me through storms and walk with me through life.

As I danced and thought about these things, God gently whispered through the storm, "Dance with me, daughter."

I smiled at the sky through the rain and thought how good it is to have a God who not only waters the ground beneath my feet but the soul beneath my skin as well. I marveled at how incredible and humbling it is that the mighty God of the universe who breathed the stars into their place chooses to communicate with us in simple whispers through the rain. And I thought about how divine His love is above any other, how no earthly relationship could ever compare to the deep love that is experienced in drawing close and dancing with the Father.

God desires to dance with you, His beloved child. As you humbly step away from your busy life that divides your attention and draw near to Him in an intimate relationship, He graces your heart with a crown of salvation. His love is far greater than any love any person on earth could offer us.

Dance with your Father today. Rejoice in this divine love you have with Him as He delights in you, His beloved.

Madelynn.

Courage

1 Corinthians 16:13

Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong. Do everything in love.

It's so easy for me to look around at others and think I am not a very brave person. When I think of bravery, I think of firefighters risking their lives to save others, missionaries giving up everything and traveling to third-world countries, or pastors imprisoned and tortured for the sake of the gospel. I don't think of average me sitting in my room reading books or babysitting down the street or blogging late into the night or any of my other day-to-day activities. My mundane, everyday actions are not what I consider brave.

But God whispers to my heart that I can be brave, and that bravery doesn't have to be big.

While risking your life to save others or sacrificing everything for a cause is certainly courageous, courage is not always in the form of grand gestures. God doesn't ask for our actions or our sacrifice, He asks for our heart and all of it. That is the courage God asks of us: that we completely trust Him with our heart and lay everything down at His feet.

Being brave is asking God to guard your heart, the heart he fearfully and wonderfully made and the heart in which He abides. Everything you do flows from this heart (Proverbs 4:23), and letting go of the battle to protect your own heart and trusting Him to guard your heart is an act of great courage.

Being brave is rooting your faith in the Rock that can't be shaken and standing firm on His unbreakable foundations (Psalms 62:2). It takes courage to step off of the comfortable but unstable earthly foundations we've built for ourselves and standing firm on the foundation that always was and always will be steadfast.

Being brave is realizing Christ's power is made perfect in your weakness and allowing this truth to make you strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). It is when you come to Christ with your weakness and desperation that He empowers you with His strength and not your own. There is bravery in seeing the beauty in our inadequacy and in God's exceeding ability to provide.

And being brave is loving. For when we love, we are living out the identity of God for His being is love and He desires for us to mirror Him in that that live out love. Love recklessly. Love unconditionally. Love purely. And love bravely.

We can live out courage for Christ by worshipping Him in these ways, for when our lives become acts of worship, everything we do is brave. Even the smallest breath that is breathed in a life dedicated to Christ is courageous in that we have offered that breath of our lives to Him in an act of faith to Him.

Lay your heart at His feet today in boldness, and offer to Him your life, your breath which He has breathed into your lungs. This is worship. This is courage.



 

Selfish

Galatians 6:1-2

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ

I sin almost everyday in that I am a selfish person. But not selfish in the way most people would imagine when they think of the word selfish. I am selfish with my burdens. So often I am afraid of inconveniencing people with my burdens, thinking the load I carry is too impossibly big to share with any other person, even God. I have an innate desire to hold in all of my oppressions, all of my brokenness and fix it all myself. I tell myself that I am strong, that I can handle it on my own and that I can come out of these battles victorious. But the truth is that I can't. I am not strong- my being is composed merely of dust and a soul. I cannot handle my burdens on my own, nor was I designed to, and the more I hold it in the more my poorly built foundation cracks and bends beneath me. Slowly but surely I am learning everyday to completely lay my burdens at the feet of Christ and leave it in his hands. I am learning that Christ's power is made perfect in my weakness. I am learning that He is the cornerstone of all life, the unshakable foundation and unbreakable rock on which I stand. And I am learning that the Lord will fight for me, that I need only be still and surrender to His perfect will. He humbles me to release my greed of hoarding all my burdens and to freely give it all to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than anything I could ever ask or imagine. He shows me that He has provided me with people wiser than I am, who have walked this mile before and in whom I can confide all my deepest anxieties. Peace is found when we surrender all of our burdens to Christ, and share our burdens with those He has placed in our lives to love and care for us, who desire to carry our burdens and give us rest. And peace is found when we seek out those who are burdened and share with them the perfect peace and restoration that comes in laying our worries at the foot of the cross.

Come to God in this moment and lay down at His feet anything that is pressing on your heart- your fears, your worries, your insecurities, your sins. His heart breaks for you when you carry it all on your own, and He desires to alleviate your load. He is the God of restoration, and He will bring you through whatever storm and whatever battle you may be facing right now. Humble yourself and let Him into your heart so that He may carry your burdens for you. And pray that He would reveal to you someone with whom you can share your burdens, someone who will gladly carry your burdens and offer you wisdom to encourage you and bring you peace. Ask that He would also open your eyes to those burdened around you, that you may show them the peace and restoration that is found in Christ. Let His peace and truth settle in your soul today and bring you rest.

Madelynn

Unexpected

Matthew 28: 5-9 (NIV)

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee.There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.” So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them.“Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.

 

When the women came expecting to find Jesus' broken body wrapped in the tomb, they trembled in holy reverence at the angel they saw and also out of fear that Jesus was not where they expected Him.  I can imagine their hearts stopping as they were afraid that someone had stolen His body or that something terrible had happened. There were struck by the unexpectedness of the situation, and frozen in fear. And then they received a message sent to them by God, alleviating their fears and instilling in them the confidence that their savior had risen and conquered death. I feel like so often are like the women at the tomb. We search for God in the places we expect to find in Him, in the places we want to find him and we are stricken with fear when we find the places in which we expected Him to be only empty tombs that could not contain Him. God is not a mundane God that He should be contained within the comfortable facets of the human imagination. No, rather he exceeds the limits of our Earthly expectations. He can only be found when we break  our comfortable cycles and embrace His reckless love that we cannot even begin to wrap our minds around. He is found when we recklessly run to Him despite our fears and fall at His feet to worship Him in desperate adoration. And as we come to abide in the sweet presence of our Savior, fear no longer has a grip on us because we are finally in the presence of perfect love, and perfect love casts out all fear.

 Lay down at the feet of Christ whatever fears may be paralyzing you in this moment, and embrace Him with reckless abandon. Know that He is not found in the expected and comfortable places of this world, but He is found in your brokenness and humility, when you break down the walls around your soul and let His perfect love come flooding in. Let this truth bring you peace, that you have a risen savior who has conquered your sins, conquered death, and reigns victorious.

Let Him in, and know that you are loved.

Stand Firm

2 Corinthians 1:21-22

"Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his spirit in our heart as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come."

When it seems the world is shaking all around you and nothing is certain, when you feel as though all that you built up in your life is crumbling alongside your dreams, and when the ground is ripped from beneath your feet and you are found on your knees in desperation, there is hope. As we come to God in whatever overwhelming circumstance we may face, he lifts us from the ground, out from our desperation and onto the solid cornerstone that is Christ. As we stand firm on the unshakable foundation that is Christ, God anoints us, setting our spirits apart to serve Him with abandon. You are His beloved, His precious child and prized portion. Before you even came to be, He wrote out all your days and prepared for you an incredible purpose to fulfill. His spirit abides in His beloved and promises to never leave you, to never forsake you and to give you a hope and a future as you live out the life story He has written for you.

Let this soak into your soul. That God has lifted you up. That He is your strong foundation. That Has anointed you, His beloved. His Spirit is alive and at work in you, and is guiding you along the path that God has paved for your life. Open your heart to Him today, and rest in this truth that when all seems to crumble and fall around, God will lift you up to solid ground in Christ.

 

You are loved. Live out that truth today :)

 

Madelynn

Medicine for the Over Thinker's Soul

Psalms 94:19

 

In the multitude of my inward thoughts, your comforts delight my soul.

To call me an over thinker would be an understatement. When it comes to the important decisions I make everyday, my mind automatically inclines to analyzing every last detail of the situation at hand. It seems daily that I fight against a current of a multitude of thoughts, often times unnecessary ones that only make me anxious and stressed. Even if you can't exactly relate to how I think, I feel like everyone encounters situations that push us into a cycle of over thinking and worrying that only digs a deeper hole in pit in which we were already stuck. It's tiring to over think, and it's incredibly taxing to be consumed by worry. Sometime I feel as if my mind never stops, like it's a machine whose gears keep turning and increasing in speed, burning out at the end of each day. My soul craves rest. My heart desires peace. And physically and spiritually all of my being is hungry for a comfort beyond the fleeting pleasures of this world.

When the gears race in my mind, and my soul is flooded with anxiety, God is peace. Purely and simply. Peace.

Sometimes my human heart forgets that God has already planned my life out. That He has written every page in my story and knows what lies in the future that I spend so much time worrying about. And sometimes I forget that God is peace, that He is joy and His comforts are meant to sustain my soul. He has an incredible purpose ahead for each of us. If only we'd stop playing tug-of-war with God over our futures and let Him be the medicine that cures our over thinking souls, we would know a deep and all too unfamiliar peace that stress has robbed from so many of us.

God is good. He is peace. He is joy. He is comfort. But ultimately He is God, the creator of your heart and the lover of your soul. Let Him in today, and let His peace settle in your weary soul.

Unchained

This past Thursday, a victory was won. Hearts had great reason to rejoice. And a step was taken by our nation to end the enslavement of thousands in our country. This past Thursday, Congress passed the renewal of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which expired in September 2011. This act aids in the prosecution of traffickers, imposing stiff penalties, and offers vital services for helping victims rebuild their lives. The issue had been put off in Congress for too long, and action against the growing issue of slavery in our country had been long over due. So when the act was passed, there was much reason to rejoice and celebrate the progress made by our Government in this movement to end modern day slavery. The bondage of the thousands in our country and the millions across the globe is a critical issue. It demands our awareness. It demands our attention. And it demands our action. The step taken by Congress is tremendous and wonderful. But it cannot stop there. Each and every one of us in every sphere of influence is called to act on bringing justice and freedom to the enslaved. And each and every of us is able to if we only step up and sacrifice for the enslaved.

We can be apart of bringing freedom to the 27 million that are physically in bondage today. But freedom can also be brought to us as well.

All of us have been or are in bondage to some oppressing force in our life. Whether it be our decisions, our addictions, our circumstances or our daily battles, we all know what it is for our hearts to be chaffed by the chains of this world. To be enslaved and in bondage to something is one of the heaviest burdens to bear, and is one that too many bear on their own, that too many carry to the point of breaking. Day in and day out, the chains grow heavier, and fresh wounds are made as we are worn. It's so easy to feel hopeless, to believe the lie that freedom is an infeasible thing in the shadow of our oppressions.

But there is a very really hope for you. There is restoration for you. And there is freedom for your soul. No matter how great the chains. No matter how deep the wounds. There is healing. And there is freedom.

"But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.' So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir....It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." (Galatians 4:4-7 & 5:1)

Let this word soak into your soul. Open up your heart to Christ and let Him bring healing to your wounds and freedom from your chains. Let His mercy cover you and bring you peace. Let this truth of His freedom sustain you. And walk confident, not in yourself, but in God, and delight in your identity as a child and an heir of God. There is sweet joy in the victory that comes in finding freedom for our souls in Christ.

I hope this brings you freedom, joy and a sustaining peace throughout your day :)

And if you want to find out more about how you can bring freedom and justice to those enslaved in human trafficking, below are some organizations you can explore that will show you how to be a voice and a catalyst in the fight to end slavery.

http://www.love146.org/

http://www.ijm.org/

http://www.polarisproject.org/

http://www.freedomplaceus.org/

http://www.thea21campaign.org/

http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/

https://www.freetheslaves.net/SSLPage.aspx

Madelynn