Let it be Jesus

let:
1.not prevent or forbid, allow
synonyms: permit to, give permission to

be: 

1. exist
2. occur; take place
synonyms: occur, happen, come out, arise

"let it be Jesus" is the title and main verse of a song that was sung at passion, it's also the same line that has been stuck in my head for the past few days.

When I think about this song it reminds me that as we go through storms, the first name we should call upon is our Jesus, but as the verse continues to play in my head, it began to hit a different place in my heart that I just couldn't understand. I felt like Jesus was trying to tell me something, so I decided to really think about what it meant to "let it be Jesus"



Here's the thing- we let words become to mundane to us. We hear words like "let" and "be" and we really don't think much of it, we know what these words mean so why do I need to look any deeper?

One of my favorite things is to take words like "let" and "be" and see what there given definition is, not the definition we think it to have in our heads. Usually, by doing this simple act we are able to transform a sentence and unpack all new power to it.

When I look at the definition of these simple words it makes me realize that i'm not supposed to just "let it be Jesus" i'm supposed to "give permission for him to arise"

Here's what I mean by that:
Jesus can't work through us until we surrender to him.
The good He wants for us is ultimately tied to our obedience to letting him take root in our lives. Jesus desires for us to be set free, but we have to accept that freedom by dying to ourselves.

My biggest issue is that my heart is trying to "let it be Jesus" but my actions aren't truly giving him permission. When I don't give him the permission to work through me, then it's me trying to use my own strength which leads me nowhere. All i'm getting from the situation is frustration. Frustration in myself and ultimately frustration with The Lord.

"Why is this not working out??"

As I am looking back at these different situations I am clearly seeing that I was falling into the lie that I am afraid a lot of us do.

I try to half-heartadly surrender because that's what makes me the most comfortable.
Here is where that backfires: Where we don't give full permission to Jesus, He can't arise within us.

He wants to use you for His glory, but until we begin to turn the light on Him and off of us, we will continue to fall into the trap of "letting it be us" while we are pretending it's Jesus. 

Jesus is teaching me that there is no such thing as a half-hearted surrender. He didn't humble himself and die on the cross so that we could choose both of us. He sacrificed himself for the sake of all, so that all may have the chance to humble themselves and follow him.

My charge seems simple, but it takes sacrifice.
Let Jesus not just IN your life but let him BE your life.

You won't regret what arises with the permission from surrender.

Rope Burn and Skinned Knees

One of the biggest things that I struggle with, is in my mind, choosing what I lay at the feet of Jesus and what I keep for myself. In my head I have two columns, one if for Jesus, and one is for me.

We have all heard things like: 
"take up our cross and follow him."
"die to ourselves"
"we must become less, and he must become more"

All of those things are completely true, and I honestly think we do believe those things, but how many of us actually do them?

We paint these verses on canvass to hang in our houses, we highlight them in our bible, we share them on facebook...Why? Because we can see that they matter. There is something in us that connects with the idea that we must let Jesus take control of our lives.

But how many of us actually let him?

For me, I don't mind Jesus having control on situations that I know I really can't control.
My struggle isn't letting him have control of my problem it is letting him have ALL of the control, no matter the outcome.

If you're honest with yourself you can see that you might share in this struggle with me.
I feel like I try to control certain situations because I feel like by me having control, I get to determine the outcome.

Have you ever played Tug Of War with an opponent that you knew was going to beat you? You size them up and you can see that they are going to end up pulling you across that line. Some people might run away, but it is in my character to go "i'll show you" and I fight until they have gotten me off my feet and are pulling me across that line.

This is how I imagine myself when I try and take control of my life.
God is on the other side of the rope going "okay really Sara, you see this can't end well"
and it's like I say back to Him "No really God, i've got this!"
And I pull and I pull and I pull and what's the result?
After rope burn, and skinned knees from fighting it, I am on the other side, looking up at God going "Okay you were right"


Maybe you follow my analogy, maybe you think I'm completely wrong but when we cling so tightly to our plans, our dreams and our goals, instead of placing them at His feet, we are in a losing battle. We can grip as tight as we want to but God is going to win, every time.

More times than not I come with scrapped knees, and rope burn because I am a hard-headed girl that thinks that my ideal outcome of the situation is more important than giving Him control.

Every single time God shows me that there is a reason he says to give him our life, ALL of it, not just the parts we want to.
and every single time God is there with band-aids for my knees and medicine for my rope burn because even in my stubbornness His grace abounds.

My heart behind this is to help someone that might be a little bit like me. Maybe you think you have a grasp on your life, and you can decide what you lay at His feet, but please, take it from someone that has been there (more times than I like to admit) let go of the rope and run to the other side.

Giving Him my tomorrow

God tends to talk to us in ways and at times where we don't expect it. I am currently sitting at a table with my notes in front of me getting ready to take a test. While I am studying for that test I have my earphones in, nothing out of the ordinary, I like to have simple background music to drown out the outside noise. One of my favorite artists to listen to while I study is Shane & Shane. I have listened to all of their songs probably 100 times each, but for some reason today, their song "crucify Him" stuck out to me like it never had before. Here are some of their lyrics: 


I sing, "Hosanna!" when I want it all.
Then I crucify the Son of God.
Cause He isn't who I always thought.
Not what I want, but what I needed.
I sing, "How great and mighty is the King!"  
Just as long as He considers me
High above every other thing.
Even His glory.

It's packaged differently than Pharisees.
Wrapped in sing-a-longs and Christianese.
Empty hallelujahs to the King.
When my heart is loving idols.
A man of sorrows acquainted with grief,
He had no form; He had no majesty.
How could He have the audacity
To ask me to give Him my tomorrow?


 I think these lyrics are hitting me so hard today because I have come to the reality that this is exactly what I do to Jesus. 
Too many times than not, I put my own desires, my own plans and my own self before His glory. If I'm being completely honest, I do it ALL the time. It's a battle that I have within myself, to keep doing this. My heart longs to pursue Jesus and let Him have my life, but the moment it turns into something that makes me uncomfortable, I run for the hills. 

For some reason I forget the part that sometimes, things are going to hurt, and in that hurt we might not always understand why we are walking through it, but that shouldn't change our pursuit of Jesus. If anything it should make it stronger, knowing that He is the only one that can get us to the other side. 

So you can see my problem, I have a heart to follow Jesus but my human nature kicks in and sometimes my longing to have my own plan seems to overshadow my surrender to The King. Jesus is really sweet with his conviction, I am starting to see that why I have such a hard time surrendering, even when it brings Him glory is because I have turned my desires, plans and pursuits of my life into my idols.

My heart can't cling to Jesus when it is so heavily clung to these idols. 

In my head I know what is right, I know that surrendering my life to Jesus is what I am supposed to do, no matter the cost, because ultimately it will bring ME good and HIM glory 
(What a great deal right?!) 
When you read that you're probably thinking "why would I not want that?" 
I do, I so desperately do, but I have to get my heart along for the ride in order for this deal to go down. 

 If you are like me, and this is a problem in your life these are some things that I am finding make it easier to surrender...

You have to figure out what the idol (or idols) in your life is. This is not a fun process because it's an idol for a reason. You are going to have to ask Jesus to reveal this to you, and help you to release it to Him. I have found the most surrender comes when you are completely honest with the Lord. 
What I have learned with idols is that you can't just "place" them before Him, sometimes you have to ask him rip them from you.

In my personal life, I have seen that I have to be honest with Him in the fact that I don't want to surrender, some things are easier than others but ultimately it's scary, knowing that releasing things to Him doesn't come without a cost. Jesus has done a lot of ripping lately and my heart is beginning to see the beauty of it.

Right now Jesus is teaching me that while it is uncomfortable to release my life to Him, it's the only way I can know true freedom. He is showing me that He is a faithful father that loves me, because of this I know that while it may not be easy, it is more than worth it to give Him my tomorrow.

Purity of mind

If you have read any of my blogs before this you can see there is a trend with singleness. Not only is it a trend within my blogs, it seems to be a trend with blogs all over the internet. They range from all different kinds:

"10 things 20 something singles should know"
"purposeful singleness"
"25 things that happen when you're single"

I really could go on but you get my point.

I'm not hating on these articles (I mean I really can't considering i'm sitting here writing one about the same topic) But if you are about to quit reading because you are tired of the same old singleness post I urge you, KEEP READING.

Yes, this is about singleness but this article is also going to be about so much more, so please take the time and let's look into what it means to be pure in your singleness

Now, some of you might want to stop reading because you read the word "pure" and you think i'm going to go through a blog on why you shouldn't have sex or go too far with a guy (while I do agree in not doing that I'm not going to bore you with that right now)

I think there are aspects of purity that we are missing.
Why is it that when you hear "purity in singleness" you automatically assume it's going to be about sex? Our brains are wired to connect purity with our bodies, and while that is so very true, it's not where purity stops.

Personally, my downfall in my singleness has not been sexually. My downfall with staying pure while single has been purity in mind.

**DISCLAIMER
I don't struggle with thinking impure or sexual things, what I mean when I say I struggle with purity of mind I mean that I have let boys control my thoughts.

Some examples would be ---->

"I wonder why he isn't texting me back..."
"wait should I have said that"
"Do you think he's flirting with me or no..."

(i'm sure there is some laughter going on right now because while you are sitting here reading those examples you can put a time, place and boy with all of them)

What I want to address is why these situations are toxic

Purity:
the condition or quality of being pure; freedom from anything that debases, contaminates, pollutes, etc.:

When we let those thoughts run wild we are letting a chain reaction occur in our head. Before you know it we have left no room for the thoughts that bring us joy

How could we even think about joy when we are too busy being unhappy because we saw a boy read our text and didn't text us back.

Our minds are being contaminated and before we know it we will look back and realize we have pushed ourselves away from God.

Why are these thoughts toxic?
Not only do they steal our joy and push us further from the truth of God, they leave room for bad decisions.
When we don't have purity of mind, we let satan take hold of our thoughts, we let him lie to us, we let him make us feel empty and broken.
Those feelings will only lead us further down the path of destruction.

So how do we fight it?
Well first is realizing that there is no form of purity that can happen if you are separated from the Lord because he is the only one that makes us pure.
We have to come to him and pray that he transforms our thoughts, but the only way that he can do that is if we GIVE them to Him.

What I want you to see is that these thoughts are normal, but that isn't an excuse.
It's too easy to play them off as "just things girls think about" or "just being a girl"

I beg you to see that thinking these things is damaging to your heart.

Jesus wants to speak TRUTH into you, His unfailing love, mercy and grace are far better things to meditate on than if a boy is going to text you.

Get into His word, pray to Him, surround yourself with a community that is going to speak life into you and affirm that you are a child of the one true KING, who loves and pursues you daily. Who has turned your heart of stone into a heart of flesh and He doesn't want that heart hurting.

Don't be your own cause of heartache because you are letting your own mind tell you lies.

I hope this blog was helpful, and I pray that if you are single right now or even if you are in a relationship you see that there is so much more to staying pure than just by your body. I pray you see that it starts with your mind.

Speak Life

If you were to talk to me about an hour ago, you would have probably heard an ear full of everything that was going wrong with my day. I'll spare you the details because they are irrelevant but
as my head was spinning of all the reason today just really sucked I quickly became convicted of a simple truth that I think we all so easily fall into...

First, too often I let my circumstances change my outlook on my day
and secondly, I am too quick to share my bad days and too slow to share my good

I think if you are honest with yourself you can admit that you fall into those things, or similar ones.

Here's a test just incase you aren't sure:
When someone asks you how your day was, what is your immediate response?
Mine usually sounds something like this.... "there was traffic after class, my professor let us out late, I failed my quiz, it was so hot outside, I'm so stressed out"

Seriously the list could go on.
We have to think, How do those responses shed any glory on God?

I'm not trying to be harsh, and i'm not saying that you can't talk about your days if they are rough, what I am saying is that if our minds are so entangled in what is going WRONG in our day, we are having a selfish perspective and we aren't leaving God any room to show us the GOOD in our day.

There is a difference in talking about your day, in hopes that those listening can pray over you or give you advice and then just straight up complaining. And that Is what I want us all to see.

When we complain about our day we are being selfish.
Yup, I said it and I'm not going to sugar coat it. We have GOT to remember that this life is not about us, it's about HIM and if this life isn't about us then each day isn't either.

Ask yourself, what are you really complaining about? And more importantly what is it doing?
You may be thinking this is extreme, what's that bad about a little complaining?
But when we complain, we are letting our minds continue down a path of negativity

"Set your minds on things above, not on things that are on earth." Colossians 3:2

When we complain we are literally doing the opposite of this.



What I mean by all of this, and the point I want to make is this,

Jesus was not crucified on the cross for us to bicker about every little thing that goes wrong in this world. Jesus died so that we could live a life of JOY, a life that points other people to HIM, that is literally the only reason you are still on this earth.

What a difference it would be if we spoke of our good instead of our bad, if we didn't let our circumstances run our day, if we clung so tightly to the cross that we could remember every single day on this earth is a gift, and every encounter we have with another person matters.

Don't miss out on a chance to share God's love because you are too consumed in your problems.

I'll leave you with this:
If any person had the right to complain it would have been Paul.
Instead of complaining what did he say?

"Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound." Philippians 4:11

I am not perfect, and that is my heart behind writing this. Because of my imperfections I am going to fail at this, I am asking us all to take action in keeping each other accountable and remember that our actions and words matter.

A call to action

I went on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic my sophomore year of high school. I can still remember almost every detail. The people I encountered, the food I ate, the conversations I had, but what I remember more than anything is the feeling I felt about a week after the trip. You could compare it to the drop you feel after your "camp high" is over. It's a feeling that I now realize I had after almost every trip I went on.

While I was there I felt so on fire for the Lord, preaching His word, sharing the gospel with people and then what? I come back home to my same old routine, I fall back into my same old slump and that "GO JESUS" feeling I had seems to fade away. 

If you have been on a mission trip, whether in the states or abroad, you can probably relate to those feelings. 

But why do we get those feelings? 

I can remember telling my parents a week after my trip that I was going back. I didn't know when or how but I was. Looking back now I see exactly why I wanted to go back. It wasn't really for the trip itself, as much as I loved it. I wanted to go back to get out of my funk. I wanted to go back to feel the way I did when I was there. I wanted to feel like I was making a difference in His kingdom. 

This brings me back to my question. Why do we get these feelings of discontentment once we return home? 

The answer is rather simple. We are called to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19) that is a command from Jesus. We are to go and tell everyone the good news. 

Maybe someone's thinking, well I did that! So why do I still feel this way?

Here is one of the issues I have found, when we go on these mission trips, we feel so good about the work we are doing, and then we come home and feel "off" as we enter back into our daily routines..

Guess what, IT'S BECAUSE WE ENTER BACK INTO OUR DAILY ROUTINES!


Romans 1:5 (MSG) puts it pretty clearly 
"Through Him we have received BOTH the generous gift of his life and the urgent task of passing it on the others." 

We feel a discomfort because we see the JOY that comes from following Jesus's command of "going and making disciples" and then all of a sudden we stop. Why? Because we are home. 
Going to the nations is an urgent need, please don't get me wrong, BUT please don't forget that this nation, the one you live your daily life in, is also a mission field. 

It was once put to me like this, If you had the cure for cancer, would you keep it to yourself knowing someone next door to you is dying? We have the CURE. 

Don't let your fear, doubt or selfishness keep you from telling people about the cure. 

Jesus didn't call us to be comfortable. He called us to live a life of obedient faith. Sometimes that means we are called into situations that we don't like and I'm sorry but I'm going to be blunt.

GET OVER IT

We have a mission field right in front of us and we are too distracted from our own lives to see that we are MISSING IT! You can do work for His kingdom every single day of your life, and you should be, you just have to step AWAY from your self in order to see it sometimes.

Don't live mission trip to mission trip. We have a call to action that is to be lived out every day of our lives. 

A life of lingering

I want you to examine your life. REALLY look into it.
Think about how you spend your time, what you think about, the decisions you make, ect.

Now, ask yourself, Is Jesus the center or is He an add on? 

My heart behind this post is to share with y'all that I struggle with treating Him as an add on, like i've said before, A lot of times I don't even want to let Jesus in the car much less be the driver. 
Knowing this about myself I really have two options, to be okay with it or change it.

I think a lot of my "treating Jesus as an add on" comes from me treating Him as a feeling. When I "feel" Him, it's easy to acknowledge Him and let Him be the driver but on the flip side, when the feelings don't come I begin to get in a rut. From that rut starts a snowball of effects, like me trying to drive my car on my own, and only thinking of Jesus as someone who's their sometimes.

I can not stress this enough, so please if this is all you get from my post listen up:
JESUS IS NOT A FEELING

He's not some "camp high" God that is going to make you feel butterflies every day of your life.

I'm timid to get honest, but here it goes,

Receiving salvation takes no work on your part. Jesus did ALL the work 2000 years ago on a cross, now it's a free gift for anyone to take it. 
BUT A relationship with Jesus takes work. (notice how I didn't say workS)
Just like an earthly relationship, you'll have your high and your low points, sometimes you'll feel so on fire for God and other days you just can't even open your bible. Why? Because we are human.
I don't like that excuse though.

So, we are human, yes. But don't use that as an excuse to stay distant from God.
We are as close to Him as we choose to be. 

In this life we have choices, He has given us free will, So choose to make Him the center.
It's going to be work, you aren't always going to "feel" like it, but let me encourage you with how I find it easy to seek God, and that's to stay near to Him...


There's a word that has been mentioned at different events that has stuck in my head and I believe it's how we escape from keeping Jesus as an add on, how we get out of our ruts, and how we get fullness of life.


"linger"

I was really curious as to why Jesus was laying this word on my heart so I decided to find out why. 

From Dictionary.com

1. to stay in a place longer than is usual or expected, reluctant to leave
2. To remain alive, although gradually dying
3. to dwell in contemplation, though or enjoyment

Do we linger in His presence?
Lingering for Jesus is the opposite of treating Him as an add-on, it's clinging to him,"reluctant to leave"

I found it interesting that the 2nd definition is "To remain alive" because that's what Jesus does for us, He gives us life.

We are all going to die, if you didn't agree with anything else on this post you have to agree with that. So while you are here on earth let Him give you life, He is the only one that can.
 My challenge for you is to linger in the presence of God,  ENJOY His goodness, find LIFE in Him,
Don't treat Him as an add-on, He doesn't belong there.