Life and death

This weekend was a beautiful weekend. On saturday, I attended a memorial for an aborted baby, which was beautiful to see the mother of the child working past the guilt and shame she was feeling for having an abortion. She named the baby and prior to the memorial, through listening prayer she was able to hold her baby and then place him in Jesus' arms so she could see that he was safe. It was a beautiful memorial. Then the next day we celebrated her birthday, which was also great! It was a great weekend to celebrate life.

As we were at the baby memorial, we sang Amazing Grace and i looked at my friend, the mother, and started to cry because I just saw the Lords amazing grace in her life, and I saw her being able to accept that grace now and it was truly great!

The Lords love and grace has amazed me recently. Like...the atonement. It happened so we could be at one with Christ...hense..AT-ONEment. If it wasnt for the atonement, where would we be? What kind of situation would we, as the church, be in? Well...I dont even think there would be a Christian church. The Lord has done great things for us and we don't even recognize it!


Paul says 'if we have Salvation through the atonement, should we keep on sinning?' (not a direct quote!) Umm...nope! We shouldn't. In hebrews 10:26, 27 it says

If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.

Therefore, if we acknowledge that Christ has atoned for our sins, we cannot just say...well...Im saved, Im come into Salvation, so...I can just go on with my worldy life. It doesnt work that way! If we acknowledge christ and then continue sinning, we will have eternal judgement.

This is what has been going through my head recently.

Glory to God

2 Timothy 2:22

Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

We were in the gardening again today. We prayed this verse in the garden. I've decided that Wednesday morning gardening is one of my favorite things at the moment. It's great! My favorite part is weeding, and pulling the weeds. Often times, I use that time to reflect on how it's like sin. Sometimes, you get weeds that have really short roots, and are really easy to pull out, and other times you have weeds that have been growing for a really long time and you need to use a shovel and dig them out, and it takes a lot of work. Sometimes we have sins that are keeping us from growing into the beautiful person that the Lord desires us to be. Sometimes the sins are really small and if you recognize them, they're pretty easy to get rid of, and other times we've been doing the same sin for so long, sometimes not realizing it was a sin and other times knowing full well that it was a sin and just choosing to ignore it, and then we see the light and feel the need to change, it takes a lot of work to get it out. But we have to make sure we're willing to put in whatever effort it takes to get rid of those weeds in our lives. We need to see what and where the weeds are in our lives so that we can cleanse ourselves of them and make ourselves the beautiful people that the Lord desires us to be.

Side note: Dominic and Noah came to the garden about halfway through. It was really great.One of my favorite parts was, Dominic came over to me and asked if he could help, so I gave him my little shovel thing and he was trying so hard to dig up the weeds...It was so awesome. Then he'd get some weeds up and throw them into the wheel barrow where we were throwing them and he'd get so excited that he was helping. And he and Noah were the "scarecrows" chasing after all the pigeons that came into the garden. Theres just something about gardening and seeing all the plantlife and stuff thats growing and having kids around thats a real special thing.

Thats my reflection on todays gardening.

4 months...

Oh man...I came to the realization last night that we only have 4 months of War College left. 4 months! 2 of that is on summer assignment, so we only have 2 months left in Vancouver! Thats a scary, yet exciting, thought. It's been a great 8 months. Lots of tears, lots of laughs, lots of meltdowns but a crazy amount of support through it all. It's been an amazing time so far...Im excited to see what the Lord has in store for the next 4 months, and beyond.

I reconnected with a friend this week. A friend that I've had my struggles with and cried some tears over, but I've grown and from the sounds of things, she has too. The Lord has really been talking to me about forgiveness and how I can't move past the point Im at right now if Im holding a grudge. I've really been focusing on forgiving those who have wronged me in the past, and also focusing on not making myself the victim in those situations, and in situations that are going to come my way. Instead of making it all their fault, also finding the things I could have done better to prevent things because in every altercation there are at least 2 people involved and 2 people at fault for at least some of it.

I've been continuing to run at 6 14 in the morning with chub club. Lately it's just been Nicole and I, but it's been really cool to hang out with her in that way...and I've noticed my self-esteem has been boosted a bit more since I started running, which is cool. It's also a cool way to connect with the Lord. When i run in Crab park and I look and see the mountains and stuff its just so beautiful.

The Lord has really been speaking to me about humility and being humble in the things that I do. Im in the process right now of searching for areas in myself where I may be prideful or areas that Im just not humble enough in. It's a really hard thing to have to come to terms with when you realize your being prideful in areas of your life, but after you've found it, caught a hold of it and let it go its sooo much better!


Well, thats about it!

Courtney

P.S the Lord has also been speaking to me about life, and this is a representation of life in the DTES, where a lot of people only see death.

On my mind

I've been thinking about a lot lately.

I've been praying a lot for the church as a whole. And about how as a whole, we're not really rising up to what the Lord has called us to in the word. There are pockets of the church who are and certain denomonations who are, but the entire Christian Church should be rising up to what he desires us to do. There are so many churches that just sit in their church buildings on sundays, and during the week if they have weekly programs, but what do they do outside of the church? What do they do to bring people into the church and to introduce them to the Lord? The Lord has called us to get people saved and as a whole, we're being lazy about it.

It's not just todays church either, its been happening forever. There are records of this in the Word as well. I apologize if this sounds harsh but it's just what the Lord has put on my heart recently.

Also...we were in the garden yesterday. I really like life. I like seeing new life. Living here is really hard when a lot of what you see and hear about is death, spiritual death and physical death. But there is life! There is life everywhere, it's just harder to see because sometimes its burried by death. The Garden is a beautiful representation of life. There isn't a whole lot that has sprouted yet, but it's still a beautiful place. It's great.

God is great and he has great plans for the world and for everyone in the world.

2 Corinthians 5

I wrote this early one morning, I hope it makes sense.

Oh man. There is so much stuff in 2 Corinthians 5. It’s packed with stuff! It’s definitely a chapter where you need to be able to focus. If you don’t fully focus you won’t pick out a lot of stuff. I was tired the first time I read it, so I’m going to try to read it more and more and see what I pick out each time.

It talks about a lot of different things. The first thing I picked out was that all of our possessions on earth are going to fade away. It says that the earthly tent we live in will be destroyed, but we have a building from God, and eternal house in heaven, that wasn’t built by human hands. When the Lord comes back, all of our stuff will no longer be with us, but we’ll be beyond satisfied with the things we have in heaven. I think this verse is an encouragement to really be who we say we are, and really be followers of Christ. Christ wouldn’t live his life for the stuff he can store up, but rather the people he can get saved for the betterment of the kingdom.

It talks about how we should “walk by faith, not by sight”. We hear this a lot, but what do we really think of it? What do we really hear when we hear that verse? I didn’t see Jesus raise from the dead, but I know he did. I have faith in the word of the Lord and trust that that is what happened. I can’t see the physical body of Christ from where I’m sitting right now, but I can know he’s here with me. He never leaves me.

“Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others” – We need to earnestly and actively seek the Lord, and yearn for his fear to be in us. It doesn’t just naturally come to us so we can deliver it to others. We need to go deeper with the Lord and know how to properly evangelize so that there will be only truth in the world when it comes to the kingdom, and the Lord.

Affirmation is where its at

I've recently decided that one of my love languages is words of affirmation. I used to say I didnt care what people said to me...but I'm realizing that isnt true. I really love being affirmed. Yesterday, 4 people gave me words of affirmation in completely unrelated situations, and I felt so happy all day, so I guess its a good thing.

Thats pretty much all I have to say right now...