Prayer

I trust you Jesus, with my dreams, with my heart, with my deepest desires. I believe you are for me, and after my joy. I will release the fragile things I've held so tightly and been afraid to let go, afraid they would shatter and my fragile heart would shatter with them. But I will not sit where it is safe. I will leap and fall and trust that I will be taught to fly. I love you, I trust you with my heart, my dreams...all of me.

Scuba Diving With Jesus

The other day I heard something that just kind of...blew my mind open the other day... "The more inward you focus, the more msierable you will be." I don't know about you, but in my walk with Christ this is so incredibly true. The second I take my eyes off of Him and start looking at myself, or even my desires I begin to sink. Just like Peter, I get distracted by the things going on around me and before I know it I start to fall, to sink into the black abyss that only moments before I was given strenth to walk across. It can be so hard to keep our eyes on Jesus when we are surrounded by books, movies, people, magazines, commercials, advertisments, shampoo bottles...you name it, that are telling us something different. It can be hard to keep our eyes on Christ if for the last hour or two we watched a television show, or read a book about sex, lies, materialism, and scandal. Imagine our walk with Jesus is like scuba diving in a tank, if you fill up your tank with the worldy message, which is in direct opposition with scripture, you're going to sink. Your eyes will not be on Christ and you will start to desire and long for things that are of the flesh, you will find yourself going to your bible less and less, and picking up a magazine, or remote instead. The bibles tells us that a mind set on the flesh is hostile to God and cannot submit to Him. (Romans 8:6-8) Instead we have to fill up our tanks, our lives with what is Holy and good. We have to set our minds on things of the Spirit. How do we do that? By being incredibly careful with what we allow ourselves, to watch, read, and purchase. And even more careful with what we allow into our homes. And by cutting off those things that pull are hearts away from God. The bible tells us to crucify our flesh, to deny it of its sinful desires. (Romans 13:14, Galations 5:25) If we are God's children, if we know Him and have accepted Him in our lives, our deepest desire HAS to be constantly striving for a deeper, more intimate relationship with Him. He shouldn't be the top of our love pyramid, He should be the pyramid. We should fill up our lives with things that bring us closer to Him, with things that are of and from Him.

No longer walk, as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding; alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned in Christ. Ephesians 4:17-29 (empahsis added)

The passage of scripture that illumanates this the most for me is Colossians 3. I really suggest after your finish this, you open up your bible and read the scripture I've talked about here for yourself, ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate the words for you, to convict you of the places where you are falling, and to teach you how to walk in closer relationship with Jesus; how to walk in the Spirit.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, eveil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk fron your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowlege after the image of its creator. Colossians 3:5-10 (emphasis added)

Scriptures to check out: Mathew 14:22-33; Romans 8: 5-8; Romans 12:2; Romans 13:14; Ephesians 4:17-24; Ephesians 5:3-10; Galations 2:20; Galations 5:24; 1 Corinthians 10:13; 2 Corinthians 4:16-18; Colossians 3:1-17;