On Rambling

I gave everyone that goes to NBC (i.e. Nampa Bible Church) their thank you cards for coming to my surprise 16th birthday party and making that day one of the best in my life!!

Yay! Phew, glad I got that over with. I write a lot of letters to friends. Writing thank you cards was no biggie, I really enjoyed it actually. I prefer actually taking time to write something PERSONAL, other than a sad little 'thank you', in the cards. Personally, I had so much fun writing those thank you cards, it was like writing a letter to all these friends! So much fun! :D

I sealed them too with my wax seal from Michaels (wedding section-YO). I had red wax, with black and white thank you cards from Target that pretty much went with the color scheme of my birthday party. Oh, and I had some silver too. For specific *Speshul* people, I mixed waxes. For instance, my pastor's family. I mixed waxes for some other friends too!! And others of course I left it as just a plain 'either-or' (i.e. red or silver) because the plain "red" is my FAVE. Or even the plain SILVER..soooooo awesome. Either way though I like both.

Right now I'm doing a job for my dad. I'm spinning some articles for him. Technically 7 articles but they have to be re-written twice so if you times that by 2 that makes 14 articles. And I'm getting paid like $45 for it! So it's worth it totally.

I have a feeling though this week is just going to be a week of no sleep. I'm 3 weeks behind in anatomy. And we're starting school again, and calorie keeping. YES. Back to normal life. Break was wonderful though.

All the flowers are in bloom, they're so beautiful!! It's no wonder God took the time on Sunday to sit back and say, "This is good. This is really, really good. It reflects me in a way that is going to glorify me, that points to my beauty, that intrigues man to the point where he ponders, 'What is man that you are mindful of him?' "

Today God gave me rest. God quieted my soul, my anxious toiling, my restlessness and I rested in Him and Him alone. It was quite wonderful. You may be wondering how I am "resting" if I am working so hard on articles and playing "catch-up" on homework. It's a good question.

Resting does not mean literally "Go take a nap" or as the pharisees thought it to be "NO WORK ALOUD". It meant that we rest OUR SOULS, that we put complete and total faith and trust in CHRIST, that we ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that our satisfaction is in GOD ALONE.-To put it to you briefly. I could go on. But, it's late so I'm trying to rap this up.

I rested today in the fact that I don't have to "fix" myself. I don't have to "tarry til I'm better". (Something I struggle with) Being a disciple of Christ has nothing to do with (i.e. A Christian..for those of you who didn't know and should've..) how much you read your Bible, and pray every second of the day. The Christian faith is not based off of WORKS. It does, however, have EVERYTHING to do with whether you are putting your trust in Christ, whether you have repented from your sins, and ARE repenting from the new sin struggles that you are faced with. Repentance plays a big part in Christianity. Obviously we aren't going to be perfect. But you cannot abuse God's grace by having an attitude/mind set of "OK. I trust you Jesus." End of story, there's no desire to do God's will because "I'm a sinner, I'm not going to be perfect". Do you understand the point I'm trying to make? Romans 6:1 sums this up in one short sentence. Being a Christian is like one big wrestling match with God. "Fight the good fight of faith". Being a Christian means you won't back down no matter how tired, how tough, how confuzzled (confused and puzzled put together), how emotionally disraught, how broken, no matter HOW dry you are, how every smithering of joy is sucked out of you due to hardships, now matter WHAT you will NOT let go! You will NOT run out of the wrestling ring, and give up, you will not recant. You will continue to wrestle with God, and let Him expose your sin struggles, your weaknesses, and you will let Him search your heart, you will let Him mold you into a brick for His church. He will continue to shave off the rough edges until you feel like you can't take it anymore, but He knows how much you can handle and how much it will take for you to get to the point where He wants you to be. He will take His hand and use it like sand paper to soften the rough spots, so that you FIT PERFECTLY in His church, in His kingdom.

There are 2 groups. Only you and God know in which group you belong in. Group A- A disciple of Christ. Group B- One of the crowd that was attracted to Jesus.

Group A is self explanatory.

Group B "One of the crowd that was attracted to Jesus", I'll explain. The crowd that would gather around Jesus treated Jesus like a lucky charm. They wanted Jesus to radically change their lives just like the disciples did but, they don't want the changes Christ is offering them. You see Christ offers Himself. He tells them over and over and over again that He came to "take away the sins of the world". But they don't want their sin taken away. They want Jesus to take away their pain. They want to rub Him like a genie bottle, and get what they want from Him. They want their pain to be taken away. And Jesus basically is telling them: Look if you let me, I can change your life. I can radically change your life so that you see the world through my eyes. I'll take away your sins, but not your pain.

The difference between (the biggest difference) group a and b is that if you are in group a, you are allowing Christ to change your life. He has forgiven you of your sins, and you have put your trust in Him. All of that has happen. Right now Christ is exposing you, shaping you, forming you into who you were created to be in the first place-had Adam and Eve never sinned. That's what Christ does to you if you are in group A. He's molding you in a way that is going to better reflect Him. The molding hurts. It's not like putting a band-aid over a scraped knee. It's like getting run over by a car, and then having to have surgery all over your body in order to "sew you up". It's not even like that. It's exactly like dying, and being resurrected by Christ, in Christ, and being made new.

We (even as Christians) tend to toil, and fumble around blindly for something to bring us satisfaction, to bring us rest. When in reality, we are only restlessly searching, searching, working, working, working, to find something to fill our emptiness. Finding rest in other things will bring you joy for a short period of time. Which cannot be counted as joy. It's the kind of worldly surface(y) joy that lasts for 5 minutes. It's the kind of joy little kids have when they get a new toy (or anyone for that matter), it lasts for a short period of time, until the next "toy" comes around.

I've been toiling restlessly lately. I got out of my daily routine of reading by Bible daily, and praying daily. Instead, I have just been existing, living, breathing short shallow breaths rather then RESTING, TRUSTING, ENJOYING, AND TAKING DEEP BREATHS in Christ!

I struggle with waiting until I have "fixed" myself before going to God and confessing. What goes on in my head when I do this is, "Well I'm not good enough to go to God right now. I'm hideous, horrible, I'm ashamed and broken.." The stupid thing is, I'm NEVER good enough because I'm a sinner. So no matter how I "fix" myself I'm never going to do any amount of fixing that will make me presentable before God.

The hymn Come Ye sinners is one of my favorites. My favorite line from there is, "If you terry til your better you will never come at all" because it's TRUE. I always remind myself of this. And of course Romans 4:5-8 says (to make it brief, simple, and sum it up) that we don't have to fix ourselves. We CAN'T fix ourselves, we don't have to WORRY about fixing ourselves because we are ACCEPTED in Christ because of what CHRIST has done, NOT WHAT YOU AND I HAVE DONE. We don't live in old testament times where we have to constantly make a sacrafice in order to be able to go to God. Back then, that was how they "fixed" themselves. The way how a sacrafice works is this: Instead of killing yourself, because justice must be done, a lamb would take your place. When God would accept your sacrafice, that meant He accepted YOU. That has already been taken care of. Christ sacraficed HIMSELF for US. God accepted His one and only, PERFECT Son, THE perfect sacrafice. Now God can look down at US and He no LONGER sees our sins, but CHRIST'S PERFECT RIGHTEOUSNESS! HE ACCEPTS US.

It is this passage in Romans that I always reflect back to when I am "terrying until I am better". Lately I have. I was waiting, waiting until I get back into the habit of reading my Bible, and praying daily. I was reminded about the line in the hymn Come Ye Sinners, and about how I am accepted in Christ when I was in Church this last Sunday. Only God knows how thankful I am for Sharad and his sermon, and getting up there even though he probably felt really crappy (he's been sick) and probably was really weary bodily, emotionally, maybe even spiritually and yet-he preached a fantastic uncomfortable to sit in sermon that was like a slap in my face, a wake up call, that my soul very VERY much needed. It was like cool water to someone who just had a heat stroke, and died, and then who's corpse never got burried and therefore rotted in the sun, and then after many days it finally rained, and the water burried the corpse. (..that means that it was dang refreshing to my soul-in case you didn't figure that out yet). A better way of putting it is my soul was starved, my tongue thirsty for God's word, and I was feasted, and I drank, after many days of starvation and dehydration. God knows I needed it.

I reflected back to that passage in Romans because a friend was having the same problem..and so I looked up the verse again and was able to encourage her, especially because I was going through the same thing.

THAT my dear readers, is how I rested this Sunday...

I rested in the fact that I am accepted in Christ for what He has done, and that I no longer have to keep toiling restlessly for satisfaction in temporary things that only bring me temporary joy and rest. I no longer have to fix myself. I am completely and utterly accepted by God Almighty because Christ said you know what? I'm going to die for Elisabeth Darcy..

I was weary, beat down, tired, restless, anxious, insecure, doubtful as to whether I was a disciple, yet I stayed in the wrestling ring, and God quieted my soul. He quieted all doubts as to whether I was His, and said, "Come, rest in me, my weary child". (..seriously I'm gonna cry right now..trying not to because it will look really weird to my Dad sitting across from me writing articles) He said be still, and I was still.

Terry no longer my friends, search no more for satisfaction, do not be insecure anymore for you are accepted in Him, come and rest in the One who breathed life into you,

~Elisabeth Darcy~