thoughts on my heart

This has been a really interesting year between myself and the Lord. Quite honestly, it has been a year of tearing down every kingdom I had placed above the knowledge of God. It has really included everything. Relationships, personal dreams, my marriage, my parenting, the roles I play in life, the faith I have grown up with, the faith I want to move in to, the knowledge of God's inspired Word, my inability to tear down areas of pride, my emotions and unrefined feelings, my future, everything. If you can think it up, God decided to tear it down. Basically God just got right smack dab in the middle of my life and totally messed it up. PRAISE YOU GOD!

Through some very hard personal times of conviction and repentance the Lord has started to work in me a mission statement of sorts, to take me through life removed from feeling carried to and fro by my circumstances. To move into a place of steadiness. Stillness if you will, and being resolved to know that God is God and I am most definitely not! That if I am going to continue to move forward with God I have to get this resolved mission statement situated in my being. So, this is what I have come up with...and where I am resting today.

We are here to love the Lord our God with our WHOLE heart, our WHOLE soul and our WHOLE mind and then to love others according to how we love ourselves and how we receive the GREAT love that the Father has lavished on us. My only problem is that I discovered in the last year, shocked of course, that I only have a broken heart, a broken soul and a broken mind to love God with. As well as a broken human nature to love others with and, well lets just face it, with all that in my basket actually being in a place to receive love from my Savior is a foreign concept.

So, how in the world am I suppose to be able to like I said not be carried away by my circumstances, and sometimes that is some serious heartache. Well a couple of weeks ago God revealed this Truth, "Cari,you have to appropriate the blood of my Son over the weak areas of your life."

I have been a believer for 20 years and can say without a shadow of doubt for the first time in my life I know what that means. I was told not too long ago a wonderful truth that goes perfectly with this. "Salvation is received, but satisfaction has to be searched for." Jesus' saving blood washed all over me when I was 8 years old and accepted the gift of Eternal life. But it has been in the last year that I have understood what it means to appropriate that blood over the brokenness in my life. Appropriate it over the ways in which my heart gets broken. Appropriate it over the weary soul that gets tired of crying out. Appropriate it over a very broken mind that plays the tape recorder of condemnation over and over and over again. I have literally had to get to a place where I verbally call out in reminder to myself, "Cari, appropriate the blood. Live saved. Live free."

This is only a bullet point to the testimony the Lord has been growing within me. I have spent a year being reminded that God's actions are all intended to nudge you - lovingly, wisely, persistently - toward the life and character you desire but can't reach without help. I needed help, I need help every day I wake up and decide to believe in God's power to save me from all the brokenness haunting my every moment. That with my willingness to accept God's lavish love I can replace that "haunting" with a fragrant aroma of Beauty!

So, today I am in a place of recognizing that He has been growing a tenacity, a strength, a steadiness on the inside so that I can withstand the overwhelming requirement of my outside calling to be a wife, a mother, a friend, a mentor, a daughter, a sister and a disciple of Christ. That if it requires all that I hold dear...if it requires all my kingdoms....then I surrender all....I surrender all that I might live free and become capable of loving the Lord with my WHOLE heart, my WHOLE soul and my WHOLE mind and then by ACCEPTING that lavish love from the Father be able to spill out in overflow to loving and serving others.

In a nutshell it goes like this..We are here to love the Lord with our whole heart, our whole soul and our whole mind. But we have a broken heart, a broken soul and a broken mind. So we have to take those before the Father so that He can appropriate the Blood of His Son and grow a tenacity, a strength, a steadiness on the inside so that we can withstand the overwhelming requirement of our outside callings.

Love to you today!
Cari