Update

So I know that this month I haven't been updating at all, it has been a CRAZY month!

I was able to go on our mobile team for a week, as we traveled south to Hermasillo, Mexico and shared God's love to those that we met. It was amazing to see God open doors that we had no idea he would!
We were able to share in a school and were blessed to see heaps of children and teenagers give their lives to the Lord to serve him! These are some pics from that:

We just saw off 120 people that came from all over the states to help build five homes for needy families here in TJ! And amazingly enough, someone from the team gave their life to Christ and was baptized in our fountain out front at the end of the weekend! Needless to say, that what we do here isn't just for the outside comminity but that God wants to get ahold of the hearts of those that come to serve the community as well! Light is being spread everywhere, because that is how our father rolls :) God has been doing amazing things and I am so excited to start the new year strong with him and in this ministry!

What this next year holds for me:

I was asked to be staff for the next discipleship training school that we are having at the base beginning next week! It's a 5 month program that disciples a group of people that move to our base and let God teach them, change their lives, and show them how they can be used by God to help those around and show the love of Christ!

This next 5 months is going to be so busy! But, I am so thankful for the amazing opportunity I have to pour out Father God's love to the students, and to the people we meet as we minister in the surrounding community.

So I start bright and early tomorrow morning, and I am thrilled!

Thank you again for walking with me on this journey to light up the dark, and bring the kingdom of heaven here to earth!

Love

I have been thinking about this topic and trying to understand it most of my life. What is love? What does it feel like? What does it look like?

I'm still young, but I feel that life has taught me rather quickly through many trials and painful experiences just what this is supposed to look like. What true love is and what the world has tried to pass off as a sad excuse for the word.

I often quote a couple sayings that I've picked up along my journey, that really have shaped what I believe love is. One of them says, "you can like a person because of who they are, but you love a person because of who YOU are."

Love is a position, an action, a decision. You become love and are therefore able to love another. The bible says love is patient, kind, good, doesn't envy or boast, isn't proud or rude or self-seeking....
Love isn't self-seeking.... It always perseveres.

Not many of these traits of love are seen in this world today, not even in the church. We've lost the vision of what it means to love a person. we often "fall out of love" in this culture, and divorce is just as common in the church now as it is out of the church. We don't even understand marriage, we expect our partner to fulfill the deep needs in us for love, instead of going into it with the understanding that we are called to serve and love them. So for so many of us, our love is selfish. We want the easy way, the emotions that make it easy to treat someone the way that we are called to treat them. We find it easy to love those who are loving toward us, but do we step it up when they are NOT loving toward us and love them still the same? Treat them kindly when they haven't treated us that way? Refused to give up on them?

The only way to understand love is to look at the one who IS love, Jesus Christ.  It's really heartbreaking to me to know that if we have so much trouble truly loving the ones that should be easiest to love, how would we do with our enemies? Jesus loved those and forgave those who were murdering him.

Love truly is a position, an attitude that we become. We learn to love, and i think that the only person we can learn to love from is the one who is love.

I've been reading this book called "tortured for Christ". It's a book written by the founder of an organization that brings awareness of the persecuted church... This man spent 14 years being tortured in a communist prison in Romania for Jesus. The stories he tells are incredible and horrifying... And so very real for a very large part of the body of Christ. Though, as I have read this book I see something that we western world Christians cannot fathom... They learn to love those who are torturing them. The stories that he tells of how they were able to love those and serve those who killed their own family members or tortured them, are so very inspiring to me.

Love is more than we have made it to be. And this world is in desperate need for the true love that we are called to become.

But the deepest revelation I have had about love is not in the understanding what it is, but in understanding where we go to get it, become it, and live it. 

There is only one source for our need of love, and that is God. If you would have told me that a year ago I would have laughed. I did not believe that and struggled with understanding how an unseen God could fill the gaping hole in my soul and that deep need for love.

It was not until I really understood that no person would ever satisfy my soul, that I began to pursue my father in heaven for that need... And to my astonishment, was satisfied.  And it has freed me to love those around me without needing back from them. It has freed me to actually love.

More and more everyday I understand what the looks like and become more of what my father created me to be. Not taking but giving to others, thinking about how I can serve and love them instead of how I can get my need for love met. Every day I grow in this, and it's only going to get better.


SO this is my encouragement: Get to know the God who is love, get your need for that love met in him.
Because we are called to serve and give to those around us, and the only way we can do that is if we are being filled by the one who can give us what we need to pour out.


I pray he gives you this revelation so that you may understand this beautiful truth.