Fight For Your Heart, Conquer the Battle of the Mind

"The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still"- Exodus 14:14

So often I forget how strategic the enemy is, and how deceptive his ways can be when creeping into the depths of our hearts and the thoughts in our minds. Satan is so much more obvious in other countries because they are not made up of such a materialistic society and do not have the high end technology that we have.
In the U.S Satan has to be so much more careful in how he attacks the spirits of those that love his enemy, the King and lover of our souls who we so often forget has authority of our souls. The enemy sees the seal that marks God's children and will go after them in any way he knows how, especially those that are moving and are on fire for the Lord. I guess take it as a good sign in a sense when you face opposition, because you are being reassured that you are right in the middle of God's will, frusturating the crap out of the one that wishes to destroy what you are helping to bring to life.. helping to unveil the truth to those who are blind.. blinded by the evil one.
I have noticed in women especially, including in myself how much Satan attacks our minds, entering into our thoughts and bringing in thoughts of doubt, confusion.. thoughts that say "You are not good enough", thoughts that say that "God doesn't have the best in mind for you", all thoughts that are not from the Lord, and not of your spirit because you are of the Lord, and these are LIES. These thoughts bring anxiety, they are intentionally there to destroy and kill your spirit from being the person that God has created you to be. You are a threat to the enemy and he knows it, so will do anything to keep you from being all that you are made to be, and from keeping your heart alive.
I've learned that just how men struggle visually and have to tame their eyes, so do women need to learn to hold their thoughts captive to the Lord and use scripture to overcome the enemy every time he creeps in with a bad thought, conquer it with the truth.. he has no hold over you if you do not let him. As women we represent more of God's emotion, so it makes sense that he would come after our minds..
Isaiah 26:3 is a great verse.. I encourage you every time you start feeling attacked, or start having thoughts that bring you down, make a concious effort to realize they are not from the Lord, and to pray that God will take hold of those.

Every day you awake, know that you are breathing because Christ is not done with you yet, that He is presently fulfilling His purpose through your life, through your heart. Take notice of your heart and your mind.. give it all to the Lord, for it is His.

"I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe"- Ephesians 1:18

"You will keep perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you"- Isaiah 26:3

"For he himself, is our peace"- Ephesians 1:14

Forget Former Things

"Sometimes without concious realization, our thoughts, our faith, our interests are entered into the past. We talk about other times, other places, other persons & loose our living hold on the present. Sometimes we think if we could just go back in time we would be happy. But anyone who attempts to re-enter the past is sure to be dissapointed. Anyone who as ever revisted the place of his birth after years of absence is shocked by the differences between the way the place actually is, and the way he has remembered if. He may walk along old familiar streets and roads, but he is a stranger in a strange land. He has thought of this place as home, but he finds he is no longer here even in spirit. He has gone onto a new and different life and in thinking longily of the past he has been given thought and interest to something that no longer really exists. This being true of the physical self, how much more true is it of the spiritual self?"- McBride

I love this quote... I love that McBride reminds me of what Jesus talks about all the time in the bible, how His Father, is the God of "I AM", which means God is with you in, God is your reality that surrounds you in the present, not God of "I WAS" of your past. This is so comforting to know that God is with us always, every moment of our lives, right NOW.

I know also that I will take this journey that McBride talks about, the feeling of returning to a place that has been your home for so much of your life. I know one day soon I will be leaving, one day yes for eternity to my real home, but also returning back to my town where I have grown up, the place that has many stories of my childhood, and teenage years, the place of comfort and security, where I feel like anywhere I go there will be someone I know.. a place I know will be hard to leave. I fear leaving for the sake of missing my family and friends, but I also fear what I will feel if I don't leave, the huge part of my heart that desires to explore new places, meet new people, feel challenged & having faith that God will provide and show up in incredible ways, and also to see more of this beautiful earth He created for us to enjoy.
Donald Miller's quote sums it up completely: "And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you:
Leave." – Donald Miller “Through Painted Desserts”

Books I Recommend

"Here & Now"- Henri Nouwen
"Blue Like Jazz"-Donald Miller
"Searching for God Knows What"- Donald Miller
"Through Painted Deserts"-Donald Miller
"Waking the Dead"-John Eldredge
"Wild at Heart"-John Eldredge
"Captivating"-John Eldridge
"The Art of Being"- Constance Rhodes
"Grace Walk"- Steve McVey
"Walk On"- Steve Stockman
"Velvet Elvis"- Rob Green
"Soul Cravings"- Erwin McManus

Take Notice

I grieved for the heart tonight… I grieved for the sake of loss… of missing someone that you can’t replace… a friend of mine lost his father and I thought the only joy he must feel right now is knowing his father is in Heaven… and I thought how even in the midst of knowing this there must be a void… and how wrong it is that children have to watch their parent suffer…. I got mad at sin, I got mad that because of sin cancer entered this world… I thanked God that nothing even death can’t separate us from Him, and the desperation for every human soul to have the peace of knowing where your eternity lies.. for I am anxious enough, that if I didn’t know that I would go crazy….

I had a conversation today with a friend about relationships.. and how when God allows two people to come together, that in Him there is no reason to break up, yet people do all the time for reasons that don’t always make sense, other than it all comes down to sin… somewhere in someone’s heart something was not right…. Christian or not a heart will suffer ache, loss, nostalgia, a tear that will take some time to heal, leaving it a little more jaded than before.
And although the heart still has consequences to the rollercoaster that it has been on and simply is just in need of some to rest… to have God’s healing.. God allows heart ache, but He is also the creator of healing, and in His timing He heals and restores your heart so it can love again, and grant you the grace to fully love someone again, love them well.. and have the courage to let a person love you in return for all you really are…

I don’t know how God does it… His heart bleeds from us all the time, yet he takes risks with us every second.. from the day He created us and gave us life He took the risk in giving us a choice… a choice to love and a choice to choose to love Him in return… this leaves me in awe of Him.. yet He is the creator of Love, a love that is incomprehensible , a love that is unconditional, unlike everything else in this world.

His love that will never change no matter what we do or not do, His love has nothing to do with how well we perform, or what we look like, or what our personality is like, or even how good of a person or Christian for that matter we are… His love is steadfast and eternal.. all He asks by demonstrating this for us, is that we Love well.. Love others that He has put into our lives, enjoy them for how they are uniquely designed… and by doing this we experience God’s love, the pieces of Heaven that come to us in the smallest moments…. A love that I will never be without, a relationship I will never stop fighting for…. nor will ever loose, because He has never stopped fighting for you and I, nor will ever give up on our hearts…

..No fear in Love...

"I want to be known and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me. My love, do I know you? What is this greater gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? What do we not connect? Will we be forever in fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow word, come into the knowing of each other? Is this Gods way of meriting grace, of teaching us of the labyrinth of His love for us, teaching us, in degrees, that which He is sacrificing to join ourselves to Him? Or better yet, has He formed our being fractional so that we might conflude one great hope, plodding and sighing and breathing into one another in such a great push that we might break through into the known and being loved, only to cave into a greater perdition and fall down at His throne still begging for our acceptance? Begging for our completion?"
- Donald Miller "Blue Like Jazz" Chapter on Love


"Fear" by Sarah Mclachlan

"Morning smiles
Like the face of a newborn child
Innocent unknowing
Winters end
Promises of a long lost friend
Speaks to me of comfort

But I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
Here in this lonely place
Tangled up in our embrace
Theres nothing Id like
Better than to fall
But I fear I have nothing to give

Wind in time
Rapes the flower trembling on the vine
Nothing yields to shelter it
From above
They say temptation will destroy our love
The never ending hunger

But I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
Here in this lonely place
Tangled up in our embrace
Theres nothing Id like
Better than to fall
But I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
I have nothing to give
We have so much to lose..."

so I know my friend Josh would find this annoying that I just put an exerpt from a chapter up here and a song lyric, but I felt these two went beautifully together... from what this song means,and the hope in love that Donald Miller talks about I think is a beautiful combination that is very inspiring.

Greatest Conviction

Being the Beloved

...in such a perfectionist driven society, in our American culture, and even in the Christian culture where it seems especially as a woman that the lie "You are not enough" whether you are not beautiful enough, smart enough, Godly enough, skinny enough, funny enough, etc.. is constantly told to you through the media, peers, churches all the time, at the end of the day it is the most freeing feeling to know that as a daughter of Christ that you are are already loved unconditionally.

This is so powerful to me, especially because so many other types of love are conditional. It is such a weakness even as a Christian fully knowing that I am fully known and fully loved unconditionally-- to still desire to feel valued, liked, loved & worthy of love in the eyes of those who are only have the capacity to, outside of Christ- love conditionally, and I realize the danger in this temptation, especially as a people pleaser of making idols out of those around me and desiring their validation.

In the book "Here & Now" by Henri Nouwen, he talks about how Jesus was tempted by Satan to prove that that He was worth being loved. The "tempter" said to him do something "useful" ( turning stones into bread), or "sensational"(throwing yourself down from a high tower), or do something that brings you "power"(paying satan homage). I feel like we too are tempted by Satan every day to do these things in order to win admiration and affection from others, but like Jesus, so we should too should respond to these things by saying" I don't have to prove that I am worthy of love. I am the Beloved of God, the One on whom God's favor rests" . This freedom of not having to prove to others we are worthy of love, frees us to be ourselves, to love others deeply, to have compassion, to not judge, and to not fear being judged.....

If I've learned anything in the past year, especially after the ending of a relationship where I felt parts of my heart were publically exposed & naturally judged -- I've learned it's impossibly to make everyone happy, that you cannot and do not have to explain or justify yourself or your heart to everyone, and that no one no matter what their authority may be their judgement is still manipulated by the world. God Himself is the only person's opinion you should care about, and after putting Him first, He will take care of the details in everything else.

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves"- Victor Hugo