Tiff and Sarah (For Amaris)

This post is especially for my dear friend Amaris who has been bugging me to put pictures up on my blog again. My friend Tiffany asked me if I could take some pictures of her. I told her I hadn't really been taking pictures for a while, but I could try. We brought my sister Sarah along to make Tiffany smile and to get some shots of them together as well. Hope you enjoy them:)

Check This Out

I know I just posted a video yesterday, but this is another one that was a huge blessing to me! If you've ever struggled with God in the OT, you need to watch this.

Here is the link: http://www.digma.com/red-hot-love/?video=play

The First Time

A good friend of mine shared this song with me this week as we were on the bus driving back to school. I hadn't heard it before, but it was such a blessing, I thought I would share it with everyone else!

So many times I feel like I understand God's grace, His love, and that I've heard it all before; let me learn something new. But this song reminded me that God, His love, grace, and character really are an inexhaustible ocean. You can never come to the end of infinity, can you?

I pray that I won't shut Him down in the mornings, thinking I already know it all and that I need to move on to something else.

Lord, teach me and take me deeper in Your love, so that it's as if I'm seeing it for the first time.

Nobody Vs. Somebody

Somebody I love emailed this to me. I'm not sure where she got it, but it touched me, so I thought I would share it.

"The King of the universe gave up all of his power, honor, the glory of heaven to live on earth. 

His supernatural splendor was buried deep, so that no one would follow Him because of it. 

He wanted nothing to do with looking good or being popular.  

He wanted only the appeal of truth - real, heavenly truth-to grab people's interest. 

He wanted people to accept Him because they recognized Him from the words of Scripture."

Yesterday, I found myself praying, "Lord, make me content to be a nobody." I want so badly to be noticed, to matter, to be needed, to be somebody.  

But when I read this paragraph, a contrasting desire is awakened, a desire to be like Jesus. Jesus didn't strive to be noticed, to prove He mattered, to be somebody. That wasn't His goal. He knew He was His Father's Son and that His Father loved Him, and so being in the center of His Father's will was what mattered. He didn't have to do anything else to prove to anyone else that He was worth noticing. If nobody noticed, but He was still in the center His Father's will, then it was all OK because that's what mattered. 

I want to be like that. I want to be able to honestly say that I want nothing to do with looking good or being popular. I want to be able to say I'm my Father's daughter. He loves me and I love Him and so being in the center of His will is all that matters. I don't need to do anything else to prove to anyone else that I'm somebody worth noticing. If I'm in the will of Him who loves me, but nobody else notices, then it's all OK, because that is what matters.

But I find myself trying to be noticed all the time. So I pray...

Lord, make me not only content, but only desiring to be a nobody to everyone except You. 

My love is not my own
It all belongs to You
And after all You've done the least that I
Can do
Is live my life
In every part
Only to please my Father's heart

--Excerpt from "My Father's Heart" by Rachel Lampa