Tetelestai

This week has been the rockiest I have ver experienced. On a daily basis I have gone from hearing God really clearly, to feeling like I have hit rock bottom. Every night I had to remind myself that hope would come in the morning. God has a funny way of preparing you for things. This weekend I attended the Passion Conference in Atlanta. It wasn't until the second day of being there that I realized that not only were we having sessions in the very room where I had been saved, it was also my spiritual birthday, January 17th. It amazed me all weekend that just as I was most looking for solid ground, He would bring me back to the place where it all began, where I knew I had something to stand on.
If you are wondering, "tetelestai" is the greek word that Christ said while dying on the cross, translated into English as "It is finished". The coolest thing about this word is it's tense: perfect past progressive, that means that the action is done and the effects are still taking place. As I learned from a song I wrote about last post, "it is finished" did not just mean that Christ's life on Earth was finished. It meant that He had finished Satan, and taken down all of the demons, and that all of my fears, and insecurities, and worries were finished too. This is what Loui Giglio spoke about on the very first night, and it was a wonderful reminder about what I heard from God last week.
All of the worship was amazing and powerful and it was wonderful. But I had a song stuck in y head all weekend that they never played, but all the same I sang it non-stop. If you haven't heard Good Father by Housefires, go and listen to it now. It is such a wonderful song, with a beautiful picture of God as a good Father. Over and over again, God kept pointing out lyrics of this song that said this or that about Him, and it was something that I could hold on to.
All of the speakers were wonderful, but the one who really got to me was Christine Caine. And, to be honest, the main point of her message wasn't what really hit me. (Now don't get me wrong, she spoke powerfully.) But as part of the beginning of her message, she talked about the calling of Elisha, and she started a little ahead of that story to talk about how after Elija had just killed 300 Baal profits, he received a message from Jezebel that was so discouraging that he turned and ran. She talked about how people now will still get messages from the depths of hell to discourage them from that God is doing. I quickly realized that that was what my last week had been. Every time God would speak love, the devil would speak hatred. For every "I love you" there was a "you are not good enough" and for every "I am with you" there was a "you are alone". After running from Jezebel, Elija went to a mountain, and then comes the story of the earth quake, the wind, and the fire, but God was in the gentle whisper. This brought me back a one to the Good Father lyrics, "I have heard the tender whisper of love in the dead of night, and You tell me that You're pleased, and that I'm never alone."
This was particularly comforting because I really did feel like I hit rock bottom this week, but the constant flow of love and hope at passion was undeniable.
This brings me to the thing that I have felt the most for the past week: alone. It was either that I really felt alone, or that I simply felt like there was no one I could tell that I was feeling so unloved. So, God blessed me with two wonderful things: three roomies who I know I can share anything with, and a wonderful family group that I could not have asked for more from. They said at the beginning of our first community group that God had placed us into these families by His will, and that He had a plan. He most certainly did. These eight people were all a perfect combination.

(Teniqua isn't pictured because she didn't want to lay down on the ground)

Who knew that I could meet brand new people and love them so quickly. They were all wonderful, and exactly what I need. We were people who met for the first time with the mindset of where are here to talk about Christ, instead of at home where you meet and then reach that point. I went from feeling very alone to feeling like I had just the right people there with me. It was so wonderful and really unexplainable. 

The love and the friendship and the fellowship and the good news flowed from every direction and hit me when I needed them most. 

the final lyrics to Good Father are "Love so deniable I can hardly speak, Peace so unexplainable, I can hardly think, yet You call me deeper still into love." 

All of my fears, doubts, and insecurities are finished, while they still may temporarily hurt, I know that they are ultimately Tetelestai. 

"You're a good, good Father, it's who you are, and I'm loved by You, and that's who I am."

Never Felt More Secure Knowing Your Heart Lord

I found out at noon today that I was deferred from Georgia Tech. But really, today wasn’t so bad. Up until today, I was really worried about finding out, because I was at a rehearsal with a lot of people who don’t know me very well, and I didn’t want to either get really excited or be really upset in front of them, but I ended up that that was the perfect place for me to be today. I found out as lunch began, and I had some really great people who all gave me hugs and encouragement, even when I just stood there staring at the page for ten minutes. Another good thing about being at rehearsal was that I only got about twenty minutes to be sad, and then I had to get things done and had to be around a bunch of people, which was good, because I would not have dealt with it quite as well if I had sat at home alone all afternoon, or even worse, with my parents.

            Another good thing about being at rehearsal was the lovely two-hour drive that I got all alone to get back home. (Every bit of that was sarcastic.) I hate being alone, I love people and I want to be around them all of the time. Being around people is my favorite thing, and it always makes me happy. So, I don’t like being alone, and I don’t like it even more when I am sad. But, the nice thing about having this 24/7 God of ours is that we never really have to be alone. So, today I would like to walk you through the ways God spoke through my worship playlist on my way home.

1.     Song of Moses by Housefires

This is one of my favorite songs. Scripture talks about two songs that we will sing in heaven: one is “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.” And the other is Moses’s Song. The lyrics go like this:

“Oh praise the Lord, our Mighty Warrior

Praise the Lord, the Glorious One

By His hand we stand in victory

By His name we overcome”

But it wasn’t any part of the original song that got to me, it was a part at the end when the singer abandoned the lyrics and just sang what was on his heart. And God was speaking through him answers to everything I had been thinking for the past few hours: every fear, every insecurity, and every thought of God lacking goodness. He sang:

“It is finished

Any doubt about my future is finished.

Any thought that I don’t love myself, it’s finished.

Any thought that You’re not that good is finished.”

Just as I had been thinking that I wouldn’t go where I wanted to, that I wasn’t good enough, and that He wasn’t really being good to me; He answered everything.

2.     Never Been So Free by Housefires

The second line of this song is “I have never been so secure knowing Your heart Lord.” And that was exactly how I felt as God began answering my questioning this afternoon. He has a plan, and I am secure in it. This was about the time that I began seeing that He had pretty good timing with these song choices, and maybe that He has pretty good timing with other things too.

3.     Messiah by Phil Wickham

I got to the middle of this song just as I was starting to worry, and thus cry, just because of the way the day had gone. There then came a line that talked about how there will be no more tears or sadness in heaven, and that was all that was needed to pull me back together.

4.     Wedding Day by The City Harmonic

This song didn’t really say anything specific, but it is a song that I love, and I think God just wanted to give me a breather with all of this revelation.

5.     Rise by Housefires (I’m noticing a partner here)

This song came on as I was driving through Atlanta, the sun had only just set, and the sky was a perfect blue and the clouds were a perfect pink, and the skyline was lit and beautiful. I said out loud, “I love this city”, during the intro to this song, and then the first words were “love will never fail”. So, wow, that happened, and it was cool. And over and over again God kept showing me that His timing is perfect.

6.     Great is the Lord by Housefires

This song came on while I was still driving through the city, and it got to the end when everyone has been singing, “You are holy, You are holy, You are holy, crowned with wonder, Majesty.” And then they stopped signing that but the music continued, and it felt really right to be singing, “You are holy” alone, in that city.

7.     Divine Romance by Phil Wickham

I think this was a little bit take-a-breather-because-this-has-been-intense and a little bit I-love-you-and-you-need-to-stop-questioning-that.

8.     Multiplied by NEEDTOBREATH

This song has been stuck in my head for a few weeks, because it was the background song for the recap video for my church’s Peru trip last year, and I think I have watched this video at least once everyday for the past few weeks. (You can find the video here: http://jfbcperu.typepad.com scroll down, it’s the second video.)I am going on this trip this year, and this song was just a reminder that God is doing things for me now so that I can share His love with the people of Peru later. (As I went back to watch this video as I wrote, I noticed the verse Maddie talked about: Romans 8:28)

9.     It Is Well With My Soul by Phil Wickham

If you don’t know the story of this hymn, the man that wrote it lost his four daughters on a ship that sank while traveling. When he followed to meet his wife, the ship he was on passed near where his family’s ship had sunk, while looking at the grave of his daughters he wrote, “It is well, it is well, with my soul”. It was amazing how God brought this story to my mind

10. Let the Peace by Housefires

This song came on right as I was pulling into my neighborhood and really worrying about what was going to happen when I walk through the door and had to see my parents. I didn’t want to disappoint them, and I didn’t want to cry in front of them, but both of those seemed like pretty likely possibilities at the time. Then this song came on, and I only heard the first line, but I did “let the peace of the Holy Spirit fall around” me. And everything was ok. (If you were wondering, this song is 3 minutes and 21 seconds of “let the peace of the Holy Spirit fall around you”)

God has perfect timing and a perfect plan. When I sat down to write this post, I wanted to open up my playlist on my phone to reference while I was writing. However, my phone decided to freeze up just as I was getting to the playlist. Because of that I pulled up Spotify on my computer, and when you do that you can see a live feed of what your friends are listening to, and in the time it has taken me to write this, several secular songs have popped up on my feed in just the right order for God to tell me one more thing: “Do you not realize? I am your protector. I have possession of your heart.” If I had gotten accepted today, I wouldn’t have listened to this playlist or learned anything from it or written this post from which, hopefully, you are learning something. We serve a God who controls the universe; all of this is in His hands.

Post Script. Housefires is the name of the band that plays at the new church I have been attending where God told me that He is doing things in Atlanta and He wants me to be a part of them. I still think that that is what He wants for my next step, but He is doing it on His time.

Unsteady and Trembling

Can I just say, it is very cold outside, and this hotel room should be warmer than it is. (That would be why I am trembling.)
But, let me get to why I am unsteady. I have been wanting to go to the Georgia Institute of Technology for about 18 years now, or at least for as long as I can remember. Both of my parents went there, and my grandfather went there, I love Atlanta, and I love the people.
However, about two months ago, David Platt came to my church and spoke, and he said something that really got my wheels turning, "Stop living like this is your home." As Christians, we know that this is not our home, this is just a temporary mission before we get to the real home for our souls. So, what we do here, other than God's will for our lives, is not nearly as important as we make it out to be. After he said this, my brain started working, as it does, and somehow, I arrived at the conclusion that I needed to go to the University of Georgia, and that Athens needed to be my mission field. Now, that freaked me out, that was so far out of my plan that I was really worried, and part of me is still not sure if that was just me arriving at my worst case scenario. I decided that Athens must be my Nineveh, and if I didn't want to be swallowed by a fish, I should start applying.
All of this thought process managed to happen from the time it took me to walk from the sanctuary to my car in the parking lot. So, for the 30 minute drive home I just prayed. I prayed, and prayed, and prayed, and cried a little, and prayed some more. I was so unsure of God's plan and I had no idea what to do. I finally just said "God, if this is what You really want, I need something to tell me that really clearly." And I got home and walked through the door, and heard a football game on, and I thought, "This is it, that is probably my dad watching the Falcons, and their colors are red and black just like Georgia's and that must be it, because football is so important to me and to where I go to college, and this must be my sign." But I walk in the living room, and no one is there, which is weird because we aren't the kind of family that just turns the TV on for background noise, we turn it on to watch something, and then we turn it off. So, the TV should not have been on. The next thing I noticed was that it was not the Falcons playing, but the Saints, whose colors are gold and white, just like Georgia Tech's.
I know this seems foolish, and like I was just seeing signs because I wanted to, but I love football, and I intend to go to every home game, wherever I go, and I had already decided that this was a sign, one way or the other, before I even walked into the room, it's the kind of things that only I would notice, and they were things that had no reason to happen just on a whim. I really do believe that this was God trying to tell me that it was ok, and that I was going in the right direction. For that whole week, I continued praying for God to show me something that really undeniably pointed me the right way.
Recently, I have been attending a new church at night, and it is the church that I will go to if I end up at Tech, and I went for the second time the sunday a week after my first thoughts of Georgia. It was Thanksgiving week, so my friends who go to the sister church in Athens joined me, and were telling me about the awesome things God is doing in Athens.
The whole beginning of the service, during worship, I just kept praying, "God, I need you to tell me if You are doing things in Atlanta that You want me to be a part of." and right after I prayed that, the guy who was preaching that night came on stage and started his sermon with "God is doing things in this city, and He wants you to be a part of them." I actually have written in my notebook from that night, "Wow, that was really clear." So, for the next few weeks, I was totally sure that Atlanta was where God wanted me, and that the Georgia Scare (as I am calling it) was just an Abraham and Isaac scenario, where He was just trying to tell me that I had made where I go to college more important than Him.
I was really sure of that until our Senior Girls Bible Study this morning, the video we watched was all about how the things of this life don't last and the treasures that we store up here are just wasting our time. This got me thinking again. (I do hate when I think). And I began wondering if I had just been pushing away God's plan for m life of what I want. This thought stuck in my head, and then I saw a weird thing happen: a devotion that I wrote for my church's Dominican Republic trip last year popped up on my recent document's list, even though I hadn't opened it in almost a year. I wet through and read the devotion, and it was all about how God has a plan, and for that plan, sometimes God calls you to do things you are uncomfortable with. That got me thinking a little more, and throughout the day, little things here and there have been making me think I should bring back up this conversation with Him about applying to Georgia.
Tonight, I went so far as to open up the Georgia application to begin looking at it. But, when I got to the web page, something felt very wrong, and it wasn't the same type of wrong I felt when thinking about going to Georgia after 18 years of loving Tech, it was something very different and weird, like nothing I have felt before, it was like I was going to be sick, and that I was just really not ok with what was happening. I promise you, I know the feeling of "I don't want to apply to Georgia" and this was not the same thing. So, now I am really confused, and really unsure, and really unsteady, and I don't know what to do.
I really don't know what God wants for me. I just keep going back to how clear it was when the pastor said exactly what I had been praying, all the same words. I was really sure then, but now I'm not so sure anymore. I guess I'll just have to wait for His timing to let me know. I probably shouldn't have prayed for patience that one time, because He seems to dole out all the more waiting when I do. I'll let you know how things go down, I just have to wait until I know first.
P.S. I find out if I got into Georgia Tech in 11 hours and 2 minutes.
P.P.S. I have yet to have a sign that really clearly pointed me in the direction of Georgia.