To Know You More [11/26/13]

Heavenly Father, 

I want to know you more. I want to discover more of you - more of your character - that I may truly mean it when I say "I love you, Lord." I desire to fall deeply in love with you. I desire for you to be on my mind all day long, I wish to seek you in every waking moment and dream of you as I sleep. Reveal to me your character; help me get to know you! Father, show me who you are through scripture, through testimonies, through nature, through all of your creations. Show me, so that I can fall more and more in love with you with every passing day. 

In Your name, 

Amen. 

For the past couple of months, this has been my prayer. I want to know him more and more because as I do, I believe I will fall deeper in love with him and he will continue to surpass the limited human expectations I have placed on him. As I have been praying this prayer, he has truly been revealing himself to me. He has revealed many of his characteristics that I had previously heard of, but had not really known or understood.

Most recently, God revealed more of himself to me through the book of Deuteronomy. Specifically, through chapters 28 and 30 when Moses knows he is soon to be taken by the Lord and he speaks to the Israelites the commandments, blessings and curses. I encourage you to read them now :)

In chapter 28, what God showed me was his wrath against sin. Moses is speaking of what happens when the commands are obeyed and when they are disobeyed. First, the blessings are spoken of in the first 14 verses. But then, the curses are described from verse 15 to verse 68. The heavy emphasis of what happens to those who disobey the Lord stirred up a new fear in me as I sat in my bed reading. The wrath of God follows sin/the sinner everywhere it goes. Wherever you go, whatever you do, whatever you desire. Anything you take pleasure in or find joy in, will be taken away. As I read line after line, there was only one thought in my head: God hates sin. This passage is when the fear of the Lord began to make much more sense to me. But we'll get back to that later.

Now. Jumping to Deuteronomy 30, I found hope, and another characteristic of the Lord! Two chapters ago, Moses had been describing the blessings that will be given to those who obey, and the curses that fall open those who don't. But in chapter 30, he begins to describe what happens to those who return to the Lord!

Deuteronomy 30:1-4

And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse,

which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among

all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, 

and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey

his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart 

and all your soul,

then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you,

and he will gather you again from all the peoples where

the Lord your God has scattered you.

If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven,

from there the Lord your God will gather you, and 

from there he will take you. 

Our God is a compassionate, forgiving and gracious God! For even those who have gone to the lowest of lows, who have strayed the furthest and who have hid the longest have still not gone low enough, far enough, or long enough to be out of God's reach. If, and when, we choose to return to the Lord, he receives us! He does not reject us and leave us, but accepts us and guides us back to the right path. For in verse 6 it says, "and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live."

He himself guides us because he desires for us to turn back to him. He desires for us to love him and trust in him! This desire is shown in verse 14 when it says, "But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it." This very verse is later quoted by Paul in Romans 10:8, but in it he weaves in the gift of the new covenant: Jesus Christ. If we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, then we are saved! Just as Moses and Paul say, to be saved is not an impossible feat. In fact, God has made it very achievable for us because he loves us. He is such a merciful God.

He revealed so much of himself to me through these passages, and as I continued to research and seek, there was more that he revealed. The next thing he helped me to better understand was what it means to fear the Lord. This fear was explained through a sermon I was listening to that described it in a way that made it much clearer!

I'm going to paint a picture for you, so imagine it with me :)

You have some well-earned vacation time and you've gone on a trip to see Niagara Falls. It's your first time going and you're very, very excited as you have heard so much about it but never had the opportunity to witness the majestic beauty with your own two eyes. As you approach the waterfalls you can hear the water crashing down and you can't wait anymore, so you run to the railing! You stand on that little cement block the railing is built on and you lean slightly over the railing to get a better view of the breathtaking waterfalls. But suddenly, since you were so caught up in the moment, you realize you've leaned a little too far. You feel yourself losing balance and you know you're about to fall in. That's when the thought, "I'm about to die," jumps into your head. (If you've ever had a near-death incident, you know what I'm talking about.) But as soon as the thought crosses your mind, somebody grabs you and brings you back to safety. You grab on to them, but you haven't forgotten the sound of the crashing water, the feel of the cool wind on your face, the distance from the railing to the water. Your legs are still trembling and you still feel the fear from what almost happened even though you know you're safe. You grab onto the person who saved you and you never want to let them go.

This is what fearing the Lord is like. As sinners, we were destined for the wrath of God (remember the anger God has towards sin in Deuteronomy 28) - a life of misery and separation from the creator. But the Lord loves us and because of this love, he gave us the choice to choose life over death by accepting and believing in Jesus Christ. This is a gift that I have taken for granted... One that I want to appreciate more, and that has been another one of my prayers. I pray that God will allow me to realize what he saved me from! I believe that as I begin to see and realize what I was rescued from, I will love the Lord my God more and more.

Day by day, I learn more about the one who rescued me. I'm continuously learning and I'm excited to share with you what I'm learning :) Let's share together as we learn more and more about our creator! Don't be afraid to comment, message me, talk to me in person, or whatever method of communication you prefer.

Thanks for reading!

-kjoosaurus out!

Where is the center of your life? [06/16/13]

Dear friends,

I hope you have all been well! And happy Father's day to all the wonderful fathers out there! I'm a little sad to be separated from my own father on this special day, but thank the Lord for technology! I could talk to him on the phone all day if I wanted! (More like if he wanted... which he doesn't.) But that is okay! I hope you all have an amazing day today filled with very special time with your families :)

Today, I would like to share with you a couple of verses that have been speaking to me in the past couple of days. You see, I'm preparing to go to Haiti in August and as we train together as a team, we are supposed to memorize a whole pile of bible verses, which is an excellent idea, but I have a very unfortunate memory. I've memorized next to nothing and no matter how hard I try, it just won't stick! But they've still been speaking to me. :)

Romans 12:1
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your act of spiritual worship."

Galatians 2:20
"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

The life I had previously lived had been a Kristen-centered life. What was the purpose of my life? Earn money, buy a car, buy a house, buy clothes, buy food, be popular, be funny, be "loved," be famous, be fit... and the list goes on and on. These are the only things I wanted in life and I worked hard for them. I earned a lot of money in high school and I was able to buy many different objects, but I got bored of every single one of them. I also had many friends in high school, but I was never satisfied. I wanted more. I wanted them to love me the MOST. I wanted to be everybody's best friend.

I was, and still am, very sinful. My heart was so full of sin and pride... But at the time, I didn't realize the extent of it. Even now, I am still realizing every day exactly how sinful I really am, and it makes me all the more thankful for the mercy God poured out onto us. Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever realized how merciful our God truly is?

In Romans, Paul is urging us, but not telling us, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God. He is exhorting us to offer our lives to God. I was reading a commentary on this verse and it was explaining how the greek word for spiritual is logikos. But derived from logikos is also the English word logical - which is normally associated with the mind. The definition is a little confusing, but it makes sense when you put it into context. When it says "this is your spiritual act of worship," it makes sense for the word logikos to be inserted there. For it should be logical that since God has shown us mercy, we would offer our bodies as living sacrifices to him! He has freed us from our old masters... So now that we are free, why would we continue to serve our old masters?

Just as Galatians says, we have been given this new life to live where Christ lives in us! We are now in union with Christ - both actively and passively. Further on in Galatians (5:13-6:10), it speaks of both walking in the Spirit and being led by the Spirit. It is not only one or only the other, but it is both. Christ now lives in us, but we now also live by faith in the Son of God!

Amen to that! We have been freed from our old masters and are now able to serve our merciful God with our lives. We are able to walk in the Spirit and be led by the Spirit! I am truly so grateful that God has allowed my eyes to be opened to his great works. Every single time I heard the truth of how a God sent his one and only son to die on a cross for an undeserving human... I feel nothing but overwhelming thankfulness in my heart and the desire to give everything I am to my creator. How blessed are we, dear friends, to be able to serve such a wonderful God. I don't want to sit around and live for myself anymore!

Brothers and sisters, may we learn to love like our creator! May we learn to die to ourselves every single day and live for God! May we learn to love one another selflessly!

Much love. :)

-kjoosaurus out!

Broken Down Walls [5/28/12]

Hello there!

Tonight, I was able to experience a beautiful moment with my own mother. For a few days, we have been  talking about how we want to pray with each other, but it didn't happen until tonight! Of course, I was feeling lazy once again, so I almost backed out of it. I didn't feel like getting out my bible and discussing it with her. For some reason, while we were reading the bible, I kept getting annoyed of her as well. It was extremely odd because I had absolutely no reason to be annoyed by her, and it was really distracting me from reading God's word!

Either way, I just prayed to God that he would help me. I prayed for him to cast away all of the distractions, and right away, they disappeared! I was able to focus on the word of God, and I was able to freely discuss the book with my Mom! :)

Then, as we were praying, an even more amazing thing happened.

To explain a bit, lately, God has been asking me to call out to him while I'm in prayer. I often pray at night when everybody is sleeping, so my prayers happen to be whispers. Yet, every time I prayed, God kept asking me to call out to him. He just wanted me to yell out his name! Although I knew this, I used the excuse of it being too late at night to stop myself from calling out his name. But tonight, as I was praying with my Mom, she was praying for me when she started to say, "Lord, cast out this spirit of heaviness. Kristen, just call out to God. He wants you to call out to him! Kristen! Call out to him!"

Of course, I realized then how much there is blocking the path between me and God. He has been wanting to get closer to me recently, but I've been allowing myself to be brought down and distracted... Before my Mom even said this, I was wanting so badly to call out his name! I wanted to yell out! "JESUS! JESUS!" But there was something in my way... God definitely wanted me to pray with my Mom tonight, because tonight, I finally called out to him. Slowly, very slowly, I'm getting closer and closer to God.

I can still feel the clutter of stuff that's in the way, but I felt so much freer tonight! I want to be able to love God with all my heart, and with everything I have!

Mark 12:30

And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart,

all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. 

He really does want us to love him with every thing we have. He wants us to give everything up to him, and just love him! I desperately want to be able to love him with all that I have! I hope you do too! There are so many things that can keep us from loving him completely. This world is filled with distractions and doubts, but God does want us to be close with him. He wants us to draw closer and closer to him every single day. We need to break down these walls! We need to throw away our pride! We need to seek him in every thing we do. We need to pray and pray and pray!

Our God is a beautiful, wonderful God. Tonight, he brought me so much joy! I feel so much happier and freer as I draw closer to him! I want to love him completely! One day, I hope to love him as much as he loves us. :) 

- kjoosaurus out!

His Temple [5/19/12]

Aloha!

Today, I would like to talk about something God has given to us; this thing He has given to us is something we often fail to take care of, myself included.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

In many ways, we do not glorify God with our body. This body we have... It isn't ours! It belongs to God, yet we somehow manage to take such bad care of it. This world is filled with so many things that we can fill our body with, and destroy it. I am so guilty of this. Living in such a comfortable lifestyle makes it even more difficult. I have access to all of the food I want, I can drink anything, I could even smoke if I chose to. Everything is just a few steps away.

Have you ever gone out to eat, and stuffed yourself until you felt like you were about to burst? I used to eat like this every single day. For every single meal, I ate until I could actually feel my stomach expanding. Therefore, for the next meal, I could eat more and more. I always ate foods that were unhealthy too... I had a major sweet tooth. Now that I think of it, I was a very greedy eater, and this greed inside of me was damaging my body! I ended up having to see a specialist to help me with my eating habits because they had gotten so bad. The specialist did help, but as always, asking God to help me did the most. God doesn't want us to damage our bodies. Our bodies are a temple!

If you owned a temple made of stone, I'm sure you would take very good care of it. Would you let it crumble? Would you personally bring it down, stone by stone? I don't think you would. If you were given a stone temple from God for the Holy Spirit, I'm sure you would make sure it was in perfect condition. If I had the money, I would hire gardeners, cleaners, maintenance, and all other things! If I didn't have the money, I would do my best to clean and maintain it myself! This should be the same for our bodies because our bodies ARE a temple!

I believe it's very important to take care of our bodies. We must do our best to keep healthy by exercising, and eating the right amount. Something we must be careful of is making sure we aren't doing this all for the vanity. This is a trap I quickly fell into. I used to be extremely self-conscious of my body, and this made me want to be skinnier and skinnier. But it's funny, because I never got near my goal. Only when I have been exercising and eating healthier with God and the Holy Spirit in mind, have I lost any weight.

Our bodies should also be clean of any sins! Because God and the Holy Spirit are pure, the temple the Holy Spirit resides in should be pure as well, should it not? The temple should do nothing but the work of God... The temple should be taken care of. Eating unhealthily, drinking excessively, sexual immorality... You know what you're doing. Why do we purposely damage the temple of the Holy Spirit? I hope you begin to think of how you're going to take care of this temple. I know I still have a lot of things to change in my lifestyle. Everyday, I'm still doing things I shouldn't be doing, but let's all work on it together!

Thank you thank you for reading this post today! I hope your day is full of joy! 


- kjoosaurus out!

One Way [5/15/12]

Hello my friends!

How are you all doing? I hope you are living beautiful Christ-filled lives :) I went to my church's youth group tonight, and it was absolutely wonderful! It is so great to see these young people filled with so much joy. Truly a blessing! I pray they will continue to become more and more passionate for God; I pray  their hearts would really open up to God!

As I was praying about what to write tonight, God told me to go straight to illbehonest.com to watch some videos. The first video I saw was this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8X8dYCfKk_g. The video speaks of how Jesus Christ is the one and only way.

The reason why this immediately caught my interest was because of how I have recently been in the presence of many, many Catholics. It began a couple of months ago. I was discussing with a fellow sister in Christ of the differences between Catholicism and Christianity. I truly could not think of any difference other than the processes of things, and how Catholics pray to the Virgin Mary. Then, this sister began to explain how Catholics also believe they are able to go to Heaven by more ways than just Jesus. She told me they believed doing good deeds would also allow them to go to Heaven. This surprised me very much!

After I talked about this with her, I noticed an increase of Catholics in my life. I met people on the greyhound who were Catholic, I discovered I have family that is Catholic, and I recently met many Catholic people on my trip to Korea! Now, I know Catholicism is not a rare religion, but I was still surprised at how I have only recently noticed how many Catholics are around me!

Then, I began to think... Is there a reason why God is placing them in my life? Is there something He wants me to do? I'm still not completely sure of what it is He wants, but it has started to get me thinking.

There must be so many people in this world who are SO close to being saved, but they are thinking they are able to be perfect in God's eyes if they do good deeds, good things, etc. Yet, the truth is, Jesus Christ is the only way! It is only through Jesus Christ that we are able to be with our perfect God in heaven above. As the video says, we must trust in Jesus Christ. We must truly believe Christ died for us; it is the biggest proof of His great love for us! Nothing we ourselves do will make us perfect in God's eyes. Only when we accept Jesus Christ and accept the beautiful and true story of how he died for us, all of us sinners, will we become perfect in the eyes of our God.

It would be great if God would use us all to show others how Jesus Christ is the one and only way! May He speak through us and use us to tell the truth to all the nations!

John 14:6

New International Version (NIV)

⁶ Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

I wasn't listening to this song while I was writing this post, but I remembered it as I was finishing up! We always used to sing this song at VBS :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPuUIUWE8h8

Thank you so much for reading this post! Every single one of you is such a special blessing in my life. You are all God's beautiful children, and He loves every single one of us so much! May you continue to trust in Him through every second of your day. May His presence be very obvious in your life!


- kjoosaurus out!