Every Morning

Well, hello blog! Its been awhile!

I just need to share what my sweet Jesus did for me this morning.

I woke up with a "cry hangover" from last night. It was just an emotional night, for no particular reason and nothing significant triggering those emotions.  I woke up, turned off my alarm, and turned on my lamp.  All I could do was lay on my pillow with all of those emotions and thoughts from last nigh still swirling around in my head.

"They are new every morning"

God brought to mind one of my favorite verses of all time. Lamentations 3:21-24

"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.'"

The Lord provided me with such a sweet reminder of His grace and compassion that he longs to pour out on my little fragile heart every morning.

"If you ask me if I love him, I'd lie"

I love Taylor Swift.
Go ahead, make fun of me if you must, but she is legit.

She has now put out three albums and has still maintained a wholesome image. That is an accomplishment all its own.
I don't claim to be a musical genius by any means, so I'm not going to comment on that aspect of her songs.

I just got her latest cd. It got me thinking. The reason I like T so much (yes, I now fondly refer to her as "T". If we were friends I would call her that. Its fine.) is because of her lyrics.  This cd has some great lyrics!  Great in general, and then just great one liners.

Here are some of my favorites:

"Please don't be in love with someone else, please don't have somebody waiting on you"
-Enchanted

"This is looking like a contest, of who can act like they care less"
-The Story of Us

"She should keep in mind there is nothing I do better than revenge"
(ha)
-Better than Revenge

"The night you danced like you knew our lives would never be the same"
"It was the end of a decade, but the start of an age"
"Bring on all the pretenders"
-Long Live

"Cause when you're (insert any age, but its 15 in the song) and somebody tells you they love you, you're gunna believe them"
"In your life you'll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team"
"Back then I swore I was gunna marry him someday but I realized some bigger dreams of mine"
"When all you wanted was to be wanted, wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now."
-Fifteen

"But I miss screamin' and fightin' and kissin' in the rain"
-The Way I Loved You

"Somebody else gets what you wanted again . . . repeating history and you're getting sick of it"
-Change

"There's no time for tears I'm just sitting here planning my revenge"
-Picture to Burn

"I don't know what I want, so don't ask me. Cause I'm still tryin to figure it out."
-Place In This World

"And if you ask me if I love him, I'd lie"
-I'd Lie

The reason I like Taylor Swift so much is because I can identify with her lyrics. She has a way of verbalizing what is going on in a girl's heart through the ups and downs of relationships.  It is fascinating to me.  I'm sure this sounds super cheesy, but I'm totally serious.  I have found myself in (almost) every one of these situations. She just puts what my heart is feeling into words.

As I was driving home tonight I was thinking over this blog.  And I realized something. As much as Taylor Swift can write great songs that speak to what my heart is feeling, God's Word can speak truth to my heart so much more!! Taylor speaks to my emotions, to what I want to feel, what my flesh wants to be okay.  Jeremiah 17:9 (I've probably referenced it before, it is one of my favorites) says our hearts are deceitful.  All of those things I want to feel, all of the emotions I let my heart run away with, are not always true.  As good as it feels to listen to Taylor when something happens, what I need is truth.  Taylor is just going to put a band-aid on the issue.  


What I need is the Lord to step in with truth that my heart has yet to realize.  Truth that will refresh and renew my heart, not sink it deeper into an emotional black hole.  


I'm not saying Taylor is bad. I mean I just shared my border line obsession.  And no, I'm not going to stop listening to Taylor Swift. That is not the point.  


The point is that the place I find truth needs to be the Lord and his Word.  Not a twenty-year-old country/pop/folk artist.  


Let me tell you a little about the Word of God:

"As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless."
-2 Samuel 22:31


"And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times."
-Psalm 12:6


"and you will be called Sought After"
-Isaiah 62:12

"For the word of God is living and active."
-Hebrews 4:12

Stop right there.  Living and active.  The Word of God is living and active. That right there is why I should depend on the Word over anything else.

If you ask me if I love the Word, I totally wouldn't lie.

. . . make all your plans succeed . . .

I've realized a fundamental truth.

As I am earnestly seeking the Lord in prayer and bringing my requests and the true condition of my heart and life before Him, He reveals truth.

I don't mean the flippant kind of prayer that I do way too often. The "oh I'll just pray while I'm eating my breakfast quick because I ran out of time this morning because I checked my face book instead of reading my Bible"

I mean prayer where I am focused on the Lord. Focused on what I am bringing before Him. Seeking His truth. Not holding anything back from Him because He knows the true condition of my heart.  Prayer where I am raw and bare before the Lord. Prayer that takes more than 5 minutes while I scarf down cereal or 10 minutes while I fall asleep.

The thing about this kind of prayer is that while I am praying, the Lord reveals His truth right before my eyes.  I get distracted easily, so I'll often journal while I'm praying.  I've found myself journaling things that don't come from my own head. Words, and truth from the Spirit. He is so faithful!!


Understand that the Lord longs to reveal truth to you. He wants you to know His desires for your life.  He promises to be faithful and reveal Himself as long as we are seeking Him. (Jeremiah 29:13 "you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart").


Keep in mind though, it takes silence for the Holy Spirit to speak truth into your life.  Prayer should be a combination of you pouring your heart out before the Lord and listening to His response.  


Just this morning I was hit with one of these major truths.  I took some time to just pray this morning. I journaled the things that were on my heart and just laid them before the Lord. I was praying a lot for my future; job, husband, life after college, etc.  A lot of earnestly praying and trying to weed through selfish desires of my flesh and what God truly has for me.  


As I was closing I looked up Psalm 20. No particular reason, just that it was the 20th.  


Let me tell you what it said . . . 

May the Lord answer you when you are in distress;

may the name of the God of Jacob protect you.  

May he send you help from the sanctuary and grand you support from Zion. 

May he remember all your sacrifices and accept your burnt offerings.

May he give you the desires of your heart and make all your plans succeed.  

We will shout for joy when you are victorious and will lift up our banners in the name of our God.

May the Lord grant all your requests . . . 

This was an incredible reminder of the faithfulness of my Savior.  He wants to give me the desires of my heart.  

I looked up heart.  The heart is seen as the center of the human spirit, from which spring emotions, thoughts, motivations, courage and action.

The heart is where we hold our deepest desires, fears, and longings, some of which we may not even realize.  

Does this mean God is just going to give me everything I want and desire? Unfortunately not. 

Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart."

This doesn't mean just "delight" yourself in the Lord and He will give you a great gpa, a new car, a perfect boyfriend, athletic ability, friends, or money.  

What this verse is saying is that if I am delighting myself in the Lord, I mean truly delighting myself in the Lord, what will happen is that my heart will be transformed!

He will take MY desires and change them into His desires.  The desires of my heart will match the desires of my Father's heart.

Those desires are what He answers. The ones that match His heart.  

As I sat back and reflected on all of the things I had just brought before the Lord I felt an incredible peace.  I have a loving Father who knows how to give good gifts to His children (Matt. 7:11).  If I continue to seek the Lord, the fleshly desires of my heart will fade away.  The desires He has placed on my heart for my life will remain, and He will fulfill them!

Oh He is so faithful! Rest in that truth today!

Part 4

This is my favorite part.

Remember how our hearts become divided because of sin? Well there is good news!

Ezekiel 36:25-26 says "I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you."

What a promise! He promises to remove all of our impurities from us and give us a NEW heart and a NEW spirit!
And guess what! If you have accepted Jesus as your savior he has already made you a new creation!! (Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17)
Isn't that great news! You don't have to wait for a new heart, YOU HAVE ONE!!

So where do we go from here? We've been given a new heart, but how do we keep it from falling into the temptation of becoming divided again?

Jeremiah 17:9 says that our hearts are deceitful and beyond cure.  1 John 3:19 says that our hearts are condemning.
How do we keep our hearts from going there? How do we keep them focused on the Lord and believing the truth instead of lies?

Proverbs 4:23 says to guard your heart above anything else because it is the wellspring of life, and Philippians 4 tells us HOW to guard our hearts.

"Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again; Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all.  The Lord is near.  Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.  Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things." (v. 4-8)

Did you catch that?
We guard our hearts through the PEACE OF GOD. And how do we experience his peace? By presenting our requests to Him, AND meditating on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.

That is the key. Meditating on those things.
What is true? His word.
What is noble? His word.
What is right? His word.
What is pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy? yes, His word.

Memorizing and reciting the Word of God is the number one way to guard your heart.

It's not always easy, but it is so worth it! Guard that heart! It is a new creation!!

Heart part 3

Here we are . . . examining our hearts.
Lets review quick . . .

Why are our hearts such a big deal?
They are what God looks at (1 Samuel 16:7)
What are we commanded to do?
Love the Lord with all our hearts (Deuteronomy 6:5)
Unfortunately, that is not easy or guaranteed. Just look at David. He is called a man after God's own heart yet he constantly messes up and begs the Lord for an undivided heart.

How do our hearts reach this point of division? What causes them to turn to sin instead of to the Lord?
Romans 1:24-25 says "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts . . . They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator . . ."

Essentially, all it takes for sin to gain a foothold in your life is for you to believe a lie. Any lie. In doing this, we remove the truth of God's word in our hearts and replace it with a lie.  This causes our hearts to be divided. We no longer love the Lord with all of our hearts, because part of our heart is loving sin.

This looks like a huge issue to tackle. It is.

BUT DON'T GET DISCOURAGED!!!

God is faithful. He wants to get at the junk that is in your heart and allow you be undivided in your love for Him.  Philippians 1:6 says that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.  He promises to not abandon you, but to work on you and mold you to maturity.

So here we are, at this point where we know our hearts are divided and full of sin, but what do we do about it?

First, we need to seek the Lord. We need to determine WHY our hearts have become divided. What sin is deeply rooted in there.  We need to start by figuring out what is in our hearts

For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks (Matt. 12:34) (Matthew 1, 2, 3, 4. thats an easy one to remember). A lot can be said about your heart by what comes out of your mouth. Not just the things you say in passing or in conversation, but when you are talking to your best friend, and all those unfiltered, unorganized thoughts come spilling out. That is what we need to be examining.

As water reflects a face, so a man's heart reflects the man (Proverbs 27:19 sorry, no fun tricks to remember this one).  Your heart reflects your true character. Do you want to be reflecting a heart of sin or a heart for the Lord. Or a divided one?

When examining our hearts we need to be careful of something. We can't just look at specific issues, problems, or events. We need to go deep. Look at WHY you reacted that way. Understand WHAT motive in your heart caused you to do that.  Don't look for the bandaid either (oh, I was just tired. Well, honestly, your true self is going to show up the most when you are tired and all of your filters are off).  This is heart surgery. Let the surgeon to actually do surgery.  And yes, surgery is painful.

Seek the Lord and ask Him to reveal to you what truly is going on in your heart.  He wants nothing to come between His heart and yours. And He will stop at nothing to get you to that point.  Nothing.

There is hope for our little undivided hearts though!! More tomorrow!

Heart (part 1)

I started blogging tonight about a verse that God has definitely put on my heart lately. He has given me a passion to understand it an also share it with others. I started writing about that verse, and realized I could talk for a LONG time about it.

So, for the interest of time, we are going to go ahead and break this down into several parts. And we'll just do a little introduction to start.

We're talking about your HEART.

It is such a powerful thing. It has a mind of its own. It rarely makes sense. It can be very convincing. It can be wrong. It can make us do great things. It can cause us to cling to Jesus. It will fail.

I really want to take some time to talk about our hearts. Their condition, how they dictate so much of our lives, why they steer us in so many directions, why they matter. Stick with me for the next several days and we'll unpack some interesting truths about our hearts. I'm very excited.

But for now, I think we need to understand why our hearts are so important.

Thankfully, it's not very difficult to grasp.

1 Samuel 16:7

But the Lord said to Samuel,

"Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him.

The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. 

Man looks at the outward appearance,

BUT THE LORD LOOKS AT THE HEART."

Yep. Thats it. 

Our hearts are so important because they are what God is looking at. Right at our hearts. He does not look at your outward appearance, how you come across to others, all your successes, all your failures. No. He looks RIGHT INTO YOUR HEART. 

That's why it is such a big deal. Your heart is seen by the one who created it. The one who truly cares about the condition it is in. He wants it to be as pure as it was when he made it. 

Take some time to examine the condition of your heart.  Ask the Lord to be working in your heart. I'm excited to walk this together. 

Tenderhearted

I was reading through this in my Bible study today. It stuck in my head all day, and has just been a wonderful reminder of the heart of our Savior

This is 3 days after Jesus was crucified, and Mary Magdalene and the disciples have just visited the tomb.

Matthew 20:10-17

Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying.  As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, Woman, why are you crying?"

"They have taken my Lord away," she said. "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."

Jesus said to her, "Mary."

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).

I think this interaction between Mary and her Lord is so powerful. Mary was the FIRST person to see Jesus alive. Why would he pick her?

"Mary Magdalene's hear was broken.  She owed Jesus her life and her sanity.  She had experienced life firsthand in the web of the evil one.  Yet, she had also experienced true deliverance.  After being set free from her sin, Mary devoted her entire existence to her Deliverer.  She did not deny herself the pain of watching Him die, nor did she leave Him until the stone was rolled into place.  Suddenly He was gone.  Unlike many others, Mary did not lament lost opportunities, nor a seemingly forfeited kingdom.  Her grief was simple.  She missed Jesus.  So why did He appear first to her? I believe the answer is because Mary's Lord, and ours, is tenderhearted." (Beth Moore, from her study Living Beyond Yourself)

I think this is so neat. Our Lord is tenderhearted.  Why would he choose to reveal himself to me the same way he did with Mary?

Because He is tenderhearted. And he loves you. So much.

Rest in and BELIEVE that TRUTH today

Thanks Ladies

Katie, you have inspired me.
Quite honestly, you always have. I adore you, and our friendship, even though we definitely don't talk as much as we should. You are truly an incredible woman of God. Your faith challenges me every day. And now I live vicariously through your blog.


Becky, you have no idea.
You are such an encouragement in my walk with Jesus. I love our times together because you always challenge me. Yet it is always out of a heart that is so committed to the Lord and committed to loving people. You speak so much truth yet you are so stinkin' real!


Why these two?
Consistency.


Yes, these two women have inspired and challenged me in ways I can't even describe. Because they are so consistent.


And I just wanted everyone to know. So, thanks ladies.


AND
I going to try something new. The name of this blog is Running on His Word. catchy huh? ha. But my whole purpose in naming it that was because I want to literally be running on the Word of God every single day. Honestly, I need some accountability in this area. So here is what I'm going to do: Every day I just want to share a little bit of what I'm running on. And yes, you 11 blog followers get to help me stay accountable and consistent.


Psalm 73:26
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.


I love this verse. It is so true. My flesh and my heart fail. Every single day. I've never had any problem believing that my flesh fails. That can speak for itself. But my heart? Oh yeah, its a failure too.


Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?


Yes, that is the true condition of my heart. And I have seen that for sure (more to come on that soon). 


BUT 
God is the strength of my heart. 
Ok Lord. You promise that, I am going to CLING to it! 
And what is portion exactly. 


Well, Asaph was the writer of this Psalm. He was a Levite, which meant the Lord physically was his portion. He didn't have an inheritance, or land, but he lived off of the people's tithes dedicated to the Lord. He consistently had to fully depend on the Lord. And the Lord was enough.


Take a look at life for a minute. Do you put your trust in your flesh? Or your heart? And what happens when they fail? This verse is great because it is so real. My flesh fails. My heart fails. It is going to happen! If my strength is in the Lord and if he is ENOUGH for me, then LET my heart fail. Why do I so often run to depend on something so deceitful anyway? 


He is our portion. And he wants to truly be enough. He'll stop at nothing to be totally enough for you. 
Let that truth sink in.


And check out Katie and Becky's blogs. They are both awesome!
http://joyfuljava.blogspot.com/
http://katieevelynlewis.blogspot.com/