to die.

i've really been focusing a lot of my time trying to die to self. i want to die to my self and live for Christ. "rid me of myself". i want to pick up my cross. it's my prayer every single day, and it will be for the rest of my life. i've always said that my identity and value comes from Christ. but i wonder if it's really true, i want it and desire it to be so but i don't know if that's how i really live. i hope so. but i was just reading something and came across this quote that ties in to all that nicely and i'd like to share it....

The Christian life can be explained only in terms of Jesus Christ, and if your life as a Christian can still be explained in terms of you – your personality, your willpower, your gift, your talent, your money, your courage, your scholarship, your dedication, your sacrifice, or your anything – then although you may have the Christian life, you are not yet living it.
-Ian Thomas

the door

so last spring break i went on a mission trip and did inner city work in chicago through a ministry called The Door. we had to write ourselves letters at the end of the week and they were suppose to mail them to us this fall...but i got mine a week or two ago. i hadn't opened it because i remember not being really into it or knowing what to tell myself. but the last thing i wrote was really the only good thing. and this is what it said...

"chase after God and change the world, that's all that matters."

New In Town

so friday night a few of my roommates and i went to see new in town. i loved it! i thought it looked really cute but i enjoyed it more than i had anticipated. myself, along with the whole theater, were dying laughing. it was very cute. but it was kind of predictable towards the end of the movie but that's ok, it was feel good. it's definitely a movie i wouldn't mind owning someday. [although i am working on my obsession with dvds :-/ ]

after the movie was over i noticed how "tame" it was, which is refreshing. i don't remember the language being bad at all, and also there was no sex in the movie--that is something that i feel is rare in a romantic comedy these days. one thing i did notice though was the fact that in the movie they made jokes about Jesus a lot. how the people in the small town would just bring him up in daily conversation and other things. and these were meant to be funny parts and they were but i wondered why people found them so funny. did they find them funny because in our general society today it is taboo for Jesus to be such a big deal to people? i'm pretty positive that Jesus was a funny guy, and him and the disciples sat around a cracked nice clean jokes and shared laughs. but it worries me if people find the idea of Jesus as a joke. how could it be funny to see a person who holds Jesus as much an important part of their life, but not just part of their life he's really life in the whole. that kind of attitude should we cherished. after all this is the king of kings, our Savior and Lord. why wouldn't we consider him the best and most important part of ourselves. but that's a side track...i loved the movie as a whole. :)

my souls husband

this is a short expert from an article by Annie Wesche in Leslie Ludy's online Set-Apart Girl online magazine that captures my heart, i think it's a beautiful picture...

I had spent hours envisioning the life I would have serving alongside an earthly husband. We would be rescuing dying bodies and souls, taking loads of orphans into our family, and while He preached the gospel I would be praying fervently for the Holy Spirit to move upon lost hearts. And while those dreams still exist, they have taken a new place in my heart. Rather than taking up each moment with waiting, they lie tucked away, joyfully and sacredly kept for the proper time; and when an earthly man is given every single one of those dreams will be possible with our Lord.

What now takes center stage is that my soul’s Husband is the very One who has healing for those dying bodies and hope for each perishing soul, the Father to every fatherless child, and the gospel itself Living and active! At His bidding and enablement each day I can be His hands and feet.