I am New...everyday! Thank you LORD!

In a previous post, I shared the same link as I have post within this post. It is a song written and song by Jason Gray and it speaks of not just who we are, but Whose we are! In the attached video link, Jason doesn't sing the first verse, but still....it is a great song with an even greater message. The Lord has used this song to minister to me lately as I question myself from time to time and whether or not I am making a difference in the lives of those He places in my path. As I was singing through it today on my way to work, the Lord reminded me of the final words to the song. It struck me in a way that it never has before! These words are powerful and true....and it is what He says I am! Wow! "Forgiven, Beloved, Hidden in Christ, made in the image of the Giver of Life, righteous and holy, reborn and remade, accepted and worthy, this is our new name." Amen and amen! This is who we are now....who I am now...who you are now if you too believe in the One who is worthy to be praised! Today I pray that you and I come to a better understanding of who we are and Whose we are! Hope you enjoy these words and song and that they minister to your heart today!

I AM NEW

You can give me a name
Call me whatever you like
Or weigh me down with shame
To crush me but you won't
My burdens are light

Chorus
I am not who I was, I'm being remade
I am new
I am chosen and holy and I'm dearly loved
I am new

Now I won't deny
The worst you could say about me
But I'm not defined
By mistakes that I've made
Because God says of me

I am not who I was, I'm being remade
I am new
I am chosen and holy and I'm dearly loved
I am new

Too long have I lived in the shadows of shame
Believing that there was no way I could change
But the one who is making everything new
Doesn't see me the way that I do
Who I thought I was
And who I thought I had to be
I had to give them both up
Cause neither were willing
To ever believe

CHORUS
I am not who I was, I'm being remade
I am new
Dead to my sin, I'm coming alive
I am new

Forgiven, beloved, Hidden in Christ
Made in the image of the Giver of Life
Righteous and holy, reborn and remade
Accepted and worthy, this is our new name
This is who we are now

By: Jason Gray, Joel Hanson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3MgJckIwWw

Scripture Memorization #2

Hosea 10:12 Sow righteousness for yourselves, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.

This verse is going to be a challenge for me not only as a memorization verse, but as a life application. When I took on this challenge, I decided to be diligent about praying and seeking to receive verses that challenge me spiritually. This verse caught my eye and got me to pondering when I came across it a few days ago.

It is interesting to me that it states to:

A. "sow righteousness"

B. "reap unfailing love"

C. "break up the unplowed ground"

D. "for it is time"

E. "until he comes and showers his righteousness"

Logically, when you plant a crop for harvest, you:

A. make sure it is the proper time to sow

B. plow up the ground

C. sow

D. water (showers) and last

E. reap a harvest

Also, I notice that the verse states that we begin and end with righteousness. Interesting.....

Memory Verse #1 for 2011

Psalm 115:1 Not to us, O lord, not to us; but to your name be all the glory for your love and faithfulness.

This is the first of 24 Scripture verses I will memorize this year. Looking forward to how the Lord is going to use the verse to minister to my heart and feel my soul as I learn them by heart and apply them in my life. So excited...yes, I am expectant! Whoot!

Expectation!

Having never made a New Years' resolution, I have never experienced the disappointment of failing to "do" or "not do" a certain thing as the new year begins. This simple fact about my life has saved me a ton of heartache, I am sure.

The women in the church I attend have an online prayer/encouragement group that I belong to. We post prayer requests, share a moment of our life, share a scripture that has influenced us, a thought that we can all ponder and comment on, etc etc. Last year, I sent out a challenge to seek the Lord for a "word"......a word that He would use in 2010 to reveal Himself to us in a fresh new way. It is amazing to hear and see how the Lord worked out the "word" in the lives of the women who accepted the challenge. My "word" was REST. At first, it sounds like a great and easy word to have the Lord work out in my life. No so, or as my son says, "Yeahno!" It was with a lot of work on my part that this word was worked out in my life. Not that I am complaining, just stating a fact. Each time the Lord would allow a temptation or challenge to creep into my life, I was able to pray and rest in Him. To rest, I found is to trust. Now, had He given me the word "trust" I would have run and still been running....so as you can see, the Lord knows me better than I do. What I found is that to rest and trust is a lot easier than I was making it out to be! It is just placing on Him those things that are not mine to pick up anyway. To rest and allow Him to do the work He desires to do in my heart and mind. Really, easier than I thought....once I was willing to turn all things over to Him.

As we head into 2011, once again, the email group I mentioned above is being challenged to seek the Lord for a "word" for our lives. This morning in church, it came to me during a sermon. My "word" for 2011 is Expectation! Can't wait to see how the Lord will work this out in my life as I seek Him, trust Him and continue to rest in Him in the coming year.

Have you found Him to be faithful....reliable...trustworthy? How easy it is for us as humans to look to all of the things we fail at, don't have or lack within. His desire is that we would begin to see ourselves as He sees us. To look to Him for the answers we seek. To know in our heart that He is 100% reliable, trustworthy and faithful. My encouragement to you is too seek Him first in all you do and rely on Him for all of your needs...both large and small. Rest in Him with an expectation for the things He has for you in the coming year! This is gonna be great!

Reconciled

^{2 Corinthians 5:14-21}

14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. ¹⁵ And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

How very often in my life I have come to realize (or re-realize) that I am a sinner, saved by grace. It is one of the earliest lessons from the Lord that I was to face. To come to that place within myself were I realized that there is nothing in this world or in the next that I can do to reconcile myself to God. It is only through the blood-work of Jesus that we are able to approach God, ask for forgiveness, receive that forgiveness and live the life that He has planned for us. This verse clearly states that God isn't counting our sin against us, but rather He is about the work of reconciliation. Furthermore, we read here that He is asking those who are reconciled to be His ambassadors and to share with others the reconciliation to God that we have experienced, so that they too may be reconciled to God. When I first became a believer, this sort of scared me. To think that the Lord would place such a huge task on us.....on me!.... I wasn't so sure about that. Then as I matured a bit in my relationship with Him, He began to show me that to be an ambassador simply means to tell others of what He has done in my life.

He began to orchestrate "divine appointments" in which He simply asked that I listen to Him, talk as He allowed opportunity and from time to time, He allowed the honor to lead others into a relationship with Him. All of these things, I came to accept over time spent with the Lord in prayer, study and reading of His Word. Slowly, He revealed to me that He is wanting to use me to advance His Kingdom. This is what He wants from each one of his beloved.

When I read the last verse of Chapter 5 though, I have a harder time accepting the idea of becoming the righteousness of God. It is at these times that I can think of a thousand reasons why there are a thousand other people who He should be asking this of. But, if I believe in God's Word, then I believe that His Word is true. If I believe it to be true that He set me free from sin and death, then I must also believe that He is calling me the righteousness of God. To not believe what He says is to in effect believe that He is a liar. Knowing that He cannot lie, I must then conclude that He considers believers to be His righteousness.

So many times, it is easy to think of ourselves as sinners, but to go to the next level of relationship with Him requires us to think of ourselves as His righteousness. Not by any of our own doing, by no means at all! We couldn't do any good on our own....none! Rather, through Him we are made holy, we are called dearly beloved, redeemed, forgiven, we are chosen by God to do His works that He preordained for us to do, hidden in Christ, made in His image, reborn, remade, accepted, worthy, and unconditionally loved by the Creator. This is who He says you and I are as believers!

Let's begin to live our lives in faith, stepping where He leads us to go, running when He says to run, going where He says to go, and resting in Him daily to be renewed and strengthened. Let's live the life that He has predestined for us as dearly loved children of the Most High!

This scripture gives me great hope while reminding me that He is God, He is the One that makes everything good in me.....well, good. Only through Jesus is it possible for man to be able to come into relationship with God. All praise and glory be to the One who is able to do far more than we could ever hope, dream or imagine. Let's head into 2011 with a new knowledge and/or understanding of not who we are...but Whose we are!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3MgJckIwWw

Okay, so maybe this is my new favorite song. Love the words and the meaning behind them. Just knowing that His hands are always holding me. Love the line "When my world is shaking, Heaven stands." So often, I think that my world is shaken and He is unaware of the damage that is taking place from the "Yvette-quake" that has just occurred in my life, unexpectedly. Those moments when my very soul is shaken to its core and I feel I cannot stand one more "aftershock". How very wrong I am at times when I think He doesn't understand. He "gets" me better than anyone....better than I "get" myself, yet at my lowest times, I doubt that He understand the depths of my sorrows, hurts or pains.

Recently, He has made me so very aware that His hands are ever under me, over me and around me....holding, covering and comforting. The words to this song speak to my very soul and encourage me beyond words.

YOUR HANDS by: JJ Heller

I have unanswered prayers
I have trouble I wish wasn’t there
And I have asked a thousand ways
That you would take my pain away
You would take my pain away

I am trying to understand
How to walk this weary land
Make straight the paths that crooked lie

Oh Lord, before these feet of mine

Oh Lord, before these feet of mine

When my world is shaking, heaven stands
When my heart is breaking
I never leave your hands

When You walked upon the earth
You healed the broken, lost and hurt
I know You hate to see me cry
One day You will set all things right
Yeah, one day You will set all things right

When my world is shaking, heaven stands
When my heart is breaking
I never leave your hands

Your hands that shaped the world
Are holding me
They hold me still

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-F6DGGF4Qs&feature=player_embedded

In Him, You Are More!

After hearing this song on K-Love radio, I had to copy the words and ponder them. As the words penetrated my own heart, I began to think of times that I have felt unworthy of the love of the Father. My heart immediately went to thoughts of my daughter and the incredible strides she has made in her life to get back on track and living for something greater...yes, something more. There are many young women that I know personally that struggle with dealing with past mistakes, choices made etc. But really, what they don't realize, is that all of us "girls" struggle from time to time. Certainly, not the same things, but as moms we 'older girls" struggle within about choices we have made in regard to our children....did we make right choices in raising them?, choices we have made in regard to our marriage.....do my children see that I love and cherish my husband?....love and cherish my family? As you read these words, I pray that you too will have others brought to you heart that may not know the great, great, great love of the Father.

Sweet Sisters, may we know that we are loved and that when He looks at us He sees what He has created...not what we have done with what he created. I have posted the words as well as a link to the awesome video that is a must see. Enjoy and know that you are more!

http://www.tenthavenuenorth.com/videos/All%20Videos/273

You Are More

By: Tenth Avenue North

There's a girl in the corner
With tear stains on her eyes
From the places she's wandered
And the shame she can't hide

She says, "How did I get here?
I'm not who I once was
And I'm crippled by the fear
That I've fallen too far to love"

But don't you know who you are?
What's been done for you?
Yeah don't you know who you are

You are more than the choices that you've made
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes
You are more than the problems you create
You've been remade

Well she tries to believe it
That she's been given new life
But she can't shake the feeling
That it's not true tonight

She knows all the answers
And she's rehearsed all the lines
And so she'll try to do better
But then she's too weak to try

But don't you know who you are?

You are more than the choices that you've made
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes
You are more than the problems you create
You've been remade

You are more than the choices that you've made
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes
You are more than the problems you create
You've been remade

'Cause this is not about what you've done
But what's been done for you
This is not about where you've been
But where your brokenness brings you to

This is not about what you feel
But what He felt to forgive you
And what He felt to make you loved

You are more than the choices that you've made
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes
You are more than the problems you create
You've been remade

You've been remade