God's Love - it's a jealous kind of love

here's what I e-mailed my small group this morning. thought it was worth posting here too!

*****

So interestingly enough, at Charlotte One last night, a lot of Stuart Hall's message had to do with God's "jealousy" of us. He even brought in the story of Hosea and Gomer. Coincidence? I think not! (For those of you not at small group on Monday, we had a lot of discussion around how the Holy Spirit "envies intensely" when we give anything in our lives precidence over the Lord. I'm telling you guys, this is the stuff like that makes me keenly aware of the realness of our God. Perhaps this is a message that really needed to be heard a couple of times!

And then that verse from James 4 keeps coming back to me "but He gives MORE grace." (emphasis added by me)

We sang this song last night Oh How He Loves Us which was written by John Mark McMillan. This guy writes some amazing lyrics. Here are the verses.

NOTE THE FIRST LINE!!! Crazy how it went with small group....and then the message last night. Crazy cool in my opinion.

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

Pre-Chorus:
And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us so

Chorus 1:
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.

Verse 2:
We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we're all sinking.
So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
And the heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don't have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

Verse 3:
Well, I thought about You the day Stephen* died,
And You met me between my breaking.
I know that I still love You, God, despite the agony.
...They want to tell me You're cruel,
But if Stephen could sing, he'd say it's not true, cause.. (back to chorus).

*By the way, Stephen was a follower of Christ, an early Christian, who was stoned for his faith.

Thoughts from Sunday

So Bruce was talking about giving yesterday -- not just about money, but of your time, of yourself. And the motive not being about what it can get you, but more of giving as an outpouring of the passion that God has instilled in you.

A couple of things I jotted down were:

"Until your heart is captivated by gratitude, you will wait." You will just sit around and let life pass you by until you tap into that passion that resides within and it motivates you to act.

"What would be too much?" How much giving is too much? I'll let you ponder that one.

"You've got to get your passion." "You've got to know who you are."

Amen and amen. I'm still processing, but this resonates with me. I'm on the path to discovery...

Vid

Okay, I'm sure you've heard that Travis Barker was in a plane crash. He is an AMAZING drummer. Here....you can see for yourself.

Thirty two

My birthday week got off to a great start by racing in the SheRox Triathlon up at Latta Plantation early on Sunday morning (and I mean early). I should blog about my race experience in another entry because I have a lot of thoughts about it, but right now I'm basking in my being thirty-two years old. I am no longer just barely in the thirties; I'm solidly in my thirties. Any age with a two at the end sounds so much more substantial.

I'm 32 and I'm just fine. 31 started off with a lot of turmoil - a relationship ending, but quickly started to get better as I got involved with my wonderful small group! I found some new friends as well as continuing to invest in my tried and true friends. I found peace and hope in the midst of some hard family stuff. In April, I launched into training for the triathlon which helped me get to a level of fitness that made me feel so good about myself and what my body could do. I deepened friendships through long bike rides and runs and trips to the pool. I gained confidence. So, thirty-one was good to me. I can only hope thirty-two will be even better!

Yesterday was a great day. I received so many birthday wishes (thanks to Facebook) and received phone calls, got taken out to both lunch AND dinner and I smiled...a lot.

From the previous post, I'm still confident that "The Lord will perfect that which concerns me..."

Meditation

It's less than 24 hours until race time.

This is what I read this morning and what I'm meditating on:

"The Lord will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy and lovingkindness, O Lord, endure forever -- forsake not the works of Your own hands." Psalm 138:8

Seriously?

Okay, I must hurry and post this entry because I need to be at work early this morning, but I had to get this out there into cyberspace.

Racewalker (not my image)

Since when did Race Walking become an Olympic event? Last night, I was watching the Olympics with some friends and one moment we're watching the USA drop batons (both men and women) and the next moment, we're watching some women walk really, really fast.

I guess the one exciting thing that happens during this event is that if you even look like you're about to jog or both feet come off the pavement just a little bit, some "referee" jumps in your face out of nowhere and flashes a yellow card! I don't know if they say anything or just flash the card, but it's the ONLY entertaining or interesting thing about this event. Oh wait, it is kind of interesting how it seems that the legs of the walkers almost seem doublejointed. And Scott asked the question, "why must they wear the same outfits as marathoners?" Is it really necessary to wear the little bitty bottoms and the sports bra to walk really fast?

The winner, who walked REALLY fast (of course), looked like she was in a great deal of pain as she entered the Bird's Nest last night. And people were cheering awfully loud for her. I repeat, they were cheering REALLY loud for a race walker. Odd, I tell you -- very, very odd. So she finished and then all the other walkers.....you guessed it.....walked really fast to the finish line. It doesn't even SOUND right. UGH.

Okay, enough about the racewalkers.....I need to go get ready for work. And, by the way, I'm going to walk very fast everywhere I go today.

Guess I should post...

Lots of things swirling around this morning:
1. I had my feelings hurt (stupidly) because I wasn't included in a group September birthday celebration. It is SO dumb, but if any of you know me well, you know how I love birthday celebrations and to think that I was left out of a birthday celebration for September birthdays....
2. It's less than a month until race day for SheRox. My current thought is that I'll do fine in the bike/run portion of the race, but the swim will be where I lose time. I'm swimming after work tonight. Really.
3. I love french press coffee. It is so much richer and flavorful than drip coffeemakers. Try it.
4. Back to training: my run has improved so much. Last night, I was running pretty fast for the whole 5K. It helped to have another woman pacing right with me. She was struggling (so she says) but was too competitive to slow down. Ha!
5. Let it Go, Let it Flow has been taken to an all new level with the additional information from Joy. I obviously need to sharpen my "skills".
6. I have a lot of wonderful friends in my life. Let me be grateful for them.
7. Oh, I'm more blonde than I used to be.