A little part of me.

Just a little.

I love it when you realise that God has truly blessed you with a friend.

Confusion? Understanding? Perhaps. Trust? Always.

What do you say when you have no idea? Mixed emotions seem like such a paradox, for surely the singlety and sincerity of each emotion contains enough clamour and thought that nothing else could share that same spotlight. Ironically, at this very moment I feel joyful, downcast, lonely, surrounded and utterly confused. Maybe that's it - confusion. Maybe having mixed emotions is an impossibility, and all these feelings are grouped together under one heading - plain confusion. But then, that begs the question, how can one emotion contain so many conflicting feelings and thoughts?
It's said that love is the strongest emotion - perhaps it is, for it is pure. But surely being confused has the power to overcome the mind and sink its host under a burden they are purposed to bear and yet cannot in such a state of mental, emotional and spiritual disarray. I touch on spiritual because it begins and it concludes, and therefore must be relative to everything in between. Is confusion a spiritual, mental or emotional reality? Or does our confusion stem from a lack of spiritual discernment? I do not know. I simply don't know. See - experience. How ironic, confusion over confusion. Entering from a logical mentality, shouldn't experience of confusion guard in some form against further confusion? But no-one ever ceases to be confused about some such matter on Earth. Or do they? Perhaps Solomon; but none shall ever be as great as he in wisdom.
So where does that leave a mortal 16-year-old schoolgirl? Am I destined for a life of confusion? Will I be able to understand things progressively or not at all? Am I my context? Do I suffer from the bitter but relative and then grateful blow of a modernist society? Am I indiviual? I don't know.
Maybe it's a lesson; a challenge of trust. Maybe it's not about understanding, maybe it's about faith; believing in the unseen. I don't know, but I trust that, one day, I will. And I will wait, taking each new step as every day arises at the command of the great I Am.

I am a new Creation

"He's coming for a pure bride." - Leeland
We can't be pure. It's physically, emotionally and spiritually impossible - for us. But whatever we can't do, God can. When He comes back to Earth, I want to be His pure bride. I want to be so faithfully, completely, perfectly alive in Him that I am completely dead to the world and wrapped instead in His sanctification.
God can make us pure.
"As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us." - Psalm 103:12 NIV
"Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." - Isaiah 1:18 NIV
God can make us pure. Again, we go back to the control issue. We think that our sin is too big or our life too far gone for God to take us from being a shattered, wilted, crushed piece of nothing to a whole, pure creation. But what makes us think we can? We forget that God already forgave us, that day many years ago when Jesus died on a cross. We don't need to do anything to make up for it - it's already been done, God's already given us the ultimate gift of love and we have already been forgiven. There is nothing left to do except the tiny part that's up to us - accepting that offer. Accepting that no, we can't change ourselves - but God can. Accepting that God has the power and the love to pick us up, piece by piece, and transform us into something beautiful. We don't need to be punished, we don't need to change ourselves - God's already done it.
"Create in me a pure heart, O God." - Psalm 51:10 NIV
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" - 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV
"I am a new creation; I have been born again." - Leeland

The Eternal Weaver

God is big. He is bigger than big. He is MASSIVE. A lot of the time I try to control my life - my thoughts, my actions, my plans, my time, my desires, everything. But it all inevitably boils down to nothing. I'm just a simple human - God is the Creator and King of the world. So why do I always think that I can do it better than Him?
I think that most of the time we're scared. Scared that God's going to tell us something we don't want to hear. Afraid that He's going to turn our lives into something we don't expect and don't necessarily want. But that's where we have to learn to trust. If we place our own expectations on ourselves, if nothing then falls into place, we become discouraged and lose sight of our true purpose. But if we leave it up to God, we are opening our hearts and minds to what He wants us to do, and it's always so much better than what we could ever do in our own strength.
Once we make a decision to give our entire lives - our thoughts, actions, future and desires - to God, He begins to strip us off, layer by layer, until we are just a core. It's painful and scary, but eventually we turn into a lump of clay in His hands, and we are finally allowing Him to mould us into the creation He intends us to be, by His pattern and His design. Rather than being threaded with the frayed cotton of earthly things, we are being woven with the golden thread of God's love and knitted with the wool of His faithfulness. And that is where we truly begin to grow. The challenge in doing that is all the things that will hinder our path. And the way we work through those obstacles?
Simple: prayer.

Little things matter!

I seem to believe that God is incredibly situational. He is not coincidental, He is purposeful. God places us in our specific lives and all the circumstances we find ourselves in for a reason. We may not see it, and we may never find it in our lifetime, but I have faith that one day, when we reach heaven, God will tell us why we did what we did on Earth and everything will suddenly all make sense.
"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see." - Hebrews 11:1 NIV
Faith is being a completely dependent creature. It's putting our lives, our minds, our hearts on the line in the trust that there is someone bigger than us who cares. But how do we live by it? How do we take this faith and put it into our weak lives where nothing world-changing ever happens?
We put it into the little things.
Faith is counting on reason. We can't see it; God can. I often struggle when I am full of the wonder of God and on a spiritual high, to then come back to things like schoolwork and practising musical instruments. Why should I worry about such worldly things when there's a world to be changed? I want to do big things, not maths equations. I want to be studying God's Word, not Mozart's violin concerto. So why aren't the opportunities coming? Why am I stuck here doing things that are seemingly worthless?
It's like starting a new job. You aren't automatically given the biggest, most important jobs that hold the future of the company in their hands. You start with the small things, the tasks that seem quite small and meaningless, but they have to be done. And gradually, as you get better and more accomplished and start to learn the ways of the company, you move up and receive jobs that mean a lot more.
It's the same with God. We won't be given the massive, world-changing opportunities before we learn to do the little things. God puts us in these situations, at school, work and home, to learn how to be like Him. It's where our training begins. And once we master the small things, gradually we'll be 'promoted' to bigger things.
I think one of the most commonly-heard sentences among this generation is "I hate school" or "What's the point of school?" I didn't see a point. Sure, it would teach us and help us to get a job, but who cares about school when we have God?
If we enter into our everyday activities with the same attitude as Jesus, we are learning. We may not understand the Godly reason for us learning about the French Revolution, but we can trust that God is using it. We should care about the little things because they are where God places us, and they are where God prepares us. God challenged me to go into every class and every music practise session with Jesus' attitude, thinking positively and expecting Him, in the long run, to teach me how to have patience and a God-serving heart. He wants us to try our best and honour His ways in everything we do for Him, not for ourselves. So if God wants me to sit there and write an essay on Shakespeare, I'll do it! And I'll do it willingly and positively, having faith in my belief that one day, God will use me for greater things than I could ever imagine. My training may involve sitting through hours of geography skills, but if that's what God wants me to do, then so be it.
Another encouragement is to challenge yourself to act as you would with Jesus sitting beside you (which, I might add, He actually is...). If Jesus gave me my chemistry homework, how much more effort would I put into it than every other day?! And the truth is, He does. God puts us into our life and our situation, and therefore He is asking us to do whatever comes with that.
"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus." - Philippians 2:5 NIV
"Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing." - Philippians 2:12-16 NIV

The First Step

Sometimes we get caught in the misconception that big things are all that matter. Sometimes we struggle with things we think are too big for God, yet most of the time, without realising, we think things are too small for God. We live life, day by day, praying for boldness and chances to change the world. But God always brings us back to the little things. Because little things lead to bigger things, and we can't get the big things right without knowing how to do the little things first. We need teaching, we need guidance, we need opportunity, and we are stuck in the belief that, without these, we can do nothing. But what we don't realise is that God is giving us these things and providing us with everything we need to change the world right here, right now, in our every situation.
All we have to do is listen...