eyes on the back of my head

The Accuser. That's who the devil is. Now, I am a new creation through Christ Jesus. Sometimes I think it is too bad that my "old creation" memories don't get washed in the blood aswell.

I have a past. That past is full of people and things. I have confessed my past to my parents and I don't feel like I'm living dual lives anymore. But still, when I come across someone from my past memories begin to flood in.

I know that my past makes me who I am today and helps me make decisions to become who I will be in the future. However, some things just pain me to think about. Certain people remind me of such sinful things I thought and did. My dilemma: Am I overreacting or is it normal that I want to avoid these people at all costs?

Satan attacks constantly bringing up memories and it's hard to not dwell on the past. But in order to not bring up the memories I need to avoid contact with people that are a part of that. I know it's impossible, but I can try, right? And I don't have the heart to tell someone I don't want to talk to them anymore.

I'm not a mean person. I just get this feeling. It's like self-preservation. I just don't know. I need to continuously pray for discernment. I have to be able to discern what is coming from my flesh and what is the Holy Spirit's prompting.

All I know is that I can't fall for the Devil's tricks again. The battle begins in the mind and I intend to put up a fight. I won't allow my fleshly thoughts to continue. It is just too easy to fall back into what I was. I know who God wants me to be. I won't be who I was. I am new.

prosperity, pain, and you

Do you know what depresses me? My Sister's Keeper. That movie was sad, but probably not for the reason's you are thinking. I mean it's sad to see how cancer can affect a family, but what's sadder is the way they portrayed life and death.

There are people who think that believing in God is stupid and unnecessary. Does believing in God benefit life? Many people would scoff at the thought of a sovereign God. Watching My Sister's Keeper gave me an insight to the world's mentality. It was bleak.

The movie opens with Anna Fitzgerald saying,"most babies are coincidences... the truth is that most babies are products of drunken evenings and lack of birth control. they're accidents."

How does having this belief affect one's perspective in life? To the world everything is a purposeless accident. Someone can do something and not think anything of the consequences.

It gets me thinking relative truths. Murder is okay and praying is offensive. This is a depressing world we live in. In My Sister's Keeper, Kate Fitzgerald is in a hospital dying of cancer and what do her relatives have to say to her? One aunt talked about how she heard about someone commanding her cancer cells to "be gone" and she was supposedly healed.

Believing in God doesn't mean everything in hunky dory. It doesn't mean that life is all of a sudden an episode of Leave It to Beaver. And it is not a sense of false hope to be held onto.

I felt that telling Kate to command her cancer cells to "be gone" is cruel. Guaranteeing a miraculous healing is pretty heartless if you ask me. She's going to die. False hope doesn't make anything easier. True hope does.

Now, there are those who buy into the prosperity gospel, where as long as you're a "good Christian" God won't let any horrible things happen to you because He only wants to bless you. If you are one of these people please feel free to contact me about it.

God tells us that we will have tribulations in this world,but be of good cheer because He has overcome the world. Did he promise happiness? First of all God is more concerned with your holiness than your happiness. However, He does promise the victory. God already won the war. So whatever Job-like difficulties you're going through don't let Satan trick you into cursing God.

A woman once gave me the analogy of a popular television show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. A family gets their house practically rebuilt and redesigned with them in mind. At the end of the episode they get to see their dream home come to reality. There's a catch. To be eligible for the home makeover, these families have had to have a tragic loss in their lives, a disabled family member, made a personal sacrifice of some sort, etc.

You see they can't have the good without the bad. As Christians, we can hold on to the victory we have in Christ. Many have had to go through the bad, but not without some good. Looking back everyone knows that it's your past and the decisions you make that make the person standing today.

Every step counts and every move has a reason. Each of us are created with purpose. Whether we live out that purpose or not is completely up to us. We can live knowing we can bring some good into the world with God in us. We can also die knowing that God can bring even more good into the world. That is how I want to live... and die.

In My Sister's Keeper, Kate had no promise. She didn't know about true hope or the victory found in Christ. She died. Anna Fitzgerald ended the movie talking about how no good came of her death. The world didn't care. Life didn't matter. I watched and heard this. I cried. The movie, to me, was sad on a completely deeper level. To understand how the world thinks. Depressing.

I guess you can read this and figure out where you stand. We were created with a free will. How do you want see the world around you? With false hope, no hope, or the true hope? You decide.

was that an earthquake... or did God just rock my world?

This past weekend was the 2010 north sectional [jersey] youth advance. I am still in awe of the events that occurred these past 3 days. I will never doubt that God can use the youth of America. The way his power manifested through 120 students gathered in a room is something that will never escape my memory. I had the privilege to witness it all as one of the leaders.

Gerritt and Tara Kenyon, missionaries to the youth of Panama, were our guest speakers for the weekend. Friday night was the beginning of our lives. Gerrit spoke. We were challenged us to check our baggage. You see, so many times in life instead of giving our burdens and sins over to God we carry it around with us like a chip on our shoulder. He presented Jesus as a counteragent in an airport. We bring our baggage and check it in at the counter, but the difference is with Jesus we only check it once. That's all we need to do, except for some masochistic reason we take our baggage back and continue as we were. We walk around with this heavy heart.

Jesus said, "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." [Matthew 11:30] God knew He was going to send His son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross. He knew that Jesus was going to pay the price and carry the burden before He created us. That is why our bodies were not meant to carry the weight that we put on ourselves. We have to give it all to God and let him carry it. He wants to.

At the end of the night Gerrit had the students come up to the altar and pick up a blank sheet of paper. On it they were supposed to write all the things they were carrying around as baggage. I saw teenagers weeping, praying, writing the burdens of their heart on paper. Afterwards, all the papers were tossed inside a luggage case. BAM. The luggage case was closed shut. It was checked at the altar and no one could take it back.

Saturday morning. Sin. Pain. Tara talked about the vicious cycle that escalates to the point where people just give up. Looking back I can pinpoint the times of my life where pain that I refused to deal with lead me to sin. And that sin caused my heart to grieve and my depression to fall deeper. She told us that Jesus doesn't tell us to not sin because He wants to be mean and restrict us. But because He knows that sin only causes pain and He wants to save us the heartache.

She went on to talk about God's plan for our lives. She said that as Christians we always have plan A. I was encouraged by all the testimonies I heard of people who were called to be pastors or missionaries as children then walked away from the faith. They came back to a relationship with Jesus, restoration began, and now are serving all over the world to further the kingdom of God. Tara described how she grew up with fear that if she had screwed up once then she would have to live with Plan B for the rest of her life.

That is definitely how I thought. Before I lived with what ifs and thinking about how I could never achieve the best that God wanted for me because of my past sins. But thankfully, I cannot work to get God's favor. Through grace, I can live knowing that God has called me and I will go where He needs me to go. I will always have Plan A with Christ.

Gerrit spoke to us again Saturday night. Everything I learned was building up to this night. He said, "When friends remind you of your past you remind them of your future." Our lives began that night.

He prayed and began to say some things that were prophetic. Pretty cool. Then, he said that God had a call for everyone. He had a plan for each and every life. Gerrit said that although he was being prophetic, surprisingly, he was not going to be the one to pray over us. We were going to pray over each other. We were going to ask God what His call for our life was. If we weren't praying for ourselves we were praying for others. "But before you go up to the altar you need to check all your plans and dreams at your seats." We had to be completely open to what God had to say to us.

Although a leader, I started praying for myself. God told me to not fall back on Plan B, becoming an art therapist. He told me that I was going to touch more lives through my art than I ever would as a therapist. He also told me that since I wouldn't have a steady income I had to rely on Him for provisions. Great. Fortune was not in my future, but I was alright with that. I accepted it and I felt encouraged to seek Him further.

I saw this girl sitting on the floor so I began to ask the Holy Spirit for something to say to this girl. He told me that she was going to be a mother. I began to think about all the things I learned at Advanced EXCEL about how powerful being a mother is. So I walked up to her and prayed over her telling her that she was going to give birth to children and raise them up to be instruments in the hands of God.

I prayed that she wouldn't let depression and loneliness discourage her from the plans God had for her and that God would strengthen her to be the woman He has called her to be. After praying for a while, I asked her if that sounded right and she said yes.

That was encouraging to me so I stood up and began praying over the students as a whole. God started pointing out people. One girl was going to do something in music, which was later confirmed to me. Then, God told me to pray for this girl that I saw at the altar. I saw her as an inspirational speaker to teenagers. Awesome. She was praying with two other girls so I decided to wait a while to approach her.

I felt a tug in my thoughts. I needed to pray for this girl who I didn't know. I was glad to because I wanted to see if I would be right since I didn't have any preconceived ideas about her or knew what she liked. Another woman was praying over her so I closed my eyes and began to pray from a distance. Doctor. I don't even know if she likes that stuff. What kind of doctor? She's going to work at a pregnancy center. The woman had finished and had left the girl.

I walked over to her. "Has God told you anything?" She said, "The lady who prayed over me said that I was going to be a healer of nations, but she didn't know what that meant." Crazy. I told her that God had told me that she was going to be a doctor working with pregnant women. I asked her if I could pray with her and she said
yes. We introduced ourselves.

As I began to pray about her being an instrument in the hands of the Master Healer, God began to tell me personal things. He said she was shy so I asked God to give her the confidence to speak when she needed to speak up and that He would give her the words to say.
Then he said that she had a bad relationship with her parents. I began to tell her in prayer that when she returned home she needed to confess past sins to her parents. God would restore that relationship. She began to shake in my hands. She was crying. Oh my word.

I continued praying saying that her parents would guide her and support her in her walk with God. I prayed that her parents would be wise counselors in her life and that they would have a good relationship. It was crazy how on point I was in my prayer. As I closed, she looked up with wet, red eyes. We hugged each other and she thanked me.

I left her and saw the girl at the altar was done praying so I walked up to her. "Has God told you anything?" She said that she felt that she was called to missions. Cool. I told her that I saw her traveling being an inspirational speaker to teenagers. "Awesome!" She was totally excited about what God had for her.

I continued to walk around praying over the students when God pointed out one of the girls in junior high. She's small and a friend of my younger sister, Emily. I closed my eyes. What do you have for her? Construction Worker. Ha, that must be wrong. The girl doesn't look like she can carry much. What do you mean? She will build churches in India. Oh.

I tapped her on the shoulder and asked her if God had told her anything. "I feel called to be a missionary." I told her what God told me. She responded, "That could work!"

Amazing. I have never been a part of anything like this. It was the most amazing experience ever. Those who attended can never forget that night. We left knowing that we can never doubt the God ordained call that we received. Satan will never be able to take it away from us. We have the victory in Jesus Christ and our lives will have satisfaction as we walk the path towards God. "An empty cross, an empty tomb, and a full life." That is what I have.

the start of something new

Different. I saw God in a different light the first time I walked into a youth service at Englewood Assembly of God. I saw that being a teenager didn't mean that I had to wait to grow up to make a difference for His kingdom. I saw people my age seeking the Lord with all their heart. That Friday night God was different and I was different.

The youth pastor, Pastor Josh, spoke of a generation rising up and proclaiming God's name, a generation that can turn a nation towards God. I never knew that I could be a part of such power. I realized what it meant to bear the image of God, to be an example to my peers. I know that I would not be the person I am today if it weren't for the encouragement and teachings of Pastor Josh. He has a heart for God and a burden for the youth of New Jersey. Him and his wife, Ms. Tiffany, have played such a major part in my walk with God and I love them.

Well, this morning it was announced to the church that Pastor Josh has sent in his letter of resignation. I already knew this because he had announced it at the end of youth service this past Friday. It's weird to grasp the fact that in a month's time they will no longer be a part of my church. I can't imagine a youth service without them. It's sad, but the change is inevitable. Who am I to stand against what God has planned?

Although it brings me sorrow to let them go, it's amazing how they are ministering to me even in their leaving. God has called them to minister to youth on a larger scale. They will be starting a school to equip ministers, artists, worshippers,etc. They are ready to take on the task to help raise up this generation, in this time, and in this state.

It would be so easy for them to say that they have something good and have spent six years ministering at my church. It would be very easy to stay where it's comfortable. They know that God has called them away from their comfort zone and wants them to rely on Him for all things. This new opportunity is completely different from anything they've ever done and they will be able to witness God carrying them through every step. God is faithful. I know that He will use Pastor Josh and Ms. Tiffany in mighty ways. They are amazing people and their love for the youth of New Jersey will penetrate many hearts.

As for the youth group, it is time for us to rise up and lead. Pastor Josh has spent six years equipping us for the job God knew we would have to undertake. We must pray for whomever God calls to take Pastor Josh's place, but in the mean time we need to put into practice what we have learned. As Pastor Josh would say, " You can't become spiritually constipated." We have sat in the pews every Friday night absorbing information and hearing the Word, but now is the time to be a doer of the Word.

I don't think my church will ever be the same. This is a drastic change for the youth ministery and I know that God is going to do something amazing. Although it's sad, I am super excited for what God has in store for me and my church in the future. It is not in our timing, but His and I can't wait to see the call God has for each and every one of us.