The Fingerprints of my Father.

Christmas lights, reminding me that Jesus is the dazzling light in a dark world.

A blanket of snow, reminding me that I am Christ’s pure bride, dressed in white.

A golden sunrise, reminding me that God is even more faithful than the sun that rises and sets each day.

The soft sound of the rain, reminding me that God replenishes and grows what he has planted.

Babies’ feet.

Wildflowers.

Fireworks.

Autumn breezes.

Laughter.

It’s all a song full of harmony telling of God’s character and his love.

Sometimes I think about Exodus 33 where Moses sees God’s back, and Moses’ face afterwards is glowing like the sun. If Moses didn’t even see God’s face, than that means I’ve only seen a fingerprint of God. Only a shadow. I am not even close to comprehending the fullness of God’s glory. But he shows himself to me in the little things, and little by little I am starting to understand and know him for who he is.

And to think that this God, the Creator of the world, considers himself my Father. He has sent his son to take all my punishment on his shoulders. He has sent his Spirit so that I won’t ever forget it, and so I can call him Abba, Daddy.

Sometimes the goodness and greatness of God is hard to see among so much brokenness in the world, but he is faithful to manifest himself if we will only truly look for him. My Father is the hope for this dying world. And he has invited me to come along and participate in his adventure of redemption. And he will encourage me along the way with the little things, a song full of harmony reminding me of his character and his love.

Change.

This is a season of change.
It's turning cold, the colors of the leaves are changing, and God is at work.

When I think about change, it scares me. I feel like where I'm at now is perfectly comfortable and enjoyable. But change is necessary.


Change is the language of the gospel.
Christ came down to take us out of death into life.
Our sanctification is a process of becoming less like our old self and more like who we already are in God's eyes.
Change is a gift from God. It is essential, because we are fallen, broken people.


"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." -James 1:17

Between college decisions and being convicted about being intentional in living out my life in a way that glorifies God, the changes that are beginning to take place in my life are painful. But God is doing something awesome. And what's extremely cool about it is that I can see him at work at large in the community of believers I'm connected with at school and church. It truly is a season of change for so many people, and I believe so many hearts are ripe for revival and change right now. I can't wait to see what happens.

There is someone who is infinitely perfect, and cannot become any more perfect. He does not require change. And he is our rock and fortress when we are drowning in change and can't figure life out.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." -Hebrews 13:8

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." -Jeremiah 29:11

His oath, His covenant, His blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.

Life is short. Make it worth something.

Lately I've been convicted of how I live my life. Do I really, truly, believe that the God of the Universe, the maker of heaven and earth, gave up his son, who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing? That he became obedient to the most painful way of dying? For me? Do I truly believe with all my heart that he died a death that satisfied the infinite wrath that God had for me, and was infinitely righteous in my place?

Because that should change EVERYTHING.

But does it?

Sometimes it takes something like a shooting at NCHS to come to grips with reality.
This life is short. It's a vapor. I'm here today, but I could be gone tomorrow.


What scares me is that I usually live my life in a way that portrays that I don't truly believe that I've been delivered from death. Yeah, Jesus died for my sins. I hear it everyday. But what would happen if I actually HEARD it? For real? And heard it EVERY DAY of my life? That would enable me to live freely, with confidence that all the requirements that God has of me have been met in Christ. That would shape how I interact with people. That would change my selfish motives. That would enable me to actually love. And not cheap love, but love that imitates the love that Christ had for me.

And that.....that could make my life worth something.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1

 
The point of my life is to glorify God. Does sitting in church, sitting in Christian school, sitting on my couch being a "good" Christian and reading my Bible glorify him? Not really. Not unless it actually leads me to real action. Doing something for the sake of God and not myself, that definitely glorifies him.

This is hard. I don't know how to take action in the right way. I'm so accustomed to living under a yoke of slavery. I don't know how to live a radical life of abandon in light of loving my Savior. It's not safe. It's not normal. But it's important. And I have faith that as long as I'm willing, God is going to do some pretty amazing things.

Summer 2012 Bucket List<3

There's so much I want to do, so I thought I would keep track of it and make an official bucket list for the summer. PLEASE let me know if you want to participate with me in any of this, because none of it will be any fun without friends! :)

1. Picnic in the park at least 5 times

2. Go to garage sales all over town

3. Dance to music in the rain

4. Make life-sized bubbles

5. Have a huge water gun fight

6. Watch a movie outside projected onto the house

7. Have a Disney princess movie marathon

8. Make home-made ice cream

9. Catch fireflies late at night

10. Go geocaching for the first time

11. Play a huge game of flashlight tag late at night

12. Camp in a tent in someone's backyard

13. Go to at least 5 restaurants I've never been to

14. Stargaze

15. Slip n slide on a huge tarp

16. Learn to make my own frappucinos

17. Have a car wash

18. Go tubing for the 1st time

19. Take pictures with sparklers forming words

20. Go to the drive-in movies

21. Watch the sun set

22. Have a treasure hunt all around town

23. Have a sleepover in a fortress made of sheets, just like when we were little

24. Go to Emack at least 3 times

25. Hang out outside late at night using candlelight

26. Go paintballing

27. Have a pie fight

28. Make new friends (so join me in completing my bucket list, even if I don't know you very well!)

Why God doesn't give me what I want.

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord."
Jeremiah 29:11-14a

My plans aren't God's. I've been finding that out the hard way lately. I think we as Christians have this false notion that God will give us all the things that we think will make us happy because we're his children and he loves us. Which is true, but sometimes not in the way we want. God blesses me each and every day with an immeasurable amount of things that make me happy, and sometimes I don't even realize it. I just take it for granted.
It's easy to praise God when he brings about the plans that I have for myself. He blesses me so much by doing this that I've just come to expect it. But what happens when the plans I have don't match up with God's plans? Instead of viewing God as bigger, I view him as smaller. I think that if God is God and he wants to bless me,  why didn't he follow my plans and make me happy? I think that my plans are better than his, and in doing this I make him "smaller."
God isn't small, though.
His sovereignty is something hard to grasp, and I don't think I'm ever really going to figure it out. Not in this life. The correct response to not getting what I planned is to step back and realize that God is so much bigger and greater than me. He has my best interests in mind, even if they're painful and it hurts. Even if it doesn't make me happy. But he doesn't want to make me happy because of my plans. How does saying, "Look at how God gave me what I planned for my life!" give him the maximum amount of glory? The subject of the praise is my plans. That's not what God wants. I exist to give him glory. He wants me to look at my life and say, "I could not have ever dreamed or imagined anything like this. My plans are so stupid and won't make me happy. God will. And his plans will. God is good to me, no matter what, and his plans are so much better than mine."
Life is like a play. God is the writer and director. We're just the actors. We don't decide what is said or done; the writer and director tells us what to do and we do it. And at the end of the show, it's God who gets the applause.
God knows what's best and I don't. I don't like to hear that. But Jeremiah says that God's plans are for my good, and they give me a hope and a future. God doesn't want to make me miserable. He gives me good gifts which make me happy. But he also takes them away, and I need to learn to be happy in that, too.
It's like the song says...he gives and takes away, but my heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name.
It all comes down to not living for myself. I belong to God now. He bought me at a price. And he's a good father. He knows what's best, and I don't. I don't find my fulfillment in getting what I planned; I find my fulfillment in Christ and throwing myself at the foot of the cross during all circumstances.
The second part of this passage is also really comforting. When God does what he plans, it will cause me to draw close to him. In the joy and in the pain. When I cry out, he will hear me. When my heart doesn't know where to go and I've hit my rock bottom, all I have to do is look up and I'll find my deliverance. God isn't far off and unknown. He's capable of being found. But he's also bigger and greater than we could ever imagine, and so are his plans. And this is what we can fall back on when our plans don't work out. The truth is, our plans probably won't make us happy and might even cause harm to us and the people around us. God's plans are so much better.

The Joy of my Heart.

"Oh, come let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! 
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods."
~Psalm 95:1-3

"Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
Serve the LORD with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!
Know that the LORD, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
For the LORD is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations."
~Psalm 100



The meaning of Katrina is "pure." And my middle name is Joy.
My name = pure joy.
The majority of the time, I don't feel like I live up to my name. I'm not one of those people who can be constantly happy all the time. When there's something I'm struggling with, it usually shows up in my attitude.

This theme of praising God is all throughout the Psalms. It's not just a quick, "Thanks God for everything" prayer that you shoot up once a day. It's a call to sing and dance with gladness and with fullness of heart because God provides everything for us. And we don't just sing half-heartedly, we sing loudly and with JOY. We are allowed to come into the presence of a great, mighty, holy God and we should do so with singing! This is a call to worship, and worship does not just take place once a week or when we're in a good mood. It's a way of living our lives, and even when struggles come our way, we can trust in the sovereignty of God in everything because he is a great God and the rock of our salvation. His love and faithfulness endure forever.

I can have pure joy. Even during struggles, when my flesh wants nothing else but to have a bad attitude. Because the Lord is good and his steadfast love endures forever.

This is why the web address for my blog is called "thejoyofmyheart."

Pray.

Today I was reading a book called "Operation World," and it was overwhelming. It's a 900+ page book that has information about what to pray about for every country in the world. I had no clue where to start when I picked it up, so I flipped to Guatemala since I recently visited there. One of the paragraphs jumped out at me:

"Children at risk:

The majority of children between ages 6 and 18 live in extreme poverty, with large numbers orphaned or from broken homes. Non-existent social support structures drive them to child labor or toward drugs, gangs, or the sex industry. Around 15,000 children live on the streets. Many documented cases exist of death squads murdering these unwanted 'nuisances.' A number of local and international ministries seek to help them; pray for real solutions to these desperate needs."

Our world is in need. The least we can do is pray.