Heart beats

When I'm driving and I turn up the praise music very very loud so that I can express my zeal for the Lord, I can feel the bass of the song, beating through the car and right into my chest. It is rhythmic like a heart beat, and it reminds me that like my every moment of living God knows and creates all my circumstances. I am pleased to be in His hands.

Dependent?

Two nights ago was the first time I have ever been prompted to pray before: "Make me dependent every moment on you."

I think I am beginning to see how come I always dredded a relationship with the Lord. It is because the idea of needing to go to prayer or the word for every decision I make seems so -- crippling -- . Who has the time or the interest to submit so often and so much of my everyday life? I'd run out of day to live. I've never asked anyone their opinion that much on anything. Not even when I was a child! Even when I was a child I wanted to do most everything without imput from my parents, or anyone else who was wise.

Everyone around me seems to be saying the same thing:

"And the Lord is saying to me right now, you know Sydney you really need me. No, Sydney; YOU REALLY NEED ME." (name is changed to protect the unknowing)

"When the time came for Abraham to rescue Lot, or for you to rescue others, will you be ready like he was?"

"I measure life's accomplishment not by what I have gained but by what I have given away."

I am finally assenting mentally. God is also working this out in my heart, building a good work, because I spend a lot of my time in the day depressed because I can't pray or read my bible.

It's coming.

Trophy for the song of the year

I have been ever searching for that feminine expression in a song. As for my Christian self this is the song which has taken my trophy for best expression of the female heart in relation to God. Unbeknownst to everyone this song has held this title undefeated for a year now--I have been waiting to blog this entry since I began blogging altogether.

Here is what I can offer--lyrics. But the song is so much more. Make sure you hear the -guitar- version.

Beautiful Name, by Zoegirl

Your heart I seek to find
Your hands have fashioned mine
Let me be used by you to carry truth
To the ends of the earth
'Til everyone's heard
A mended heart will share Your words
I will tell the world that You are God

I will run
I will fly
I will live to be a sacrifice
Through it all I'll rise above
Unafraid I will face what comes
I will run
I will fly
And for my faith I'll live & die
I'll be strong - I will press on
For the sake of Your beautiful name
Your beautiful name

Should all life cease to grow
Should chaos take control
The only hope we know is You will save us
It's worth the cost to take up my cross
As You take back what's been lost
Until all who doubt know
You are God

I will run
I will fly
I will live to be a sacrifice
Through it all I'll rise above
Unafraid I will face what comes
I will run
I will fly
And for my faith I will live & die
I'll be strong - I will press on
For the sake of Your beautiful name
Your beautiful name

I'm not captive anymore
I'm gonna soar to a new place
Take on a new pace
I know what my life is worth

I will run
I will fly
I will live to be a sacrifice
Through it all I'll rise above
Unafraid I'll face what comes
I will run
I will fly
And for my faith I will live & die
I'll be strong - I will press on
For the sake of Your beautiful name
Your beautiful name

Yes, this is my favorite song, and it has been for this whole year.

Yesterday afternoon I saw how to choreograph it. I just stood there and saw it all--how I would dance to it so that I could maximize it's expression. However the moves this song call for are those which I need professional training for. But I would do it, and if I could, I would be quite fulfilled to see God magnified. In order for me to do this song right I need three things: To lose 40 pounds (I need to be not average but skinny) because in order for a move to look right there has to be straight lines, to take a class for a while till I get the moves, and then buy a new house that would have a huge open space where I could run and leap without flipping over the couch. If you know what I mean. No sweat, right?? Ha. No really, in myself I have what it takes physically and inspirationally. We'll see if the Lord ever blesses me this way.

Historically I have rarely attempted guitar songs in dance. They are beyond my ability to express, a challenge. They are more complex, more variated and more emotional than the human voice, and it takes a lot of ambition to try and do it.

Also I think that God blessed me to think of this choreography, where more space and more across-the-floor kinds of movements are used. It would solve my issues regarding dance that is not sinful. I have thought about this a long time (how to make dance right for God), and I have to think about it some more.

No sweets of giving them up

Nothing is as I would first choose it to be, right now. I miss my baby to be and I am failing at nearly everything.

Works-righteousness is the idea that our peace in Christ variates because of the choices we make to do or not do the right things. And I think if I believed it I would lose hope. Because my Christianity would diminish when I was frustrated at myself. But it's at that very moment that He wants to be there with me; it's the frustrated He came to save, and that is why I keep on believing that I am restored fully through faith alone.

When I fail I feel like giving up on being obedient altogether. Even when I know there is a blessing promised, if it is too hard, or if I am too incapable or too slow to change, then it doesn't look like it pays off, anymore, to try to do what is right. And that is why I begin to loathe myself. Because I am stuck. I am forced to choose to surrender my goal or else forced to admit that I don't have it in me to make it there.

I need a mediator. My mediator is faith.

Not faith in myself that I am awesomely strong enough or good enough, because I'll waste a lifetime proving myself that that awesomeness doesn't exist. Nor do I have faith that somehow the standard is not as strictly interpreted as I once thought (that is true deception right there). But faith in God to produce in me, all of it in me, -the work of generating something from nothing.-

If the Artic Sea is the Holy Spirit, and a year ago I was an iceberg floating in that sea, today I am still an iceberg, only a significantly smaller one. There are portions to the sides of me that have fallen away; some of those chunks are floating nearby; some of them have melted and evened in temperature with the fluid water and disappeared. But my goal is to be completely shattered with only small chunks left floating and ready to be melted.

Remember how I said that I have been on a diet/fasting-thing? Well, the day after I wrote that entry I woke up and everything was different in my heart. I no longer had the strength to withhold food from myself nor did I feel like it was necessary to do so, and I didn't even feel guilty. It was like God had moved on, and withdrawn that radical path from my options. Back to the complacent, common path.

I recently read a story of a technique a parent was using to potty-train her three year old boy. "The wise mother cheerfully said to the boy, "Son, Mother has decided that you are just not old enough to be eating sweets, so until you get a little bigger and stop pottying in your clothes, you will not be allowed anything sweet." For a week he seemed to be... monkish about the sweets.... Then the day for French toast came around. Not eating syrup, they were allowed one teaspoon of powdered sugar per toast. After watching the other children receive their powdered sugar, the forlorn fellow said to mama, "I sure do like powdered sugar on my French toast." "I know you do," she said, "but you are not old enough yet." After his deprived breakfast of plain French toast, he climbed down, walked around to his mother, and with all the soberness of one making a revolutionary, life-time decision, he announced, "Mother, I am ready to stop wearing a diaper. Take it off." That was it. From that moment on, he took himself to the toilet. A week later, the little man, now possessed of a more disciplined character, climbed up to the table, sat down on his dry pants and had his French toast crowned with a spoon of powdered sugar." (Pearl, TUAC, Ch. 11)

I've gotta find my reason to get to the Word of God and prayer, just like that boy needs to remove himself to go into the bathroom to do his business. The reason why He let my power to keep offering up my eating habits disappear, is because He wants to be the source of my vision and strength to accomplish my diet.

After all, imagine how easy it would be for people to marvel at an amazing diet I suddenly find that works so quickly and so assuredly. Just because I'm a Christian? Because I know something they don't? No. That's not good enough. At least, that's God's point. He wants to be there every moment for me so that I will be very forced to admit that it was He who did it from start to finish.

It is a miracle to become a Christian and have rights to the power of Christ. But it's all training on my part to utilize any of it for myself. He let me see how sweet it could be. But when I said no as I have so far in my life for striving to remain in fellowship with Him, He took the power away.

He is building His case in my diet and in all my other failures, to help me want to choose willingly to let Him build a daily relationship with Him and I.

Renouncing in order to Receive

I could see my sinful nature having been fed through the blogging effort, and so awhile back I prayed about it. This time however He didn't ask me to be removed from blogging but rather made my pride removed from me. So I'll keep on.

I'm just tired of walking any form of a path that increases my witness of hype over... me. I don't want hooplah for me anymore; there are moments here and there when I have drifted too far from the Lord's voice when I accidentally start to think about how awesome I am again, and then I get slapped in the face again, by shame. Being honest wading through how much I am messed up, it disgusts me to see my image be exaulted.

I am willing to lay down anything, if I can just remove the hype from my heart. I want no room for it.

I am glad that I have been so insulted by myself. All I want is to change. My dependence on God is increasing by quality and quantity.

It is amazing how die-hard this notion of works-righteousness goes in my heart. It is always there, keeping me deceived, keeping me at bay from the Lord who does all good things. Works-righteousness is opposed to trust. And I am glad that it isn't my burden to do amazing things for Christ, except by faith.

Here is what the Lord has me walking through, since I began a serious training session from the Lord starting about a month ago:

--giving up my baby, and plans for a baby soon even though....
--giving up being at LDS Digital whom are not only a love of mine because of Christ but at the minimum a three-year reinforced routein of daily conversation and thought-stimulation
--giving up speaking my thoughts, just because it's in my heart
--praying, oh, praying like it is my very crutch
--giving up in family dynamic matters
--giving up food
--comitting to a daily reading of God's word

It has been very challenging! When I used to have one thing go sour I'd just turn to another, but that "another" is gone, too! And so on and so forth. My mind has very little to focus its pleasures of anticipation on.

You have to renounce before you can receive the blessing. One part must be cut off so that another part can flourish. I keep concentrating on these concepts as I practice everyday giving up what I want to eat. Since somewhere around at least Thanksgiving I have stopped eating, where now I eat, at the most, half of what I used to. It is an amazing thing to see how little food I really need to live on. It is amazing to see how the hunger sensation keeps being strong well after I have gotten full. I never knew these things until now. In all my life I have never tried to deny myself food. The concept to me was painful, and I wouldn't even consider it. I knew I had no ability to restrict myself, so I never even wanted to try anything committed. But God has somehow delivered me a strength I never had, to begin! It takes so much concentration to not eat like I used to, that I've had to change around my entire normal routein.

When I fail to withstand temptation, I feel angry and I feel like giving up altogether, because I hate myself. It has come to my realization that it is very much a part of God's plan for me to experience this frustration. Usually this frustration makes me fall away. But that's not good enough anymore--I want obedience too much now. Now it has the opposite effect on me; I am propelled to remain close to the Vine, to Him--He wants to give what I need moment by moment so that I abide perpetually in obedience and satisfaction. So the hatred for myself, instead of fueling my giving up, is fueling my understanding that I need to remain close to Him.

I keep thinking, when I am restored in vision and strength because I am close to Him, that "I will never again stray from Him so that I feel like giving in to temptation." But I think this is a false path. It is not my destiny to be "impervious." God hasn't made it an attainable goal for this life to become immune to falling away. What He has made walkable is a life that is so well versed and rounded in the richness of His grace that many, many many kinds of temptations or falling aways will simply not have sway in my eyes. In two words: "well-trained." I will be too intimate with Christ to ever choose sin, in increasingly greater and greater regard.

Again, a testimony, that the path set before me is designed to increase my dependence on Him, not decrease it. Here comes that relationship, that as I said in my blogs this whole year, I have been dreading for some reason.

That's where I'm at. These things set before me are challenging.