Laying down my ambition. Picking up His heart.

Here I am in Los Angeles.... the craziest place EVER. Wow what a transition.

I have this crazy heart to see anointed worship arise. There is a vein that I am specifically talking about that I don't always hit myself. But when I hear it, I know it. I can feel it. There is a line that I can see very clearly when someone is operating out of performance and not being in love. I live in the city of performers. LITERALLY. I freaking live in Hollywood. Everyone wants to be seen. Validated. Sadly, there are many Christians in this same boat.

I have a heart to reach people. To take those that have believed the lie that their portion is ashes, loneliness, pain and bring them into the knowledge that their portion is Jesus. And HE takes the ashes, the loneliness and pain and turns it into BEAUTY, JOY, DANCING. Such wonderful knowledge is this. And how could I hoard it to myself?

I want to influence the influencers. I live in the city that influences the nation. How did I get here again? Did I see this coming even one year ago? NO WAY. I don't want to influence the influencers because I want to prove I am right. I want to influence the influencers because of who He is and how He has changed me. He transformed this heart. He kept me. I shouldn't be where I am today. The odds were WAAAAAAY not in my favor. But somehow, there was a yes in my heart. And that's all he needed. And here I am.

Here is my journey. Living in the in between world where I have to, I MUST encounter the true reality of WHO HE IS. Because I cannot inpact someone that only performs when I am performing myself. I have to KNOW HIM in the deepest parts of me. So that I don't speak out of a remembrance, but out of an indwelling.

What would we look like if we truly looked to Him and had the light of His face shining on us? What would it look like if we all just SAID YES. Just gave in. If we kept our eyes upon Him, and affection pointed to Him.

I have spent too long trying to plan and figure it out myself. So here I am, laying these plans and all of my futile attempts to become successful on my own. I lay my own ambition down and I pick up His heart.

Call Me Out of Where I've BEEN

I had two dreams last night. I woke up remembering them vividly and thinking about how incredibly random they were. I couldn't shake them as I worked all this morning. Then I decided to share the randomness with my co worker. Low and behold the dude interprets dreams and nails it. So here are the dreams.

First dream I was with one of my very close friends. She had gotten put in jail the night before for driving with a violated license. She was let go, but would have to return the next day if she didn't come up with 4,ooo dollars in bail money. She came up to me and asked "If you felt like giving me a gift, would you want to buy me out of bail?" In the dream, I apparently had 20,000 dollars in the bank. I felt so confused cuz I was supposed to use it for my album I wanted to record. Then after some processing I realized that I actually only had 2,000 dollars in my account and couldn't even help her anyway.

Second dream I was in my home here in Kansas City and we were having a meet and greet hang out time with all my KC friends. One of my old best friends that I had pretty much had a broken heart over was here from Redding. I watched as she and this guy that I am currently crushing on met and I instantly felt insecure that he would like her instead of me. I ran downstairs hurt and she was down there as well changing into a not so cute outfit but came out of the bathroom saying "I can even make this look hot."

So after processing with my co worker, this is what he told me.

"I feel like the Lord is pin pointing a perhaps life long feeling that you didn't deserve what you desired or maybe you never felt completely taken seriously but whatever the feeling is, I feel like the dreams were for you to take to the Lord and ask him where the feeling is coming from and let him come and heal that place and liberate you into freedom in who you are."

Spot on. So now I'll go to my journal and process with the Lord privately :)

The Journey

I find myself at this place in life.... a crossroads where everything has been laid out on the table. I've pushed my chips to the center and have declared, "ALL IN." I wonder if everyone comes to this point in life. Anyone else out there in my shoes? I have gone this far in life, and now that I'm here, I can't go any farther. I have gone around the mountain and now I am finally getting the picture. It's not that I am physically unable to move foward. (Although sometimes I think that even if I tried, my feet would fail me at this point) I can move foward on my own accord, but I have seen where that has gotten me. Around the mountain and back to square one. Back to this place. I was in this place in August of 2010. Moving out of my hometown of 14 years for the first time ever, I knew God was sending me on an adventure. I had a picture in my mind of what it would look like. After landing in my new city, Kansas City, I realized that things looked different than what I thought they were going to look like. Instead of stopping and asking the Lord what He was doing admist it all, I just took things into my own hands. And here I am... 4 months later... with the stark reality that I CANNOT MOVE FORWARD WITHOUT HIS HEART. It's a beautiful reality actually, once embraced. Towards the middle to end of December, I realized I was kind of feeling a bit lost, and like I was falling apart. Which if you know me, that is a rarity. I am the strong one. I have it together. I have a plan. I have an answer. I have.... yeah..... nothin' this time.

Through some processing and some advice from a mentor, I realized I MUST, MUST, MUST set my heart on him. I made a commitment at the beginning of the year to take these next three months (or more) to focus on Him. Learn about Him. Get to know Him. And attain His heart for my life. And I can proudly say that I have successfully done so. Three weeks have passed by and I am already waking up thanking Him and adoring Him. Sometimes I wonder... am I weird because I wake up and I am already excited to spend time with Him? Do any other 24 year olds do this? And then I think about how I MELT when my niece wants to spend time with me. When SHE actually comes to me and wants to sit in my lap. I am not a mother, but being an auntie gives me enough perspective to know that there is no greater joy than when a child wants to spend time with his/her parent. JUST IMAGINE HOW PLEASED HE IS.

That's all that matters.

I remember the first day in the prayer room after making my 3 month (or more) committment. I told God I had no idea how to navigate this season of my life. I had no idea what the rhyme or reason was to "getting closer to Him" or "going deeper". Christianese. What are the practical steps people!? How do I get closer to God in a 10 step program!? Ha. Step One. Be honest and admit to God you have no clue what the heck you are getting yourself into, and what you're supposed to do next. It works.... promise. Through this brutal honesty on my part, the Lord has returned the favor with showing me what I have to go after in this next season. I feel like He has told me that I am a little bit in the red zone... the danger zone... of never recovering from self preservation. Love is patient, Love is kind, Love... can be tricky. ;-)

I have so gotten into a place where I have safe guarded my heart so that I can neither feel heart broken or sadly, feel love at all. A worship leader at IHOP-KC has a chorus that explains this dilemna perfectly, "Self preservation steals the joy of sweet adoration." I believe that falls under many categories of love. Friendship, marriage, and even with God. I have felt the Lord nudging me to get free of this because I AM coming close to no recovery. And my heart LONGS to love. To love God. To love people. To love myself. To love my husband and children one day. I want to take care of whatever I need to now so that I can end up holding my husband's hand in fifty years.

So I took a break and went to sleep and now it is Sunday afternoon. I love God's timing. This morning, Dana Candler spoke at church on EVERYTHING I have been writing about. She put language to what my heart has been feeling. She talked about self preservation blocking us from the Lord going deeper. She gave a few perspectives to have when going into a season of whole heartedness. I basically felt like the congregation had dissapeared and Dana and I were having a conversation in my living room. One point I really loved that she made was her second perspective on understanding the role of hunger. A lie that is very prevalent to people in the prayer movement is feeling like God has not met you in your hunger. When you have put 8 hours in the prayer room and fall into the trap of not believing He has met you in your hunger. Dana brought up the point that it was God who put the hunger in you in the first place. The more we taste of the Lord, the more we want. So from the very first hunger pain we have, we really need to thank Him for it. Because without him placing a hunger in us, we would be unaware.

Hunger is a gift from God. It is not a sign of His absense, but of His presence.

So here I am, at the beginning of my journey, having never felt so fulfilled and excited before in my life. Now having realized that although I may have gone around the mountain, I still attained a level of maturity and hunger through it. Therefore it was not in vain. God is the GOD of redemption. As soon as I say yes, He is on the other end pouring out more, restoring and redeeming. Through this journey of breaking down walls of self preservation, I will learn to love Him and receive love from Him. The rest falls in to place. My one concern must be that I love Him and know Him more. To seek the face of God. To seek the knowledge of God. To seek the heart of God. To love Jesus with all my heart, my soul, and my strength. To yield to the Holy Spirit. What an incredible journey.

THANKS GOD.

He is in it all

Well... I am waiting for my potatoes to cook.... I tried to start a fire in the fire place and that definitely didn't work. I feel like a lot is on my heart, so I need to write it down. As I was surfing facebook, I saw pictures of the Fight! conference that is going on right now in LA. It's been killing my heart to not be there. But I know that God is so good, and the Holy Spirit is with me wherever I go, so I have tried to reconcile myself with the fact that it's just not my time right now. I feel like the Lord is pulling me into the music industry. When I think about performing and touring all over the world, I get so excited I feel like I could burst!! I love it. I love music. I love fun. I love writing a good song with a good message. But then, when I think about the Holy Spirit and how I so LOVE to feel and see Him move, I remember how much I LONG to just encounter His presence. To have meetings that last hours as we are just fixed on Jesus, encountering His holiness, His beauty, His perfection, His love, His goodness. I feel overwhelmed just thinking about it. And when I think about how I want to be married and be a mother to many, I think, "How would a guy fit into the picture? I don't even know how the picture will turn out, let alone adding a guy to it?" But it's deep in my heart. The desire to love someone and share a life with him, making babies and living the life God created and intended for His children to live. How do we make peace with it all? The desire we have in the forefront, and the desire we have in the long run, and the desire we have in a couple years?

We simply dwell in Him. We love Him. We set all our attention on Him. We give Him everything and have full faith that HE WHO STARTED A GOOD WORK WILL COMPLETE IT. I will sit in my reclining chair in Kansas City, Missouri, and I will dwell in Him. I will pray for the Fight! conference, and I will ask Holy Spirit to SHOW UP! I will thank Him for all the times He's shown up in my life, and I'll simply sit. I'll sit and wait expectantly. I'll enjoy Him and He enjoys me. I'll run in life. Enjoy the small things. A good cup of coffee. A homecooked meal. A fun movie. A sunny day. A warm fireplace. I know He is in all these things. I'm so convinced of His goodness and faithfulness. Today I kept thinking to myself, "What a fun adventure I get to have with the Holy Spirit." Everyday of my life. Everything I put my heart to, He is there. Such a sweet life.... I love you GOd. You are worth EVERYTHING!!!!

DreamS

Dreamt last night that I was serving at a show/worship service. I was in the audience cleaning up popcorn and serving the patrons. Katie Torwalt was on this magnificent stage with sparkly shining dress singing her heart out. There was an open mic towards the back of the stage, so I put the bowl of popcorn down and went on stage to grab a mic. I knew it would be ok. Then Amber Hellein/Stevens got up on the stage at the same time as me going for the mic as well. I ended up grabbing it from her and said we can just take turns with a smirk on my face. I started to sing and someone cut me off from the front of the stage. A testimony. I knew what I had was something prophetic for the audience, but i just kept getting cut off.

Maybe this means in the past... I was competing for a place to be on the stage, but kept getting cut off, in competition with people I didn't even want to be in. All I wanted was to sing out what I felt the Lord had given me, but ended up getting caught up in competition, knowingly or unknowingly. Katie Torwalt was one of the up and coming leaders while I was constantly being pushed back. Maybe I'll get a part two tonight?? I sure hope so!!

Life

I am in Kansas City, Mo. I have been working up to this for quite some time now. My last two months in Redding were "surviving" until I could go to Kansas City and THRIVE. Promotion started happening right before I left. Relationally and in ministry. And now that I'm here, I am in a freeze it feels like. The questions of, "Was this really you God?" "Am I really in the right place?" have hit me since being here. I have gotten homesick a few times. Not so much homesick, but moreso needing familiarity. I think I need to be sensitive to myself in this season and not underestimate the fact that this is my very first real move and it's a big deal. Especially because I moved out mainly in faith. Which is SO not like me. I'm SUCH a planner! But God has been faithful with everything. He has answered every prayer and is fulfilling every promise. Sometimes when it happens differently than what I expected or thought, it scares me. When this happens, I just have to remember what He's done so far and how faithful he has been. He has done SO much in this past year. I couldn't get away with thinking He wasn't going to continue His faithfulness.

This next year - I would like to see fruit. I want to refine what my heart is going after. I want to grow in the word. I want to rise up into my prophetic potential and gain understanding on each season I am in. I want to know the big picture and be confident in being "hidden." I want to grow in music, and grow in song writing. I want to live life well. Partnering with the Holy Spirit in making life an adventure and full of His destiny.

Above all, I want to KNOW God. I want to know him in a deeper way. I want to know His heart. I want to be attuned to what His heart is burning for. I just want to care for His heart too. I want to honor Him, bless Him, and love Him with all my heart, mind and strength. I want to walk away from this next year without one single doubt in my mind of His realness, His goodness, and His faithfulness.

DREAMS

It started with me being inebriated, and physically getting closer to a young guy about 17. The scene switches to me two months later feeling my stomach and realizing it's getting bigger. I go to the doctor and he tells me I'm pregnant. I am shocked and say that I didn't do anything the night before. The doctor then told me that at the stage I was at, it probably happened two months ago. And then in the dream, i remembered back to when I was drunk, and how all I remembered was starting to get intimate with a guy, but I couldn't remember anything about how far it had gone. But there was evidence that it had gone that far.

Then the scene switches and I'm at the beach and I'm about to take off my day clothes and unveil my pregnant body and I felt so much shame and embarrassment. I had thoughts of abortion, adoption, but more so abortion. I kept thinking to myself how much easier it would be if I just aborted the baby. The father wouldn't have to know, no one would ever have to know, and I could go on with my life.

The scene changes to my brother's wedding, and I am about to get called up onto the stage to make a speech. Even more intense thoughts of shame and guilt and all the worst feelings you could think about yourself, I was feeling. I knew that I had to come out with it and let everyone know, but I felt completely ashamed. And then i woke up.

It was so real I actually felt my stomach when i woke up just to check. It was so real that I feel like I just carried a baby even right now as I am writing. I just feel like God wants us to go after not just abortion. I think from what I get from the dream, that we must go deeper. We must capture the hearts of the youth in this nation. We MUST be captured by the beauty, the holiness, the redemption, the love, the passion of God. Out of this encounter and reality, we HAVE to bring others with us. WE HAVE TO CAPTURE THE HEARTS OF THE YOUNG ONES.

Another dream I had in the same week was a dream about Lou Engle. I know that I wrote it down somewhere but I can't find it, so hopefully I can recall everything in detail.

I was with a group of teenagers in my dream in a downtown city area in America. We were laughing and having a good time when out of nowhere everything around us went silent. So still that it was creepy. A large group of tanks started to roll in slowly on the street we were walking. All of the tanks stopped abruptly; one directly in front of us. American soldiers climbed out of the tanks and began open fire on all of the young ones.

Next scene. There were people and soldiers every where. One soldier was on a sidewalk with a 19 year old boy. The soldier took a clump of mud with rocks mixed in and smeared it on the boys eyes. This is where Lou steps in. Lou and I grab the boy from the soldier. I make sure the boy is doing ok while Lou steps in front of the soldier. The soldier then punched Lou in the stomach. Lou doubled over in pain, but then began to laugh a hearty and joyful laugh as he rose back up to full posture. And then I woke up.