Dreams of God - Pt. 2

So, I was watching my two-month-old niece sleep as I was holding her, and she started smiling, then giggling in her sleep. It was so cute, I wanted time to stand still for several moments. I began to wonder about the dreams that God puts in the minds and hearts of infants - dreams that make them laugh, dreams that startle them, dreams of Destiny. Then I seriously started praying. I prayed for an environment that would support those dreams, and that they wouldn't be discouraged by the enemy, and derailed from those dreams that God put in their hearts. Praying that also gave me new hope and a new life; it's never too late to pick up God given dreams, dust off the ashes and take off running. It has pulled strongly on my heart that those dreams are so powerful that satan is so scared of them, he will do anything in his power to way lay them before they come to fruition. It's sad that we value dreams so little that many of us drop them after a little opposition or major obstacles jump in the way. I wonder what would have happened if Joseph gave up on his after he was thrown in prison unjustly... I want to follow my dreams, and take them where God has destined. Even more, I want to help others pick up abandoned dreams, fill them with hope, and have them go for it. After all, "The body of Christ needs the result of the dreams God has placed on your heart."

Dreams of God - Pt. 1

I woke up this morning to the most awesome text message. I opened up my message to read this: The body of Christ needs the result of the dreams God has placed on your heart. I tell you what, I went from groggy to wide awake in no time flat. I called my friend who had sent it, and she was listening to a sermon while getting ready for work, heard that phrase and thought to send it to me. It is something I've been hearing for the last year or so, and it finally solidified in my heart. God gives us dreams, passions in our hearts. What are you doing with it? I'm learning that it doesn't matter whether it makes sense to you or not, if God has put it in your heart, you will never really come alive until you are doing something about it. What is sensible to you may not be in God's plans (I Cor. 1:27). Sometimes, fear of the unknown, fear of ridicule, fear of rejection and/or failure keeps us from pursuing that which God has given us. Is it worth it? Basking in the safety of fear, as opposed to the high adventure of your passion and destiny? Just a question. For some, yes, but I have my doubts...

I'm Yours Lord

Last night's Burning Ones service was flippin off the chart. I just want to put it out there. Maybe I'll write another post going into more detail later on, I just wanted to share this small thing.

Pretty much throughout most of the service after worship, I kept singing this song I learned at camp when I was in elementary school, just this one refrain, because I didn't remember the rest: the words are-
I am Yours, Lord
Everything I am
Everything I'm not
Everything I've got
I am Yours, Lord
Try me now and see
See if I can be
Completely Yours, Lord.

Coll song huh? I love it and was humming it all night. Well, I had a moment where God said, "that'll work." I was reading this morning in II Samuel 22, where David praises God for deliverance. I am reading and just getting some good stuff! Then I come to this verse, and it was the rest of the words to the camp song I had been humming all night. I read the words and recognized them instantly. It's from II Samuel 22:47, and whole song is -

I will magnify the Lord
Who is worthy to be praised
I will magnify the Lord
Who is worthy to be praised

Hosanna!
Blessed be the Rock
Blessed be the God of my salvation
Hosanna!
Blessed be the Rock
Blessed be the God of my salvation

I am Yours Lord
Everything I am
Everything I'm not and Everything I've got
I am Yours, Lord
Try me now and see
See if I can be completely Yours, Lord.

Hmm... I think I like the way my Jehova Sneaky plays....

a world that cannot be shaken

This is thoughts from one of my devotionals from class...

"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee" (Isaiah 26:3)

I was talking to a customer today, and he was discouraged and feeling despair- I could almost physically feel the hopelessness washing out from him. He was caught up in the financial unstability, and even though he was glad that Obama was elected, this man didn't see how things could be fixed. He said it was a scary time and scary place. I told him it could be, if I was focused on this place, but I know of a world that cannot be shaken, so what's happening now doesn't really frighten me. We had an interesting discussion - he was intrigued, but I don't believed he was convinced - but that scripture made me think of that conversation. Even when the world around us has crumbled, God will keep us in perfect peace if we train our mind on Him and trust Him.

I honestly didn't think about that before, but I realize that now. God is bigger than any situation I can come up against, so what's the sense in losing my peace? If I can keep my mind focused on Him, I can ride the waves of a rocky economy or a trying school day with grace and the authority of the love of God. It's surreal, but si true. God gives me peace in the middle of a storm, a peace that passes all rational understanding.

He is so amazing.

No guilt in life, no fear in death

There are times when the words to a song says it all...

"In Christ Alone"
Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2001 Kingsway Thankyou Music

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.

What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.

Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev'ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!

And as He stands in victory,
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow'r of Christ in me;
From life's first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.

No pow'r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow'r of Christ I'll stand


No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow'r of Christ in me;
From life's first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.

No pow'r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow'r of Christ I'll stand

Flipping on the Moon / the Love of God

A friend and I were talking to a former student who's going through a crisis and needed counsel, and my friend had this analogy: We're driving a car down a very dark road, and even though we have our headlights on we still can't see very much of anything. When we give up wanting complete control over everthing in our lives and turn that control over to God, He flips on the moon, and suddenly we can see our way.
I hung out with that same friend later and we were talking about our triumphs and struggles and battles. I told her of a time during camp I had the overwhelming experience of really feeling the enormity of God's love for people - and that only being a very tiny liver of it - and being totaly and completely overwhelmed. Then, I had a glimpse of how He felt when people rejected that love, I was undone. Like sucking carpet. I can't begin to describe the feeling, the hurt, yearning and sadness. The love of God is amazing...
So when I got home, there was a nearly full moon, so I went out on my balcony to think, pray, ponder, whatever. I had several things going through my mind, nothing too coherent, and then I saw it: dark clouds were floating around the moon, but thinner clouds enveloped it. The darks clouds began to completely obscure the moon, but the thin clouds carried the shine of the moon and made it look like someone flipped on a light switch. Things kept rushing through my mind, different prophecies about my capacity for love and deep compassion, and how God keeps knocking walls down. Then I remembered a time not long after I completely gave myself over to Christ when I heard God say to me that He wanted me to show people the love He had for them, and He would use my love of languages for that purpose. I bent over the rail, realizing that was my purpose, who I was, and I didn't need excuses. That's why songs like "How He Loves Us" means so much to me, no matter how many times I hear it. That is what God created me to be, and it hurts, it's so dissatisfying not to be that person.
Much more to be said, thought about and prayed through but I looked up and the dark clouds had totally hidden the moon. Almost before I could process that, I felt the Lord say, "I've already shown you the way, and you now know where to go. So go."
And so I went.

Dragon Skins and Such

I wrote this entry in another blog over a year ago, and I read it and felt like it had alot of revelance in my life right now. This is what I wrote:


I can get analogies from anything, and I've been pondering on this one a long while. Have you ever been scraped so raw emotionally, that everything hurt? I was reading through the Chronicles of Narnia, and I came upon this passage in Voyage of the Dawn Treader that was a very good picture of what I had felt. The character, Eustace, had been turned into a dragon by his greed and piggishness, and after living like that for a while, miserable because he was a dragon, he wondered off and met Aslan, who led him to a large well. Eustace wanted to go in to ease his pain, but the lion told him to undress. So this is the amazing part:

"I was going to say that I couldn't undress because I hadn't any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of thing and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, that's what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.
"But just as I was going to put my foot into the water, I looked down and saw that it was all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as it had been before. Oh, that's all right I thought. It only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this under skin peeled off beautifully and I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.
"Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away the third time and got off a third skin. But as soon as I had looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
"Then the lion said, 'You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat on my back and let him do it.
"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it heart worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff pull off. Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off - just as I thought I'd done myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt - and there it was lying on the grass: only so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly looking than the others had been. And there I was as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me - I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on - and threw me in the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious. After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me in new clothes..."

So much richness in there, but the thing that got me was the whole scraping off of the dragon skin, the bad, scaly, hardened to life and God skin. We try doing it ourselves, but it doesn't ever get rid of it. But then we allow God to remove that, and sometimes, it hurts. It hurts like an open wound that someone rubbed sandpaper over, and on the inside where people don't see that you're sore and hurting and brush up against you emotionally and cause you more pain. But you know that this is good, and God is bringing you to a good place, washing you clean, as it were. And when it's all said and done, He gives you new clothes, His clothes, the clothes of righteousness... It hurts, but it's worth it. It hurts, and I wouldn't willingly choose that as a "fun", easy path, but it's an experience, several experiences, that I value 'cause I've come out on the other side and seen what God has done. As an incredibly dynamic pastor said, I see the pruning shears coming and though it's not a wonderful experience, I hunker down and say, "okay Lord, come on. Prune away what you need to." And I come out stronger in the end. Don't dodge the pruning shears, you might get rid of some dragons skins.


Why did that pull at me again? Yes, I'm going through a season where God is pulling off the dragon skin, but I don't quite feel it, not yet. I've been so snowed under, I've been fighting just to keep my nose above water. Yet I know that it takes a response from me, a willingness to lie down before God, in order to go through the process. I won't even pretend - that has been the last thing on my mind lately, but I know in order tomove forward, I need to do this. I also know the freedom that comes from removing the dragon skin, so the process is not quite as fearful and actually holds some anticipation.

So, yeah. This is me and what's going on lately...

Where have I gone?

So, I'm re-reading Dreaming With God, and something struck me: "Christians who live out of who they really are cannot be crippled by the opinions of others. They don't work to fit into other people's expectations, but burn with the realization of who the Father says they are."

This captured my attention because this used to describe me, but that person has... not really disappeared, but maybe has been hidden lately, and I have no idea when and how it happened. Was it a steady but slow attrition, or did some events happen to totally handicap my self-image. Maybe a combination of both, but in any matter, I never saw it coming. I am fully aware that aspects of my identity don't measure up to who God says I am, which adds to my sense of stagnation and frustration.

Funny, but in the midst of this, I have no intention of bowing to despair. God is good, and I have been through too much for anyone or situations to try and convince me otherwise. I remember when I was in Haiti, totally incapacitated by a parasite, hurting and miserable and unable to move, so much so that breathing was a conscious effort. So, in my mind I sang this refrain (cause talking was 1000 times worse than breathing):

"You alone are Father and
You alone are Good
You alone are Savior
and You alone are God"

I think of that and know with out a doubt that My God is a good God.

I haven't written in a while, I lost interest for a while, and I couldn't find the time, I guess. I felt like I should write again, even though I don't think there are many people who even read this... We'll see how it goes....

Daughter of Kings and daughter of the King

I don't know how I got to thinking about this, but I was pondering on my heritage the other day. I have a manuscript in my nightstand at home that is the history of the Djokoto family, my mother's side of my lineage. Now when I say history, I mean that it starts out "When the tower of Babel fell..." That is absolutely amazing to me. But I realize that I have access to this stuff, I know that stuff because I am a daughter of kings. My family were tribal chiefs from as long back as there were tribes, and therefore, many records were kept and passed down. I have a rich heritage, and I can physically see where I come from. I know how rare this is, and it blew me away. It especially became personal because reading all that was like reading a history book, but I got to a part that sounded familiar, and I remembered a story my mother told me about her grandfather, and that really hit home. This was not only my history, but my LIVE history.

And this is who I am. I know where I came from and I know who I am. Yes, I am a daughter of kings, but I am first and foremost a daughter of the King of kings. My heritage is written out, and I know where I come from. He has known me from my mother's womb, and He has my destiny in His hands. Oh my word, that is so awesome!!! It's an identity that I can carry with confidence and security, knowing who I am and Whose I am. All I can say is WOW!

My Name

So, I was at a firm foundations class, and we were told to sit in prayer and ask God what He is calling us. I've done this several times before and so when we sat, I asked Him if He was still calling me those others - Glorious One and Intimate Lover. I heard those names over and over, but I also started seeing a picture of fire, then a person on fire, and then I heard "My burning one." He saw me as a one burning for His glory, burning white hot in hunger and shining for Him.

I can't wait for the young adult regional event!

This is me...

Forgiven Much

"Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.” - Luke 7:47

I was contemplating this verse, and a quote came to mind: An old man, barefoot, torn and battered, having escaped with barely his life from a civil war in the depths of Africa, was sitting down beaming, waiting to be served by the overworked relief workers. One young lady asked him how he could be so happy, so at peace when he had gone through so much, and had nothing, with not much more to look forward to. He said to her, "My dear lady, I never knew that Jesus Christ was all I needed until He was all I had." (Or words to the same extent). I can't put into words very well why those two concepts are related in my mind. I guess it's where desperation and hunger meets the overwhelming love of God. I have been in a place where I've felt like my world has totally fallen apart, and seen and felt God come meet me where I was and totally envelope me. There have been times when my love for Him poured out, so that nothing else mattered. I understand how little love and many possessions or "blessings" can hinder my own understanding and experience of the Great I AM. My thoughts are all mixed up and random, but I guess the bottom line is that I know I've been through much, I've been forgiven much, and I love so very much!!!

The winter is past

I was in the prayer room at Campus house of prayer, yesterday I think. I was with someone who read Joel 2:18 - 3:?, that passage about restoration, the years that the locust has stolen. There was a song from Misty Edwards that really spoke to me about how God feels about me. I decided to read Song of Solomon with the mindset to really put myself in the role of the Shulamite and God in the Beloved's. I immediately began to feel... drunk with the passion of His love, overwhelmed by an amazing sensuality. Over the past year, I have felt moments of being purely loved by God, and was very content in that, but this was magnified, more than I can even begin to explain. Pretty consistently in the last month or so, God has told me how much He enjoys, values, desires, looks forward to our intimacy. I knew it in my head, but the fact that He has specifically said it changes everything somewhat. It's not only just something I do because I desperately need to feel God. I go now because I feel and expectation, not just from me, but also from Him. I feel wrapped up in His love, I feel a deeper intimacy, a deeper and more steadfast contentment. How do I put words to it? I can't I just can't. All I can say is that I'm loved and desired and He wants me, He really wants me.

Anyway, reading Song of Solomon, and this passage popped right out at me - S.S. 2:10-13:

My Beloved spoke, and said to me:
"Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away.
For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of singing has come,
And the voice of the turtledove
Is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth her green figs,
And the vines with the tender grapes
Give a good smell.
Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away!"

The winter has past. I could relate to the Chronicles of Narnia when Tumnus says, "Always winter and never Christmas-" This year, I feel like I came out of a long winter, and God totally took me hand, lead me out of the valley of the shadow of death and reassured me - the winter is past and the rain is gone...

Afflictions Eclipsed by Glory

I heard this line in a song, and it realy made me stop and think. Yes, the afflictions are there, but the Glory of God is so amazing anything bad begins to fade in comparison. Simple, I know, but it realy helped me with my perspective.

Lord, let Your glory eclipse all my afflictions...