::: one day :::

Josh Garrels: farther along 

Please click on link above, lyrics can also be found there.  The new album "love and war and the sea in between" is insanely good.

.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Phew... a rough two months its been for me here in Japan as the "foreigner".  A deep valley I feel I have just passed through. Spirit heavy, emotions all over the place, heart discouraged, tested, tried... still always knowing God present, but struggling to "do" life as a "believer". Loving God with ALL that we are... I fall short of the full measure every day. The path is not easy... it's narrow...

Ichinoseki, Iwate, Japan

Two things remain strong in my heart and mind though..

I love Jesus + Japan. This is why I am here.

 Great danger comes to us though when we begin fearing man and not fearing God. This was my problem I think.  I do not mean He is a scary God, only that we should revere Him and that He alone has the power to give us eternal life or death. While the circumstances here have been difficult, I really needed my eyes turned back up to Him. I was so worried about respecting and honoring the people and being sensitive to the culture here, that I was conforming and forgetting who I was, and who I belonged to. 

 I am His!!!  

I can trust that God's perfect goodness and faithfulness will always see me through. Life with Jesus is good, brothers and sisters. Japan is a rich + complex culture, one I may never fully understand but I can have compassion for my brothers + sisters at this time,

without sacrificing "me" or losing heart.

He is personal and knows "my"and "your" name.

 Peace begins with a smile,

a smile I will cheerfully wear! 

Lets keep going together.

Greater things are still to come...

Temporary Housing, Iwate, Japan/ mobile cafe FUN!

" Love God, your  God, with your whole heart: love him with all that's in you, love him with all you've got!" 

Deuteronomy 6:5 

 

...inhale and exhale

I cannot come to grips with my current state...
Feel much like a fish flapping around on the dry shore.
Needing desperately and longing only to be in safe, living water


breath in the air, feeding on your word... sustains me
but truth remains,
insufficient and inadequate...me


What is a "fish" with out water?
What am "I" without  You, my God?


You are mighty to save...
God save me.
I need you!

true love

Reading Bonhoeffer again. I am amazed at the heart and understanding of such a man about God. I can be so blind, selfish and callous; I am so weak too!

oh that God would help me:

see with eyes like His,
understand  + know with a mind like His,
love with compassion like His...

“God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.”
-Diedrich Bonhoeffer (Letters)

:: selah ::

  

dear God, i can do nothing but stammer to you. i can do nothing but hold out my heart to you.  you created us in your likeness. our hearts are uneasy until they find peace in you.

-sophie scholl in her final hours before her death