MOVING

Friends!

I have decided to condense (most) all my social media.  If you would like to keep updated on my life, interests, travels, etc.  Please follow the following blog:

http://abeautifulcontradiction.tumblr.com/

Thanks! Hope to see you on my new blog!

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Perfect Love

"Perfect love desires that every heart it touches will be more alive, more free and more passionate about life than before they met."


This quote has caused more disruption in my life in the past few days then few things ever have.  Lately, in my walk through life I have been operating out a place of fear.  I would be so bold as to say that the fearfulness is quite out of character for me.  Yet, lately is something that has taken root and has begun to dictate my actions and thought life.  Which honestly is so ridiculous because the kindest person I have ever known is the author of my story.  


I have always been a rather brazen person, straight forward, honest, and rarely care what people think of me.  But, I have this deep rooted fear of not being wanted or loved.  This is obviously an issue.  It causes hinderances in relationships with people but most importantly with the father.  If I am so fearful of love how am I to love the father fearlessly? 


I want to be a woman of reckless abandon before Him. I want to waste my life at His feet.  But, if I am too scared to do so, I will never do that.  And the thought of that, is terrifying. 


The good part, the part that is slowly beginning to sink into my heart, is that in this world, I will never encounter perfect love, except in Him. There is no expectation that He cannot meet and there is no thing He could do that could damage me in anyway.  Because to Him, I'm perfect, whole, and wanted.


So perfect love casts out all fear, right? Yes. It takes away all fear and replaces it with the things that my heart yearns for: freedom, passion, and being alive.  These things that sometimes feel fleeting or missing, I receive from a perfect love.  Which is why that quote was like a slap in the face.  He wants me to have it! He wants my heart to be alive and free and passionate! He wants me to have a full and thrilling life, full of adventure and free of inhibitions.  It is my own fear that prohibits this.  When really the reality is all I have to do is nothing.  Let his perfect love wash over me.  His love casts out all fear.




Fearlessly,


AB

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Humility

Hello blogging world! Have you missed me?  I bet all 3 of you who read my blog are just tickled that I have returned!


So here are my thoughts:


"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." - Psalm 37:4


I think most of the time I totally skip past the "delight" part and go straight to the desires part.  I take what part of the scripture I want to appease whatever I am wanting at the time, knowing full well that is not what is being said.  But, I am learning that why should I even want my own desires?


So many things have been going on in my life lately that the question of what I want has become rather reoccurring.  "What do you want? If you could have anything, what would it be?" As I sit and think of the answer to these questions, tons of things flood my mind, but all the answers seem empty.  I noticed this pattern and began asking the Lord why that was.  Imagine my surprise when he responded, that my desires were not His desires.


If that doesn't leave you hanging with your mouth open, I don't know what will.  The Lord began to reveal to me that although I live so closely with Him and that I truly do want His desires to be my desires, there are areas in my life where I have refused to relinquish control. Oopsies...


Relinquishing control is one of the hardest things to do in my opinion, especially for a reforming control freak.  The root of control is pride, as is most things.  If I am controlling my situations and manipulating them to produce the outcome I want, that is me saying "God, you're great and all, but I know better."  God calls us to walk in humility, not pride!  Humility is coming to a place of "Okay Jesus, I am giving it all to you.  I am 100% dependent on your and your goodness."  Where there is trust there is humility.


If I trust Jesus and relinquish control, my desires and my heart will become so intertwined with His that when I am asked what I want, I know my answer will reflect what the Father wants.  When I begin to walk out in that place of complete dependence, that is when issues like pride, begin to fall away.  If I want to look like Jesus, which I do so so terribly, then things like control and pride cannot be present in my life.  I want to walk in the humility of Jesus and in complete dependence on Him.


"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." - John 15:5


Apart from Him, I can do nothing.  With Him, I can do everything.

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