The Lord is my Strength

I have to give praise to God for something. Friday morning when I woke up, I found I had absolutely no energy left in my body. This of course is not unusual for waking up, but as I went through the day I never got energy. I walked to class and felt like I had just ran a marathon and my heart rate was out of control. Everytime I stood up my vision went black. I kept hoping it would go away but it just stayed that way all day. I finally had to call Applebees and tell them I couldn't come in that night. I could barely lift anything anyway, let alone those big old fajita plates! I took it as a hint from God to just spend more time with Him that night and rest. So I trucked on up to the prayer room and just spent time before him. Then, while I was there, God gave me a verse out of Isaiah 40.

Have you no knowledge of it? has it not come to your ears? The eternal God, the Lord, the Maker of the ends of the earth, is never feeble or tired; there is no searching out of his wisdom.
He gives power to the feeble, increasing the strength of him who has no force.
Even the young men will become feeble and tired, and the best of them will come to the end of his strength;
But those who are waiting for the Lord will have new strength; they will get wings like eagles: running, they will not be tired, and walking, they will have no weariness.

So I took God's promise to heart. I waited for Him. I spent time with Him. Saturday morning I got up for work. When I first got there I was still very tired like the day before. I think it took me 10 minutes just to put trash bags in. But I kept praying. Praise God, He gave me strenth to get through the entire day. I don't know how, but the fog lifted. I did my job well. I didn't mess up one order or spill anything. I had happy guests and made good tips. And not going to lie, once I was done with work I was done for the day! I came back to the dorm and flopped. But God let me make it through the day, and for that He deserves the thanks!

Veils

This is just my prayer today... so eloquently written by Jason Morant.
What will it take to be closer to You
Show me what stands in my way
Strip away all of the veils on my heart Lord
You know that I want just to look at Your face
What can I give as I lay at Your throne
Is there a song to be sung
Search me all over my life is in Your hands
You know that I want to fall deeper in love with You
I’m following hard after You
Lord You’re all that I need in my life
Show me what I need to do
To bring joy to Your heart
And strip away all of the veils on my heart Lord
And know that I just want to look at Your face
O Jesus Your beautiful face

Fasting

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
(taken from Isaiah 58)

I just finished (in under a day) this wonderful book called "fasting" by Jentezen Franklin. God has been sorta speaking to my heart lately about fasting. It just keeps coming up and He keeps prompting me to fast (and I usually prompt Him to leave me alone about it). So I was buying some books on my handy flex dollars yesterday, and I came across this book. Without much thought I just threw it in my stack, figured I might as well read into it. Well I just cracked it open when I got back to the room and I couldn't put it down. God has spoken to me through this book so specifically. You see God never really put fasting as some sort of optional bonus points. No, in Matthew 6 Jesus uses words like "When you give.... When you pray.... When you fast..." It wasn't really debated, it was just something you do. But the rewards of fasting far outweigh the sacrifice. Your only sacrifice is giving up food. And really although it makes you hungry, it is scientifically so healthy for your body to fast. You see, God knew what he was doing. And the Spiritual rewards outweigh anything. Your heart becomes more in tune with what God has to say. As the verse says, fasting breaks bondages and heavy yokes. Fasting brings for quick healing. You will call to the Lord (what a privilege!) and He will say 'Here am I."

Happy Singles Awareness Day

So this picture is of my roommate's stuffed animal, haning underneath my bed. Yes, of course there is a story. Yesterday, a lot of supported the 'To Write Love On Her Arms' movement. Well, when Bekah wrote 'love' on her arms and then took a nap with her penguin, it turned out with some red marker on it. So after washing it, this is where she hung it to dry, and it just looked funny. It's still haning there, I can see its little feet from my desk.
Fun moment for a fun day
Happy Singles Awareness Day! Remember to bask is the love of Jesus!

LOVE

TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS

different types of love

With Valentines day here, I guess it’s appropriate that I’m pondering love. Actually, I’m reading this wonderful book called Enjoying God by S.J. Hill. I highly recommend it.

What has been running through my mind is the verse out of Song of Songs “You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride.”

It’s a verse that can pierce you if you let it. But what I noticed is how the author described the beloved as both a sister and a bride. You see, there are several different kinds of love of this earth. Some of the girls on my hall last night were laughing about the fact that we often say, “I love him, but I don’t like love him love him you know.”

There is a love that lovers feel toward one another. I have felt just a taste of it. Often it is very stomach turning. You have butterflies and can’t sit still. You can’t eat or sleep. You day dream all the time. Even when the emotions and feeling dies down, they still make you feel good inside in a different sort of way. And when that special someone isn’t with you, you have an irrational desire to be with them all the time. You want to be with them more than anything, even if you aren’t talking to one another. You long for their presence.

There is a love that siblings have. I love both my brother and my sister very much. It’s a very deep love that can’t easily be put out. It’s a defensive love. I would stand up for Bethany and Levi any time anywhere, period. It is also a comfortable love. I don’t have mushy feelings for them, I just love them. I enjoy their company. They are my flesh and blood.

There is the love a parent has for a child. Since I am not a parent, I only can tell you what other people have told me. A parent would do anything, and I do mean anything, for their child. A mother with a baby is the most protective creature you will ever know. A parent is absolutely irrationally captured by their children. They don’t have to do anything or be anyone for a parent to love them. They can poop and smell and cry and be completely ungrateful. It doesn’t matter. A parent’s love will prevail.

Then there is the love a child has for a parent. This love is still deep. The loss of a parent is a sorrow I cannot imagine. I don’t want to imagine. I love my parents so much. It’s funny though, I have a hard time showing love to them. And although I hate to admit, I know they love me more.

There is a love that friends have. This comes in all different shapes and sizes and expressions. I love my girl friends in a similar way that I love my sister, and I love many of my guy friends in a similar way that I love my brother.

Back to the parents and children. I think it is so perfect that God made it that parents love their children more than children could ever love their parents. It doesn’t make sense. Children do nothing for their parents and parents do everything for their children. Logically it should be the other way around, and children should love their parents more than parents love their children. But it isn’t that way on earth because it isn’t that way with God. God will always love us more than we could ever love Him.

The beauty of all these types of love is that they aren’t just convenient metaphors for God’s love. No. they are deliberate intentional metaphors for God’s love. Think about Adam and Eve. Adam was perfect, the world he lived in was perfect, he communed perfectly with the perfect God. And yet God created Eve, so he would have someone else to love. Then God explains to us all throughout the bible that we are the Bride and He is the Bridegroom. He is our husband. He was perfect and lived in perfection. He loved His perfect Son who perfectly loved Him back. Yet He created us.

But God’s love goes beyond the love a man and woman have for each other, so they had children. And they loved their children. More and more people came to the earth meaning more and more different types of love. If you take the purest form of every kind of love imaginable, mix them together, and multiply it by infinity, then you get a small taste of the love God has for you! Amazing! He thinks about you all the time. He can’t get you out of His head. You have invaded His every thought and emotion. He is defensive of you. He will do anything for you. He longs just to be with you. He wants just to talk to you for as long as you will talk to Him. And He will talk to you about anything, it doesn’t matter. He is just absolutely totally hopelessly in love with you!

real blog

http://blog.myspace.com/rachelwredhair

for the record, this is my real complete blog. I just made this blog.... well for fun. So I may post a few things on here, but the good stuff is on the myspace one.

another one

um.... i like.
yes, did get new photo editing stuff. hense all the posts in one day.

cowgirl

Just an old picture of me I wanted to mess around with. Dang, I miss my long hair!

The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood

Out of my two trips to St. Petersburg, Russia, this has to be one of my favorite pictures. This was taken January 2007, by me, with a Kodak Easy Share. I think it turned out great.

Girls at the Lake

So I just thought I would go ahead and make this into a picture blog. I like messing around with photography, although I am horrible at it and not really serious. I was just playing around with this picture and I really like it. I did some stuff to make it look like an older photograph. Or at least I tried to make it look older. From left to right it's Barb, Linzi, Me, and Danielle. It was a great day at Lake Erie. Good memories:)