On the Road to Beautiful

Have you heard that song, 'on the road to beautiful'? It's a good song.
Yes I remember talking about those words... You lived to die, rejected and ALONE...
what a God we serve, Mel. WHAT a God.

You picked many of my favorite quotes from the chapter to post...
This is a very, very good book. Maybe I should be reading pieces over every day instead of in chunks all at once. The gospel of grace and hope is something I need daily in my life right now--and always.
Praying the Scriptures and God's promises is something I need to do more. To use that gift He's given us, this incredible gift of the written Word. Incredible.

I loved loved loved reading about your time at the Messianic congregation, and the different ways God is bringing you into contact with the Jewish people and fueling your passion to serve them, love them, pray for them. What an amazing thing to pray for Israel with that congregation, Mel. I am so thankful to God for giving you these experiences!!! And excited about the Ebenezer application. Do they have a website? I'll look. I'd like to read more about their theology, goals, etc...
About work at Capernwray. I guess I'm just waiting to hear what openings they have, and waiting to see if God opens the doors for me to go. I am literally broke right now but I truly believe anything He wills is possible. I miss you very, very much, and I can't tell you how sweet it is to me to actually have someone--you-- out there missing me of all people. That's a highly undeserved gift of love to me that makes a big difference right now.

The summer is so open in my mind right now, still, and I don't want to even start thinking that "I'm not praying about it right" so I'm not going to go there. I just want to be where God wants me. And I want so much for you to be where He wants you. It would be lovely lovely lovely if that were together.
Whatever this summer holds, today especially I am longing for and looking forward to breaking out of this pattern, away from the notebooks and the CDRoms and the way some of this classwork shapes my emotions and drains all my energy and enthusiasm. God has plans for us and I refuse to let any of this diminish my belief in the excitingness of that. We have our little parts in the grand story of God, the grand story of All Time. And no part is truly little because they're all intertwined and all essential...otherwise we wouldn't have been made.

I am definitely a ragamuffin right now. I always have been but there's not even an iota of use in pretending otherwise right now. I'm learning, in fits and starts, that this means God's grace is even BIGGER than I thought, not just that I am even more undeserving than I thought. "Grace increases all the more..."

I love you, I am praying for you right...this...minute.

You live to die...rejected and alone.

...remember when we disected that song like we do so many others? If I remember correctly it was in the summer when everything was different. Before you went to the Phillipines, before Jesus reshaped my dream for the future (haha)...before we grew up in a large sense of the word. Amen?

So Chapter 2:
I thought this was perfect. A blessing indeed.

"Be still and know (experience) that I am God. My own journey bears witness to that. I mean simply that a living, loving God can and does make His presence felt, can and does speak to us in the silence of our hearts, can and does warm and caress us till we no longer doubt that HE is near, that He is here. Such experience is pure grace to the poor, the children and the sinners, the privileged types int he gospel of grace. It cannot be forced from God. HE gives it freely, but He does give it and has given it to such as MOses and Matthew, to you and to me. In fact, there is no one to whom God denies it.

...I loved it when he said that "the Word we study has to be the Word we pray." Grace taught me a lot about that...where we put pray in spirit and in truth and declare the word of God while we prayed...crying out to Jesus on behalf of what He already promised us.

AMEN to this:

"When we accept ourselves for what we are, we descrease our hunger for power or the acceptance of others because our self-intimacy reinforces our inner sense of security."

And to end with this:

..."In essence there is only one thing God asks of us--that we be men and women of prayer, people who live close to God, people for whom God is everything and forwhom God is ENOUGH. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seekingsomething besides HIm, we lose it."
Isn't that perfect? Something I think I've been fighting for the last ....nine months. Kate, it has been nine months since I left England, 9 months since I moved here. 9 months since I said goobye to Rudi and had to accept change and moldation (if thats a word:) For the both of us, except quite a bit longer for you. How beautiful that we've been apart for nearly a year and yet here is Jesus working in us the same way He did this time last year. Praise God.

Last night I learned about "seasons" and the seasons of...happiness and joy...the season of sorrow and devastation...the season of mending and molding...He talked about how everyone of us is in a season and is about to transition into another one. What a wonderful way to look at it. The season will not last forever. We should read the story of Elijah. He talked about how he must have been on that spiritual high about conquering the bail idol...and then the next day he was in devastation, went into the fields and asked God to end his life. I wish you could have heard this guy, Kate. I feel silly rephrasing it all but it was incredible! He talked about how God took him through the desert for 40 days and Elijah had this alone, solitude time with God and mending. He mended from the heartache, from the trouble, and then God sent him back out there and said "you're ready to keep going, kid. Just trust in me." (obviously, God didn't use those words.) Anyway, I'll end here because I'll end up wording things wrong. I have to study my Russian but know that I love you and miss you. You are in my prayers, my dear sister.

What next?

light at the end of the tunnel....

...i have missed you.

not just sort of, in a way that is tangible but in a way that goes so deep and has been engraved so firmly in my life that i realize that its a feeling that won't pass until i see you again face to face. and yet we percervere and accept the things we can not change.

so we embrace the future:

what are you feelings for capernwray? have you thought of it much? i have been....as well as this:

i sent my application to the ebenzer ministries in last week. who knows where the Lord will lead, but before i continue can i please elaborate on something incredible that happened this past weekend?

...i went to the Messianic Chapel and the service was incredible. there was the dancing with the Rabbi, frolicking around the temple as if we were Jews from Isarel dancing in the streets. the service was long and we prayed for Israel: stood in the direction of Israel and he prayed in Hebrew singing the prayer and we repeated it in English. Oh Kate...these people, God's chosen people are hurting so deeply and their hearts have become so hardened that its so hard for them to see clearly. even the Messianic Jews who believe in Yeshua suffer and have it so difficult. their families don't believe in Jesus and neither do their loved ones; they are ostrosized because they believe in Jesus and aren't supposed to because they are Jewish. the temple has little to no income and are basically bankrupt. Yet through all of this Jesus still provided the light of hope to be spread across the room. my cousin and i went to an Israeli restaurant after the service for lunch. we were sitting and trying new things, new soda, new settings. the manager of the restaurant aproached us and began conversation. the first question he asks us is: "what messianic chapel do you go to?" now, what person asks this...how did he know? why did Jesus press it on his heart to ask this? i still, to this day, do not know if knows Jesus. he said he is from Poland and his grandparents were Jewish. he said he had been to the Messianic chapel we go to and knows the rabbi. what incredible opportunities Jesus opens up to us and yet i was scared out of my mind. i was terrified of what was going on. i didnt know what to say, what to do, for this one reason: i am not a Jew. i am not a part of all of this so why does my heart ache to reach these people? that night (saturday) at youth group a young Jewish girl in high school came. she was given the blatant truth of Jesus Christ and she did not accept it well. afterwords we were able to talk with her and ask her what she thought, how she felt, what her ideas were...and she is blinded. these people are blinded and the Bible said they would be, but for how long? i know your heart and mine both cry out for these people. Kate. God will once again deliver them. i believe it.

right, so the book:

i have started chapter 2 (wonderful to have you back dear sister. Bonnie was doing good?) and will read more tomorrow morning and let you know tomorrow night exactly what the chapter said to me. this past weekend my cousin zander talked about something that reminded me of you and i and it rang so true to my heart: Jesus is madly in love with us. if we try to compare our love for Him with how much He loves us we will forever be striving to please him. but if we just rest in the fact that He is MADLY in love with us and is constantly pursuing us with His love we realize there is nothing we can do to change it. There was more and hopefully I will tie more into it later. I will try to call sometime this week but because of the time difference it might not be until this weekend. What should we do? Write them and ask them if we could come and work this summer? No pressure, we could always wait until this weekend.

I am off to read a Proverb and dive into sleep...I wish we could listen to something and stay awake talking aka whispering and resting by the heater. Perhaps someday....maybe even in Israel.

Resistance to the furious love of God

Hello, dearly loved one!! How ARE you today? I got your phone message! I should be here most times this week if you can call again.

So I read chapter 2 yesterday, and am just sitting in the middle of a roomfull of wonder at how this is what I need and what I have been not grasping, what's been wrong with me the past month and a half. Part of me is ashamed for having heard the message so much, I should have grasped it; I've held it for a moment at a time; I even remember specific moments at Capernwray... but I let go again. Maybe I should stop trying to hold on to grace and instead start floating in an infinite pool of it.

Have you read any Flannery O'Connor? Do. The short story Manning mentions on pp 43 to 44 stands out in my memory. It's a good one -- cuts to the heart of hypocrisy so violently, shows its ugliness. Tears off the falsely attractive mask of earning one's way to God's heart...

"The struggle itself is exhausting. The legalists can never live up to the expectations they project on God." I haven't thought of myself as a legalist... no, I'm not--for other people. Yet for myself, within myself there is a "resistance to the furious love of God." There is a staring at spiritual heroes and a hearing all words as "YOU SHOULD" and "YOU NEED TO." But you know what? I'm never going to be a spiritual giant by my strength or power or greatness. I'm a broken person.

And oh the greatest biggest most indescribable joy in the world comes over me when I imagine that being all right, me the broken person being given to God and accepted by God, and then even used by God. Not because I'm doing anything right, praying right or fasting right or saying the right words or being impressive. But because HE IS GOD.

I want to give in to that sense of immense relief.

I pray this for you too, my Melanie.

Drinking grace straight is not about us and our drinking abilities. Lord Jesus, move me toward this...

Grace Has To Be Drunk

"Make my life a prayer to you
I wanna do what you want me to
No empty words and no white lies
No token prayers no compromise

I wanna shine the light you gave
Thru your son you sent to save us
From ourselves and our despair
It comforts me to know you’re really there

Well I want to thank you know
For being patient with me
Oh it’s so hard to see
When my eyes are on me
I guess I’ll have to trust
And just believe what You say
Oh You’re coming again
Coming to take me away

I wanna die and let you give
Your life to me so I might live
And share the hope You gave me
The love that set me free

I wanna tell the world out there
You’re not some fable or fairy tale
That I’ve made up inside my head
You’re God the son and you’ve risen from the dead

I wanna die and let you give Your life to me so
I might live And share the hope You gave me
The love that set me free" --Keith Green

God bless you today sister...i read last night this little part that i loved :
"Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case." -The Ragamuffin Gospel.
..my cousin zander said to me last night that this book changed his life. lets pray it does the same for us, eh? have a wonderful week with Bonnie!

mel

Kate's First Response

Mel, that song is so appropriate for this Ragamuffin Journey's beginning. I've liked that song the few times that I've heard it, and when I really think about it, I realize it's more because that's my wish than because it's my total reality. I read the first chapter, and I'm struck by how THIS is the right time for me to read this. I don't remember it really hitting me before, or speaking to any need I was feeling, which I guess is why I didn't get very far the first time I started it.

But for such a time as this, Mel, you brought up this book. For such a time as this, too because the author is coming here and I'm planning to go hear him. For such a time as this, because yesterday, before I even picked up the book or thought about its subject, I was praying and I was so tired of being numb and feeling self-amputated from God... and in the deep cave of my own unfaithfulness, my own selfishness, I knew--I wrote--"oh, Papa, if I could believe that You really love something this depraved and messed up, how tremendous that love would appear to me!" I share this with you because when I got into the first chapter of the book, it was being spoken to ME.

I have this pattern in my life, this blockage that is keeping me from REALLY REALLY accepting that God is love and loves ME.
This is part of who God is--look at the Jesus-instances cited in the first chapter! Yet again and again I put up walls, assuming "yes, but not for me."...

I can say it to myself over and over, I should have held onto this lesson from Capernwray, but some deep part of me still sees Him as shaking His head over me, giving me up, thinking of all the ways I could be better and be doing better. Because He's perfect, for crying out loud!! He's wonderful, and beautiful and worthy of all my love, and I turn away and get tired and then get disgusted with myself for doing so. So then of course I assume He's hurt and disappointed and reacts like... like a human would react if I did that to them.

Anyway, all this to say, this truth--a really deep-down, unshakeable, impossible-to-uproot belief in God's love for even me--this truth is what I think I have been missing and a big part of why I go through cycles of negativity and giving up. If I can take hold of this truth as though it's REALLY TRUTH, oh, Mel, what a life! What a difference.

To have the experience of grace that Manning quotes Tillich about at the top of page 29...

what Manning confesses on p.27, about extolling the virtues of 'superior Christians,' I admire him for lamenting his own actions there. Because I know that this is part of my confusion, and it's part of how I've grown up in the Church, and because since childhood I've wanted to please and impress. So you've got to get up to supersaint level... NO! THERE ARE NO SUPERSAINTS!

Okay, this is extremely long. I'll stop for now. Obviously the first chapter has started a very timely and God-ordained journey for me.
Let's pray for each other as we go through this, eh?
I love you,
Kate

p.s. What was the song you wanted to play for me??? And can I post on this as an actual poster, or just a commenter?

He's Always Been Faithful To Me

....please, write what you think about what we read in effort to get us motivated to write and anything else you care to share with me, it would be such a blessing to share it together on this thing.

...goodnight my dear girl, i leave with these words:

Free- Ginny Owens

"Turning molehills into mountains,
Making big deals out of small ones,
Bearing gifts as if they're burdens'
This is how it's been.
Fear of coming out of my shell,
Too many things I can't do too well,
Afraid I'll try real hard and I'll fail -
This is how it's been.
Till the day you pounded on my heart's door,
And you shouted joyfully,
"You not a slave anymore"

You're free to dance-
Forget about your two left feet
And you're free to sing-
Even jofful noise is music to me
And you're free to love,
Cause I've given you My love,
and it's made you free
I have set you free

My mind finds hard to believe
That You became humanity
and changed the course of history,
Because You loved me so.
And my heart cannot understand
Why You'd accept me as I am,
But You say You've always had a plan,
And that's all I need to know.
So when I am consumed by what the world will say,
It's then You're singing to me,
As you remove my chains

You're free to dance-
Forget about your two left feet
And you're free to sing-
Even jofful noise is music to me
And you're free to love,
Cause I've given you My love,
and it's made you free
I have set you free

Free from worry, free from envy and denial
Free to live, free to give, free to smile

You're free to dance-
Forget about your two left feet
And you're free to sing-
Even jofful noise is music to me
And you're free to love,
Cause I've given you My love,
and it's made you free
I have set you free"