Archive for May, 2009

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May 14

My Heart: House or Home?

My heart: House or Home?

I was driving to Starbucks after working out in the morning singing and responding to worship playing in my car. I love how worship can connect our hearts to God when we engage even for a moment. I began praying this prayer…”Lord I want my heart to be your home…that YOU the creator of the universe would be resident in my heart to see the truth of who I am…my strengths…my weak and frail parts…the parts that still have icky residue from my past to deal with…some I can see…some I can’t. Really live in me…be BIG inside me…BE bigger than me in me. I don’t want to be your house…I want to be your home!” And then…the download of His heart and revelation came to me. I don’t want to be a house that’s decorated and looks good…looks like it loves God…has pictures on the walls with scriptures…but His presence isn’t there. I want to be a home that might even be disheveled at times but IS lived in. I want God to live there and feel at home and others to feel at home because God lives there!

The revelation of this house and home thing really brought to light something in my heart. For so long I’ve had an idea of what my home schooling and domestication (for lack of a better word) should look like. That on any given day after home schooling my oldest son through all his subjects and had him read for twenty minutes, helped my second son through his kindergarten work, and entertained two smaller children…I should be able to get my house immaculately clean (like every other Mother does…right???) I should be able to keep it that way until my husband walks through the door. And well…I can occasionally get it that way…and it might even last a couple hours until a small tornado called my four children comes through and um…we begin again. I say ALL that to say it’s an idea I keep myself to…that I beat myself up about if I can’t get it done the way I want to get it done. It’s been a long struggle to find balance. But I’ve realized…I’ve served this idea in my head instead of serving God in this area of my life. And for a long time now I haven’t cared so much about what other people might think about me since I have a hard enough time with what I think about me …my own opinions of how I’m doing as wife and mother (most often we are our worst critic). I am not saying that I’m NOT going to clean…seriously does the cleaning ever end? No…I just want to serve God and not an idea…I want to be me…walking in Grace that is REAL…I don’t want to miss God in this moment because I’m off serving an idea of who I should be and trying desperately to arrive there instead of loving Him and being the best me I can be now! I only have today…TODAY…tomorrow’s worries will be there when I get there and when I get there…they are not too big for God! Deep breaths…I‘m finally okay with never arriving…embracing imperfection as my link to utter dependence on the ONE who made me imperfect. I was just telling my son tonight something he has heard me say since he was a baby… “ I will make you one promise about me that you can take to the bank…I will NOT be perfect, in fact I will blow it (more than once)…I will hurt your feelings…you’ll hurt mine…it’s relationships and it’s life…I won’t be perfect but I promise to lead you to the ONE that IS! He forgives…He heals…He makes new and He makes better.” He (my son) may only understand this in part now…but I know there will be a day he really gets it. It’s taken some years but I have finally got it for myself! I am just a Mom trying to walk this life out with God the best I can…aware of His amazing grace and humbled by His ever-present companionship that rises on the inside of me when I’m weak and says, “Your with Me now…we’ve got this!” I’m humbled that He chose imperfect vessels to be the place He wants to abide…that He chooses my heart…your heart to be His Home…a place His presence lives! We could all look around our hearts if we are willing to be honest and see messes…we might even think we can’t invite Him in till we get it all straightened up…but all the more I say, “Lord get comfy up in our hearts…make our hearts your home…because I know if You’re living here…the rest will surely fall into place!”

Being His home and with Great Love,

May 01

When I said less…HE DID MORE!!!

When God put it on my heart to write about this hole in our faces…the hole that words come out of. I thought really Lord,…me? I get to talk about the beauty of holding one’s tongue? You know who this is right? Your girl with the talent to still be talking when the room goes silent, um…talking to my girlfriends about a sale at our favorite store and how much I love my new pink bra! Umm…Ya, that would be me Lord! …And that would be only one example. I am the queen of trying to reign back my words in the air after they have come out of my mouth without thinking. I can see myself in slow motion reaching out for them saying, “Come back to me…come back to me…,” But NO…they go and land on the ears of the hearers leaving me with nothing but huge eyeballs starring back at me. One of my favorite BIG GULP moments is when I was pregnant with Caleb our first and my due date was Nov.5th…one of my big prayers was that he would not come early and be born on Oct. 31st. I just thought that…THAT would be horrible. Yuri my husband was invited by some friends to play electric guitar during a worship service at their church…after practice Yuri invited me up to the stage to meet everyone. Being just one month away from having our first baby everyone asked what our due date was. I started chatting with the Leader’s wife how it is Nov. 5th and I was just hoping and praying he wouldn’t come early…because I just didn’t want a Halloween baby. Then there was a moment of silence…the kind that nudges you and let’s you know you shouldn’t have been so opinionated. She graciously tells me her husband’s (the worship leader) birthday is on Oct. 31st and not only his but also the bass players birthday was on Halloween. I thought …”Oh JESUS! …oops, I did it again!…please HELP ME!!!!” We all have times we wished we had kept our mouth shut. That we would have taken just a few more moments to process the words that would come out of our mouths…and instead of recovering from another instance of verbal regret we would have played it safe at least just once.

Now this is just a silly story and embarrassing moment that might not of happened if I had stopped to consider in such a large world someone was bound to have been born on Halloween and they might just be in that room. But… what I really feel like God has put on my heart to talk about is trusting God with our words through the lack of them. So often when we go through difficult circumstances and challenges in life and we feel in some way we have been misunderstood, judged, accused, and or even rejected by or due to the prior…we want to defend ourselves (or fix it) with our words. We want to talk to other people about it…seeking validation. This kind of validation usually only lasts the length of the conversation and sometimes can border on gossip if details are still unknown or closure is looming. Guard your heart with all diligence…believe the best of all people even the ones that have hurt you…I challenge you to seek God’s validation. Only what He says about you and your situation will give you the strength to stand strong with integrity in Him. What ever you have gone through or are going through I want you to be encouraged…God vindicates…He rescues…He defends…He protects….He heals…and ultimately HE CAN BE TRUSTED!!!

Concerning this hole in our faces…I have come to learn less IS more. What do I mean by that? I mean the less we say the more God can do! I hope to be able to articulate in words all that is in my heart…I’m going to start by sharing my story and how trusting God and saying less has changed my world and given me the opportunity to see and experience the tangibility of His faithfulness. I went through a situation that touched many relationships in my life…people I loved. Relationships were tested…and the fire was there to burn up what wasn’t God. It was painful…it felt lonely at times…anger was there too…holding up her “Why me” sign and I wanted with everything in me to defend myself. I wanted to fix it and make it go away. Surely I could fix it…I could give more…I could love more…I could make allowances more. But when I would go to pick up the phone the Holy Spirit would say, “Don’t do it!”, on the inside of me. I didn’t understand…why would you not want me to fix it…if they just heard me out they would see…I could make it better. I will never forget what the Holy Spirit said to me. “Marissa …go ahead…make the phone calls and you can put a band aid on it and it will be fixed the best it can be with your efforts. I’ll let you do it and what you get is what you get and that’s it. But…if you will trust me and say nothing… I can change you, I’ll change them, I’ll change the situation and every angle of the situation will bear fruit. I was presented with a choice and I would be a liar if I didn’t say that going ahead and taking care of it myself wasn’t a strong temptation. I was desperate for the hurt to end…but I choose to let my God be my God even if this choice meant I would have to hurt a little longer while I learned to depend on Him. In His job description (found all through bible) says He’ll take care of us, He’ll fight our battles, and He’ll protect our name and us. During this period I was all up in the Psalms everyday…some days printing them out and sleeping with them. In those days I felt like King David and I were best friends, his words were as dramatic as I felt and God used them to show me His steadfast love for me. Life is not without pain…pain usually puts the pressure on our lives to bring about bitterness or change. As your reading this…choose change! I made a choice to anchor myself in love…that was my position in Christ daily to choose LOVE! I remember being in a Target parking lot and that sneaky little devil started accusing these people to me in my head and I almost didn’t catch him! I pointed my little finger (probably looking nuts) and said, “Stop accusing the people I love to me!” And with those words I dug my toes into the sands of His faithfulness. I am telling you…He IS faithful! He restores…it may not be overnight in your world it sure wasn’t in mine. I gave Him a hurting heart and He cultivated love in it…I was changed!!! He did a work in the people I love restoring even closer relationships where He is Lord! Their hearts were changed! The situation was changed! It continues to bear fruit! He said it and He DID IT! There is a faithfulness that can be felt when you walk in the fulfillment of His promises. Take courage…He sees you…He wants you to be an over comer in every area of your world! You don’t have to do it alone…He wants to fight your battles…let Him!! I hope this is an encouragement of how powerful He wants to be in our lives when we yield to Him even when it hurts. So it shall be one of the greatest testimonies of my heart …when I said less…HE DID MORE!!!

Always carrying you in my heart with GREAT Love,
~Ris

Star Girl

About
My Name is Marissa Star and this blog is dedicated to loving an unseen God in a seen way! I love being real ... I love lives being changed ... I love the freedom that comes from authentic living in intimacy with God! I'm a God lover, a proud wife of my own personal genius-man, and a beaming Mama to four lil' men! Here's to living life out loud and loving hard! ~Ris
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Archive for May, 2009

My Heart: House or Home?

When I said less…HE DID MORE!!!

Star Girl

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