from faucet to fountain

There is only one proper response to Jesus and His death on the cross. Complete and utter surrender of our lives, really a life for a life. He laid down His life, so I can see no other reply. I don't find it gruesome or taxing to me though, I find that it's my joy to serve Him. How He turns around even my dying to myself to my own pleasure, to my good, for the fullness of joy and life I will never quite understand. I want to leave a legacy, I want to be a legend to the people that I have had the pleasure of doing life with. I want to leave a legend so rich and thick of faithfulness and obedience to Him that it is no question to what I lived for, or to whom. I want people to know that He is the most worthy thing that I could have spent my life on and that I took all pleasure in following Him. That I followed Him when there was no earthly reason to, that I followed Him into the darkness, into the pain and the brokenness in this world and into the dark ugly corners of my own lif...

As we made the last leg of our trip, I could hold back tears no longer. My heart began to tear open shedding its bottled up feelings of conviction and exposing the raw, tender area being sifted by the Lord. I poured out all that was swirling around in my head, my heart to my friend and she patiently listened, giving me the room to express myself and be vulnerable. Allow me to rewind and give you the full picture though....  A couple of months ago it had popped up in my facebook that a friend of mine that I work out with was signing up to cross something off his bucket list, and was inviting others to sign up with him. I had seen these types of races in the past and was interested but never went through with actually signing up to do it, feeling rambunctious and a sense of camaraderie, I signed up and without too much effort convinced two of my other friends to sign up with me. Starting off the day of the race, the girls and I painted up our faces and with windows down an...

  When I hear the word abandoned I think of those left out, forgotten, of the times I have felt all alone and it conjures up mental images of the orphaned, the outcast. The word itself seems to fit this dreary day, the grey skies continue to roll in with no notice of the fact that we could use some warmth, some sunshine to brighten our day.   The dictionary defines abandoned as "wholly free from restraint" and although this word seems to wear gloom like a thick heavy coat I have found quite the opposite when it comes to my walk with the Lord. At the fresh age of sixteen I acknowledged that my life was Gods, (after all isn't it His if we ever surrender to it or not?) but I took the title of my life that He had freely given me out of love and signed it over to Him. I recognized that although I had my dreams, my hopes and my desires that I could not even begin to swim in the deep end of all that He wanted to do in me and with me. He was and is the great Maker and He k...