The man & the treasure; the merchant & the pearl

I read Matthew 13:44-46 in a whole new light the other day. It's the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl, and it reads:


44 The Kingdom of God is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. 45 Again, the Kingdom of God is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had, and bought it.


I've always just read these two parables as basically saying the same thing two different ways. We're to pursue God and give everything for Him like a man who found a treasure in a field. We're to seek God and give everything for Him like a merchant who's found a precious and valuable pearl.


God has recently been teaching me about our relationship with Him as represented by the Bride and the Bridegroom. The great romance. God seeking us, cherishing us, pursuing us, loving us passionately, and our response: seeking Him, cherishing Him, pursuing Him, loving Him passionately. It's a big love story. We both just throw ourselves into each other's arms. The love is tangible.


So when I read these parables again, I noticed something I had never noticed before. Verse 44 compares the Kingdom of God to the treasure. This implies, in the context of the parable, that we are to pursue God like a man who finds the treasure in the field and gives everything to get it. But verse 45 compares the Kingdom of God to the merchant. Do you understand what this means? It means He's the merchant who found us, the pearl of great worth, and gave everything to get us!! Just like we seek Him with everything, He seeks us with everything!


My heart can hardly bear the weight of this. He finds me to be a fine pearl of great worth! It's all a big love story! The church, madly in love with God, and God, madly in love with His church, His bride.

How the enemy works like communism

Yesterday I watched a movie called Red Dawn. It's a remake of an 80's movie with the same title, and it was a really good movie. It had a little too much language for me, so I wouldn't watch it again, but a very good movie nonetheless. In the movie, international tensions are rising as North Korea continually attacks various nations. The story follows two brothers, one a former marine and the other a high school student, who are caught in the middle of it all when a North Korean attack on America invades their town. The brothers escape to the woods with a few friends, but the North Koreans take control of the town and set up a dictatorship-type government. Throughout the movie, the brothers and their friends continually set up small attacks on the North Koreans, then escape back to the woods, creating an irritating disturbance for the Koreans and rousing the Americans caught in the town to action, while the Koreans try to convince everyone that they're here for the Americans' good. It's a movie that definitely makes one feel patriotic! At the end of the movie, I thought, "That was a great movie, but it doesn't really happen that way." I wasn't referring to the unlikelihood of them surviving in the woods with thousands of North Koreans nearby, or the unexplained fact that they had to have food for all that time (where did that come from?). I was referring to communism.


Yes, sometimes communists invade a country with guns blaring, bombs exploding, and men controlling. But if you've ever studied communism, like I did last year in government class, you know that most of the time communists don't operate that way. They come in as one of our own. An American citizen rises to government, promising wonderful change, new jobs, a fixed economy, etc. From there, they gradually wean the people off their dependency on themselves to dependency on the government through law changes. When the people are willingly depending on the government, to shift is made from a free country to a country under what is called socialism, which is the step under communism. Once the country has accepted socialism and is completely dependent on the government, the government seizes all control, and becomes a Communist state. The people are then so dependent on the government, they cannot rise up to fight the government. They have trapped themselves.


Why do communists do it this way? For the very reason as displayed in the movie Red Dawn. When governments try to seize control of  country that has all of its freedoms, we recognize that they're taking our freedoms and fight back. However, when it comes slowly, when they convince us that what they're doing is a good thing, when they wean us off dependency on ourselves, we rarely see the shift until it's too late.


Why did I just talk about all that? Because Satan is the exact same way. He doesn't come to a strong follower of Christ and say "Hey! Why don't you do drugs/get drunk/have sex outside of marriage/commit adultery/etc,' because the immediate answer would be a resounding "NO!" He comes slowly, distracting us until our quiet time gets ignored all day, or convincing us a tiny little cuss word in a song is okay, or telling us its okay to be disrespectful to our parents behind their back just this once because it's justified this time. He weans us off our righteousness, one compromise at a time.


An example of this would be a time I was reading a book I had gotten from the library, and I was about a hundred pages into it (about a forth of the way in) when BAM! F-bomb. I set the book down in shock. I was not expecting that! But now, I was faced with a choice. Put the book down and move on to the next, or continue reading. It was only one word. There was a high probability that there was no more in the rest of the book, and I was already past that one. I sat there, undecided, until I had a thought straight from God. "I can either lower my standards and keep reading or uphold them and stop."  I had not seen it that way until then. We rarely do when faced with such choices. See, if it was okay with that book, what keeps it from being okay in the next? Or if it's okay once when it wasn't before, what keeps it from being okay two times, or three, or four?


Satan doesn't come in asking us to make huge, life-altering choices right off the bat. He slowly weans us off righteousness until everything is questionable, every moral thrown up for grabs. Because if one thing that was wrong before is now right, what keeps the next thing from becoming okay too?

Be lifted high

I've noticed lately that there are a LOT of recent worship songs that mention or revolve around some variation of the phrases "We lift up Your Name" or "Be lifted high" or "We lift You up." I've given it some thought, and, contrary to what I thought as a kid growing up in the church, we don't lift Him up by raising our hands. We are not singing about physically raising Him higher in the sky. When we sing about lifting up Him or His Name, we are referring to holding Him higher in our lives through reverence. We are stating that in our decisions, speech, and thought, He will be held in the highest regard.


Have you ever considered that unbelievers don't respect God and Christianity because we Christians don't? We sing songs that say that we lift His Name up, but we take His name in vain so flippantly as if to say it doesn't matter. We sing songs that say that we lift Him up, but we'd rather do what we want than obey Him. We sing songs that implore Him to be lifted up, but we refuse to lift His opinion (which, by the way, is truth) higher than what is politically correct or socially acceptable. We say over and over and over and over that we want Him to be lifted up, but we constantly make choices that act as if what He says about life is the lowest of our priorities.


Wake up, church, and start doing what you sing about. Hold the Lord in the highest regard. Lift Him up in your actions and not just the songs you sing.

This changes nothing.

{This post concerns information found in another post, which can be found at http://honoracademyadventure.blogspot.com/2014/02/big-news-about-honor-academy.html}


My eyes widened. My pulse quickened. I started to fidget as I looked for more information, disbelieving.


"The Honor Academy is MOVING?!?!?"


There it was. I had seen a post on facebook from a Teen Mania friend, and gone to the Honor Academy's website to see for myself. There it was, just sitting there on the screen like it wasn't rocking some sixteen year old girl's world in Lafayette, Indiana. The Honor Academy is selling its campus and moving to Dallas. Just like that. Surprise!


The first day after I found out, I had next to no information. Basically all I knew was that they are moving. I remember that some of my first thoughts were, "This changes everything. This is crazy. Am I even supposed to be going still? Does God still want me there?" And I also remember God replying so quickly, just like that: "I knew this was going to happen from the moment that I called you to go. I knew this was going to happen the day you took your first breath. I knew this was going to happen when I set the very foundations of the earth, and even before that, unto the endless eons before time existed. This is not news to me. This is not unexpected. This changes nothing. You are still to go. Trust me."


Woah. He is so amazing! His peace has so engulfed me since then, I cannot help but trust Him. He really, really knows what He's doing, which is more than can be said about any of us. He knows that this will be best for me, and I trust Him. I'm taking this whole crazy season one adventure at a time, doing my best to delight in each wild bump in the road that throws me deeper into His everlasting embrace.

You knew I was coming

I had a dream last night that I think deserves some consideration. In the dream, I was at my friend Keliann's house, and I had spent the night there. I woke up in the morning and was just hanging around, being lazy and doing whatever it is that we teenage girls do at sleepovers. I knew my dad was coming to pick me up at some point, but I didn't really know when. I was in their kitchen when my dad walked in the side door, ready to pick me up. I was unshowered, in my pajamas, by no means ready to leave and go out... wherever we were going. "Let's go," he said, and my response was "I'm not ready! I have to go change and put my contacts in and throw my hair up!" What he said next was what made the dream really remarkable. "You knew I was coming at some point. Why didn't you get ready?" I then proceeded to get ready and we left, but I remember waking from the dream and sitting up, and I immediately thought, "I wonder if that's how it will be when Jesus comes." I was hardly awake. I never really have any coherent thoughts just after waking up, so the fact that I immediately had a clear thought like that alerts my attention. God's trying to say something.


This post is not for the unsaved. Yes, if you're not saved, by all means, get to know Jesus. He's amazing beyond compare. But I want to speak to the Christians reading this. You're already saved, but are you ready? When He comes, will He find you in your spiritual pajamas, not having ever bothered to clean yourself up? Sure, you're saved, but are you prepared for eternity? You know He's coming at some point, so why aren't you getting ready?


The world is getting darker, friends. It's time to seek Him like never before.
People, get ready. The King is coming.

A speck of dust

I had a revelation of God's goodness while listening to some worship the other day. It absolutely blew my mind. I think (but I'm not sure) that I was listening to Your Glory by All Sons & Daughters. It came out of nowhere: "Even if you were to combine all the darkness in the whole world; condense it all, all the rape and violence and murders and shootings and immorality and hate and anger and evil and hopelessness; all of it, past, present, and future, and compared it to God's goodness, it would be as if you were comparing a speck of dust to a sun a million times bigger than ours." Everything, all the evil, in the world, all the hurt, everything, cannot even compare to Him. He is so much bigger. He is greater than anything we face. He is the constant Rock, the one who holds us all together. He has not forgotten us. He is patient, waiting for the time when He will make His Glory evident to all.


Romans 8:18
"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us."