As the sun sets.

Pastor Steven Furtick wrote a book called Sun Stand Still. It talks about having audacious faith and living that out.  Praying a sun stand still prayer for a restored relationship with a friend or a possible marriage.  Sun Stand Still could also be healing physically or spiritually. Pastor Steven tonight at church combated a thought of mine…What happens when the sun sets?  What happens when i feel i have followed God with audacious faith but my dreams are shattered…. Dreams possibly of restored marriage…actually meeting a decent guy in this area…career goals….whatever it is! WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SUN SETS?  I prayed and listened to what God has told me to do. i want this restoration to happen! God please…i begged!Please make the sun stand still. The past 6 months this has been my “24 hour day”  I wake up right before the sunrise. I walk out onto a hill to sit and wait for my Lord to arrive.  The sunrises and it is absolutely glorious….the brightest colors imaginable. bright oranges and light pinks. Beautiful. The whole day i pray for my creator to perform the most amazing  miracle…to make the sun stand still until the battle was won. Midday comes and its scorching.  My body is dehydrated.  My clothes are drenched with sweat. Yet still i wait…with audacious faith…believing God for the impossible. As i am watching the sun drift across the sky…my heart stops because suddenly there is only a few mere minutes of daylight left. So where is my miracle? i close my eyes for one more plead. My eyes open just in time to see the sun set. What do i do? Why is this dream of restoration dead? What am i going to do? Most of the time i would immediately head into a state of survival which would be numbness…so the pain i couldn’t feel.  Then i came across this quote from pastor steven… Sometimes God has to let your dream die so that his vision for you can come alive. (P 73)   i have buried my dreams of the restoration of a relationship because just maybe that was the only way for me to see the VISION. God open my eyes…so i can see in the night and know your vision is leading me.

Sometimes we get to see the miracle other times we get to be the miracle.” (P 124)

i don’t believe in love

I don’ t believe love exist. TO me its like someone telling me big foot is real…I don’t buy it because i haven’t experienced it…But at the same time…I can’t stop chasing it and hoping that its real. It has to exist.  I am so tired of throwing the word Love around…and using it strictly as just a saying. Something maybe you say when there is nothing else to say or whatever it is. I am making a vow right now for the next year…not to say the word love…but instead…to show it to those around me. New word Love…God Show me love is real like only you can.

Love: (found from dictionary.com) the benevolent affection of God for His creatures, or the reverent affection due from them to God.

Verse: 1john4:7-10

God Is Love

^7-10My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. 

God Is Love

^7-10My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

You say you love them…whether is those affected by the earthquake in Haiti, girls trapped in sex trafficking,the homeless in your area, those who cut,are depressed, those children without mothers or fathers, those whose parents abuse them….You say and speak all day long i love you, i love you, i love you, SHUT UP AND PROVE IT! For one year i will not speak the word love but i will show love! i challenge you to do the same!

Letter

God is amazing! A couple of weeks ago, i went to visit some friends for the college i use to attend. I was super nervous because i would be seeing people that there was some water under the bridge. For 2 years i had been praying for healing from this situation.  God please heal my heart. I cried, i struggled. It was a very rock bottom time for me.  So i am standing in this room knowing that i am about to face my past! SCARY!!! He walked in, and i waited for the pain to hit me again. The whole time i could feel my Jesus standing there with me. Saying im here. It was like this overwhelming sense of GOD falling over me. Those two years of purging and pain, struggles that i felt were in vain…God was healing me. It was the most amazing thing ever. During that time i was just getting involved with Vision our “young adults” group. It literally had 5 people in there….but tonight guess how many were in there at least 25 i think…i mean i didn’t turn around and count but it was sooo many.  God is amazing and Holy and worth so much more praise than i give him. I doubt God for what? He can do Beyond the Beyond (eph 3:20) 

Satan, try as you may…My God is King. You can’t win. You don’t win. I know what the final score is.  My God is holy! My God is able to do beyond the beyond. My King is enthralled with my beauty. My God is fighting for me. He is my salvation. He is LOVE! you won’t win, Ashley!

Its time to stand

This past week i caught up with an old boyfriend of mine.  Me and this guy have known each other for i believe 7 years. only really dated once for a month but we did that whole “talking” thing and he would find a “better” girl  and i would be history or he would come back and i would reject him pretty bad and once was at our junior prom. Not good! Anyways, when we talked this past week, he started telling me how beautiful i was and how much he missed me. Tons of  sweet stuff. My love language is words of affirmation so immediately i was sucked in to him. By the end of the week, i had our whole life planned! This was going to be great because i am ready to fall in love and want to just jump head first with no fear of the future (proverbs 31) ,and i’m sure hes changed and realized that i am the only one for him and he has eyes just for me!  Dont think i’m crazy because this is how girls are! WE see a guy and immediately our future with him is planned! Crazy i know but its us! so this guy preceeds to tell me he has a twitter. So like any normal person i check it out!  On there he is talking to all these beautiful girls and saying how much he misses them and is calling them baby. For a girl like me, i was devasted because here i had believed these words and thought this time was going to be different! It hit me. look how quickly i fell for him! I truly believe God is saving me from these wretched relationships because if a guy comes along and says certian things i am done!

I truly believe that we as women need to stand up to these punks and little boys and say you will not talk to me like that. I am daughter of the King.  I deserve respect. I am not just your feel good toy that you drag out when all the other girls are gone. Im not your trampoline!  We single ladies need to truly study Proverbs 31! See the woman God has in his word for us to be.

Next: Men

ITS TIME YOU STAND UP AND BE A MAN!  If you want to ask a girl out, ask her out. Don’t do it via text. Be a Godly man! See these girls as priceless jewels. They are royalty. Stop being men of this world and be Strong Sons of GOD!  THATS WHAT YOU ARE!  Don’t base your view of women based on what tv says we are or whatever!

ITS TIME TO STAND!

The Last stitch!

I haven’t dated many guys. in fact i can count them on one hand. one when i was in 9th grade and 10th grade, and a few guys in between there that i would “talk” to but never dated. There was the guy in 10th grade who i guess you could say was my first real and only boyfriend. I actually went with my whole heart in to that “relationship”. I was young and trusted quickly. I guess about a month into the relationship i found out that he was “cheating” on me. Now of course cheating back then was just talking to another girl  and asking her out! When i found out, i was devastated! I couldn’t believe that i had given my whole heart to this guy for him to rip it out a month later. So i made the promise, i would never give my heart away to a guy ever again! A little extreme, i know, but i was so hurt! So lets fast forward a few years!

Freshman year of college!!! WOW! It was something new and exciting! then this guy came along! I was so excited because he seemed really in love with God. Very cute! Funny! Everything that i am attracted to…but he had made this commitment to not date for a year! Bummer was my first thought, but it made me that much more intrigued by him! We start hangin out and talking via text,phone, and in person.  He seemed to really care about me. I noticed that he was hanging out with this other girl. She was beautiful. Funny, stylish, and skinny. That was something i wasn’t, i thought to myself i bet if i could look like her, then maybe just maybe he could be mine!  So i started skipping meals and very soon it became this obsession. Through all that, this guy kept telling me how beautiful i was and talked about the future together, picked flowers for me, called me babe, sat and talked with me on a swing looking at the stars, made comments about kissing me ( never did kiss). Slowly but surely i began to give my heart to him without even realizing it until it was too late. I was in too deep with him.  Being a girl, i had our whole life planned out. I knew that this was going to be the best thing in the world! He was going to complete me.  This all happened first semester.

Second Semester rolls around and i am soo excited to get back and see him!! Well i week before school i went to see that girl at the very beginning of my story, the one i desperately wanted to look like. She started talking about this guy and all the amazing things he told her. Guess what? they were word for word what he told me. I refused to believe it though! There was no way my fairytale was ending this way.  We get back to school and things just seem so strange , but i just keep denying it! One day me and this guy get in a fight because i wasn’t going somewhere and he says “we need to talk”. Before we did talk i wrote him this huge heart felt better because i wanted to make sure everything i needed to say was said before we talked. He calls me and ask to meet in the cafeteria during busiest time in there to talk.My heart is pounding as i am walking up there, and i feel like i can throw up but truly i felt like after he read my letter that he would realize i was the one he was meant to be with. I KNEW IT!  He takes me to this table sits and down and starts talking and says how he knows i have an eating disorder and that i have too many problems for him to deal with and that we would both be better off not being friends. then he asks me if i have anything to say. I couldn’t speak because he had become something i depended on when i needed anything. I just watched my world come crashing down within the span of 10 minutes. I have no idea how i made it back to my room before busting out into tears but i did. As soon as i stepped in there the tears fell and they didn’t stop. I had given him my heart and trusted. I became someone else with an eating disorder! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN!! I cried out to God for healing. What i didn’t realize was God had stitched up my broken heart. Through when that happened until now(which is 2 years)  Slowly God was removing the stitches. this weekend at Searching for the Beauty within Seminar i did a drama about this whole situation. The very last part was about saying to God that no matter what happens…have Your way!  I truly feel like when i stepped on that stage just me for that drama…God was removing the last stitch. Finally i felt completely healed and can see why i went through that and how God was glorified!

Psalm 107 (The Message)
^1-3 Oh, thank God—he’s so good! His love never runs out.
All of you set free by God, tell the world!
Tell how he freed you from oppression,
Then rounded you up from all over the place,
from the four winds, from the seven seas.

Delight yourself

Here something about me: i can’t wait to fall in love and have this funky wedding and have babies!! Its a desire of mine to marry a man who is so in love with God its crazy!!! SO how many times have you discussed with someone the things you desire in your heart and they say well “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” right? Heard it before? I have plenty of times but i started reading that verse and i noticed something…theres more to that…

Psalm 37:4-5 (New Living Translation)

4 Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you your heart’s desires.

5 Commit everything you do to the Lord.
Trust him, and he will help you.

Verse 5 says something we never say with verse 4.

Commit everything you do to the Lord!

commit everything? what? That means that i have to commit my job, what God calls me to do, my love life (or lack there of), I have to commit EVERYTHING to GOD!!!! Trust him and he will help me.
I can say all day long…”Oh lord i delight in you GOd…now where is my desires…where is my husband,kids,good job. I delighted myself in you….now give me give me give me! No more! I have to commit whole heartedly!!!

God,
You amaze me! thank you so much for revealing this truth in my life that i have in the past just rejected it! God i commit EVERYTHING TO YOU RIGHT NOW!!! I give you my life. Every hurt, painful and joyous memory, dream, my past and my present! God it is yours!!
I love you!

No more Idols

My friend holly taught on Luke 4 tonight and it was amazing but there was a verse that she read that just slapped me in my face and here it is:
Ezekiel 36:25 (New Living Translation)

25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away, and you will no longer worship idols.

There has been something in my life for a while now that i have refused to admit that it was my idol. MONEY! Back in January, i worked at a child developement center at a local church and i loved it! I made minium wage and i was ok with that because i was impacting these kids lives! Then this job came along with more money working as a one on one! AWesome Job! Those people captured my heart. Suddenly i was so worried about money and having more. It was all that i thought about! It plagued my mind! Just last week, I felt God telling me to call the place i use to work and get a job again over there. Hello God, i don’t want to beg for my job back! I had a huge pride issue! I did it and they gave me my job back! In away, i’m saying God what are you doing? The world says you have to make this amount to be successful in this world! You have called me home from North Greenville University. Now you calling me away from this job where i was making more than that the daycare! I don’t understand and tonight God spoke straight to my heart. “Ashley that job has been your idol, you have pride in your heart, i need to cleanse you so that i am that only one you are Worshipping! Ok God…have your way! My heart is open to you God, forgive me for the pride i had, forgiving me God for worshipping that instead of you! I love you God. Mold me to look like your son! thats who i want this world to see when they look at me!
God really wanted me to grasp this because holly taught on but also my twitter friend Michael Newsome blogged on this! So ok God i got it! Idols…no more!

Unbound- FREEDOM

so this week holly had us define what freedom meant to us. I really started thinking about the word and also my struggle of self-image and i just couldn’t define it. So i was praying so hard and God told me to read Isaiah 42. So i read it and there it was my definition of freedom. Because i struggle with Self Image i can’t see myself clearly…as a MASTERPIECE. I can’t see other things clearly either! I am BLINDED. Isaiah 42:7 says

Isaiah 42:7 (New American Standard Bible)
    ⁷To open blind eyes,
         To bring out prisoners from the dungeon
         And those who dwell in darkness from the prison.

 

That is it! Freedom to me is To open my blind eyes and let me see myself and this world as HE DOES!!! WOW!!!

In Stephanie Smiths book She talks about her track beauty and asks  “will i believe God when He says that He created me in love, that he made me beautiful and wonderful and just as i should be?”   WOW!!! No i don’t belive that. At all. I believe that i am fat disgusting person and everything thing i eat i think of how it is going to make me fat and see what the world says is beautiful and i just want to cry because i know thats not me. I won’t be a model ever!  But i am a MasterPiece! I am still struggling to belive that but i am tryin to hear God’s voice instead of letting Satan whisper in my ear!!!  God you see me, GOd you love for me to sing to you and to praise you!!! God i love you and Help me to see this masterpiece you have created!

ephiphany

Ok so here has been my life this past week!
Have you ever dreamed soo much that you are restless while you sleep? The dreams are soo real that you are actually doing the movements like running or whatever. SO this past week i have had these dreams of my wedding and marriage but last night was the icing. My dreams had continually built up this moment of walking down the aisle and this perfect life i would have…then last night right as i was about to walk down the aisle FEAR hit…I ran. I couldn’t stop running. I paused long enough to look back and see everyone crying over the fact that i ran. Tonight i watched Fireproof!!! WOW! And its in that movie that it hit me. I can’t love i run from love because i don’t know what it is? To me love is this heinous,mean,cruel,abusive monster something that lures you in and then kills your spirit,hope,and dreams. I could never see at as people described it to me as something sooo beautiful and trusting and worth it! I love Jesus because i am a Christian. I am a Christian because HE loved me. He died to love me. DIED! He didn’t tellme hurtful things to love me, hit me, call my fat and stupid…HE DIED!!! DO you understand what i am saying?…. DIED!! I see it now and TRULY SEE IT! I was going to bed tonight and like always i told my mom i loved her but instead of saying it out of habit tears welled up in my eyes and i meant it! Past everything that has happened i loved her! My life has changed!

Furious Pursuit!

Pursue! Pursue?

What are we taught in todays society as girls and women…if we want something we have to pursue it ourselves. A job we want and a car…and all that is well and fine but what about a guy? You see a cute guy standing in the store, you tell your friend wow Hes cute and what does she say?…Go and talk to him what have you got to lose? But really you are costing everything…Men are meant to be the hunters and pursuers of things. that is how God designed them.  We miss out on being wooed and chased. Girls, we are not meant to called the guy and ask the guy out, we are meant to sit back and have this guy do everything he can to win our hearts. Its a princesss looking for her prince. She doesn’t leave her throne to go and find him instead she sits there and they come to her bringing her things and when he walks in she knows!!!! Ladies we are meant to be pursued.  THe pursuit only happens when we know exactly who we are in Christ! Beth moore said “the chains being to break when we are willing to believe we are who God says we are.” Wow! there is no guessing God tells us who we are all we have to do is believe Him and it is done!!! like in the movie twilight bella is pursued by edward, he can’t resist her, he has to protect her.