Target?

I'm selling out to The Man... as circumstances would have it. I didn't want to try for this job at Target for a lot of reasons... but things in life have come up and now I have an interview on Wednesday. How's that? When this girl goes, this girl tends to go overboard... lol. I also applied for a teaching positions in Seoul, Madrid, and Hong Kong. Seoul got back to me this weekend... crazy huh?

So I've been in my "Quarter Life Crisis" for the past year now... and I'm getting sick and tired of everyone asking me" "So what do you want to do with your life?" The answer always is "I don't know =( =( =(" Then I realized yesterday that this answer, in fact, is a lie because I do know what I want to do, BUT:

There is a current and constant war between what I want and what I want.

1. I want to take in the world. I want to learn. I want to teach. I want to meet awesome, awesome people. I want to experience life to the fulliest (of what my pocketbook can afford at the time... lol). I want to be a part in the construction of God's Kingdome.
2. I want to be in the will of God.

And until #1 corresponds with and is in submission to #2, I'm not going to get either.

A huge part of me wants God to deny me the job at Target and really struggle to make ends meet... because my awareness of the necessity of God comes with being aware of my needs. But then I remember the words of Jeff Adams in Amsterdam... that it's okay to make mistakes.... it all goes into God's plan. I have to fail to succeed.

The Green Letters is awesome, by the way. I haven't picked up the book in a week, but I'm only 50 pages into it and it's already a meal-full to digest. Praise the Lord for the two-part redemption found in the Cross.

The key to happiness?

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace
- "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus" (Lilias Trotter)


I read this on a poster in high school once:
Happiness is not having what you want. It is wanting what you have.

This week has been a bit looney for me; good, but looney. This week I came to the knowledge that every one of the "men" in my past is happily (?) with someone else, AND all of my best girlfriends (with the exception of one) are sitting happy with their man. I mean, I know that I don't date, but it is the winter and I get S.A.D. every winter since I'd moved to the Midwest. It hasn't been as bad this year though.

Then this morning I was having breakfast and we were talking about a friend who is dating someone that she really shouldn't be. I hadn't gotten so S.A.D. that I would just give up all the way in order to fulfill my need to "be with someone," but at the same time, who am I to talk to her about being satisfied in Christ when the observation that I made about my friends and the past "men" in my life?

Bottom line is this: not only do I have to know, but I have to REMEMBER that I have Christ. I don't have to not only know that I have Him, I have to WANT Him. It's so hard to choose Christ and the ONE best that He wants for me, when I live in a world that belongs to the devil who offers me the TEN good-enoughs to conterfeit God's best.

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose" - Jim Elliot

Psalm 27:8

When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek.

Target Practice

Falling on my knees in worship
Giving all I am to seek Your face
Lord all I am is Yours...
My whole life I place in Your hands
God of mercy
Humbled I bow down
At Your presece
At Your throne...
- "Came to my Rescue" (Hillsongs)


God always teaches me things, and I feel that a lot of times I don't learn them because I forget them. Being the "N" that I am (living more in my imagination than in the real world), it's easy for me to get up in ideas and concepts and less on the inaction of those concepts in real life, being the "S" that I am not (living less in the observable, tangible world). So remembering that the entire reason for this blog was to help me remember what God is doing, here we go:


Target #1: Attitude is everything

Now this is something that God has brought to my attention this week, and I am running into plenty of opportunity to practice this "newly" found concept. See, and attitude the way I look at it is not just the way that I feel about the world, but the actual way I choose to see the world. This world is either the world we see, or it is as the Bible says, a world that is ruled by principalties and powers unseen by the human eye. The way my attitude is a huge factor to the enviornment around me, whether it be in my classroom, in my social life, in my church, and in my "ministry." Oswald Chambers said that the things that most define the state of our spirituality are the small things in life. To me, the small things in life has been defined as the multitude of choices in attitude that I make every single length of day. I face so much in a day that can take my attitude away from the way God sees the world and the way that God sees me. Suddenly, the "small" things in life that define my spiritual state, taken cummitively, are not so "small" anymore, are they?


Target #2: I am responsible for my actions first

Now yes, I know that I am responsible for the spiritual welfare of those in my body, but at the same time, I can not expect someone that I'm having issues with change, nor can I truthfully ask for a change in someone when I cannot keep up my end of the bargain. If all I see happening is eye for an eye, well then we will all be blind. I know that I have to lay my own pride aside. I know I have to put the veil of patience and mercy. If I'm not acting right, then I can't expect that other person to act right either. Ha, and I just recalled the personal mantra that I have: that ANY negative feeling on my part is indicitive to a default in MYSELF. I don't need to get angry, God is my Defender. I don't need to get prideful, God is my Good in me. I don't need to get righteous, God is my Law who will act accordingly, for or against me.


Target #3: The best way to teach is to ask questions

And this is an off-target thing more than anything, but I know that God wants me to be able to communicate in a way that is effective. I know that my tongue must be seasoned with salt, and yet I know that the tongue of the virtuous woman is the law of kindness. No one likes to be told something, but everyone remembers a lesson learned on their own than by someone telling them, as if they have walked a mile in their mocassins.


And yes, I realize that I can continue to calculate and formulate theorums and postulates until I'm black and blue, but in the end, this sanctification of this body comes only from God and not by my own flesh. Lord help me see the lines of where my responsability ends and where Your ability begins.

Galatians 3:3

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

Lord all I am is Yours...