keep it simple.

My top 4 things I’m thankful for this week:

1. The 5-1/2 inches of snow I was greeted with Monday morning, and the first week of class that I enjoyed missing because of it.

2. With lots of free time together on our hands, my Daddy and I spent a good many hours racing on Mario Kart Wii (and when I say racing, I mean me whooping the tar out of him.) I’m thankful for how sore my sides are from laughing so much while watching my Daddy swing his controllers around because he had no clue what he was doing …More so, I’m just thankful for time with my Daddy.

3. After being sick AND snowed in the house for 4 days, I was grateful to be released to enjoy my weekly Friday Chickfila lunch and quiet time. Good time spent with my Bible and journal (and CFA nuggets and tea!!!) is always something I’m thankful for. Always.

4. The more I listen to it, the more and more thankful I am for Tenth Avenue North’s cd The Light Meets the Dark. It’s so good! I just can’t get enough of it. And while the whole cd could count as my favorite song, Oh My Dear is the one I just like to soak in, it’s so…pretty.

My first week of 2011 has been INCREDIBLE. Straight up, I mean. Wow, just thinking about how long this week has been, and I mean ‘long’ in that ‘I’ve-been-stretched-so-much-and-so-much-has-gone-on-but-I’m-so-extremely-happy’ kind of way, makes me want to relive it again over and over! [Legit] is the only word that seems to hardly, if at all, do any justice to describe this week.

My first 4 days of the year were spent at Passion 2011 in Atlanta. Being my first time there, I had no idea what to expect; but even if I had known what to expect, my expectations would’ve been totally blown out of the water. I mean, AHHHHHHHHH! It was awesome! God used 4 days, and barely 15 hours of sleep over the course of those 4 days, to speak to me and change me and move me in ways I’d never dreamed. I’m starting to realize that this year is going to be a year that God does some serious moving in my life, and dadgum! He’s already done so much in just the first week.

One of my goals for this year was to abandon my facebook for the year, only getting on it the last day of each month, if that much. On New Year’s Eve that seemed like a daunting task that I dreaded, but still looked forward to and was excited about at the same time. Eight days later, I’m kind of loving it. Yeah, I miss the ability to check in with somebody whenever I want (which is so creepy, in all honesty), but it’s kind of a good thing – I’m forced to personally connect with people. I also like that all the hours in my day are accounted for, I feel like no time is lost in the black hole that is facebook. I dig it. I’m excited to see what God does in that time that I can spend alone with Him focused on Him.

The other thing that I made a priority this year was my thankful book. At the end of each day before I go to bed, I take a few minutes and write down atleast 3 things that I’m thankful for or that made me happy on that day. It’s really helped me focus on all the good things God has blessed me with and He lets me experience on a daily basis. It’s also made me look on the brighter side of things, especially Wednesday when I slammed my thumb in a car door at work and then later had to have a hole drilled into my thumbnail (OWWW!!!). A few things from this week I’ve been thankful for were: Monday’s breakfast date with God by the street-view window of our hotel in Atlanta, hearing a fellow Jesus-follower from China pray over all 22,000 of us IN CHINESE, hearing God speak straight to my heart through a girl I’d met 2 days earlier, being home, going back to work and being with my favorite kids in the whole wide world, coffee and catching up with my best friend.

This week has been an eventful one, and good for my heart in SO many different ways. I’m excited for the next…while still incredibly thankful for this one.

Much love,
Holly

PS: This is a video of my absolute most favorite song from Passion. I cannot stay still listening to it.

“Cut your burdens loose and just simplify, simplify.” (Newsboys)

This is my resolution of sorts. To simplify my much more than simple life.

I want to cut out as much ‘white noise’ as possible and really live my moments.
Keep a Thankful Book and add to it daily.
Be intentional. In my words, my actions, my relationships, my prayers, my time, my money.

“But there is something I’m looking for: a person simple and plain, reverently responsive to what I say.” Isaiah 66:1 (MSG)

“Everyone runs; one wins. Run to win.“
1 Corinthians 9:24

My favorite line from the song comes from the bridge,

This is not about what you’ve done, but what’s been done for you;
this is not about where you’ve been, but where your brokenness brings you to.
This is not about what you feel, but what He felt to forgive you,
and what He felt to make you know: You are more.

For this truth, I am thankful.

I’ve been reading through the New Testament this year – a chapter a day. When I come across a verse or passage I particularly like I write it down in my journal. When I got to the book of James, it seemed like I was running out of paper to write down everything that stuck out to me. I decided to pull out my dad’s J. Vernon McGhee Commentary for James and dig a little deeper into this book.

I’m the kind of person who loves practical application. A lot of the time, during a message I find myself thinking, “Ok, but how do I do that?” I like straightforward steps. God’s definitely teaching me that not everything about Him and a relationship with Him is like that; He’s the God of the universe, I can’t make a check-off list out of Him. For that I’m grateful. I’m glad I’ll never figure Him out.

I think the reason I like the book of James so much is that it’s a practical book. In my Bible, it says that the purpose of this book is “to expose hypocritical practices and to teach right Christian behavior.”

To teach. Those are my kind of words. They say to me that this book wants to lay it out and show what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus.

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.” James 4:1-2

Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?
The battle going on between wanting what I want and wanting what God’s desire for my life is makes living in my head exhausting sometimes. It’s a constant back-and-forth. I don’t know how many times I’ve wished I could take a vacation from my brain. My head gets so weighed-down and jumbled up with the things I want…and don’t want. It’s chaos.

So why aren’t my desires met or this chaos calmed?
You do not have because you do not ask God.

Oh.
And really, how many times is that me? How many times do I talk about all the mess in my head, I try to sort it out, I try to make sense of it. Why is taking it to God, exchanging my worry for His peace, the last thing I seem to do?

My commentary says, ‘Our desires should be taken to the Lord in prayer – to have them satisfied or denied or refined- and then we need to accept the answer from Him…When you find that there is strife and envy in your heart, talk to Him about it. Consider these words which were written by a great saint, a mystic of the Middle Ages, Fenelon:

Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart, it’s pleasures, and it’s pains, to a dear friend.
Tell him your troubles, that he may comfort you; tell him your joys, that he may sober them; tell him your longings, that he may purify them; tell him your dislikes, that he may help you conquer them; talk to him of your temptations, that he may shield you from them; show him the wounds of your heart, that he may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself and others.

If you thus pour out your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subject of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back, neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of their heart, without consideration they say just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God.”

I desire that. I pray that God gives me more of a desire for that. I think that’s the relationship God made for us to have with Him; no restraints, just pouring our hearts out to Him continuously.

“The only way to take away that envy and jealousy and strife which is in your heart is to go to the Lord Jesus. You don’t need to go to the psychiatrist; he’ll just move your problem from one area to another. You need to get rid of that hang-up problem by going to the Lord Jesus, getting on HIS couch, and telling Him everything.”