Little, Rebel Sheep

Rebel Sheep-
Why do you cry?
Put down the blade,
Put down the razor.
Take your finger 
Out of your mouth.
Rebel Sheep-
Wipe your tears,
Rebuke the lies
And insecurities.
Rebel Sheep-
Do not suffer any longer.

You're suffering-
Already taken.
You're punishment-
Already bestowed upon.
Your faults, 
Your mistakes,
Already dealt with.

Rebel Sheep-
The taken suffering,
Is not taken by you.
Rebel Sheep-
The punishment,
Was not bestowed upon you.
Your faults, 
Your mistakes
Not dealt with own your own.

Rebel Sheep-
You have missed the beauty
In the unbeautiful.
You have missed the delight 
In the pain.
He had no beauty.
He had no majesty.
He of suffering,
He of pain-
Has taken it all.

The lies,
The insecurities,
The suffering,
The tears at night,
The chill of loneliness.
The blade,
The blood, 
The cuts.
The bruises
On your knuckles.
He took it all away.

By his wounds,
We are healed.
By his suffering,
We are forgiven.
We are made new.
We are free.

Oh, Rebel Sheep-
You are just Little Sheep,
You are Beautiful Sheep,
You are Innocent sheep.

What was painful,
What was tearful,
What was crimson red, 
Is white as snow.

Oh Little Sheep,
Come home.

Come home,
Your debt is paid.

New Blog Coming!

It's about depression. 

It's about how depression will suffocate a person.

It's about stopping depression and suffocation. 

It's about prevention.

It's about preventing suicide.

It is about hope. 

I can not promise someone hope without promising them Jesus, because Jesus is hope and hope is Jesus. Authentic and pure hope that real people need comes from Jesus and ONLY Jesus.

It's about loving the unlovable.

It's about grace.

It's about patience. 

It's about prayer. 

It's about the love of a Father and a Savior.

It is John 13:34.  

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

Stop Suffocating. Prevent it. Because there is HOPE. 

Redemption of Family and Songs

      I started writing lyrics around the same time my parents got divorced. I was 6 or 7 when they got divorced and I started writing songs as soon as I was capable of writing at all. I know I was young because I remember writing songs as young as third grade. But also because every now and then when I clean out a closet I find tarnished pieces of paper with 2nd grader chicken scratches; words that are far from spelled write, but very phonetic. I had melodies, verses, choruses and bridges. I didn't have those names for it, but I left several spaces between a few lines of words at a time. I remember the day I learned the word "Chorus" and I was soooo excited to finally have a name for the section that was always repeated three or four times in a song ( because "the section that is repeated multiple times" is way too long a name). I also remember the days I learned the words 'verse' and 'bridge'. When I didn't know the word 'verse' for sections 1 and 2 I called them 'parts'. There was 'part 1, 'part 2' and 'part 3' was typically the bridge. With every new word I was ecstatic to finally have a name for the things I was already writing. I also remember when I learned how to say, "I write lyrics" instead of, "I write words for songs". So the point is I've been writing lyrics for quiet awhile and since I was very little.
     I don't think it's any coincidence that Is tarted writing lyrics right after my parent's divorce. Sometimes I wonder if I would've ever started writing if my parents hadn't gotten divorce. I think I would've because I am sure that something else tragic would've happened at some point to spark it, but I think it would've just been a lot later on. I think I needed that tragic experience to begin writing. I think the depth of emotion I felt at such a young was so deep and complicated I had no idea how to express it. I think I picked up a pen and paper and started writing words (that were not at all spelled correctly) and suddenly the words sounded more like singing in my head than talking. I remember I wrote about vague mysterious things that I didn't really understand, writing stuff like "I look up at the stars and wonder". It's like my subconscious knew that everything going on around me was too big and great for me to understand, but I think I also had some idea that everything going on around me was somehow controlled by something even more greater that I couldn't understand. I'm not a children's psychologist so I don't know what was really going on my head, especially my subconscious. I just know what I remember. And I remember writing about things I didn't even understand. I remember being in third or fourth grade and writing about break ups. That doesn't even make sense, I had never been through one. I think I just knew that sometimes things don't work out in life; sometimes puzzle pieces that look like thy fit together really don't. I think that's how I saw my parent's divorce; as some vague, mysterious concept I didn't understand, I just knew that two people who looked like they went together all of a sudden no longer did go together.
    I believe that my parent's divorce was like a key to unlock a box of many songs. I think something tragic that I didn't understand had to open up a box inside me to start writing. Because it was something tragic that had to unlock that box many of my songs since then have been sad. I also struggled with depression since my parent's divorce. Through elementary school, middle school and high school I have felt things on a ridiculously deep level. A splinter could feel like a third degree burn. So then I would write about my splinters like they were third degree burns. By that I mean if a guy didn't like me back in middle school, I could go home and write a song about it as if I was going through my first heart break and break up.
    Now I'm going to start getting to the bigger point of this story; redemption. For me; in my head, my life, in my perspective I believe that my song writing has redeemed my parent's divorce. Today it is redeemed, not in middle school when I was writing about depressing stuff. You see my parent's divorce lead to me feeling something so deep I couldn't understand it at a young age, so I started writing. The divorce also lead to my depression though so my writing became pretty sad and complicated stuff. Today in my walk with God he has completely redeemed my song writing. And because my song writing is redeemed, so is my depression and my parent's divorce. Actually, each of their other divorces are redeemed too. My dad got remarried when I was in sixth grade and my mom got remarried when I was in 8th grade. I saw both divorces coming because of all the fighting. My dad got divorced at the end of 8th grade and my mom got divorced the end of my Freshmen year. With so much divorce and fighting I believe that just continued to keep my song writing in the dumps. I didn't believe in love for years because of all that happened in my family.
    So the redemption is this; for years I didn't believe in love because of what happened in my family, today I write love songs for Jesus because of what he has done in my life. I used to write dramatic break up songs in middle school and high school because I felt everything on such a deep level, today I write lyrics about the depth of God and his faithfulness. It's amazing that when I doubted love, trust and faithfulness the most God showed me his unconditional and everlasting love, faithfulness and trustworthiness the most. Today I write songs that redeem my past and my family's history. I am raw and real with God because he understands my past.
   I wrote a song called 'You Have Me' when I was a Freshmen and I had my mom's and dad's second divorces in mind when I wrote it. The first verse says,
"In this world people come and people go, but I don't wanna be the one to go. God I want to stay with you."
Then I write, "Promises are broken, but yours are never broken. And I don't want to be the one to break. I want you to have me wholeheartedly."
   I am writing about my step-mom and step-dad coming and going during the re-marriages and second divorces. I'm talking about broken marriage vows when I write about promises being broken and God knows that because he sees my heart. He knows my family's history and better yet he understands. It says in Hebrews 4:15 that Jesus emphasizes with us. How wonderful! This song in itself redeems so much that I went through; people coming and going because of broken promises. All the people that came and went and all the broken promises used to make me bitter; I thought I would always do the same things, walk away and break promises. But Jesus understood my pain and redeemed my heart! Today the coming and going and broken vows make me stronger! They stir in my heart a desire to never walk out on someone I am committed to, especially Jesus. And they give me a burning desire to stay true to any vows and promises I make; especially my vows to Jesus.
    I believe I had to go through something tragic that I would feel to a depth I didn't understand for my music box to be unlocked. I think God purposely gave me a music box to be unlocked. I think in a 'Perfect Earth' (like the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1) God would've unlocked my box in an un-painful way, but we don't live in that 'Perfect Earth'. So when God saw that my parents were going to get divorced he decided to use it for good and turn me into a lyric-writing-machine. At first my songs weren't worship for him, they were sadness and bitterness. But even sad and bitter songs can sound beautiful. A sad situation can be redeemed through a beautiful sad song, but God wanted to take it farther than a beautiful sad song. So he redeemed my heart and my writing, so now I write worship songs for him. But because of my past, my songs are more personal they would've been without a sad past. They aren't just "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty" (there is nothing wrong with that), but I can speak to God personally through my music and he understands me. My broken past that I am still overcoming some days just gives me an opportunity to be closer to God in different ways because God is in the brokenness and beautiful redemption comes from brokenness and hurting. Also, because I felt such sadness on a deep and intense I can now feel God's love and glory on that same deep and tense level.
    This is living redemption. We serve a God who redeems. Hallelujah.

Experimenting

Guard Your Heart

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." 

- Proverbs 4:23

I have a clear picture in my head of being 15 years old in church and seeing a fiery women of God stand up on a stage and yell, "Girls! We have to guard our hearts!" I remembering thinking, "Yeah! That's right, preach it!" I also remember not really having any idea about what she meant though. I didn't know what the practically looked like to guard my heart, do I just put my hands on my chest? No, of course not, I'd look silly. It's not literal in a physical way. It is literal in an emotional and spiritual way. So what does it really mean to "guard our hearts" and how do we do that?

God has given me some revelations on what it means so I am going to share that today. We need to guard our hearts from both people and things. We are in a covenant with God right? In Jeremiah 31:33 God says, "This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." The most common Hebrew word in the Old Testament for "covenant" is 'berith', a word of uncertain derivation. It seems to come from either the Hebrew verb 'to cut' or from the Assyrian word 'to bind'.  A lot of scholars and theologians have thought these words through and have come to their own conclusions. What I think though is that we are in a covenant of bondage to God, which requires some cutting away of ourselves. Or perhaps you could call it, cutting off our selves to give ourselves to God. God calls us to guard our hearts because our hearts are in a covenant with him! We cannot give our heart to something or someone else when we have already "cut it off", so to speak, and bound it to His heart. If you're visual, just think about literally doing that with real hearts. . . That would be so messy and yucky! All the verses about not committing adulatory (Exodus 20:14) or worshiping other idols (Exodus 34:14, Leviticus 26:1) go hand in hand with guarding our hearts. God is asking us to not give our hearts away, create covenant, bind ourselves up or give ourselves away to other things or people. 

To put it more simply and practically all of this means do not give pieces of your heart away to things you love that our unworthy of your heart. Do not love your Spotify account so much that your heart is in it, same with; your makeup, your size jeans, your hair or your smart phone. These things sound so dumb, and you're thinking, "Ha! I would not give my heart to my hair or my smartphone!" But I am telling you now that we live in a society full of idols like these that we are committing adultery with in the most suttel ways. We do not even notice we put our heart in something until it is taken away. I broke my smartphone and had a melt down! I cut my hair short and thought I was ugly for two weeks. I am telling you, these idols are sneaky. That is just what Satan does, is be sneaky. Thank God for everything you have that you love, thank Him for your clothes are for your smartphone. Praise Him for it and remind yourself everything we have is really from God and not ours. That way when it disappears your heart was not attached to it, but attached to God. 

We also need to guard our heart from people sometimes, especially in school. I think Church community is a less guarded place, but I am telling you I wish I would've guarded my heart so much more during school. So many guys and girls I made covenants with without even knowing it and it hurt so much when they left. There are ways to love people without giving them a piece of your heart and you have to ask the Lord to guide you on how to do that. We can not put up walls in fear of everyone. We have to be real with people without letting our emotions get attached and giving ourselves away. God is a lamp to our feet, right? (Psalm 119:105) So we can also ask him to shine a light on the people we come across. He will speak to us who we can let in more than others and he will show you who your brothers and sisters in Christ are. Those brothers and sisters are people we can attach to, lean on and trust in.

Now, just two more things. Luke 6:45 says, "A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of." This means you can tell where your heart is based on what you say. I have friends who aren't Christians who constantly talk about their hair and makeup. I can tell their heart is completely absorbed in vanity because of the way they talk. It's like if a girl only talks about her boyfriend, she has probably given a lot of her heart to him. 

Matthew 6:22 says, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light." So another way to guard your heart is to guard your eyes. Do not think you can watch whatever you want and be pure on the inside. Be careful what movies you watch, you think "oh it's okay, there is only one sex scene." But, it can still mess with you, trust me, I am a victim of this too and still working on it. It is sneaky how Satan as used such "small" things in our society to try and unbind us from God. He wants to take back that cut of ourselves we gave to God and have it commit adultery, but we must guard our covenant with God. But He will light the way for you if you just ask.