Ripped off

(God to Abraham) ...through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed... Gen 22:18

bless - 3. To invoke divine favour upon.
blessing - 3. Something promoting or contributing to happiness, well-being, or prosperity(dictionary.com)

This might upset some people so I apologise in advance.

I have recently become friends with this amazing beautiful girl, who is really really really shy. I'm really excited to know her and be a part of her journey, and I love that we're really different - she hates sport and the water : ) recently a few people have been like, Amy I think its really cool you're taking the time to get to know her bla bla bla and I've been like yea I'm pretty cool. Anyways, so we had thanksgiving lunch together and afterwards she was like, would you maybe want to hang out this weekend? and I was like yea! how about Sunday after church? and she was like, yea ok we'll see. And so Sunday comes around, and its a beautiful day, and I'm like God, thank you for this day, I'm going to the beach! and God was like, what about Polly (code name) - she hates water? and I'm like, its ok we can hang out another day, and God was like, Amy, you told her you'd hang out with her today. And then I was thinking about how much effort I was putting in to actually getting to know her and making her welcome, and I realised I'm not half or even a quarter as noble as I think I am. But thats ok and its not my point. I was like, God, I'm not hurting her by not hanging out with her. And God was like, no Amy but you're not blessing her either, so what is the point in chasing her?

There is a really common world view these days, which I used to agree with, and even up to a certain extent agreed with up until yesterday. And that is the thought/idea that its ok for people to do whatever they want, as long as they don't hurt anyone.

And I just want to say, that is SUCH a rip off.

People just want to get through life without being hurt...God wants people to go through life being more blessed than they could imagine. He doesn't want me to simply not hurt Polly - when has friendship/relationships simply been about not hurting someone? when has that even been possible? He wants to bless her through our friendship. People hurt, I think thats unavoidable. Blessing people is avoidable unfortunatley, and far too common - and christians are often the worst culprits.

I know this probably sounds kinda fairy taleish, but this is the best I could come up with for now, I don't think life is at all supossed to be easy, but being blessed is truly Gods desire for our lives. He loves us more than we could imagine right? So if people who you know how much they love you bless you, how much more does he want to bless you? If there are christians in your life who aren't blessing you, I'm sorry. I want to apologise on their behalf. If I haven't been blessing you, I'm sorry and I'm going to, by grace, make more effort.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense, just had to put it down.
much love
A xxox

Kisses

OK so we just had bible study and we were talking about beautiful things and what was always really beautiful to us personally and how that portrayed God to us. And I just think its really cool. So sometimes I'm just sitting there marvelling at this world, which happens a lot. And then all of a sudden its like God is kissing me. Like a "this moment is just for you my darling" Like, I'm his darling. yus!

So here are some things that make me feel like God is kissing me and what is beautiful to me:

When it goes quiet all of a sudden and theres a gentle breeze, theres a song that goes and its so soft and gentle across your face.

Hot showers. I could seriously stand under one for hours. Like just standing there with the water pouring all over your face and you can feel all the drops of water. And when it rains heavy fat rain drops like that too, and you can just walk in the rain and your eyebrows fill up and start dripping warm water down your face.

Anything to do with the ocean, its just so huge and so beautiful and so much fun. Looking at it or swimming in it or listening to it or whatever, its just amazing to me

Shutting my eyes and walking in the sun and just feeling its warmth sinking into my bones.

When you're about to cross a busy road and then all of a sudden, it goes quiet and there are no cars

The smell of the air and how plump it feels just before it rains

People smiling just because they can.

When I have practice in the morning, and when I get in the pool its all dark and I really love watching the sky change and sun coming up, even though I never actually get to see the sun.

Mornings in general, just when the sun has come up and its starting to be warm, and its all quiet, just before the rush of the day starts.
and at home, in the autumn and spring time in the morning its really crispy and quite cold, but the sky is so clear and you know its just guna be such a beautiful day.

When you eat food that you just can't help but get all over your face and hands. When it's so good and so messy and you don't even care.

when people sing, even though they can't really sing that well, but they really love the song and really feel what they're singing, I think its the most coolest thing in the world
And when people are so enthusiastic about what they're doing, and so into it, whether its sellng hot dogs or discovering a cure for a disease. When people are excited about what they're doing, other people get excited. Thats not really God kissing me but it totally reflects him to me.

Basically whatever is beautiful. The stars, the mountains, people, machines if thats what you like. It's so cool how you can just breathe when you're around something beautiful, you can sigh and something inside you is calmed and becomes still, even if the rest of your life is chaos.
How it heals, its no mistake that people give flowers when something bad happens, why people go for walks on the beach to clear their heads, why people stop to listen when they hear a beautiful song...

And thats what God is to me, of many things, He is beauty.

Here we go! Ready?

OK so here is my first post. So much pressure! haha! nah but its ok. I'm guna be ok I'm guna be ok. And dang it people really do like me! Kezia you have to finish telling me that story : )

OK so lately, God has been totally teaching me all about me. Wait. haha. ok, let me start at the beginning.

The way I got here was totally a God thing, but I'm guna leave that story for another day. But anyways, I got here totally expecting to change the world, and I was pretty sure I had everything figured out about me and who I was in Christ you know, the whole shebang. But about a week after I got here, I had this nagging feeling that I just wasn't doing enough, that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't measure up to God's expectations of me and I was never going to reach anyone let alone the world. I had had these feelings at home before, but I had put them down to being a new christian and thought that now God was taking me places, all that would be left behind me. So I was a tad bewildered at coming back to the same point again and again.

OK so fast forward to June. I had been trying so so hard to change the way I thought about myself. I knew that my feelings weren't right, and I knew that God really loved me, but I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried, make myself really believe that. OK skip to August. I'm at campus crusade for Christ retreat, in the meeting room in the middle of the night, balling my eyes out (let me tell you the snot was flowing - I could barely breathe). Ready to give up on this whole God thing, even though somehow I didn't really want to. I just got to the stage where I was like, whats the point of this? Secretly begging God to send me someone to help me understand but really not expecting it. Everyone thought I was in bed. And I'm not a person people usually go looking for.

I don't think they were looking for me, but these two amazing girls walked in, put their arms around me and started talking to me, I'm pretty sure secretly praying they could maybe help me figure out what was going on, coz I really had no idea! And anyways, one of them asked me a simple question. And out comes even more tears. I realised, that since I was a little girl, through one small event or another, I have believed (like really thought in my heart) that I was a burden to people. And people really close to me like my family really didn't believe that I loved them. And this lie in my heart was reflecting in my relationship with God too.

Since then has been so incredible. Romans 12:2 instructs us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds by Christ. Slowly God has been showing me all these hurts that I've been living with, and telling me truth where I used to believe lies...its hard to change 20 years of thought! Some of it has been really painful. It hurts really bad sometimes thinking about things I don't want to dig up again, places I don't want to go back to. But as I tell him about it, as I cry and show him like a little girl showing her daddy her grazed knee, He wraps me up in his arms and kisses it all better. He really does love me. (REALLY!) He really does want to protect me and bless me and heal me and show me how to get through this crazy adventure called life. I found myself marvelling at God the other day, just letting him know how incredibly merciful he is, its really not enough that I get to know him, but he wants to know me too, he wants to go deep inside my heart and fill it with love and peace and truth and joy and all this other awesome stuff. And I think he was giggling at me, it was like he was saying "duh!"

I'm just really loving Hosea 2 at the moment, it talks about how God will strip away all the things we try to get our worth from so that we will turn to Him - thats how much he desires us. Like he really really WANTS to be in our lives, like he is jealous and passionate about us. Then it talks about how he will heal us. How he'll teach us who he is and who we are. How he will join us to himself in the sense that he will never let us go, he will always be beside us, no matter what we think of Him, or ourselves. He will bless us more than we could possible imagine.

"Surely you desire truth in the inner most parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place." (Ps 51:6) He really wants us to know truth. He really does weep over our brokenness. He really does want us to be happy and whole and live a full awesome adventure of a life. He has no conditions to this love except that we turn to Him and let Him in. OK so thats what I've been learning about lately. A bit soppy I know, and probably really simple to all those christians reading. But it's truth, and the truth sets us free...

Another Crazy Blog

Hey guys,

I decided to make this blog for people who were interested. God's been doing so much in my life and I really want to share it, but I don't want people to be uncomfortable with that. So this blog is going to be all about God for those who want to hear or are interested. And I'd love to get feed back on things, what you think, whether you agree or not, or what you think in general. So yea, hope everyone is awesome.

Peace out
much love
A xxox