Heaven

We are on vacation. Beautiful, long awaited vacation.

We have been spending every day watching movies, taking walks, and playing on the beach.

The air is moist and perfect. Not too hot and not too cold. There is a slight breeze almost all of the time and the sound of the ocean echos in the background of every connection filled moment.

This is heaven. Heaven. You heard me. This. Is. Heaven.

I am becoming more and more aware of the reality of heaven. Not the fluffy, harp in hand type of heaven, but the heaven of Hope and Expectation.

I am convinced that heaven is life as it was meant to be lived.

Beaches, fresh and filling food, laughter, connection, joy, barbeques, fireworks, hammocks, and long walks through His creation.

So, this week, I am tasting heaven.

Something Divine and powerful has touched earth and has filled my heart with hope.

We are always saying, “Don’t you wish this could last forever?” Ah. It will.

check out the new blogs and photography!!

http://web.me.com/stephanie.moors/Be_Free_/Be_Free_.html

new blogs and photos!

http://web.me.com/stephanie.moors/Be_Free_/Be_Free_.html

Moving My Blog...

I've moved my blog (and added a few more) to a mac website. you can actually subscribe to the blog and recieve email updates.

enjoy!

http://web.me.com/stephanie.moors/Be_Free_/Be_Free_.html

Recentering

I am feeling judged all the time lately.

Judged for the way we choose to eat and live.

Judged for the friends I have (and don't have).

It is almost completely overwhelming. Honestly, my first instinct is to find a place to hide.

I conjure up images of smooth beaches and cool waves; warm sun spilling out over the sand and water like a blanket. A place that it totally empty. No one but myself, my man, my babies and the dog. How long could I hide here? How long could I live without the people I am running from?

The problem is that I hate conflict. I hate to feel unacceptable. I hate being the source of frustration or anger.

But I can't hide. Let's be honest, I'm too poor to hide. :) And hiding would only cause more conflict, which would only drive me deeper into my little hole.

So, I guess I have to stay where I am and attempt to sort myself out.

Because I am a judger too. I judge people I don't know, don't understand, and don't like. I follow other people's judgements towards others more often than not. It is easier to look down on someone else than to consider my own inadequacy.

Don't get me wrong, I FIGHT this tendency with my whole heart. I have absolutely no desire to judge another human being. Their pain only causes me more pain.

I've been trying to tell myself that PEOPLE don't really have a hand in measuring my adequacy. I am acceptable only because I have asked to be bound to the altar and have chosen a way of life that will require me to surrender my brokenness over and over again. If someone despises something about me and it causes me to shrink back and writhe in agony, I have set my heart on a fading hope.

Who can affirm me to the point of life?

Who can resurrect my feeble heart when I have been crushed by someone's opinions?

Ahhh..

I have momentarily lost my center. I have become unbalanced.

Life seems to be a constant repositioning. I am always having to step back to find my breath again. I am always having to remember who God is.

Today is no different.

People don't like some things about me.

Okay. I guess it happens. And if it is truly about me, then I might lose my footing altogether.

But my life is set on something else.

So, I guess I move forward. Not to a perfect beach clothed in solitude, but to my life and it's inhabitants... To Jesus, at the very center of my life, brimming over with the kind of love that causes a man to race to the woman he loves - to pay her dowry.

I am my Beloved's.

My Beloved is mine.

she is everywhere

I've watched it happen from my own house.

A young man forgets wisdom; he dismisses insight, and he walks too close to her house.

The house where she waits.

In the time of shadows and secrets she meets him, dressed as a prostitute, skilled at taking an advantage.

She is loud like a blaring commercial.

She is a wanderer, riding the waves of the internet looking for her prey.

She stands over the street, a giant billboard, tantalizing and seductive.

She is in the market, sprawled over magazine covers, half clothed and whispering.

At every corner she lies in wait.

She doesn't wait to be approached.

She seizes him and kisses him.

With a bold face she tells him,

"I've come to find you; looking everywhere to seek you.

My bed is ready and will quench your thirst.

Come, let us take our fill of "love" till morning.

My husband is gone; there is a thrill in knowing that I am never really your's.

You will never have to commit to me."

She persuades him and with smooth talk she compels him.

At once he follows her,

as an ox goes to slaughter,

or as a stag is caught fast as an arrow pierces it's liver,

as a bird rushes into a snare;

he does not know that it will cost him his life.

So, listen to me.

Cling to these words.

Don't let your heart turn aside to her ways;

do not stray into her paths,

because she will lay you low as she has done to everyone else.

Her house is only a rest stop on the way to death.


-Proverbs 7:7-27 (in my own words)

He is in the Fire

It seems like grief is bubbling up on every side these days.

There is sorrow in this world.

There is loss.

Where is God in sadness?

A few months ago our really good friends found out that their unborn baby girl has spina bifida. Immediately this precious mama felt the stirring of the Holy Spirit and asked for people to come and pray for the healing and health of her little one.

As we walked through the front door into the full living room I was struck with the strangeness of this group of people. In ordinary circumstances we probably wouldn't all be in the same room. We were all so different, drawn together by the one thing that makes us family - Jesus.

Everyone knelt down; no one sat on a chair or stayed standing. With an unspoken brokenness and urgency every single person, young and old, sank to the ground.

And then we wept. We all cried.

And we prayed.

Looking around at the tear streaked faces of the people around me I was so struck with the holiness of the moment. The Message Bible says that "a basic holiness permeates everything."

Holiness saturates our air; thick and sweet.

Not long after that prayer meeting my girlfriend wrote to me about a woman she knows who was lying unresponsive in the ICU due to toxic shock syndrome. Her 3 little ones (one of her kids is 11 weeks old) are waiting for her to be healed and come home.

And then another friend posted a link with a video made by the parents of a beautiful 5 year old girl, asking for prayer. Their daughter, Kate, has a brain tumor.

A few days ago we found out that my vibrant, life-loving aunt has cancer.

Grief.

Loss.

Sorrow.

The mama of the unborn baby posted a prayer on Facebook. She wrote:

"This has all been a blur, but the goodness and faithfulness of the Lord stands out clear in my head. Separated from the mess and distinguished above all of the pain and fear is He. He sits alone, and from His holy hill he listens. My mind is full of the Lord, my thoughts captive to Him. He has told me to be persistent. He has told me to hope. He has told me to wait, and be still. He has told me that His power is over this child, and that I will behold it. I prayed that He would not let me be ashamed. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown in the fiery furnace, Nebuchadnezzar looked in and said, "Look, I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like the Son of man." This is my prayer... that when they look at the ultrasound in about 3 weeks that they would call out, "Look, who is with her? It looks like the Son of Man." That she would be unharmed and unbound, that the things they thought would hold her would be gone, that they would burn away that they would be healed in the POWER of His presence. That the hearts of the doctors and nurses and the hearts of those sitting and watching would be turned to Him. That they would know who reigns. I want them to proclaim as Nebucadnezzar proclaimed, "How great are His signs, How mighty His wonders! His kingdom is an eternal kingdom; His dominion endures from generation to generation." Our God is good and we wait in anticipation."

So, this has also become my prayer.

I pray that my aunt, my family, the children of the mama in icu, the mama herself and her husband, sweet kate and her parents and siblings, our friends and their unborn daughter, their 3 year old daughter, and their entire family all would see Jesus in the fire with them.

I pray that we would ALL see God in our sadness; that we would encounter him untying our hands and feet.

Freedom.

Miracles.

Life.