.: weight watchers and victories, to our god :.

I walked out of Weight Watchers yesterday morning with a heart and a soul full of tears. Tears of joy, as I was processing all He has done, this intensely personal journey of ups and downs that has come to be my weight loss journey the last couple of years, one that is hard for me to put words to, yet is a journey that has led me to experience my God in ways like never before.

After the tears and processing, this song was on my heart. This is one of my anthems, a song I'd never heard before but also ironically, a song I first heard in church we visited our first few weeks in Pasadena, also about the same time when I continued my Weight Watchers journey with Weight Watchers Pasadena.

Grateful and full of thanks and praises this morning to my God. A God who is with us through the pain, struggles, and heartaches of life, One who loves us too much to leave us knocked down by them, but One who works to see us, in His power and strength alone, overcome. I can't describe how much I deeply resonate with these lyrics in a multitude of situations and ways. Praise be to God.

To my God, to our God.

Up from the ashes Your love has brought us

Out of the darkness into the light

Lifting our sorrows

Bearing our burdens healing our hearts

To our God we lift up one voice

To our God we lift up one song

To our God we lift up one voice

Singing Hallelujah

Chains have been broken eyes have been opened

An army of dry bones is starting rise

Death is defeated

We are victorious for You are alive

Hallelujah Hallelujah (repeat)

We'll make His praise glorious glorious, glorious

For His name is glorious, glorious, glorious

Make His praise glorious, glorious, glorious

Shout His name Glorious, Glorious, Glorious

- Lyrics by Brian Johnson, Jeremy Riddle, Joel Taylor

{where i create}

ran into this on pinterest the other day. truer words have never been spoken. there is something intensely powerful, beautiful, healing, and restorative that is unleashed when we create.

{let the bones you have broken}

{.rejoice.}

:: psalm 51:8

:: photo courtesy of pinterest

50 days of transformation {day 3}

Thanking, praising, and celebrating tonight my God who is so faithful. My God who brings freedom and healing and a peace that surpasses understanding, my God of unfailing, everlasting love.

"GOD'S SPIRIT IS THE POWER INSIDE every fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ. Jesus promised every disciple, 'I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to help you and be with you forever--the Spirit of truth...[who] lives with you and will be in you,' (John 14:16 NIV). But what does the Holy Spirit do for us?

The Holy Spirit helps learn and apply God's truth to life: 'The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my [Jesus'] name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you' (John 14:26).

The Holy Spirit builds our character through crisis: 'We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us' (Romans 5:3-5)

The Holy Spirit enables us to be more like Jesus. (Galatians 5:22-23).

The Holy Spirit gives us power to speak the Good News of Jesus. (Acts 1:8).

The Holy Spirit equips us for ministry. (1 Corinthians 12:4-6).

When we are filled with the Spirit, God's power, peace, presence and purpose are ours. We have stability under stress. We don't cave in, because 'Greater is he that is in us, than he that is in the world.' "

- Excerpt from today's devotional in "50 Days of Transformation."

--
I don't have words for how I experienced many of the above today.
The Lord is the everlasting God. Be Glorified.

Jesus, I thank you for your power, for your goodness, for your mercy and your grace.
Thank you for calling me to yourself, for letting me experience the joy and the intimacy and the pleasure of your embrace, of being yours, Abba's Child.

--

50 Days of Transformation is a devotional series created by Rick Warren and Saddleback Church. We had the pleasure of visiting there this weekend and while we can't attend Saddleback regularly since it is an hour away, we bought the 50 day journals and we're doing them together. God is in the midst of doing something big. Before we began the study, He began speaking, pushing, and prodding in many ways that also fall in line with the theme of being transformed. Grateful and thankful for my loving Father and Savior; the only One who has the power to change and transform me. Be glorified.

{thrive in truth}

photo source

WOKE UP WITH THE WORDS OF this verse below on my mind this morning, words I've read a couple times in the last few days since visiting Saddleback Church on Sunday with Ben and words that I pray and believe will come to encompass the theme of the next few months. Haven't been able to get these words and pieces of the devotional we started together yesterday on transformation out of my mind.

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." 

:: romans 12:2

As Rick Warren said on Sunday, "How we think affects how we feel, and how we feel affects what we do. We can't change the way we act, until we change the way we think."

Words and a truth I have heard from time to time and believe in with everything with every fiber of my being, yet words that the Lord knew I desperately needed to hear.

I am excited for these next few months, these next 50 days. A time of healing and restoration, renewal, transformation and truth. Yes, Lord, let me thrive in YOUR truth.

- Rick Warren's Saddleback Church began a series on Sunday called "50 Days of Transformation," this week they kicked off the beginning of the 50 days' daily devotionals and small group study falling in line with various aspects of transformation in the areas of spiritual health, emotional health, financial health, relational health, physical heath and more. 

It is intersecting with many things God has been doing lately and beginning to do and this new journey with the 50 days is changing my life already.

50 days of transformation {day 2}

"for i am yours; and you are mine."

Words from a song that quickly earned its spot as "my new jam" over christmas break and one that soon became declared as my anthem for 2014.

I can't describe the ways in which the spirit ministered to my heart in the midst of what i was going through at the time, a night i stumbled upon this acoustic version of the song and kept it on repeat while I was working on some stuff for our hall. these words and this woman's beautiful voice pierced my heart.

These lyrics came alive to me in ways like never before and tonight as i was listening to this song again on repeat while chopping fruit for a fruit salad for dessert for Ben and i, i was reminded of words that deeply resonated with me in today's devotional in "50 days of Transformation," simply that we are God's children. He is mine, and I am His.

--

"We are God's children. When we believe in Jesus Christ we are brought near to God the Father. So near in fact that he calls us his sons and daughters. We are a part of his family now. Fully received, fully loved, and fully accepted. What does this mean? It means we get to share in the very same relationship of love and intimacy that Jesus shared with the Father."

--

Quick pause, and then it goes on to share the verse where Jesus calls him "Abba, Father." I just thought that was ironic as me resurrecting my blog "abba's child," though I have been feeling a push to change the name of the blog link, I still kept the title and quote at the top because that's me, that's who I am.

I tried to do other blogs and it just didn't feel like me or representative of my heart. So I took a couple steps in figuring out a way to keep my old blog and the ways it feels like home, keep the abba's child stuff still at the top, but change the link as a part of me being obedient to some of the nudgings and the pushes I've been feeling from God in the midst of this season. One of them being, to write and post again.

I've got millions of pictures, stories, and experiences from my last six months in moving from Missouri to California, stories and experiences and photos I've been trying to figure out what/where is the best place for them to find a home.

I stopped posting on instagram and facebook a few months ago as I've yet to find a way to process and share my life in my new season. I still haven't figured it out yet, but it's time for me to at least try and figure out a way for me to share my life, heart, and experiences and what my Jesus is doing in the midst of it all.

Wow, that was quite the tangent ;), back to the devotional and what I was saying before, it pierced my heart and blew my mind again to read and think about how true and crazy it is that because of Jesus, we now have FULL access to the Father.

It goes on to say we get to share in "the very same relationship of love and intimacy that Jesus shared with the Father."

That is CRAZY! It just really hit me today and the last couple of days even in wrestling with and finally landing on incorporating "abba's child" into a new/old rendition of my blog. Because no fewer words describe who I am and what I'm about, what's driving me in life and where He's taken me, where I'm headed.

I belong to Him. And sometimes just knowing that, nothing else matters.

"for i am yours and you are mine," those words resonate with me deeply tonight for i feel free. free in him, free in the wide expanse of his beauty, his mercy, and his grace. free in him, free to live out of and feel connected with that which is my true identity.

i am abba's child.

--
50 Days of Transformation is a devotional series created by Rick Warren and Saddleback Church. We had the pleasure of visiting there this weekend and while we can't attend Saddleback regularly since it is an hour away, we bought the 50 day journals and we're doing them together. God is in the midst of doing something big. Before we began the study, He began speaking, pushing, and prodding in many ways that also fall in line with the theme of being transformed. Grateful and thankful for my loving Father and Savior; the only One who has the power to change and transform me. Be glorified.

- Photo courtesy of Pinterest

i am abba's child

{ my dignity as abba's child is my most coherent sense of self. every other identity is illusion }

:: BRENNAN MANNING

there are fewer words that resonate like that within the core of my being. fewer words than i can conjure up to describe my identity, my sense of self, worth, and value, whose and who i am, and who i really am. words that gripped my heart from the moment i first picked up that timeless treasure years ago that quickly seeped into ever fiber of my identity, healing, restoring, and reclaiming my identity. words that became so much more than mere words on a page, words that signaled and began a journey that will continue till the day i am reunited with my father in heaven, words that breathed life into my dry bones, beauty from ashes. words that have transformed everything about the way i would learn to live and be in this world. words that shaped far more than my identity and my relationship with god, words that He used to save me, awaken me to new life.

i am abba's child.

- photo courtesy of snaptastic shots photography