He knows it all.

   He knows it all.

   When we're confused and can't figure out why God is doing what He is doing- we need to trust Him. We need to surrender to His plans, and lay down our plans. It is not easy; but God can't lead until we allow Him.

   When we got back from the Philippines, we had no idea what was next, other than my parents knew our calling was still missions. Our house in Texas was still on the market, and had been since mid April of 2013. Payments still had to be made on the house, and God provided EVERY single payment while my dad has not had a job. But come February, the house still hadn't sold, and God still hadn't opened new doors for us, as far as what was next.

   So we were waiting.. still. Waiting isn't easy. The enemy really messed with me during this time, and tried to discourage me. Why did the Lord make us give up our old life, sell half of our stuff, and have us live a life of COMPLETE dependence upon Him!? And on top of that, WHY hasn't our house sold? If He opened every door for us to fix it up and put it on the market last spring, why is He allowing it to take so long to sell? And why isn't He showing us what the next step is?

   I relearned something.. God has His own timing. He doesn't always tell us what is next. He makes us wait. It's really for our good though; we just don't always see it that way. At least, I don't always see it that way!

   I had to come to a place of complete surrender again.. "Lord, my life is yours. Our life is yours. I trust you, even though none of this makes sense to me right now."

   I've had to come back to a place where I'm choosing to put my trust in Christ. If I don't get my old "comfortable life" back; will I be happy? You know what? Yes. Yes, I will be. Because I was reminded that there is nothing more rewarding than being called by Christ and getting to actually live out what He has called you to! I was made to glorify God, and that means I need to give up my own desires to live for His! He's faithful to provide; He has always provided for me, who am I, to think that He won't continue to!

   So all this to say... shortly after all this went on; we got a contract on our house. It closed last week! It's sold! It took almost exactly a year. But it's one more step along! God has a plan, and He's slowly revealing it.

   I truly believe He's giving us this time up here in St. Louis to catch up on school, and settle for a little bit.

   We still don't have exact details on what's next, but we have ideas. The Lord will show us in His own timing... There are days when I just want to know NOW, but.. the Lord knows. He will reveal when it's His timing. Until then.. more waiting. And trusting. :)

Reckless abandon

   I haven't posted in awhile.. A month, to be exact. It's been a good month, I just haven't felt like I had anything to really write on. The Lord has really been working on me lately about following Him with reckless abandon, and I felt called to write a post on it.. So I'm back!

  Following Christ is a decision we need to make for ourself. And when we choose to follow Him, we need to do so with reckless abandon.

   That means we don't follow and love Him just because He's good to us, and life is easy and wonderful and going our way. Following Him with reckless abandon means we follow Him for who He IS, not for what He is going to do for us.

   Following Him with reckless abandon means that despite the circumstances, we choose to follow Him. Even if life is falling apart, and we do not know what is going to happen next, we still choose to
follow Him. Because He is God, He created us, and He has a plan for each and every one of us.

   From the beginning, God never said this life would be easy.

   "I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world.” John 16:33 {The Message}

   From the beginning, God said that in this world we would have troubles and experience difficulties. He also said that He would be with us through those trials.

   When those trials come, we have to choose to cling onto God and trust Him. We have to choose to love and follow Him despite what happens. We have to choose to be recklessly abandoned to Him!

   Following Him with reckless abandon is harder than it sounds, and even though I will always fall short of Him, I'm choosing to make it the desire of my life; to follow Him with such love and devotion through everything. Choosing to trust Him through everything.

   Thank goodness that the Savior we serve knows that we will always fall short of Him, yet He still yearns for us to follow Him and make Him the prize of our lives. How good is He?! We'd be crazy to not want to serve Him!
 
   No matter what happens, Jesus is so good and always has a plan for each and every one of our lives.

   We need to strive to trust Him through it all and still choose to follow Him through all the trials that are going to come.

   Lord, help me to be recklessly abandoned to You!

Love.

   Love. It's something in everyone's life. It's something that our generation has completely twisted up today. It's a word that is thrown around so lightly like it's nothing. You guys, love is SO big. Jesus died on he cross for US because He LOVED us. We cannot use this word so lightly!

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son, so that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life." - John 3:16

 

   Love is so real and so big. Love is something that everyone longs for. Until we experience Christ and have a personal relationship with Him, we will not know true, unfailing, eternal love. Seeking for unfailing love from another human is setting us up for disappointment. It's not gonna satisfy. Nothing besides the love of God will ever satisfy us.

 

   Once we've experienced love from Christ, we have the true ability to love others. It needs to be our desire to love others with the love Christ has given us. But here is the thing.. So many Christians nowdays don't make an effort to show the love of Christ to other people.

   We get comfortable in our normal lifestyle and just go along with it.. There's an issue if while you're out in public nobody would even know that you're a Christian and living your life for God. There's an issue if you're not trying to show the love of God everyday.

  We're not perfect though. We all struggle in this area. I know I do, and I hate when I do. This whole topic is something I am still working on daily myself, and it's something I always will have to work on. But I'm allowing God to work in me, and asking Him to help me get better at this whole thing.

 

"Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God." - 1 John 4:7

 

"We love each other because he loved us first" - 1 John 4:19

 

 

   God has really been speaking to me about all this these past few weeks. How we as Christians need to share the love of God any chance we get. Wether it be by welcoming the new person at church, or just truly taking interest in someone who you know is going through something and needs encouragement.

   We need to stop being ordinary, and start being extraordinary for GOD. We need to desire to be a light for Christ, and share His love everywhere we go. We need to make sure we're reflecting the love of Christ at church, at home, and just while out in public.

                                                         Madeline

Moments captured.

   Those who know me, know that I love taking pictures. And I hate deleting pictures. My iPad has over 2000 photos on it. Mainly because I like them ON my iPad so that I can look at them whenever, which is why I have yet to transfer any of them to my laptop. I just love capturing memories with people that I love. Tonight I was going through some pictures.. from the Philippines. From our Texas visit. From the other day.. So yeah, one thing you should know about me: I LOVE taking photos!
   Here's some photos from our life these last few months:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   And there is our life these past few months put into about 18 pictures. So thankful for all the wonderful people God has placed in my life!
                                                        
                                                               ~Madeline

Where I left my heart...

   The Philippines.

  This post is complete honesty coming from me.. A part of me just wanted to skip sharing the struggles and the hard times, but what's the point if I don't share the hard times too? God uses those for our own growth.

   When we left the US, I was beyond excited. We got there, and upon learning of our new schedule, the excitement died down a little. I was trying to figure out how I was going to balance our new schedule of waking up at the crack of dawn, morning worship time, classes, homeschooling, chores and everything in between, combined with trying to stay in touch with those at home. It was an overwhelming first week. But I began to seek the Lord and told Him that I couldn't do it on my own. I couldn't handle the changes and the adjustments on my own, I needed His help. I no longer focused on how I was going to manage it all, but rather on just doing it all one step at a time and allowing the Lord to lead me. Had I not opened up my heart to allow God to work on me, I may have missed what all He wanted to do in me through the FDTS.

   As we continued throughout the school, I still missed home a lot, mainly just my friends and family. Once again, I had to ask the Lord to renew my focus back on what we were doing in the Philippines. He did, and I began to love the Philippines. I wasn't always focusing on back home anyone, but rather on what God wanted to do and use me for while in the Philippines. I started focusing more on the relationships that could be built there with the people.

   Outreach began.. And yes, I still had all of my struggles. But I just kept coming to love that country even more! By the time it was time to leave and go back to the US, I was not ready to go back. Yes, in a sense, I was ready to go back, as I did want to be home for Christmas. But other than that, I wasn't ready! I especially was not ready to leave the people and the relationships I had built there.
This was a complete 360 from our beginning weeks there, when I just missed home, & I missed our "normal life"..  I am so thankful I allowed the Lord to work in me while we were there, so that I didn't miss everything that He wanted to do in my life while there.

   You guys, the Philippines is a beautiful country. The people are so sweet and open. The hospitality of the people over there is a blessing, and the culture itself is just wonderful. So yeah, the Philippines and the Filipino people stole my heart. When and if the Lord wills for us to go back, I will be ready.

What am I doing?!

   Ahhh. Off and on from the time I was 10, I have had different blogs. I've always loved to document and share with people what is going on in my life. I guess just due to life getting busy, several times I have kinda dropped the whole blogging thing. But... Here I am again.

   These past 8 months of life have been different. A good different. But also a crazy different. The story is long; but in short- In June of last year, we sold half of our stuff, and moved the other half back up to St. Louis, Missouri to store at my grandparents. Our home in Texas was on the market, and so trusting God and obeying what He called us to do, my parents, along with me and Eli, packed up a few suitcases and headed to the Philippines in July. While there, we stayed in Baguio and attended a 5 month long YWAM FDTS. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a Family Discipleship Training School run by YWAM (Youth with a Mission). During this school we covered different biblical and spiritual topics over a course of 12 weeks, called the Lecture Phase. We then applied all of our teachings into our next phase of 8 weeks, which was Outreach Phase.

   We graduated this school on December 12th, and headed back to the USA on December 16th. We are living in St. Louis at the moment, and waiting on God to show us our next step. Whether it be going back to the Philippines to do full time missions, or who knows what, we are believing God will show us. The most common question we get is this: "So what are you guys doing next?" The answer is simply this: We are still waiting on God to show us.

   The hardest part that has come with being back in the States is the fact that so many people don't understand what we're doing. They don't understand what living a life of obedience to God is. The crazy comments and looks we get from some people upon telling them that my dad is not looking for a job at the moment and  that we are completely trusting on God to reveal to us what we are to do next cannot be numbered. So many people don't understand it. In complete honesty, this has discouraged me, and at times makes me wonder why we're doing THIS. Why we are stepping out into obedience to see what God has for us..? There has been so many times that I have questioned God and even my parents on this. But God always has answers for us, and reminded me again why we are doing this.

   This life is not ours. It is God's, and it is not up to us on what we are going to spend our lives doing. The so called typical American "comfortable and settled life" is not enough for Him. If we are true believers of Him and we truly want to follow Him, we need to be so willing to obey Him when he calls us to do something; even if it's as big as leaving the country. No, God does NOT call everyone to leave their home country and give up half of their stuff. But He does have a call on everyone's life, and whatever that call is, you need to be willing to obey it. Even if it makes you look crazy, and even if it makes some of the people around you question you.

   All this leads me to say: I am in a place of contentment now. I know that God has us here in the states for this season, although it definitely isn't the same life we've always lived here in the states. I still struggle, but I'm choosing to trust God. I am excited to see what He has in store for us next!

   This life is a beautiful journey, not just my life, and not just my family's life, but EVERYone's life. I love seeing what God is doing in the lives of others, and I especially love seeing when people are obediently walking out the call that God has put on their lives!

                                               ~Madeline