Changing Over

It has been forever since I have posted and I apologize for that. However, I am starting clean, I will keep this blog up, but it won't be active. I have created a new blog where I will post, stories and thoughts about my walk with God.

Here's the new link to my other blog!
https://maggierhea.blogspot.com 

Known

During my time in DTS (Discipleship Training School) I learned that the deepest desire of anyone is be fully loved and fully known. But those two don't usually go together, it's usually a one or the other situation. We all have the fear of being fully known, because we want to be fully loved. When I say fully, I mean heart, soul, and mind are open. Let's take a surgery analogy. You're under anesthesia, not knowing what's going on, but they are opening you up. You are trusting they are doing what they said they would before you went under. You trust that once they open you up, they aren't going to back down, no matter what's inside you, no matter how broken you are. God is the surgeon, he's opening you up, from head to toe, nothing is left unexposed, and He has promised you beforehand to fix everything that is broken, no matter how broken it is. 

We humans can love to the best of our abilities, but it will fail. Every relationship, friends, family, romantic, marriage, will fail. There's no exception, because we humans are imperfect. Bringing two imperfections together won't make the relationship perfect. In every relationship, we try to fix the other person, or ourselves, because there's something that isn't accepted in society, there's a little quirk the other person doesn't like, so they want to fix that, so you become more likable. I admit fault to that. If there's something I don't like about myself, or someone see as a flaw, immediately I try to fix it, so they can like me better. Or I will try to fix another person because, maybe I don't like a quirk they have. 

Needless to say, we like to fix things. But we have to realize that 1. God made everyone a certain way, the quirks you don't like, may be the characteristic God wants highlighted. 2. We can't fix people. 3. God is the only one who can heal and fix our brokenness. 

If we aren't trying to fix it, we are hiding it. This is where I excel at. Out of fear of not being loved, we will just show aspects that we think are likable. This means we are being loved for what we allow them to see, it has its conditions. God has no conditions. He isn't going to say "Oh I don't love you because you're not a certain race. Because you belong to a certain socioeconomic class. Because you don't have a 401(k), because you don't have a 5 year life plan. Because you did this with someone." The list can go on, but needless to say, there are no conditions for Him. Nothing will scare Him away. It's hard to comprehend, especially if in your life everyone has ran away, or you're hiding things because you know others won't accept you. 

It's a matter of trusting God. May be one of the hardest things we can do, but it will be one of the best things we can ever do. 

We all want to be fully known and fully loved. It's what we strive for, we date to test waters and see how much they can handle knowing about you, while loving you. But the sooner we all, I included, can realize no human being could ever fully know and fully love us, the sooner we can realize we need to rely on God. Because he's the ONLY one who can Fully Know and Fully Love us. 

This is a Song about being Fully Known and Fully Known, hopefully it's encouraging. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xckDgX8xNfg

What's Your Story?

During my time at DTS, we learned about stories and different parts of a story. Every story has a background/setting, character, conflict, and resolution. We each have a story. 

What’s your setting? What’s your background? Because you were added to a story. The setting includes location, family, friends, values. Whose story were you added to? What’s the history? 

My setting? I was abandoned by my birth parents, adopted into the Rhea family, so there are two separate stories I’ve entered into. 1 story I don’t know about and the second story, I have truly become apart of. My mom has a different story than my Dad and different settings. It goes on and on. Each person in the family has a different setting, but we have all come together as 1 family, and that’s the story. Which leads to the next section. 

Then who are you’re characters? Who’s apart of this story? There are different types of characters in a story, spectators, victims, villains, and heroes. Which character are you playing? We’ve each played each character at least once in our life. There are characters God has called us into,  for some God wants us to be the ‘rescuers’ for those who are stuck in the victim stage. God also uses each character to better the story. The victims are the ones who come out to be heroes or villains, their pain and suffering can be used for good or for bad. 

Then there’s the conflict, the heart of any good story, the reason why a story is a story. Because there is brokenness in us, we can relate to others brokenness. One of the main points from the lecture was, “our pain points to our purpose.”  We all go through pain and suffering, its inevitable, what tells the story is HOW we use that pain. This is the part where we can choose to be heroes or villains. Externally and internally. Personal example, my brother was brutally murdered and then shortly after my grandparents had died. I could be bitter, be angry, but I’ve been able to use that pain and suffering to help relate to others who have gone through similar events. Lastly, the conflict helps shapes the character. Romans 5:3b-4 puts it well “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” 

Then lastly, the resolution. The conflicts produce wounds, now how do we turn those wounds into scars? One of the methods is going in steps like this.

1. Name It
2. Embrace It
3. Forgive It
4. Use it

First, 2 steps are relatively easy, and once taken it starts the process. The hardest part, at least for me, is the forgiveness part. Without forgiveness, we have bitterness, that bitterness just stays. An analogy is if someone falls and scrapes their knee. First, two steps are just realizing you got injured. Forgiveness stage could be parallel to putting on the ointment and band-aid, then letting it heal. Without the bandage and ointment, then it may get infected and become worse than it actually is. That’s the bitterness part that comes without forgiveness. It’s hard to forgive. My brother was murdered, yet I’m called to forgive the murderer. I’m still working on that part and it's going to be a process. But once that wound has turned into a scar, I get to look back on it, and yes it will be painful, but its a testimony. 

Scars aren’t meant to represent that you have it all together and that it isn’t going to hurt. Scars is a representation of what you’ve gone through, your story. It shows that you’ve gone through pain and suffering and didn’t let it overcome you, but you overcame it. Take charge of your story. The setting part of the story isn’t controllable and neither is the conflict that comes your way. Its how you respond. What are you going to do with the unexpected? 

Who are you? What’s your story? 

Take Courage

Waiting…. why is waiting so hard. Waiting for food, grades, relationships, guidance, whatever it is. Nobody wants to wait, that's why we have all these mobile apps to order food or drinks, drive thru’s, fast food restaurants. We compromise quality and value when we don’t wait. 

Applying this to real life. When we rush into something, we compromise quality, virtue, sometimes we compromise beliefs. Recently I jumped into a relationship with someone that I knew, I knew it was wrong, and that I would be compromising my beliefs for, but I didn’t want to wait. God will guide you on the right path, however, if you press to get on another path, He is so gracious and merciful, he is going to let you have your way. 

There is this song called Take Courage by Bethel Music. There’s this line “He’s in the waiting” God is in the waiting. It’s in the waiting that we need to lean on to God the most. Those are the times where we need to Trust. And of course, being human, trust is something hard to give away, even though we know the person we are giving it to will NEVER fail us. These are the times we hold on to the Truths, hold on to Hope, hold on to Love. Because pain and suffering wasn't the end of Jesus' story and it won't be the end of ours. God's Righteousness and Justice always win. 

"God’s order in the Cosmos is a Comfort because it will not always be this way" - Pastor Glenn Packiam

Take Courage. 

"Is God Safe?"

"Is God Safe? No but He's good" - CS Lewis

This quote has stuck with me for awhile now, because I often subconsciously ask if God is safe. I've question at times, since God isn't safe, does that mean we don't trust Him? It was soon after I caught myself believing a lie "if he isn't safe then he must not be trustworthy", a direct lie from the enemy.

An analogy I thought of was driving, 'is driving safe? Heck no, people constantly get into accidents and die or have major injuries, but we still drive don't we? Do we avoid planes and trains because of the chance we could crash and die? Point is, we are in an unsafe world, but that doesn't stop us from experiencing life to the fullest, at least it shouldn't. When in God, we know and trust that God will protect us, until He calls us home.

My family and I have been through hell and back, and many others may have too, however, because we have been hurt so much and been through many lows, we've been through many ups and seen God's faithfulness and goodness to us. We have seen major life changes, for good, come out of our most distraught times. An example: In 2008, my brother was murdered, tragic time. Yet, ever since our lives changed, we became missionaries, we traveled around, we moved to Colorado Springs. I could go on and on with the changes and how they've impacted us. No doubt, since his murder we've been through trials, but because of his murder, I am who I am now.

When I read biographies of people being persecuted for their faith, that alone is a sign, God isn't safe, but those missionaries risked their lives because they knew God was so much greater than their own life. Such as Jim Elliot and the 6 who were brutally murdered, but looked at the effects of that? A whole village got saved. I pray to be that kind of missionary, one willingly to risk EVERYTHING for Christ, because of how GREAT He is.

Endurance

This week at my meal group, bible study, we discussed endurance and what it means to run the race with endurance and what the purpose is of running the race.

At first, what came to my mind was a personal example. This is an example of emotional endurance. I really am bad at sports, but I love playing. Every year at our school in Cambodia we had a athletic day (track and field day) and of course I always got last place in every race. I would often get encouraged by teachers, peers, and parents to finish the race, though many times I didn't want to, or felt the need to, cause I was last anyways. But I always finished those races.

Backing up a little. In sophomore year of high school, I joined all three sports offered at our school. Basketball, volleyball, and soccer. It was an emotional endurance because, I was an anchor in the team, at least that's how my teammates saw it. I could've easily quite, but I didn't because I loved what I was doing and I couldn't let my teammates control what I did or not. It took a little while to get to that place because in 8th grade and as a freshmen, I stuck to just volleyball, because I was the best at that sport. It was worse when I had my sisters on the same team. They have a competitive spirit which is bad because it helps bring the team to victory, but I didn't have that. I played for fun, and it was the only thing that kept me fit. There were conflicts between interests and different goals. I would get 'why do you do the sport you know you're not good at?' and 'oh, please don't mess up.' and more. I endured it, because I was encouraged through my coaches that I did belong to that team and to not pay attention to those comments. Though hard to ignore, I got stronger and I will do a sport I love even when I am told not to. Even through this God had richly blessed me. At the end of that year I won the sports award for the class, as there's only one per grade. I had also received the Gwen Coventry award, which was the highest award at our school given to 1 boy and 1 girl throughout high school. It was based on character and student leadership. It was insane to think that, out of all the athletes they could've chose from, they chose the least athletic.

I found a verse in Romans. Romans 5:3-5 "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Reading this was encouraging, because those award didn't show my athletic abilities, it showed my character, which was shown through the endurance.

I don't mean to be prideful or arrogant. I'm simply sharing my story of God's grace and how I ran with endurance and purpose in that era of my life. I hope this can bring encouragement, because knowing that you aren't the only one going through a situation brings encouragement and hope.

God Bless

Hope

Google defines hope as "a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen." I agree with this definition to an extent, because hope, allows for us to go further than what we see. Jesus is the hope to the hopeless and Jesus hasn't told us to give up hope. Romans 5:5 says "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." 

Hope is one of the ways that gives us a desire to live, but then even after life we have a hope to be with Christ. Hope can also come in different forms, for example: I have hope to see my birth parents or family again. This kind of hope is very ambitious because realistically I will probably not be able to see any of them again. But to take away that hope, takes away part of my life, because they are the people that have similar genes that I do, possibly within the same gene pool. I have never met them or know anything about them, but I still have hope that one day I may be able to see them. That's a very extreme example, but it's true. God can do the most impossible and bring hope to what seems  very hopeless. Another more realistic example; graduation is approaching and that's the end of High school, Middle school, and Elementary school, if I had no hope, I would see graduation as the end. However, I have hope that I will have a career and a future beyond high school. It allows me to see further than high school and motivates me to keep going.

I have hopes that I can reach my goal on my fundraising for YWAM DTS. gofund.me/maggiezrhea
I hope to reach this goal, which can take me beyond what I can see or imagine now. 

As Christ followers, our hope is to be with in heaven with God one day. Our preacher said that, hope helps us see beyond the horizon.  Having Hope in Christ allows us to see that there's something beyond even death, which is eternal life with Christ in heaven. 

Taking away hope from someone, no matter how far out of reach it seems to be, I personally would feel robbed. Even if it was something that others know that it can't happen and it's so far out of reach, it's still robbing a person from that aspect of their life.

I want to close with this verse from Job 11:18 

"You will be secure, because there is hope;

    you will look about you and take your rest in safety."