Elizabeth Smillie

What do I encourage you to? Experience God’s grace and glory, know His love? I hope so.

I feel quite sure – if I did my best – I could maybe impress you
With tender words, and the harmonies, a clever rhyme or two.
But if all I’ve done in the time we’ve shared is turn your eyes on me,
Then I’ve failed in what I’ve been called to do.
There’s someone else I want you to see.

Will you love Jesus more when we go our different ways?
When this moment is a memory, will you remember His face?
Will you look back and realize you sensed His love,
More than you did before?
I pray for nothing less than for you to love Jesus more.

I’d like to keep these memories in frames of gold and silver
And reminisce a year from now about the smiles we’ve shared.
But above all else I hope you will come to know the Father’s love
And when we see the Lord face to face
You’ll hear Him say, “Well done.”

I pray for nothing less than for you to love Jesus more.

“will you love Jesus more?” – by shawn craig and john manderville

I know this song has been sung many times, by many people, but tonight it is true of me. I pray that your encounters with me, however brief, may lead you to love Jesus more.

The secret of life is letting go
The secret of love is letting it show
In all that I do
In all that I say
Right here in this moment

The power of prayer is in a humble cry
The power of change is in giving my life
I’m laying it down
Down at your feet
Right here in this moment

Take my heart
Take my soul
I surrender everything to your control
And let all this is within me lift up to you and say
I am yours and yours alone
Completely

The journey of life is a search for truth
This journey of faith is following you
Every step of the way
Through the joy and the pain
Right here in this moment

Right here, right now, and for the rest of my life
Hear me say

I am yours and yours alone
Completely

-“completely” by Ana Laura

It is the surrendering part that I have difficulty with.
I can love, realizing that I only love as I come to know the fullness Christ’s love for me.
God does a pretty good job of keeping me humble, too.
It is the letting go, the laying down, and the moment-by-moment surrendering of all of me – all that I love, long for, desire – to all of Him – all that He loves, all that He has for me – that brings me to my knees. Because it is hard. I cannot do it alone.
But it is also in the surrender that He is glorified. It is when He has complete and absolute control that the glory shines through and I am most like Christ.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. –Psalm 119:105

The LORD God is a sun and shield, He gives grace and glory. No good thing does He withhold from those that walk uprightly. –Psalm 84:11

The Light of the world illumines our lives. He uses His word to guide us step by step, making our way clear with its light, divining truth from error, “light” from “darkness”.

… walk in the light as He Himself is in the light. – I John 1:7
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“There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.”

-Mother Theresa (1910-1997)
founder of the Missionaries of Charity

Psalm 63

A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.

1 O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.

2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.

3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.

4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.

5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

6 On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.

7 Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.

8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.

9 They who seek my life will be destroyed;
they will go down to the depths of the earth.

10 They will be given over to the sword
and become food for jackals.

11 But the king will rejoice in God;
all who swear by God’s name will praise him,
while the mouths of liars will be silenced.

Life IS beautiful, it really is.
Even when you feel like you are barely hanging on. Even when your friends seem to be dying left and right. Even when your heart hurts so much it feels like one mass of throbbing, beating and bloody pulp.
Why?
Because “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” -romans 8:27
God is good. God is mighty. And God is tender.

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. … And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.” -romans 8:26,28