There's Been a Change in Me

"You want to make God laugh? Tell Him your life plans."

I've always liked that quote, but this summer, it has become more real to me. More personal. 
My first summer in Nebraska has been more than eye-opening. It's been life changing. When I first moved here, I was determined that I would spend the enitre summer back in Minnesota. I would stay with my best friend, I would go to Common Grounds Youth Group every week with my school friends, and be in the summer musical The Secret Garden with my theater friends. It would be exactly what it was like when I lived there. I even wrote a blog about it last November! 

A month or so later, my parents and I were talking about it, and they told me they didn't want me in Minnesota the entire summer...I was extremely disappointed to say the least. But, I compromised. I would stay, and do the summer musical (South Pacific) with Papillion LaVista Community Theater and afterwards, I would go to Minnesota for about a month before school started. Then at least I would be able to see The Secret Garden and my friends. I was still in the stage where I was bitter and angry so I wanted nothing to do with the church or Chain Reaction Youth Group. But Dawn and Chelsey and a few others kept telling me to go to Dare2Share in Feburary. So I did. After that, youth group was all I really cared about. God showed me so much about the people when we were there. In a lot of ways, I enjoy being with them more than my friends at school. They are probably some of the most amazing people I have ever met. 

Finally, I made the right choices. I signed up for the summer trip to Montana, decided to go to Kansas City with Cheryl, Mike, Brad and Dawn, volunteered to help with VBS in June, applied for a job at Kids of the King, accepted an offer to be a worship leader intern with Cheryl and settled for a week in Minnesota in August and a week with my best friend Sarah in Nebraska. Wow. What a change from my original summer plans! And I have absolutly no regrets! All I can say is, God works in mysterious ways. He has spoken to me through so many people here and He still continues to do so.

My favorite part of summer, so far, has to be the Montana trip. I went to serve, and I did as much as I could, but I think God wanted me there to learn something else too. One night, Jordan was talking about who we are in Christ. That really hit me hard. I didn't feel like I was a hypocrite, but I felt like I was trying too hard to prove myself to other people. The harder I tried, the stupider I felt. And I would always beat myself up. After talking with Dawn that night, we found out that there was something deeper going on that I didn't even realize. I signed up for Montana so I would grow closer with the people in the youth group. Now, I can honestly say, they are my new family. It was hard admitting that at first. It kind of felt like I was betraying and replacing my old friends, but I wasn't. No one and nothing could ever replace them. These people love me for me. They don't care if I act immature at times. They don't care what I wear, or what I look like. I don't have to change myself for them. I am Me and that's who they love. I have a strong connection to the youth group now. I truely believe that, no matter what I do for college, God is gonna be calling me back to Thanksgiving! Lutheran Church...someday. I found so much in Montana. More of God's awesomeness, new friends, acceptance, strong relationships, love and more. It's been hard for me not to smile the last few days. I can now truely say that I am extremely happy. Probably more happy than I've ever been. 

You know what else is amazing? Summer is only half over... :D
<3 


There's been a change in me
A kind of moving on...
...For now I realize
That good can come from bad...

For in my dark despair 
I slowly understood
My perfect world out there
Had disappeared for good
But in it's place I feel 
A truer life begin
And it's so good and real 
It must come from within

And I, I never thought I'd leave behind
My childhood dreams
But I don't mind
For now I love the world I see
No change of heart, a change in me
~ "A Change in Me", Beauty and the Beast

You're Beautiful

We all have our stories. No one person's story is better or more important than anyone else. Every person's story is unique. Like a thumbprint or a personality. My story is confusing at times. Even to me. But everytime I start wondering where my storyline is going, God shows me something new or reminds me of something old. Something amazing.

Today He reminded me of three things. When I was in the plane on the way home from Minnesota, I looked out the window and saw three aspects of God. When I looked up, I saw a huge blue sky. When I looked straight ahead, I saw a gorgeous sunset. When I looked down, I saw thousands of God's people. 

When I looked up and saw the huge blanket of blue over me, I felt so close to outer space. Thinking of outer space and stars and planets and galaxies always makes me paralyzed with awe before God. To think that something so vast and unending is being held in the palm of the Creator of the universe! It gives me shivers!!!

I see Your power in the moonlit night,
Where planets are in motion and galaxies are bright.
We are amazed in the light of the stars,
It's all proclaiming who You are.

Once, when asked by an atheist how I knew God exsisted, I replied saying that whenever I look at a sunrise or a rainbow I always see the beauty of God. He laughed at me saying that I had been brain-washed into taking things of nature and turning them into things of God. I've been called many things in my 16 and a half years but I think "brain-washed" had to be the worst. When I saw that sunset the other night, once again I was taken a-back at how beautiful God is. Could a belch in the universe millions of years ago really create something that gorgeous??

I see Your face in every sunrise,
The colors of the morning are inside Your eyes.
The world awakens to the light of the day
I look up to the sky and say...

Jesus loves you. I think that has to be one of the most well known sayings in the world. "Smile, Jesus loves you!" Jesus te ama! Jesus hat dich lieb! Jesus alskar dig! Yeshua ohev otach! It's everywhere! We hear it all the time and, to be honest, I get kind of sick of it. Only because it's so religious! I want something more than religion. And yes, I know, I've said that many times before. But when I looked down at all the lights and cars and houses and people below me, I was in disbelief. There are millions, <billions of people on this planet, and yet Jesus loves me. Why me? I'm nothing special. I'm hardly worthy of His love. What baffels me even more, is that He loves every other single person on this planet just as much as He loves me. When I saw all those minature cars driving around and caught myself thinking, 
"Wow. Even with billions of people on the planet, He still knows who I am."

I see You there hanging on a tree,
You bled and then You died and then You rose again for me.
Now You are sitting on Your heavenly throne,
And soon we will be coming home. 

Huh. I can't fathom how amazing God is. All I can say is,

You're Beautiful


p.s. All the bold is from the song You're Beautiful by Phil Wickham.

All the Stars in the Sky

This weekend, I went with my youth group to the Love, Sex and Dating retreat. God showed me a few things while I was there; only one of which actually having to do with love, sex or dating. :)

1. Have you ever heard of a Nazarite vow? Well, I went and looked up a good definition and it's basically a vow made by someone who wishes to "separate themselves unto the Lord" (Numbers 6:2). In the Bible, it talks about a specific vow that a Nazarite makes (Numbers 6:4-6), but I believe that it can be anything you feel God calling you to. For example, my Nazarite vow was telling God that I wasn't going to date until I graduate high school. But it's different for everyone. :) Now, after making this promise, I would just casually tell people that I don't want to date until after high school. They'd ask why and I'd casually tell them that it just wasn't for me. But this weekend, I realized that this promise, was everything but casual. In God's eyes this promise that I made to Him is beautiful, amazing, ravishing, and best of all, sacred. Wow. Sacred. How awesome is that?! Now I feel like I truely belong to something, but not in a bad way like a slave or a prisoner. I don't feel weighed down by this at all. I feel so much light-hearted! Now I know that once I graduate, I am going to enjoy whatever God has for me so much more because I waited. Of course, I'm not sure why God wants me to wait, but I'm sure I'll understand later. 

Now, either God has a great sense of humor, or Satan is more mean than I thought. See, when I made this vow, I didn't think it'd be that hard, 'cause I'd never been asked out, and no guy had ever shown any interest in me. Ha! 4 months after I made the promise, all of that changed. For six months I really struggled with keeping the promise and even the beginning of this school year I had thoughts of going back on my word, but God is faithful and He will help keep us strong!!! <3 

2. The whole time we were at this camp, it was kinda chilly and cloudy. While we were having worship this morning, I was felling sorry about not being where I should be in my relationship with Him. I've felt so guilty because of that for a long time now. But God said, "Katie, look where you are now compared to where you were in 8th grade." So I thought back to 8th grade and I was like, ew. I was pretty messed up. God agreed. Haha. But anyway, I kinda argued with Him saying that I didn't deserve this because I didn't do that...etc etc, but God just said, I love you and you love Me. That's all that matters and we can work on that other stuff. 
As I gave up all that guilt and shame that I've been carrying for the longest time now, the clouds parted and the sun started to shine again. I couldn't help but smile because the weather was reflecting exactly what I felt in my heart. It was awesome! 

3. Last night, we played capture the flag. It was fun, for the part where I wasn't in jail. Haha. But when I was in jail, I looked up to the sky and I realized that I had seen stars before, but just not so many all at once! It was gorgeous! As I studied each one of those stars individually, I realized that they flickered and turned from white, to red, to blue (and no, they weren't airplanes 'cause they weren't moving and all of them were doing it!). I imagined those stars millions of miles away in the galaxy and was totally overwhelmed by the awesomeness of God. And I realized something. The little things that God reveals to us about Himself and His love and mercy, are like little stars. It's like all the stars in the sky are little parts of God's heart or something that He has put out there for us to see. Kinda understand what I'm saying? But yeah. I guess I'm kinda glad I was in jail...for 40 minutes...in the freezing cold....
:D

The only thing I regret about this weekend is not bringing tennis shoes like I was supposed to and having to wear Mark's big socks over my flip-flops the entire time.

Sorry Mark.

;( 

What God Already Knows

R. W. Emerson once said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." 

Ok, so that's my attempt at sounding smart for the day. Haha anyway, I was in English today and my teacher has that quote up on the wall. The moment I read it, it dawned on me. In a way, God is saying that to us too. 

When we spend time to talk to God, He doesn't always want us to just repeat back what He has already told us in the Bible, He wants us to talk to Him about whats going on in our hearts. I mean, talking to Him about what He says in the Bible isn't bad. I'm just saying, that shouldn't be the majority of what our conversations with Him should be about. Do you kind get what I'm saying? 

Basically, God doesn't want us to "quote" the Bible to Him. He wants to hear about us. About what is going on in our lives. Not that He doesn't already know...lol, but that is what creates a two-way relationship. 

It brings me back to the story that I know I've probably written about once before. The first time I went to the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, I was just having some time with God and this was basically the conversation: 

Me: God, please just tell me something! I want to hear Your voice. 
God: I love you. 
Me: *smiles* Yes God I know! But tell me something I don't know! 
God: I love you. 
Me: I know God! But can You tell me something important?! 
God: You know I love you, but you don't know I love you. 
Me: ......oh........ 

Basically God was saying that I knew in my head that God loves me, but I didn't know it in my heart. See, I was just going off of what I had learned and read my entire life. "Jesus died for you." "God loves you." I was "quoting" the Bible. But we can't just "quote" the Bible, we need to believe it with our hearts. 

I don't want to just quote things back to God anymore. 

I actually want to talk with Him.

Judging VS. Imagination

Lately, I've been really thinking about how difficult it is to keep from judging people. Which is ironic since one of my biggest pet peeves is when people openly judge people without even knowing them very well, or even without meeting them.

See, a lot of times, I hear someone say something, or see them do something and I'll kind of start wondering why they said or did that, and think up different things that could be going on in their life because of that. 

Does that even make sense?

I guess what I'm asking is, am I judging that person? Or am I just too imaginative and let my mind get carried away? Once after thinking about a guy in my math class to much, I went from the possibility of him being an atheist, to gay, to vampire (not seriously of course lol), to a musician. I came to the conclusion that he was a gay atheist vampire who was a musician. Lol. Just kidding. 

Seriously though. I don't want to be a judging person. Because it's not my job to judge. That is God's job. And I say that quite often. So feeling like this, also makes me feel like a hypocrite because I'm saying one thing, but then doing another. 

Hypocrisy is another one of my big pet peeves. 

Hmmm. New thought. Maybe all my pet peeves are something that I need to work on myself.

Matthew 7:3-5
3"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. 

Reminds me of the time I was in dance class about 5 years ago. We were working on our recital dance. I went up to the teacher, Miss Debbie, and told her that I thought that my partner Mary needed to work on a certain move. Miss Debbie just looked at me, smiled, and quoted Matt. 7:3. I was kinda confused. She turned to the class and said we needed to do that part over again so that we could work on that move. "Especially Mary and Katie" She said. I'll always remember that.

I really hope I'm not a judgmental hypocrite. :(

I'll be praying about this one. 

Christianity VS. Churchianity

So, lately, I've been realizing that a lot of people don't have anything against Christians themselves, but they are against the actual concept of religion. The whole idea of religion, kinda bothers me too...and a lot of other Christians I know. One director I worked with a while back said it well when he said, "Religion is mixing the things of God, with the things of man." It's so true. But us, as humans, are imperfect. So religion, is mixing our imperfections with God's perfection! 

I grew up in a "religious" home. Both of my parents are strong Christians and I was homeschooled. I was drenched with religion 24/7. And I gotta tell ya, I got tired of it fast. So I understand where people are coming from when they say they are sick of religion! So am I! 

But you see, being a Christian isn't about a religion. It's about a relationship with Jesus Christ. When I realized that, suddenly Christianity wasn't boring anymore. It was a journey. A journey of digging deeper into who Jesus Christ is. His love for us. His will for us. A journey of becoming more like Him. An extremely exciting journey. 

I heard it put this way once. I love it. The religious leaders of Jesus' time were the Phariesees. They were the leaders of the church. Did you know, that they hated Jesus? Did you know, they are the ones who wanted Him dead? They hated Him because He was preaching something different than what they preached. They preached from the Old Testiment. Rules, and regulations. Jesus taught and showed love. 

That is the difference between Christianity and Churchianity...or religion, whatever you want to call it!Christianity is the act of going on an amazing journey, forming a relationship with our Savior Christ.Churchianity is following the church, and its rules. 

Which one would you rather follow??

Dare2Share

So this weekend, I went to a youth conference called Dare2Share with my youth group. It's exactly what it sounds like. We were challenged to take the good news of Jesus Christ into our schools, neigborhoods and communities. Wow. It was amazing. Not just in the sense of learning more about sharing the gospel with friends and such, but also personally. 

One thing they asked us to do during the conference was to call a friend that didn't know Jesus for themselvesm, and talking to them about it. I called one of my friends. I don't know him very well, but the second they asked us to think of a person, his name popped into my head. I was so freaked! I was freaked because I didn't know what to say, and I thought I would regret calling him afterwards. I know that what people think of me isn't important but I still wanted to be friends with him, so I didn't want him to think I'm a religious freak. So anyways, I called him (I think I might have woken him up...oops) and the whole time the phone was ringing, I was praying I would have to leave a message.

God had different plans.

He answered, I awkwardly said hi, asked him about something had said about a month ago about God and asked if he wanted to talk about it. He said that he had just been kidding around and he didn't need to talk about it or anything. So I said, "Oh. Ok....well, I guess I'll talk to you later."

Talk about awkward. :-/

But it was afterwards that surprised me. Instead of beating myself up for even calling him in the first place, I was beating myself up because I suddenly thought of a thousand things I could have said (that's why I suck at improv in theater...). I actually didn't regret calling him at all. 
Do you think it's possible that God put me in that situation, not so that I could lead "John" (not his real name) to Christ, but because maybe, God wanted to show me something about myself? That I do actually have enough courage to do this kind of stuff? That I really can do anything in Christ's name?? Of course I'm hoping and praying that God will use that phone call in "John's" life somehow, but maybe that wasn't the whole point of it all...

I am really excited for the days to come. There are a couple of quotes that I love. "Actions speak louder than words." and "Always preach the gospel; When necessary, use words." Those two quotes are so true. As a Christian what you do, is just as important as what you say about your faith. But I realized this weekend that I took those quotes too far. I tricked myself into thinking that if I live like a "good Christian" that will be fine. I don't really have to say anything unless someone asks me about it or it comes up in conversation (neither of which happens very often). But I need to make my faith and what I believe to be true in my heart, verbally known. One of the speakers at the conference used this example. If you had the cure to cancer, and your friend had cancer, wouldn't you give it to them? As Christians, we have Jesus! Why wouldn't we want to give that to our friends too? 

One other thing they talked about a few times this weekend was the fact that there is a difference between religion, and having a personal relationship with Jesus. Personally, the whole concept of religion makes me sick. Guess who else got sick by that?
Jesus.

In the bible, the Pharisees are high, religious, men in the temple. Guess what. They hated Jesus. They strongly disliked the things He said and did. They are the people who wanted Him dead. For three days, they got their wish. 

Jesus did not come to earth to enforce more religion. He came so that we could know Him personally and be free of all that religious crap that holds so many people down. 
I just thought it was pretty cool how they said that. I love it!

So, if I come running up in the halls or something and ask you a question about God, or ask if I can pray for you; please don't be freaked out. Lol. I'm not crazy...well, maybe just a little... :-D

I'm just really excited because this cowardly lion, just got her medal of courage!