I'm in Missouri visiting fam all week and preparing to go back to YWAM; my second school begins in just a few days.

Words can't possibly get across how good it was a couple nights ago to see a couple of the biggest blessings God's hand has ever given me.

one of the handfull of books currently occupying my time is andrew murray's "school of obedience". it's a grand piece of work on God's heart cry for our motivation in obeying Him. LOVE LOVE LOVE. true, connected, living, breathing relationship.
obeying God's commands and pleas for things such as deeply trusting Him with the plans of our lives, finances, friendships and family, sexual purity/waiting in faith for a spouse, a disciplined thought and prayer life, truly loving all deeply and from the heart, sacrifice, determined focus on Him and the eternal, etc. etc. etc. and to trust and obey in all these and much, much more with your heart and not just a dry, cold, logical head thing.
anyway, in the portion i took in last night, he writes:

" the life of obedience is impossible without the continual fellowship and continual teaching of our Father (John 10:17-18, Heb. 5:8). Only when His continual presence as the Eternal and Ever-Present One is believed and received, just as The Son of Man believed and received it, there is hope in obeying such commands as 'taking every thought captive', 'pray continually', 'be joful always', to hope, etc... the expression 'obey the commandments' is very seldom used in Scripture; it is almost always, 'obeying Me' or obeying or harkening to 'My voice'. with the commander of an army, the teacher of a school, the father of a family, it is not the code of laws, however clear and good, with its rewards or threats, that secures TRUE obedience; it is the personal living influence wakening love and enthusiasm. it is the joy of even getting to hear the Father's voice that will give the joy and strength necessary for anyone to truly obey, from the heart. it is the voice that gives power to obey the Word; the Word without the LIVING voice does not avail anything..."

ya know, as i read this immediately i had in my heart this bold, stark contrast of the foster kids i have worked with vs. loved, nurtured, confident biological kids. these past couple years has flat-out proven this point to me in a huge, huge way. i see it in foster kids over and over again: they either tend to obey their present parent figures or adults out of a legalistic, false, and shallow motivation to get approval and fill up massive voids that can never be filled by such means, or they just altogther ignore and despise the authority figure of the present moment because they have no respect, love, deep heart connection or genuine enthusiasm to comply with the requests of yet another adult whom the child assumes will just up and leave them, like all the countless others have.


and as i read that it broke my heart. because i realize how often i live like an unanchored, swaying, insecure foster kid of God's and not in light of my one and only TRUE 100% of the time identity ... HIS.

The last 3 days have been nothing short of breakthrough.
God has graciously drenched me in revelation, repentence and restoration. I have found myself almost transported from the temporary things of this world to the eternal and everlasting things of the True Reality to come.
This switching over to what's lasting has in turn caused my heart to yearn and crave only one thing: More of my God's heart.
More of His emotions and personality, more passion for what He's passionate about.
More admittance that whatever things I have craved in the past or find myself currently craving- no matter- they are all just some slight shadow of the Greatness to come; a tiny peephole look at a much more massive Craving and Desire.

I find myself no longer striving as much for even the very "good" things like faith to see my God-given heart's dreams come to pass or even the joys of seeing the plans He has for my life...I am utterly burned up and consumed with an enormous hunger to just catch more views of Him as He is. Everything but getting to know Him and living out the life that He alone dreamed up for me seems so small and pale.
My heart has been screaming and moaning for Home these last few days in a way it perhaps never has. Not a one of us has any idea how long He will delay His return. None of us knows how many more hours or days He will bless us with. How long until we lay aside all our short-sighted wants and pick up a consuming passion for the eternal needs of men's souls? how long until we truly consume ourselves with His heart and His Kingdom and entrust Him with the very thing His honest, always trustworhty heart vowed to us, that "all else will be given to you from Me if you set all you got on Me and My plans and strategies" ?

How long?

When will His Bride hold her Husband's hand and heart in one hand and her God-given authority and sword in the other and fully engage in this battle for men's souls?

How long?

I'm going to be honest here.
I'm not at all sure really how I can be more confident and grounded in regards to my dreams for the future, how they can be brighter and louder than ever yet shrouded in this fog of confusion and obscurity, all at once. But, alas, this is where I find myself presently. No matter how varied the circumstances I have found myself in the past year or so have been, they all seem to shout one foundational thing -

"Sarah! Come! Taste! See! Your God is enough for you. He wants to be IT. He wants to prove to you that you can be unsure about a hundred and one things so long as you're sure of One Thing. He's insane about you. And He wants to prove His love, affection, approval, ecstatic joy, daddy-heart, mother-heart, adventurer heart, outlandish provision, and reveal His mysteries. Come! Stay in this yoke alongside Him alone, it's easy with Him, so easy..."

I am praying about returning to YWAM for the School Of Evangelism that starts April 1st. I am stirred deeply every time I go and hang out there. God is about to pour out some big time stuff on that particular chunk of Christ's Body. And I want to be there for it. Desperately. With every prophetic utterance and every heart-shaking, I am pumped up beyond compare to experience what our King is about to do in response to His kids' prayers for awakening in this nation. And in this world.

It's gonna be good, brothers and sisters.


Here's an excerpt from Oswald Chambers' devotional. Enjoy.







THE DISCIPLINE OF SPIRITUAL TENACITY



"Be still, and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10

Tenacity is more than endurance, it is endurance combined with the absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to transpire. Tenacity is more than hanging on, which may be but the weakness of being too afraid to fall off. Tenacity is the supreme effort of a man refusing to believe that his hero is going to be conquered. The greatest fear a man has is not that he will be damned, but that Jesus Christ will be worsted, that the things He stood for - love and justice and forgiveness and kindness among men - will not win out in the end; the things He stands for look like will-o'-the-wisps. Then comes the call to spiritual tenacity, not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately on the certainty that God is not going to be worsted.

If our hopes are being disappointed just now, it means that they are being purified. There is nothing noble the human mind has ever hoped for or dreamed of that will not be fulfilled. One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God. "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience."

Remain spiritually tenacious.

Hello friends,
I truly apologize for taking almost a month to post an update on here. God has been so very active and near. I can't wait to at least attempt to share with you even a portion of what He's been showing me.

I've been officially working at the home for abused/neglected children near the Texas YWAM base for about a month now. It's been very surreal @ times because it's so similar to the place I worked at before God asked me to come with Him down to Texas and do the crazy YWAM gig about a year ago.
God has used this season to temporarily pull me out of the amazing YWAM/community living to be alone with just Him a little more regularly. And it has proved to be very eye-opening. I am constantly ever-increasingly aware of just how much I base who I am, my worth, my feeling of accomplishment, etc. on man's feedback instead of solely on what God's eyes alone can reflect back and tell me. I am learning daily just how important it is for me to look to God and the many things He daily speaks to me, those profund internal things that flow from the Spirit living inside me instead of the external things... all the things man and this world tell us. He's been clearing away confusion, fogginess, and short-sightedness. He's also moved me to fast from many different types of lessar comforts and pleasures; I have a more clear understanding of fasting than I have ever had in my life.
Here's the down low- human beings operate out of pleasure. No matter what we do, we decide to pursue it because it, in some form or another, brings us pleasure. For example, even if isolated monks in Tibet decide to sleep on a bed of nails in order to self-impose pain, they have done this because they want to deny their flesh and physical body...they believe they are giving pleasure to their minds or souls because they believe that by denying their physical body they are closer to a higher power, etc.

The thing is, when we willingly lay down pleasures for the sake of our God we are, in essence, proclaiming with our lives (hence, the power the Word discuses of combining our faith with action) that we believe that God tastes better than anything and are willing, at any cost, to put a stop to one pleasure so we are better capable to experience another, deeper, more profound pleasure. In the same way, when we willingly shut off for a time the accolades, attention, or advice of humans through fasting from email or phone, etc. or when we abstain from food in order to more accutely sense our need for the true Bread of Life, etc. , we are living out the Psalmist's declaration in Psalm 73-

"Who do I have in Heaven but You? And Earth has nothing I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but You are the strength of my heart, my portion, enough for me...forever."

Please continue to pray for God's divine will to have its way fully in my life daily. This is truly my deepest desire, save knowing my God better each and every day. I long for a mind that is truly ALWAYS fixed on, set on, and obsessed with Him alone. (Col. 3, Heb. 12, 2 Cor. 5) I am not sure if He desires for me to return to YWAM in April. Please pray that I know without a doubt. I do know that I desperately long to get involved once more with the 24/7 Prayer movement and to work with older youth (middle & high school and college age) leading small groups and bible studies, etc.
Anyway, I am soaking up this current season as I long to let God continue to truly free me of ways I have been conformed to this decaying world and to also fully allow Him to fill up those spaces with Himself, the eternal, the truly valuable; while also anticipating with much joy and hope the season to come!

May our God bless each of you with fresh and incredible revelation of Himself as He truly is, moderation in all things, and the joy and peace that He alone gives.

Fresh Outpourings

Well, as always God has shown up and done marvelous things.
I love that He keeps insisting on me stepping out for Him on things when I honestly can't see much but Him; I love that He keeps at it with me as the Faithful Teacher, ever patient and loving as I daily learn to trust Him just a tad more.
I felt the gentle prodding to come back down here to Texas with virtually nothing in the way of plans- where to sleep, eat, work, etc...ya know the basic life survival stuff. Anyway, on a long shot I called a children's home really close to base that's wonderfully similar to where God had me before He called me out into the great missionary/vagabond lifestyle. And they offered me my own small apartment and a job, knowing that I am still raising support money to possibly attend YWAM again in just a handful of months. It's one of those one-in-a-million God gazing down on me and grinning as I look back up at Him in a stunned daze because of how insanely perfect the whole dang setup is!
I am still praying about attending the second and final YWAM ministry training school which will begin in April. I will continue to seek God on the big-picture plans He desires for my life and to get the necessary prayer back-up and money, etc. to do so.

He's been really great lately in showing me who I uniquely am at a greater extent. I look forward to "finding my place in this world" more and more specifically all the time.
He's also been very patient in showing me the "discipline of remembrance". This amazing art of being faithful to Him in looking back on my life daily to remind myself of all the times He's loved on me, provided my everything, being all that's wholesome and good, stuck it out with me-good times and challenging times, and just been that one Constant that we all truly need when it comes down to the line but also in the end to remember how in love with Him I am... and only because He's FAR more in love with me. To "obey Him because I love Him"- not to categorize or prioritize my acts of obedience, but to consider every last one of them as deep, satisfying, exciting and purely reasonable, really- acts of love towards my All in All.

What a joy. What an honor. What a life-giving delight to give and pour out with gusto unto Him as a sacrifice of praise that flows from a heart that's simply lovesick for Him. And to fully trust that He'll provide our wants and needs if we focus on meeting His and others' that surround us daily.

On the Road Again

Well friends, the time has arrived to re-locate once again.
I'll be roadtripping back down to Texas bright & early tomorrow morning with a friend. I honestly am not sure what God has planned to have me do, but I can rest knowing He does indeed have a plan- even when I can't see it presently.
Your prayers for clarification of vision, direction, rest/joy/focus on Him, and the necessary nuts & bolts stuff of money for ministry, etc. would be immensely appreciated!