Follow Your Heart by Anthem Lights

Some say follow your own heart and it will never lead you astray.

Some say chase your own dreams, that's all that matters anyway.

Well I've been there, done that, tried that, lived that way like it was all for me...

and I came back, found out truth is, turns out to get me where I'm meant to be...


I've gotta follow Your heart if anything is gonna count in this life.

I've gotta follow Your heart if I'm ever gonna make a mark on eternity.

So let Heaven's heartbeat always move me,

let my only prayer be to follow Your heart.

Help me follow Your heart.


I don't need a second opinion, You just say the word, I'll go.

And I don't need any convincing to walk along the narrow road.

'Cause I'm all in, sold out, can't turn back now, these are more than empty words...

for the things that I want I trust You got, I'll just keep the first thing first...


I've gotta follow Your heart if anything is gonna count in this life.

I've gotta follow Your heart if I'm ever gonna make a mark on eternity.

So let Heaven's heartbeat always move me,

let my only prayer be to follow Your heart.

Help me follow Your heart.


I'll count it all as joy to give this life away.

There's not a cost too high

or price that I won't pay

to follow Your heart,

follow Your heart,

gotta follow Your heart,

help me follow Your heart.


I've gotta follow Your heart if anything is gonna count in this life.

I've gotta follow Your heart if I'm ever gonna make a mark on eternity.

So let Heaven's heartbeat always move me,

let my only prayer be Your heart.

Help me follow Your heart.

Help me follow Your heart.

Help me follow Your heart.

Help me follow Your heart.

Follow Your heart.

What is Love?

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. If I am called to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and then love my neighbour as myself, what does that look like?

My thoughts immediately turn to 1 Corinthians 13 which contributes a lot to understanding what love is.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

Love is certainly a powerful thing, especially when defined in this passage. It is something that we need in order to live a life that has meaning. But where does love come from? What is it's origin?

I recently read an article that explained some of this very well. In fact I will quote from it:

"God is love, and love is from God. Therefore, loving others is doing whatever it takes for them to have as much of God as they can."

A recent example from my own life comes to mind. A guy that I know claimed to "love" me but he didn't have a relationship with Christ. Impossible right? Where was this guy getting his "love" from? I still do not know the answer to that but I know that the world that we live in often defines "love" as a feeling. It's that feeling you get when you see a particular person, you think about them all the time, and you would do anything for them. Infatuation is a better word to define this kind of "love" and it will fade because it is not true love. The fact is that true love cannot flourish apart from God.

To quote more from the article I mentioned earlier:

"Anything that looks like love that we do for others - being patient, kind, not boastful or irritable or resentful, giving away our possessions, even martyrdom (1 Corinthians 13:4-5, 3) - that isn't done for God's glory and with a desire that others may taste and see that God is good (Psalm 34:8) is not true, vibrant love. Godless love is a hollow shell, a love that has lost its soul, a flower cut from its root. Godless love is sin (Romans 14:23)."  

- Taken from http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/love-is-not-a-verb

This is a great reminder for me to keep my head on straight when someone claims to love me or when I claim to love someone else. Only God can give me the ability to express true love. As I live my life claiming to be a Christian, a particular song comes to mind...

"And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they'll know we are Christians by our love."

What Girls Wish Guys Knew

Just follow the link: http://www.boundless.org/relationships/2006/what-girls-wish-you-knew

Fire

Is mesmerizing.

At least to me it is :).

My Mom asked me to start a fire in the fireplace so our family could watch a movie together and I have to admit that I watched the fire more than the movie.

I am no Girl Scout but I remember from playing Nancy Drew computer games how to build a decent fire. The whole paper, kindling, and big logs deal, in that specific order. Well I successfully built a fire last night and found great amusement in watching it burn.

Fire burns, and fast too.

I was adding new logs to the fire every ten minutes to keep it burning bright, almost burning myself a few times in the process. This reminded me of my faith in God.

Faith is like fire, it needs to be fed to keep it burning strong. My soul needs to be fed to keep my faith  alive. As a fire is fed wood, my soul requires Scripture, prayer, and fellowship to sustain it. When I stop putting logs on the fire, it soon extinguishes. The same happens to the soul when it is deprived of spiritual disciplines.

Sometimes I get lazy and I can feel my soul growing hungry. It always hungers for the Lord. And He says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." - Matthew 5:6. I know this to be true because food for the soul is always within reach. By the blood of Christ I am able to have communion with the Father whenever I want. But it's up to me to feed my soul with the food that God has freely offered. Only the truth can satisfy the hunger.

Please Lord, help me keep the faith fire burning in my soul. May I never cease to be mesmerized by You.

What I Do Not Want To Do

"...I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me." - Paul (Romans 7:15-20)

I think that I can clearly identify with Paul.
I hate sin. It's awful, but I still do it every day. I'm sick of it.

"So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin."  (Romans 7:21-25)

I know that deep within me somewhere, something is always telling me to press on in my faith. It must be the Holy Spirit because I know that nothing truly good comes from me.
Thanks be to Jesus Christ our Lord indeed! God has not given up on me yet and I pray that He never will. The battle against sin cannot be won without God, I know this to be true because I have experienced both victory and defeat and when I call upon the Lord there is victory.
Temptations will never cease, but God is my deliverer and in Him I will trust.

Thank you Jesus for saving me from the chains of sin and for giving me the strength to continue the battle.