The Grace-Movement...

At the start of this new year, with things as they are and have been prophetically spoken to continue to become....whether it be over the next two hundred years or the next three years (I'm certainly not claiming to know)...I have a bit of a  bone to pick *if you will* with all of us, including myself!!!

You may also call it a challenge.
It is NOT a 'resolution'...I refuse to call it that because I think that really it's just a fact of how we should ALL be living anyway, and I'm stating it now because I feel nudged to--whether just for myself to 'hear' it outloud, or also to possibly challenge some thoughts, cause some questioning, or simply reaffirm what many of us 'know' already and need to hear in order to hold ourselves in accountability and 'resurface' a healthier way of thinking and living.

I really don't even care what your scenario is, to be quite honest. Whether you already have a personal relationship with God, or whether you've sworn his existence off, entirely.
I may offend, and so-be-it if I do. But I am still sharing it...
so here it goes.

God is doing *as my sweet mama is referring to it and I am stealing the phrase as I think it fits well* a major heart-surgery on me these days. Changes are painfully occurring within me and though you all keep stating how 'gracefully' I am dealing with things at this time, I am still nothing but a broken human, going through PLENTY of turmoil and battle with Him before arriving back *AGAIN* to my knees. Yes, it's the 'run back into a wall, over and over, deal'...I am absolutely no special scenario away from just that dumb and imperfect!!! Those closest to me know and see it, firsthand. THIS IS NOT EASY FOR ME and I didn't expect it to be.
BUT CHANGE...the most crucial kind of change...THE CHANGE THAT HAPPENS WITHIN US never IS easy.... HeLLo??!?!!
But just as the bible itself states, over and over and over again, self-transformation is necessary for God's purpose to be carried through in absolutely everything...through all that has passed and all that is to come. If you have not yet accepted this, I pray, feverishly, for you that you do. Yet even after accepting it, we all still have a rough path.
Sorry.
This isn't Hollywood, ha! :-P (But I remind us all as God continues to beat into my head now of the Promise that the ending is waaaay better than any of us can imagine and promised to be PERMANENTLY joy-filled!) I don't know about you, but I'll take that outcome over the facade of Hollywood's idea, ANY DAY!!!

Which brings me to my point.
Sorry. Off-track a bit.  

*Hi, my name is Hayley and I have a rambling problem...*


In ringing in the New Year tonight and seeing many of YOU do the same, I was joyed to see the many different ways it was celebrated---though I have to be honest---I was also a bit saddened.

SO MANY of the posts were geared toward one thing that kept ringing out, LOUDLY, in my ears----
'EXPECTANCE.' 'DESERVING.' 'CLAIMING OF BLESSINGS.'

NO. I am not being a New Year's scrooge.
I am very well aware that God Gifted us all, HOPE...
but I'm very troubled by the fact that we are many of us, still, at this time and place, laying that hope up in 'A YEAR'....
A DATE.  Like, because we have turned a corner in a literal set of numbers in history that we are going to see some major change in where we are. !??!?!? Like that 'date' is our ticket to a happiness that is going to be any less temporary than it was last year.

Sure, you will make and have new, wonderful memories. I pray that we all do!!!
Absolutely, you will probably acquire some new 'things' that will bring you temporary and very WORLDLY joy---of course, the way our country seems to roll---also just add to your debt too, ha.

But really?!!

I want to beg a BIG question to any of you not already offended so badly that you've stopped reading...
and I pray that we will all remember and promise right now to ask this question, EVERY DAY that is GIFTED our way, this new year.

What did we, alone, do to earn the 'expectance?'... to 'deserve' any of what makes us earthly happy? (and for that matter how many times do we have to learn that nothing of this world brings us LASTING happiness, anyway!?!) ...and why do we feel WE ALONE are worthy of blessings?---(also challenging, again, our very idea of 'blessings' which we all are guilty of defining many times as unnecessary things to existance---something that is especially obvious when traveling outside the confines of our vain country.)

As was once WISELY said by a true man of God... I, alone, have done NOTHING and can do NOTHING to deserve ANYTHING BUT DEATH.
It is by HIS GRACE ON ME... ALONE... that I have been given this very moment in time, this very breath to take. I ALONE, without God deserved death!
Do you understand this???
I am very well aware of what a harsh blow this is to all our pride--let's face it, it's a Mohammad Ali punch to mine!!!
But so be it--as I've stated before, my pride leads me daily down the very path I despise most!!!

The only thing I pray that we... and all around us that we love dearly and want Eternal Life and Joy FOR and WITH is the acceptance of this fact. Of course we should CELEBRATE AND FEEL HIS LOVE FOR US, but we all must meditate on and really, truly, in all that we say and do, begin to abide in the fact that it is ONLY because of the love and the sacrifice that HE MADE on OUR BEHALF that we are deserving of absolutely ANYTHING we have and are.

I don't know about you, but my head spins with guilt and accountability to my self-provoked thoughts when I really, REALLY think on this fact.


Please know that my words are not intended as a threat.
They are not intended to cause some forceful fear in my friends and family who've not yet accepted Christ's real love for them.
They are intended to cause a movement in your heart, as well as my own--no matter where you are at with Him.
I do pray and will continue to pray that we all learn to accept how UNworthy we all are, yet only because WE WERE CHOSEN by the One Whom IS, we are redeemed from our wretched humanity.

We ARE deserving...because of HIS doing! And we can claim His blessings---the blessings that aren't the 'things' of this world, but the blessings He cares about... the ones that are ETERNAL!!!
We need to ALL, accept now and REJOICE OUTLOUD... that WITHOUT Him, His intervening, and the bridge that Jesus, the God-Man was intended for brings us out of death and into life!!!

PRAISE GOD!!!!!!!

Sure, you can blow me off.
It's not as though I am the first human to 'preach' such things that you've 'had to painfully' listen to ramble on about your Gift of Life...and I'm so sorry and sad that it has indeed been done so broken-record-like that to many of you that this is just more of the that.

But I ask you and I beg of those of you in this position to ask yourselves this year...

If death is 100% sure for me, what exactly do I have to lose?!?! 

At the very least, if I submit myself in my own quiet time, honestly and simply and He does not meet me there and make Himself known in the inarguable form that only He can, then I can just go back to things as before. Why would you NOT at least try??
If and when He does meet you there, in your honest submittance...go even a step further and ask Him to place Himself, as a cure to a 'disease' if you will, inside your brokenness.

I have done this already and know that many of you around me have too. I know that you who have Heard God's awesome voice in your heart and lives are at all different areas of your own personal walk with Him as it should be. But in a muddled, cluttered, temptatation-filled world as ours, I also know how easy it is for us to fall back---run into that darned wall none of us seem to be able to fully walk AROUND.

So, this year, my challenge to US, is to Live, Thrive and ABIDE in God's Grace.

When you say to yourself I 'need' or 'deserve' all brand-new modern appliances or I 'need' or 'deserve' all brand-new modern furniture cause it's a 'blessing'...remember some things. They won't give us lasting happiness. In most honest cases for any of us, they WILL create more debt---either by being bought on credit or by being bought with money that's not going TOWARD other debts.
They won't go with us when we die. They are only an earthly desire---not a 'blessing' when my old ones work perfectly fine and, in all truthfulness are in and of themselves a 'commodity' compared to how many other countries live.
They really do offer us NOTHING ETERNAL.

Hmmm. Thinking in Grace?
Yep.

And it doesn't stop at 'things'---it spreads to the thought process that absolutely ANYTHING we do or acquire ON OUR OWN, without the accepting of the deed that has been done will make a difference in the inevitable death that quickly approaches us all. Things like houses, CHILDREN, food...they are blessings--but they are not 'deserved'---we were not ever, any of us, deserving of any of it. God made the way for us to receive any of it.

I'm sorry, but I guess I really do want more than to live for myself--to live for this world...and to be honest, I'm beginning to realize that I want more of that if for no other reason than for the rest all otherwise seeming like a STUPID WASTE at the expense of a VERY COSTLY DEED, carried out, to give me another option.

I'm calling this year, at least for myself, the Grace-movement, and I believe it's time that I really, truly embrace this concept in my daily prayers, on a daily basis--every waking moment that my fallen self creeps back in and forgets to submit to my nothingness and my desperation to be healed by His Grace so I can be something of greater importance in His Plan~

Care to join me???