A great lack.

Just thinking about how much I need to grow in love. I guess the closer I grow to Christ, the more I will love. I feel like sometimes I can be in a room full of people and God will show me things about a lot of them and my heart feels like its going to explode with love and I am overcome with joy and tears. Then...there's other times. These other times, its hard for me to love anyone even the easy ones to love... I think these other times are a reflection of the selfishness I battle everyday. Unless I sacrifice and lay down my own wants and unless I myself submit to his perfect love and allow him to fill me daily, I won't have love to give. I guess its nothing I can do with my own strength...I can only REALLY love people passionately and unconditionally by the power of Christ in me. Im so incompetent, so imperfect, so lacking...and he is so the opposite of all that. He is my strength in weakness, my only hope, and my reason for everything.

Me= complicated, God= simple.

My heart and greatest desire is to see people completely transformed and healed...so that they can know God's unchanging and unconditional love and mercy. It is not only my cry every day to Jesus that I be used as his instrunment, but it is my calling. God has given me so much grace to be where I am at in life. One thing that I don't deserve at all for a number of reasons is the opportunity I have to lead people into worship at The Stirring. The greatest reason is that I know there are probably so many people that are WAY more gifted vocally than I..(I'm pretty sure if I took vocal lessons the teacher would go on about how Im doing everything wrong) but I know without doubt God has me leading for a reason. This last week my heart has been burning for revival in the youth of The Stirring community, for people to really experience freedom, and I've been asking God to use me and flow through me that people would feel him and know him and desire intimacy with him. My cry has been something like this... "What can I do that you would move through me God? What do you want to say to these people? How can I hear you better? How can I reflect you better? When will you heal the sick? What has to happen that you will heal the sick and broken hearted? Speak and sing through me! Use me! My heart aches for people to be free!!" Recently as I was praying these things in my secret place with Jesus, my favorite place to be intimate with him (everyone should have a place, its awesome)...he said "Jamie, I am completely holy, I am completely pure" and I said, "yeah I know, you're awesome Lord!"...and he said, "If I'm going to speak through you and sing through you, my everyword...your mouth and your heart must be completely pure." Even now I want to cry because he is so good...so clear, so simple, so profound...I make everything complicated and lame. I am longing for him to purify me completely, I want to be made holy so that he can move through me in great power. Not only do I need to be purified but I need to be made completely humble...if the Holy Spirit is going to move through me in power he must get all glory and all praise, I don't want an ounce of glory, I don't want an ounce of recognition, I don't want any pride at all. Its awesome that one of God's promises is that he is never finished working on us. I am growing and changing everyday...every day Jesus is changing me. I once had a vision I was in a work shop on like a carpenters table and Jesus was doing surgery on me, fixing things replacing things, changing me. I realize that for me to walk in Jesus ways and be holy as he is holy...I have to go into his shop EVERY SINGLE DAY! I am lost and gross and wretched and wicked without him...everyday I have to surrender my whole entire self to him. I am desperate for him, lifeless without him. 

JESUS! YOU ARE AWESOME! I love you, there is nothing I want more than you, I am wholly and completely yours...take over every single part of who I am...take me over...I love you.