I am the only one to blame for this

Somehow it all adds up the same

Soaring on the wings of selfish pride

I flew too high and like Icarus I collide

With a world I try so hard to leave behind

To rid myself of all but love,

To give and die

To turn away and not become

Another nail to pierce the skin of one who loves

More deeply than the oceans,

More abundant than the tear

Of a world embracing every heartache

Can I be the one to sacrifice

Or grip the spear and watch the blood and water flow

To love you - take my world apart

To need you - I am on my knees

To love you - take my world apart

To need you - broken on my knees

All said and done I stand alone

Amongst remains of a life I should not own

It takes all I am to believe

In the mercy that covers me

Did you really have to die for me?

All I am for all you are

Because what I need and what I believe are worlds apart

And I pray,

To love you - take my world apart

To need you - I am on my knees

To love you - take my world apart

To need you - broken on my knees

I look beyond the empty cross

Forgetting what my life has cost

And wipe away the crimson stains

And dull the nails that still remains

More and more I need you now,

I owe you more each passing hour

The battle between grace and pride

I gave up not so long ago

So steal my heart and take the pain

And wash the feet and cleanse my pride

Take the selfish, take the weak,

And all the things I cannot hide

Take the beauty, take my tears

The sin and soaked heart and make it yours

Take my world all apart

Take it now, take it now

And serve the ones that I despise

Speak the words I can't deny

Watch the world I used to love

Fall to dust and thrown away

I look beyond the empty cross

Forgetting what my life has cost

So wipe away the crimson stains

And dull the nails that still remain

So steal my heart and take the pain

Take the selfish, take the weak

And all the things I cannot hide

Take the beauty, take my tears

Take my world apart, take my world apart

I pray, I pray, I pray

Take my world apart

Worlds Apart.

It takes genuine courage to trust God. It’s a lot easier to just be a coward because cowardice behavior is generally more acceptable and excusable. Trusting God can be like a Trust Fall, you blindfold a person and have them fall backwards into someone’s arms. As I have myself participated in this I remember feeling completely over-confident when I first tipped from my heals and began to tumble backwards, but how quickly my confidence was shattered when my body began to shift from just being at an angle to almost parallel and I still did not feel hands bracing my back! I got that twisting knot feeling in the pit of my stomach and throat and fear griped my chest and it was at that very moment when my partner caught me inches from the ground.

Proverbs3: 3, 5-7 (Message) don’t lose your grip on Love and Loyalty. Tie them around your neck; carve their initials on your heart.

When I see the command in verse three the first thing that comes to mind is that if I am being warned against losing my grip than for sure there will be times that I will do just that. I have indeed lost my grip on God’s love and loyalty and I have done so when I tried to make sense of things for myself.

Trust GOD from the bottom of your heart; don't try to figure out everything on your own.

Listen for GOD's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he's the one who will keep you on track.

Don't assume that you know it all. Run to GOD! Run from evil!

Trust is me shifting my focus from how I see and make sense of a given situation and instead turning back to seek God’s nature. If I can just get to a point in my prayer or thinking process where I begin to dwell on God’s nature as I know it from the scriptures I can acknowledge Him and trust a bit more in that very moment.

It takes courage to trust because trusting for me has also meant shifting from praying and hoping for clarity to praying and trusting in the absence of clarity because as Paula Rinehart writes, “The path will always appear no clearer than one little step at a time.”

I don’t think I have ever truly understood trust in this way. I have tried to “trust” that God would give me what I want, as well as how I want to get it. I have also tired to “trust” that God would provide clarity where there was none or catch me right before I hit the ground. Instead I am learning that God will let me fall a bit longer than I am comfortable with, He won’t give clarity, and His plan almost never resembles mine in any way shape or form. So as I face the big unknown career wise and ask what's next for my life in all its many aspects, I can feel challenged by the call to truly trust.

Brannan Manning once wrote, “The scandal of God’s silence in the most heartbreaking hours of our journey is perceived in retrospect as veiled tender presence and a passage into pure trust that is not at the mercy of the response it receives.”

So when the scripture says to “trust in the Lord always” all of a sudden as I get older and my life experiences broaden, along with the experience of pain and/or things and events that just don’t make sense to me, the emphasis on ALWAYS is amplified in my heart as the call to trust becomes not just a matter of surrender or hope, but all out war to hear God’s voice among so many other murmurs. It takes courage to keep straining to listen.

In my darkest moments a quote that really has always helped me to regain perspective has been,

“When you come to the edge of all the light you know and you are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid for you to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.” (Unknown Author)

"And the parched ground shall become a pool."

We always have visions, before a thing is made real. When we realize that although the vision is real, it is not real in us, then is the time that Satan comes in with his temptations, and we are apt to say it is no use to go on. Instead of the vision becoming real, there has come the valley of humiliation.

"Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And batter'd by the shocks of doom
To shape and use."

God gives us the vision, then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.

Don’t burn out. Burn on.

Without Sacrifice, there can be no victory. – Captain Archibald Witwicky, Transformer 2007

A devotional by Spurgeon

"In summer and in winter shall it be."
- Zechariah 14:8

The parching heats of sultry midsummer do not dry up the streams of living water, which flow from Jerusalem, any more than they were frozen by the cold winds of blustering winter. Rejoice, O my soul, that thou art spared to testify of the faithfulness of the Lord. The seasons change and thou changest, but thy Lord abides evermore the same, and the streams of his love are as deep, as broad and as full as ever. The heats of business cares and scorching trials make me need the cooling influences of the river of His grace; I may go at once and drink to the full from the inexhaustible fountain, for in summer and in winter it pours forth its flood. The upper springs are never scanty, and blessed be the name of the Lord, the nether springs cannot fail either. Elijah found Cherith dry up, but Jehovah was still the same God of providence. Job said his brethren were like deceitful brooks, but he found his God an overflowing river of consolation. The Nile is the great confidence of Egypt, but its floods are variable; our Lord is evermore the same. By turning the course of the Euphrates, Cyrus took the city of Babylon, but no power, human or infernal, can divert the current of divine grace. The tracks of ancient rivers have been found all dry and desolate, but the streams, which take their rise on the mountains of divine sovereignty and infinite love, shall ever be full to the brim. Generations melt away, but the course of grace is unaltered. The river of God may sing with greater truth than the brook in the poem--

"Men may come, and men may go,
but I go on for ever."

How happy art thou, my soul, to be led beside such still waters! never wander to other streams, lest thou hear the Lord's rebuke, "What hast thou to do in the way of Egypt to drink of the muddy river?"