Daughter of the King

I wrote this one for the lovely ladies of Wonderfully Made when I shared on my talk " True Love Waits"


To: Wonderfully Made
Never forget how much of a princess you are in his eyes. You are a Daughter of the King!
Love,

Andrea

TRUE LOVE WAITS

Yes, we grew up watching them... our favorite princesses who fell in love and found their prince charming.  You know ... prince charming always comes to save the girl when she's in trouble and whisks her away at the end of the story.   

The little girl inside of us still hungers.. for as long as we believe in the fairytale we will starve to death. I wish i didn't have to tell the story this way, but we live in a fallen and broken world. Sometimes dreaming lifts us out of the sad and cold reality of the world, it keeps us from growing cold ourselves. But it is unreliable, and it will fail us eventually. So where does this leave us?
To take those dreams and package them up, put them in a box and leave them at the foot of the cross. The story we tried to write ourselves .. well it was never a place to be writing it to begin with. God wants to do something with our dreams. God is our only hope. We live in a world that breaks my heart, but I believe in a good good God who grows things out of the ashes. What i've found is that the hero who rides in at the end of the story is Jesus. He finds us where we are in our trouble, he binds up our broken hearts, he patchs us up again. He helps us walk again when we are not strong enough to stand anymore. He hears our prayers, he listens closely to our concerns and the desire of our heart.
 Our fairytale princes don't have the courage  and strength they do in the movies. What if I told you that your fairytale prince was in bondage too, just like you. What if I told you he is bound by lies just as you are, about who you are .. your identity? And I need to warn you that there are some imposter nights out there who will take you over a cliff, who don’t care if they endanger your soul. because they aren't concerned about your spiritual, mental, or emotional well being

But venture to say that we can take some wisdom from these fairytale princesses. What we remember most about them is their compassion, gentleness, bravery, humor and liveliness. What we remember the most when we recall our favorite princesses we remember their stories and the WHO that they are, not what kind of dress they were wearing. Their beauty and charm was not what made them memorable, but the courage to be who they are was what always stood out. Put your heart behind God's will and I promise he will give you the desires of your heart. And the one who wants to have a daughter of the king must first go through her father. For God, our king stands above the hearts of men and will only let the best man win his daughter. 
Maybe we don't get the fairy tale or the same love story in the movies, but in letting go of the fairytale God still gives us something beautiful . How far does human love carry someone? A wise woman once told me ... beyond them-self.  In case you have forgotten ... God says about love  this …


1 Corinthians 13 
 And now I will sow you the best way of all. Suppose I speak in the languages of human beings and of angels. But if I do not have love, I am nothing, am am but a loud gong or noisy cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.
 ⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
 ¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Canopy of Hope

I wrote you a letter
Didnt want you to hear the hurt in my voice
Or see it in my eyes.
Lost the possibility that we could fix what never was

In my weakness and need you tore me down.
Now these wounds have pushed us far apart.
Farther than the miles that I went just to heal from you.
Love is like a. Ghost that never stays too long.
Broken by the dreams that I used to keep me alive for so long.
But all I have is this canopy of hope that keeps blocking out the rain.
Saving me from the darkness of the doubt and pain. I can feel you all around your lighting up the room. Casting out the lies I finally see the truth.

Change Me

For so long I wanted to become whole, but not realizing the pride that would come in my strength. To be honest, the contrite heart of a broken sinner is more acceptable to God then the proud heart of the self-sufficient. First,the posterior of our hearts is of higher value to God, I've always known this but I never knew that relying on my own strength would cause my heart to become so hardened. That It would steal the very identity of who God created me to be. I realize how unworthy I am to do God's work because I realize how unloving I am. The first sign of pain or embarrassment and I retreat inside myself, I withhold my love. God is saying it's time to learn how to love again. God is asking me to create love where it is absent, to bridge the gaps and boundaries I have put between myself, God , and others. God created man with a capacity for relationship and called it good. I will die if I don't change, I need God to change me.

River of God

God's grace I'd like a river... I cannot stop it and for the most part not cause it.  Throughout the bible it talks about how those who are kind and forgiving the lord is a friend to and has grace on them... So that might  be the only causing part. When it comes to grace ... The sinner who returns home seems to understand the concept of grace better than the pious christian who only refrains from sin out of fear from the loss of Gods love and acceptance. How does this happen? And to be perfectly honest for most of my life I have rejected the idea of grace.  Before god restored me from my brokenness it was easier for me to just believe that I was  unworthy of god and and worthless. I wait witdesperately in hopes that I could adopt grace into my heart without resistance, that for all past and present sins, mistakes grace would overcome. Like a missing puzzle piece in my heart i cannot really love without grace. If i am only holiness then i love with a harshness but my life has been marked by this. No one has ever taught me about grace, it is a stranger to me.I pray that one day the thought of letting a holy holy god love me in my imperfection wont make me nauseous. I grieve grace because it is too beautiful, it is overly just. But it is the only way to beat satan and all the evil we commit in our moments of weakness. I acknowledge in my mind that grace means permission to be human. But i loathe those who are apathetic to the God ive fallen in love with. I lack the ability to understand just how much god can see the state of our hearts, and the sorrow we have when we hurt the one we love the most. A sure fire way to know how close you are to god is when you hate sin as much as go does. Please god help me to receive you and all the good things you are trying to add to me. It's really hard to love yourself when you haven't had a good example of what that looks like, but I trust  that God is more sovereign over all the matters of man.