The Gift

The Gift

Open your ears and open your eyes; put out your dainty hands and take a hold of mine. For, I want to lead you, and I want you to follow.

Open your ears and open your eyes; put out your dainty hand and take a hold of mine. For I have a gift I want to give you. This is a gift from above to you below. Use this gift liberally and tell everyone you know, who the Giver was.

Open your ears and open your eyes; put your dainty hands and take a hold of mine. Your carnal mind cannot receive the gift I now pour on thee. A gift for the masses, a gift for just one, to be harnessed and shared with everyone.

Open your ears and open your eyes; put out your dainty hands and take a hold of mine. I'll speak to you in your terms. Be a mother to the motherless, a father to the fatherless. Remove your stereotypes and give My gift like I am watching.

Open your ears and open your eyes; put your dainty hands and take a hold of mine.
LOVE.

Emily Gnagey
10-13-09

What is worship?

I believe it's John Piper who says, " Missions exist because worship doesn't." I think that's a great point, and a great quote considering those two things are what make my heart beat. I love worship and I love missions. Missions is easy to understand, you give hope to anyone who needs it by sharing the hope you have in Christ...In the art world that would be like realism. But when we start talking about worship it becomes more abstract, and even maybe a little non-objective. The definitions of worship aren't great, its people's version of how they worship. But I don't think that's what worship is.

I was reading in Revelation 19 and in verses 9 and 10 it says this.

Then the angel said to me, "Write 'Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!' " And he added, "These are the true words of God"

At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, "Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."

I believe this is what worship is. And there are three points that I see, as I take a look at this passage.

1. BE AT THE WEDDING SUPPER!

This should be the obvious, but to truly worship God, we must know him intimately and know for sure that when Christ comes back and takes His bride, we are a part of that group. We must embody the spirit of a member of the Bride of Christ.

2. INVITE THOSE AROUND YOU TO BE AT THE WEDDING FEAST AS WELL.

It doesn't necessarily say that here, but I believe that is the implication. The time is short tell everyone you know about that hope you have in Christ and make sure they are sitting at the head table of the wedding feast with you and all the other believers.

3. WORSHIP GOD!

This is one of the most important parts of this verse. As I read about John falling to worship at the feet of the angel and the angel saying, "get up" I realized we as Christians do this all the time. We worship the things of God, but in our prideful service worship, we forget to just admire God and fall at his feet. Think about it, why do you love worship? It's the feeling you get when you are in the presence of God, isn't it? I submit that it is not worship, its a part of worship, and a part of God, but not true worship. We worship the emotions we get when sing. No! Worship is a lifestyle of daily(every moment of the day) gift of bestowing glory to God, because "His name and His renown are the desires of my heart." - Isaiah 26:8.


This is what I say. What do you think?

Insane.

Has America lost their mind, you know the world is going down hill when Barack Hussein Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize. For me this is the straw to break the camel's back. How long will the world look on this guy as their savior? Notice I don't capitalize savior, because he's no one's savior, he's an arrogant man who says nice words and does absolutely no good for our economy. The U.S. failed when they elected him president, and the the Nobel Peace Prize committee failed by giving him this. Insane.

What peace has he brought to the world? That was the question streaming the Internet today, there answer went something like this, "It's not whether he has created peace, but that he wants peace." Bull Crap! I want peace too, so where's my prize? What they were really trying to do was fly in the face of George Bush, "Who only brought violence." Insane.

Well, I guess I can see why he would win, with people like, Nelson Mandela, Doctor's Without Borders, The United Nations Peacekeeping force, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., and The Red Cross as his predecessors. Since BHO is so up to par with these peacekeepers. Ridiculous! What a mockery a shame for those who went before him. What a mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize. Insane.

Giving this to our President, is like giving Heisman to a dedicated football fan. It would NEVER happen. He said he was "humbled." Insane.

(I was going to write about a word from Revelation, and maybe soon I will, but I coudn't not blog about this)

What is man that you are mindful of him

Here's my life right now:

Work
School
Church
Church Work
Worship
School
Work
School
Work
depression.

The monotony of life has set in and has brought a slight depression. My dear friends the Wixted's are moving away, and now I'm left in the town I despise, with few around me. I have decided not to make anymore friends because it hurts to bad to lose them.

Spiritually I'm bi-polar. My struggles consume on some days in which I say basically, so what God I'm hurting, why not sin...I know this is wrong, but it truly is what I think. Or I have days when I feel like life is so good, I can't stand it. The Lord in the recent years have given me a heart of a visionary, and sometimes I glimpse the moment my life will move on. But for now, I trudge, and in trudging, and falling, and getting up, one day I will stand in the glory of God. Tonight I'm not a well done faithful servant, but one day, I will. For Your glory, I stand. For Your glory, I get back up. For Your glory, I will try again, to be the woman you have created me to be.

okay so I had absolutely no time on the trip to blog...sorry to anyone who tried to keep up with it. I am in TX again. There is too much to even write about in one blog, but I must say it was an amazing thing to share hope to the hopeless, watch miracles take place, and watch scales fall of the eyes of the spiritually blind.

I hate sin, I hate that I have compromised my faith because of sin, and I hate that I didn't realize it until this trip. It is my new found desire to never compromise my beliefs for the feelings of other people. The challenge to defeat sin started the moment I said I hated it, in fact, it got harder to not compromise, than when I didn't recognize my sin. I could preach this, but I won't, because no one reads this blog anyway...

So, I'll be home on Sunday...stories to come...

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This is the day that the Lord had made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.

Our MA's got in yesterday. It looks like we have a really solid group of men and women ready to touch Uganda.

The Lord has really been stretching me in my prayer life. I feel like I should be up before the missionaries, MA's and even the project director, to be praying for the day, those I'm around, and for the spirit of God to fall consistently on us. The difficult part is the getting up. After that it's all gravy....The other thing is, coffee is sparse. That is excruciating.

We had a mock severe weather storm this morning at 6:05 to practice our safety skills. NEXT...

Alright, if your cool enough to keep up with this...mom ;) , know that I'm so thankful for the prayers.

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Training began last night and we met up with our leadership team. They are really great and I really feel like God is knitting our hearts together for his glory.

I just wanted to share a little bit about our vision for this team.

Adrian, my co-leader, and I both feel God leading us to be servants. So our team name is Diakonos. Diakonos is the greek word for servant, more specifically, servant of a king. And we are in the pursuit of becoming better servants to our King. Our vision comes from John 13 where Jesus washes the disciples feet and says, " ...having loved those who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love." If that is the full extent of his love is humbling himself and becoming a servant(phil 2) then that is how we will show our full extent of our love, Christ's love in us, to Uganda and our our team members. We want to pull people out of their self-centeredness and focus them first on God and then second on others. I was reading The Servant and I wrote down this quote: Loving serving, and extending ourselves for others forces us out of our self-centeredness....This is our hope.

I love you all and miss you!

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New hair, New Day

Goodness the Lord has been so very good to me. I feel much more confident in the fact that God is really going to use me. I still don't feel that prepared, but I am as prepared as I'm going to be. The thing I really need the most prayer about is my confidence in the mock crap. I have to go in front of project directors and share my net(the gospel) as well as do confrontations and counseling and its all fake and practice...so I'm not so stoked about that. But it will be okay.

I got my hair cut yesterday. I officially look so much like my sister its uncanny. So that's so cool.

love you all

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So we'll try this blogging thing again.

I'm in Garden Valley, Texas preparing to prepare for Uganda. I feel a little inadequate as I sit at this computer and type. The devil has really been hitting on my inadequacy today. But I refuse to let him have a foothold. This morning sitting at Mercy Ships Coffee House, I was struggling with moving past camp and getting on to mission trip mode, and God gave me the verse in Philippians 3:13-14 "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus"

I feel like I'm ready to move forward, I have been spending a lot of the day preparing, and repreparing for what's ahead. I believe God is going to move in awesome and powerful ways. I felt kind of down today, because I noticed I was about 100 dollars short of what I think I will need for this trip, but God will supply all of my needs according to His riches in glory.

For your glory I serve.

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