Why Fear?

"Why fear?" is a question I have been asking myself lately. It is a very logical question, why should I fear anything when God is on my side, the creator of the universe! And yet so many of us have spent most of our lives fighting some form of fear..........
Fear is defined as being afraid or feel anxious or apprehensive about a possible or probable situation or event. Anxiety is something that has a huge grip on so many lives, it is very real and crippling so many people. I know I struggle with anxiety on many occasions. And I found myself asking the Lord the other night why I am so stuck in this fear and anxiety..........and I felt Him saying that it is because I keep choosing to try and control everything, because I won't release control of my life to Him. Which boils down to I lack full trust in Him..........and of course if I am not going to put my trust in Him then yea there is going to be anxiety and a whole lot of fear because I am afraid of what is going to happen next. Because I have not entrusted that situation to God.
So of course I knew all this before and many many people have told me before...........but there is just something about the Lord very clearly telling you, is when it just seems to click! At this point I don't know what the next step is.............but I will trust in the Lord to show me..........He is faithful!
There is my little random thought of the day!
"Why Fear!"

Isaiah 41:10

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

The Roller Coaster Called Life.......

I feel like I am on a roller coaster right now in my life...........And I am partially okay with that. Yea it is difficult at times but God is doing what He needs to do in my life at just the right moments. There are many many areas that the Lord is working on right now in me, oh so many! He brings one area to the light and says okay deal with it, and I am all like I don't want to! But eventually I come around and I work through it with the Lord by His strength only! I guess you would call that the top of the hill on a roller coaster.........then I kinda coast for a while letting what He just did in me root down deep........and then He takes me up yet another hill!
Sometimes it is overwhelming, but I remember one thing I asked of the Lord coming into BCOM was that He would rip everything out that was not of Him. He is definitely holding me to that prayer, which I am okay with, sure there are days where I am like.......please just stop I can't take it anymore. And then I remind myself or depending on my mindset someone else reminds me.....The Lord will never give you what you can not handle..........sometimes I go okay yea that's right, other times it takes me a while to fully grasp it again. But it is so very true He will never give me anything I can not handle, so even when things seem impossible He is right next to me just waiting for me to rely on Him to keep going.
At this point I see myself heading up yet another hill, after just coming down from one. But this is definitely a point in my life where the Lord is taking a lot out of me, and it hurts but I am okay with it! The Lord is faithful!! And I am seeing the true FREEDOM getting extremely close, so close! There is still so much to do, but I am beginning to see the light at the end of this tunnel. I do not believe I will ever get off of this roller coaster though, There will always be areas to work on I will never be perfect, I will always need at points in my life to go up the hill again......but at some point the hills will become less frequent..... 8)

Restoration!!!

God is so amazing!!! He just continues to shock me every day! He is restoring me in so many ways it is crazy! It hurts but man is it going to be beneficial in the end. He is bringing me to a point of freedom from so many things that held me back. I am learning to hear His voice, which was always something I struggled with. I could just never figure out how to hear Him. But once I started getting all these things out of my life that were just huge walls that had I had built up, it was crazy how much clarity I got and how much easier it is to hear Him now!
The love that God has for each and every one of us is absolutely amazing and yet so hard to grasp a hold of sometimes. We are children of God and He is an amazing Father, his love never fails! That is a realization I am coming to more and more, and it just blows my mind! He cares so much for us!
Even when things get to a point where it seems impossible to keep going He is right there holding us up, He never leaves us!!!
Wow this is just a bunch of random things.............sorry!!! yep I guess I am done down......8)

God is Faithful!!!

As a lot of people know I have had a lot of health issues for a long time, I have struggled with ulcers and IBS stomach issues for a long time. And it was coming to a point where I could not eat a lot of food, I could not eat anything basically. Everything was making me sick. I also I had recently sprained my knee so I was in a huge knee brace that totally immobilized my knee. My knee and my stomach had been killing me! This is a testimony of how the Lord healed me, all the glory goes to Him!!! He is faithful! I hope this shows how there are so many root issues that we all harbor deep in our hearts that God does not desire us to hold on to, it can cause a lot of others issues in our lives. Over all the Lord is our strength our provider and our healer! He is faithful! So here is an outline of how the Lord met me this past weekend!
Several students had been planning a trip down to IHOP for a couple weeks. And a few kept asking me if I wanted to go too. And I just kept saying no, I don't want to go. I was saying that up to the last day. When Friday morning came along my mentor got an email from the Dean of Women saying that she suggested I go down to IHOP with the other students. This was oh like 4 hours before they were leaving and we had class and what not. I kept saying no I refuse to go, but I took a minute to pray about it and I felt strongly that the Lord was telling me to go. So I got over myself and said fine I will go 8) Yes I am subborn! lol! (oh on a side note I was preparing to work through alot of unforgiveness issues that I had, because it was becoming very obvious that those unforgiveness issues were contributing to my health issues, so we had made a plan for me to spend Saturday in the prayer room here on campus to work through forgiveness) So anyways I headed down to IHOP we had no clue where we were going to stay, which is obviously pretty common with trips down to IHOP 8) We found out about 3 hours into the drive that we had gotten one of the IHOP apartments to stay in! The whole way down I just kept getting this feeling I could not put my finger on. But we got down there at like 8:30 and went to the FSM building for the last part of the Awakening service. And they were praying for healings of the stomach and what not, so I was like eh why not and went up. Only I started feeling sicker when I was getting prayed for and I just felt God saying no you have root/heart issues to deal with first. So I was like okay God I will spend all day tomorrow if necessary in the prayer room working through forgiveness. As soon as I said that I could just feel the Devil attacking me, man he hated it when I said that. It was a strange feeling!!!
But thats what I did I got up early Saturday morning and just went in with as open of a heart as I could, and for the first time I just felt myself able to actually forgive a lot of people from my past. And I began to pray for them with love, I have not been able to basically ever do that! It was like this huge weight was lifted off my shoulders!!! Then the first thing that popped into my head was are you going to heal me now God? But then I was like wait a minute, no, I lay that desire at your feet Lord. All i want is to encounter you and if it is in your will to heal me tonight then okay. But I just want to know you more and feel your presence! Then I had my prophecy appointment, which the outline of that was that: I have a servants heart, that God sees how much I pour into everyone else and how much I put them first, That I have a huge capacity within me to hold more of the Lord, that I am going to be in leadership in different aspects, that I am adventurous and the 4 walls of the church can not hold me and that is a good thing. That is about it there is more but I just have not had time to listen to the recording again. 8) Then I headed over to the awakening service cause it was 6 by that point. By this point I was pretty happy! but I was also in a lot of pain with my knee, rather annoyed with the knee brace I had to wear. And I had not had a chance to take my pills for my stomach that morning so my stomach was killing me. But I was just happy to have the release from the unforgiveness! And all I wanted to do was encounter the Lord!! So they started praying to receive the holy spirit and to just encounter the Lord more. So most of us went up front, and I got prayed over a ton of times. It was crazy! I was so much more open this time, the Lord just kept filling me up! Almost everyone that prayed over me was like give her more Lord, more!! It was great I could feel God there!!!
Then at one point I was sitting on the floor at the front by a few people from BCOM and they were calling people who wanted to get baptized. And two students from my cell group went over to get baptized and my mentor was with them, I wanted to go over and be with them not to get baptized but to just be with them, cause I was happy for them! But I just felt the Lord saying no you need to stay here. So I did..........and someone prayed over my knee just kind of randomly. And it just felt like the constant pain went away, but I didn't really think much of it. But then one of the mentors looked at my leg and said Hey take that off and she started undoing my knee brace, and she told me to get up. I was like okay but I don't know. So I did and I was shocked it didn't hurt at all!!! I started walking around and everyone looked at me surprised. Then I was thank you God for healing my knee but I really want my stomach healed. And someone else asked what was wrong with my stomach and I told her and then she prayed for me and the constant stomach ache just went away and I was like okay but is this the whole deal and I just felt this huge amount of peace, like the Lord saying your healed from this!!! I was so excited and so shocked!!! Wes Hall had not even prayed for healings yet! it was crazy!!!! Then I went over to watch them get baptized, but then Wes started asking if anyone had been healed to come up by the stage, and everyone just started screaming at me to go, I was torn cause I still wanted to watch them, but I went and then that is when I ended up on stage. 8) Then I gave my testimony at the Sunday morning service also.
I can eat things I have not been able to eat in like 10 to 15 years. I was telling a few people how I was afraid to eat oranges still and one of the girls was there and she just whips her head around and was like what did you say?!! She told me she had been dreaming about someone having to eat oranges for like 2 weeks now, and God just kept telling her to pay attention to conversations, and to tell that person to not fear the oranges, they are healed. So she was like eat the oranges!! Then she was like I finally feel at peace cause I guess that had been bothering her. That also helped to get rid of some doubts that were creeping up in my mind because of the stupid devil!! It is insane how totally different I feel, I have a huge amount of restored energy! The Lord is faithful!!!! I am still coming to grasp with what happened and fighting the attacks from the enemy, but man I can not even begin to explain the feelings I have. This has nothing to do with me, it was all God and I hope to use this testimony to further His kingdom and for nothing else. He provided for me in a way I could never imagine!
~Andria