A little taller....

I remember when I was a kid I saw all of my friends getting taller and I remember being one of the shortest girls in my class until like 7th grade. I remember I wanted to be tall like them. I wanted to grow a few more inches so I wouldn't be in the shortest group of my class. I would ask my mom why I wasn't growing or when I would grow, or if I would be 4 ft something for the rest of my life!! If it was that way for me, I can only imagine how it was for guys. I know one of my best friends was a guy and I will never forget him being shorter than I was until one summer. I know it must have been very hard for him, being in jr. high and shorter than most other guys, but like I said one summer he hit his growth spurt for real! He was about 5 inches taller, regardless he was now average. In Jr. High I also caught up and surpassed a lot of the other girls too! I remember how tall I wanted to be and how important growing was for me. Sometimes it was so frustrating. Even as a kid when I dressed up I would put my mom's shoes on and think of how I was getting so close to being her size! I remember even though I wanted to grow I didn't measure myself every single day. I would wait until the dr. told me or my mom would measure me or something like that. Growth to me was wanted by me, but recognized by my parents.
Earlier I heard something about growing and the "wandering" years for Jesus and for the Israelites. The short clip said that those were the best yrs. for them. Sometimes now, spiritually, I just wish I could grow several inches and see it........but even when I don't see my growth, Jesus does and that makes all the difference! As long as we are doing the things that grow us, even when we feel like we aren't growing, something inside of us is shifting. When things are fed, they grow. That's the bottom line. A parent's desire is to see their kids become healthy adults. How much more does God desire His children to grow in Him. That is HIS utmost desire, that his children grow in Him! So, even during those frustrating times, they are precious because every now and then Jesus pulls us up and says check this out.... after months have passed he has been making marks on the wall to see how much we have grown... and He will show us! This is a scripture of growth: Call on me and I will show you GREAT and Mighty things (secret, fenced in things)! Jeremiah 33:3
I am thankful, that when I am pursuing and seeking after God, He is molding me and growing me to be more like Him!

Grace Abounds......

A lot of times it's hard to know where to begin, but at the same time it's very easy. Begin at the Cross. Although at times for myself having everything redeemed at the cross or made right is hard to fathom in my "humanness". But when I really think about it, the cross is the best thing. I think about all the times I have messed up, but where sin abounds grace also abounds. Not that I want to mess up or fail, but things happen. It's just amazing because Jesus is my hero. He is the only person that I don't have to prove myself to. A lot of times with people it's almost like you have to prove yourself to be sorry and prove yourself to be different and prove yourself to be better. This could take days, months, and even years. Often times it's hard not to get in that mindset with God, you know trying to earn your righteousness. Having a bad attitude, getting more frustrated because you aren't having a right one, and failing all the more... but during this time God is all sufficient. I think on days where I try to earn my righteousness that I am going around one big frustrating mountain, when God is waiting the entire time for me to become aware of HIS greatness and grace. That's like the children of Israel when they wandered around...they wandered around because they were trying to do things "in themselves apart from God!" That option NEVER works! Everything is by the cross. Pure human existence and freedom is in the cross. This was a VERY crucial gap to be filled.. and Jesus filled that gap, being driven by pure love and compassion for His people. Its awesome and amazing. I know that nothing can hold me back, because Jesus defeated everything. He broke old habits, he broke generational curses, He defeated guilt, and provided forgiveness for the worst of sins.

When I think about a sinner, really understanding God's grace, I think about Saul(Paul). This is a man, who relentlessly persecuted God and His children. So he is determined to cancel out God's work and then in a moments time is blinded by God, then later visited by Ananias, and baptized with scales falling off His eyes. A chap. of two later, the word says... Immediately Paul preached.

I mean I can't imagine how much pounding guilt burdened him, but Grace abounds all the more. In 1st Timothy 1 Paul talks about all the things he used to be and how thankful he is that God enabled him and found him faithful for ministry and then Paul says, the GRACE of our Lord is exceedingly abundant. A supply and resource that never runs out. Everything is through the cross. Not just two wood things built together, but the Sacrifice. Jesus was and is the greatest gift than mankind could ever receive. We are never fully alive until this moment. He takes nothing and turns it into something. Another amazing thing is what God told Ananias about Paul. He said "Go, for he is a chosen vessel of mine, to bear My name before Gentiles, kings and the children of Israel." "For I will show Him how many things he must suffer for My name!" I mean I know that we always hear how Christian will suffer, and the term suffering has changed. Today we view suffering as having to give up sin for Him, or not be able to do certain things like "go out", or being looked at weird for praying over food. But suffering then, was being beheaded, hanged, crucified, stoned, and even imprisoned. I don't think I want to hang out with Paul and say yeah I suffered too... because someone called me stupid for praying out loud. Jesus suffered GREATLY for me a pain I will never know..... so whatever sacrifice I have to make, I want to. I am thankful today that grace abounds and that his grace is sufficient. I am thankful today that God is more than enough, all sufficient God. There is no one else like Him in all the earth, all honor to Him!

Unlock the Glory

If things hold us back we rely on our own power. I think of obstacles I face outwardly or even struggle with internally, both in the past and present. I think about the future and things that are far off. I think about all the things I want God to do, and it's not to give me more money or to give me stuff. Everything has to do with Him and His will. Getting back to this place took an empty heart, with everything around me broken and just as empty. I was at a place where I went to the well and experienced a new tasting water so then I gathered it up and took it back to my village but then noticed it was temporary. So then I would go back and draw from the well again, and drink of it. Because it was temporary I constantly had to go back and draw water. Water that never last and only reached a certain point of satisfaction, but never fully satisfying. And then one day when I went back to the well, Jesus was there....... and it was after drawing so very much that I realized that nothing would EVER be as fulfilling as Jesus. Well now I realize where I am, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everything is fixed or perfect, but this is what it does mean.
God, I am here in this place where I am hungry and thirsty for you. I want to see what you can do, not what another person can do, but what you alone can do. I want to be so hungry for you and have a love for you that is greater than anything else. I don't want to constantly be held by condemnation or make you small with human reasoning, because I know that you wash our sins as far as the east is from the west.... and what you do is great and mighty, and above everything that I am or could ever imagine. These are my desires... to be so close to you, produce your fruits, and people see you. I want to really love you, but have a reverent fear of you all at the same time. Knowing you and your will even more, constantly submitting myself to you.......
I believe that this is the place where I am: that I give up.
That I give up in my victory, that I give up in my salvation, that I give up in my will, that I give up in my piecing things together, that I give up on my ideas......... but at the same time gaining His victory, and His salvation, gaining His straight paths, and taking on His ideas. I am at a place where only His glory and His power can do anything. I don't want to touch any area of my life, or have someone else speak something to me (that is appreciated and helpful), but I believe I am at a place where what He is going to do will be so glorious that in this process I will know that it was Him and HIM alone. The good thing is that I can not give myself credit for it, anyone else credit for it.... but to Him and Him alone. I want Jesus to do things in Carrie Tucker that I have never heard of and beyond myself. Destroy everything of me that does not please you. I cannot have holiness and junk residing in the same place. It is important to me that the word is fulfilled and that in me He does exceedingly abundantly above all I can ask or think.... things beyond my comprehension. So I am at this place where on the power of God can do and only His glory will be revealed and that Jesus will receive ALL glory and praise for it.....
and I am at this place where only God can do.................. and that is how I want it to be.
If I have to seek harder so be it... but whatever things happen I want them to be all God so that I can see a new aspect of HIS glory and power. And see I know that I cannot let things get in the way because He has overcome... and if I can just walk in the fact that HE has overcome... nothing can hold me down...
In the book Fear of the Lord.. John Bevere talks about how we have served God in the image that we made. Sin has shaped our view of God, our happiness has shaped our view of God, our pleasure has shaped our view of God, our lack of faith has shaped Him, this world, people, has shaped our view of God..... I guess that is why we dont fear Him, why we sin against Him and why we don't live our lives to the capacity He has for us...... I know that I do not see God fully for who He is or else I would go around the same mountain, or struggle against the same giant, or pick up the same chain.... and I need God to show himself to me, full in His glory. That is why I am where I am......................and I don't care as long as I become fully reliant on Him. This is best for me because I will see His glory.. fall more in love with Him and have more of a fear of Him and others will directly see JESUS. I am so sorry for never allowing myself to see God full in His glory and for not giving Him reverence with my actions... so others couldn't fully see Him. Jesus, I want to fully encounter you with your glory... and I am going to hang on.
From day one, the enemy has been about lowering the glory of God in our perspective. He talked Adam and Eve into eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and by giving into this the glory of god in THEIR eyes was made smaller and became limited. Not only that but they began to see their flaws instead of the imaginable glory of God.. and then they tried to cover up their mistakes but forever they would see His glory through their natural eye. That's why we now have the Holy Spirit because the Spirit is of God and so that thing in us, will allow us to see the glory of God through spiritual eyes and not fleshly eyes.
He has overcome, therefore we overcome.
Let me see your glory, like Paul did on the road to Damascus that forever changed Him.
Whatever needs to be done, do it.... so your glory will be revealed to me and through me.
I cannot let anything stop me, because if I do I am starting to rely on me.
I need to love you more and I need my eyes to be opened fully to your Glory, God.
Chabod: Weightiness, the root, heavy, glorious, notable, or to be renowned. The opposite of heaviness is lightness which is equated with vanity, emptiness, temporariness, or instability.

So why wouldn't satan even try to lessen our view of God's glory. He did it to Jesus when he showed him all the kingdoms he could have..............
So my desire is to fully see God's glory.................and just let Him be God to me and through me!
We are overcomers by the blood of the Lamb...... if His blood was already shed, we have already overcame.

Welcome all intruders

Mobile Alabama
City population: 251, 345
Crime rate: 16, 151
About 10 thousand of which are theft crimes!
cityrating.com/citycrime

After knowing this how many people would go to bed with there doors unlocked or even open?

Even after we are aware of information we choose not to change, but why?

Something is constantly in the back of our minds saying, "that could never happen to me!"

A valuable and significant piece of information warns and says, the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. John 10:10

"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left. Luke 11:24

After hearing this why do we leave our doors unlocked and unguarded?
This simply welcomes all intruders. Whatever wants to come in can come in.

If you think about it, when a thief comes into your house what does he come for?
He comes for some hidden money, the plasma, the computer, the playstation 3... notice these are valuable things. A thief doesn't come in looking for a spoon, grabs it, and then leaves satisfied.

He wants to take your precious things into his possessions.
The enemy of your soul comes in to steal your most prized possessions. Your purpose, your influence, your destiny, your intimacy with God, pure love, your joy, peace, zeal, passion, and the encounters that changed you.. These are things that cost something of you and that mean the most to you. When you are left unguarded the enemy comes in stealing these things, but a lot of times he is disguised, sneaky, and skilled so that he can slip in and slip out before we are ever aware. Before long we look around in a frantic and in a hurry where, where is my passion. I can't find it anywhere... where is that peace.. I'm stressed and can't handle things, where did my peace go. Before long you realize that the house you live in is now stripped and you are filled with confusion about everything.
what to do now? You just walk around in your house and view its brokenness and and take a count of all the things you lost.
that's just like us. After we realize things have been taken from us, we just sit in awe of the things that have been stolen from us. confused about everything wondering what to do next.

Another way to view this intrusion would be a second point.
The people you surround yourselves with.
Sure you welcome your social group, but when you welcome them you welcome those pet peeves. When you connect yourself to someone through a relationship, friendship or whatever you have to be cautious of the things that surround you. Your peer group can introduce things to you that you may never have intentions of participating in, but eventually it effects you.
The whole thing that made me even think of this was yesterday when I was sitting in the living room doing some homework and I got hungry. I am a pretty healthy person so I normally strive to eat healthy things for my body. Well my roomie wanted to buy some captain crunch a few days earlier for a recipe, but we both eat healthy and having unhealthy food laying around isn't always the best. (not looking down on anyone who eats this cereal, its just addicting, full of empty calories, and has too much sugar for me).. anyway, before I knew it, I was on the couch and had eaten like half a box of captain crunch. I was like this is what we get for bringing stuff in here that we shouldn't eat.
Then something hit me. A lot of times we surround ourselves with people who have unhealthy habits and when we are in a desperate search for something, we feed on the unhealthy things. We cling to things we never would have if they had never been in our cite. If you are hanging around with people who have intruders, you will easily share those intruders and before long instead of running to something that will fulfill the hunger and thirst of your heart you run to contaminated waters. We feel strong and hang out with whoever and some friends around us dabble around in lust. When we are strong it doesn't bother us, but on one particular day we just don't feel so loved. In this situation it is easy to run to the cabinet and pull out lust, because it's there right in front of us.
What do we do now?
Because just like termites, these intrusions will destroy us from the inside out.
Exterminate, get rid of the junk. Clean your house. Guard your door. Keep it locked, clean and filled with the things that make it beautiful.
How many times do I keep the door unlocked, how many times do I leave it unguarded?
How many times do I run to the cabinet to feed myself on something that isn't eternal, but only short lived and temporary?
At this rate, pretty soon it will be nothing like a house anymore.
That house is me, my identity and new creation.

Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first."

²⁷As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, "Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you."

²⁸He replied, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it." Luke 11