Heaven. What do you think about when that word is said? It says in Revelation 21: 3-5 that heaven is a place where there will be no more tears, or suffering or pain. To most of us that sounds like, well, heaven (pun intended). But to a lot of people, heaven seams like a big fluffy white place where people sing all the time eat food. But when you really take the time to sit down and think about it, it is SO much more than even just these things alone.

I was at a concert once. It was once of those concerts that didn’t require tickets so it was a’ first come first serve’ thing. And if you know me, you know for a fact that I am that girl who is first in line 5 hours or more before they actually even do a sound check.

My mom and I were waiting patiently for the flood gates to open and to run and grab our seats (ever notice that when the nice concert people tell you ‘no running’ that you end up running anyway?). The concert started at 7:30 and it was only 5:30 or so- told you I’m an early person.

Behind us were two people waiting to get into the concert too. And for the next few hours, my mom and I got to talk to them and get to know each other. Before we even got inside the arena, we could have easily explained one anothers life history.

Once we were inside the concert (and we got front row seats…early birds get the worm!) we saved seats for the two we had met in the line. We still had time before the show started so we chatted a little more, and we went and bought merch together (you’ve gotta love artist merch!) They were even nice enough to buy my mom and I a treat for the show. We couldn’t believe how nice these people were!

A few hours later the concert was over (and what a splendid one it was…) and these two people gave my mom and I a hug and without even giving us a way to even stay in touch, one of them looked at us and said ‘if not before, we will see you in heaven…’

That phrase echoed in my ears on the way home. ‘We will see you in heaven’. As we were driving home my mom told me how much she enjoyed the company of the two people we had met and how they were some of the most interesting people she had ever met. I had to agree. It’s not often you meet two people and by the end of the night claim that you could be close as family.

I had forgotten about these two. But recently for one reason or another (and we all know Who did it), they came back to mind. And those words started to echo in my head again. ‘We will see you in heaven…’

Think back in your life as FARRR as you can remember. How many awesomely cool amazingly nice people have you met in your life and never seen again? Now answer me this: how many of them, knew Christ?

Over the course of my life I have met some really cool people. Most of them I insist on stay in touch with. But it’s the people like we met at the concert that night, that baffle me. I always wonder where they are, what they are doing…if they still love God as much as they did when they really spoke into my life. It’s a really thought provoking thing.

But then it comes right back to the phrase: ‘we will see you in heaven…’

Heaven is not just a place with no suffering or pain, although it is. It’s not just a place where we will always be happy and singing with joy up in the clouds, although it is. It is also like one big giant family reunion. We were will meet people we’ve always dreamed of meeting but for one reason or another didn’t get to. Where we will meet our great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents and hear stories about when they were kids. Where we will see family and friends that we miss so dearly. Some family that you may even be meeting for the first time.

And you will meet people who touched you life, even just once, and proved to you that it’s really not that hard to be the hands and feet of Christ. People you met in line at a concert who bough you a churro and laughed and some silly joke.

Most of all, you will meet the One who paid for us to be there in the first place.

And that is the person I look forward to meeting most of all.

With all that in mind, heaven doesn’t sound so boring after all, does it?

Princess and Frogs. It’s a story people in Christianity like to use for purity purposes all the time. Ya know the whole thing, girls should wait for their prince because you never know when you going to kiss a frog. It’s an analogy I personally like.

But as you can tell by now, the Lord has things hit me at different times, in really random ways. Weird? No…But I really do believe that our God is a comic genius…

Anyway, I was watching ‘The Princess Bride’ the other night for the first time ever. Yes, I’m just now 17 and I had never seen The Princess Bride. Not the point… somewhere along the movie there was a scene where Wesley and his new found friends were trying to stop Buttercup from marrying the evil prince. They had many obstacles to go through, but once Wesley has fought them all, it was then that he found his princess.

In a reality distorted way, the same applied to guys today.

You see, girls have to wait for their princes to come and get them, that means straying away from the frogs. But guys have a hard battle too. They have to battle dragons to get to their princesses.

‘English Please’ your asking? Guys have a hard battle out there too. They have to fight dragons every day, dragons that come in all forms of temptation and lust that would try to make them fail. Don’t get me wrong; life isn’t all about getting ‘the right one’, but about LIVING for the right One, Him being God. But all the while, God still has a future for us, that most likely including a family. But what is the one thing satan will try to do? Steal it from us any way he can. That is why girls need to stay away from frogs and that is why guys battle dragons.

It all sound very complicated but it all really amounts to one thing. For the girls: Knowing that fact that there is a guy out there fighting to wait for you. And for guys: Knowing that there are girls out there cheering you on your way.

It might all sound extreme but really it’s not. God said out life was going to be a battle and that we needed to fight. Not just here and there, but in all aspects. That is why we’ve been told to ‘run the race with endurance’.

I see so much stuff out there today. For girls and guys, and instead of indulging in these things that will only eventually make us crumble, it’s about time we began to step up and support each other. Not just in our faith walk alone, but in all aspects of it. Including the walk to stay pure and to wait for the person God has planned for you to be with.

A little help goes a long way. Even the smallest prayer can change something in the blink of an eye. So guys and gals, here is the moral of my message: run the race, flee the frogs and fight the dragons. Not only God, but your future family, will thank you for it.

Here is a question for ya: How well do you hear God? And i'm not talking like 'oooh ahhhh creepy!' hear God, I mean how well to we hear Him speak to us. And more important than that, how well to we actually listen?

Growing up when your parents told you to clean your room and you refused to do it, you probobly got punished. Whether or not it was severe or not, you still learned your lesson and you knew better than to ever disrespect your parents again.

Our God isn't like that. When we mess up, He's not waiting up in heaven with a belt in His had ready to 'teach us a leasson'. He leaves that up to the choices we make and the options we put upon ourselves. Let me explain:

It happened about a year ago. I walk my little sister home from school everyday. And while she might complain that 'it's torture', I know that it is only a mile and that it's good exersise. I mean really...a mile isn't that far.

One day something came up and my mom had to head into work early, so it was my job to walk my sister TO school and my parents would pick her up. 'No problem' I thought. Well from some reason as I was getting ready to leave that morning, I felt the Lord telling me to 'take a cell phone with me'.

'A cell phone?' I thought. I NEVER walked with a cell phone, because like I said, it was only a mile...what could possible go wrong?

'Okay God' I said, 'i'll bring a cell phone.'

So my sister and I begin walking to her school and it is midway there that I realized that I FORGOT to bring a cell phone. I paniced for a moment but I figureed that we were too far gone to go all the way back for a cell phone. So I took her to school and began to make my way back home.

Just as I began to make my way home, I noticed an adorable cat in the driveway of a house. Me, being the animal lover, stopped to pet the cat. I had pet him befpre so I knew he was harmless. But for some reason today the cat kept walking away from me and to the other end f the driveway.

Brilliant me, decided to follow the cat to see if it was alright. I reached out to pet him when suddenly he snapped. And I mean literally...his sharp teeth bit into my arm and locked.

It SERIOUSLY hurt and I screamed so loud that I thought people on Mars could hear me. After a few moments I was able to rip the cat off of my arm. I looked to survey the damage: your basic swollen, puffy, multi-colored and painful cat bite. I was in shock for a moment, so when I began to bleed I didn;t know what to think.

It hurt soooo bad that I felt like going into a little ball in the driveway and crying. I couldn't walk the rest of the way home...so I reached out for the cell phone to call my dad to pick me up and I realized.

I forgot the cell phone.

I wasn't going to hickhike but I knew I had to get home and fast. So like the speed of light, I started to run and run hard to make it home. And suddenly that short mile I walked seamed a whole lot longer. My arm was turing a nasty color of purple and it was bleeding pretty bad, once I saw my house in sight I knew I would be okay.

But running in the house with a bloody purple arm isn't your parents favorite sight to see. They cleaned me up and made sure I was alright. Alas, I am. But I have NEVER gone back to pet that cat again. That's for sure...

You see guys, God didn't use the cat to punish me. He knew. He KNEW. He wanted me to be safe and bring a cell phone so that I wouldn't have to run home like a maniac in a horror movie. Bu because of the choice I made, I had to deal with what I did.

The moral of THIS story is this. If you feel the Lord leading you to or fro, or if He is telling you something really specific, please don't brush it off. God loves us soo much and He only wants the best for us. If that means doing random tasks, do them.

Cause you don't want to wind up with a a cat named Fluffy stuck to your arm.

I can go on and on with the fact that Jesus died so that not only could we be saved, but that we could also live a happy and prosperous life. But today I’m feeling rather frank and to the point so answer me this would you: Why are Christians so angry?

You may not agree with me on this. Not too many people I know have (probably because they are the angry ones…).

Now more than ever in a time of not only economic distress but spiritual and moral bankruptcy have I seen more and more Christian opting for the easy way out. Instead of loving one another the way Jesus loves us, we would rather whine, and complain and judge others and do anything that will get our minds of whatever situations we are in. And excuse me if you are getting offended by this but I’m not afraid to be honest!

I’m not perfect by any means I still find myself struggling with the whole ‘slow to anger’ thing. But I know that at i'm least doing everything I can to not let it win in the rough times.

I think it’s time that we as followers of Christ took a good look in the mirror, and by mirror I mean the Bible. The Word is the believer’s mirror. It maps out how we are supposed to live our lives, what we are supposed to say, what we are meant to do…IT defines us.

For far too long now we have been acting no different then this word acts. And yet we STILL wonder why they think they are better than Christians, often times, they might just act better than we do…is that the way God wanted His children remembered on this earth?

Here a few steps that I seriously think we need to try implying for just one day, who knows, you might actually like it and want tot stick with it.
-Be SLOW to anger and quick to love. You know satan just loves it when we begin to curse our enemy’s instead of proclaiming prayers and a heart change for them.
-Okay people, enough with the Judge Judy act. It says in the world that we have NO right to judge anyone. Yet why do I see Christians call people fat, ugly, stupid, lazy, idiots, and a bunch of other stuff more than I do children of the world?
-Pray and pray HARD. Pray is one of the best tools that we as Christians have been given. Whether it’s in the rough times or the best times, God deserves our thanks, our prayers and our praise.
-Be careful of your influences. What we watch on TV in moves, hear in music, see on video games and even the people who we hang out with and the things they say and do. You can deny this till your face turns blue but it DOES affect our lives and how we live. When we expose our ears and our hearts to garbage, you may not see the side effects right now but take it from someone who has had to deal with it…it will come back and bite you later if you keep letting it in now. Change the what you watch, see and do. Even if they are small, or even if it’s cutting off something or someone totally. You’ll be thankful that you did it in the end.

Moral of the story here peeps? Take some times and realize that we have been set apart by God. That although we have made mistakes that we can be forgiven, and most of all: to not go back that way. To start living as children of the Most High God, children of the Light. And to not let anger rule over us anymore.

I am one of those people who will easily get touched by a song and immediately run out and have to find out more about it. Lately it seams I’ve been having it happen more and more often (like every other day).

A few days ago I had it happen again and I found a song that really touched my Spirit. ‘A Little More’ by Jennifer Knapp (none other than a Gotee alumni!)

Here are the lyrics to the song that have really hit me:

"Turn Your eyes from on this way
I have proved to live a dastardly day
I hid my face from the saints and the angels
Who sing of Your glory
What You had in mind
My weakness shines show me grace
A little more than I can give
A little more than I deserve
Unearth this holiness I can't earn
It's a little more than I can give
A little more than I deserve
For all the sin that lives in me
It took a nail to set me free still,
What I do I don't want to do and so goes the story
What You had in mind
What we seek we'll find, shine, show me grace
A little more than I deserve
Unearth this holiness I can't earn
It's a little more than I can give
A little more than I deserve
With all this motivation I still find a hesitation
Deep in my soul
Despite all my demanding I still find You understanding
Show me grace show me grace I know is...
A little more than I deserve
Unearth this holiness I can't earn
It's a little more than I can give
A little more than I deserve”

The line in that song that really got me was ‘For all the sin that lives in me
It took a nail to set me free’…that is such a powerful statement.

Say you lived to be 110 years old. You would have lived a very long life, happy memories, some sad ones. At the end of your life you’re given a list of all of the wrong things that you ever did wrong. Your list might go out the door, or it might just hit your knees, but the point is that this list holds that fact that you weren’t perfect.

‘Gee’ your thinking ’this message is so positive’

Here is the encouragement: at the end of this list off all the wrong’s is a little memo reading ‘taken care of by the nails on the cross’ and that’s it. Because of what Jesus did we now get a ticket into heaven.

Sometime we as so quick to forget that Jesus suffered and died for us so that not only go to heaven and spend eternity with God, but while we have breath on this earth that we would be blessed more than our minds can comprehend! (Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits- Psalm 103:2)

Guys, He gives us so much grace. And all God asks in return for us is to love Him. And when we love Him, we honor Him, and when we honor Him, we live for Him, and when we live for Him…we are blessed. It’s a never ending chain of grace.

Lest we be so quick to forget today how much He loves us, be the first one to look at God and say ‘I Love YOU.’

Hey guys...have you checked out Krystal Meyers new sound yet? Her new album hits shelves September 9th...check it out!

As if you couldn't tell by now, I can find that God wants to teach me something in everything that I do. And last Christmas, I got taught a lesson in 'stepping out' that I will never forget...

A bunch of kids I homeschool with got together for a Christmas gathering at one of thier homes. Thier mom decided a few weeks prior that she would set up a scavenger hunt that had everyone in the neighborhood in on it. She made two teams and gave us all a list of things to go door-to-door and ask the neighbors for. Me being one of the oldest at the party was named team capitan for team 2. I was the one who had to go door to door and ask the people very sanely for very random items. Coco, paperclips, ask if they would sing to us (no one did that for us), and some of thie wierder ones? Asking them for thier Christmas lights.

I was embarrsed to even ask anyone that one so I went door to door and asked for everything else on the list than thier Christmas light's. Before long someone on my team old me that we were loosind. Big time. So I sucked up my pride, went to the next house, and asked the older man for his lights. And you know what? He GAVE them to me!

Although we lost the scavenger hunt and had to wait for our dessert (winner got dessert first), I still took something away from that whole silly thing.

It was cold, I was nervous and I didn't want to put anyone in a wierd position. But if I didn't ask, I never would have tried to win. That is the way we are in our faith sometimes too. We would rather lose the race then put anyone out of place. Buy guys, if we refuse to step out and ask then we will never have the risk of winning...or in my case, getting an old man's Christmas light's.

Moral of the story: Step out and don't be afrid. Ask about 'Christmas Lights' (And by that, I totally meant live out your faith)

My mom and I are really close, and although we may not agree on everything, she is still my mom and I still love her. But to this day, there is one thing we disagree on and I don't think it will ever be resolved:

Shoes.

She grew up when Vans the were "groovy" shoes to wear around town, but you see I live in a new age, and in this new age, Converse All Stars are where it's at!

While we were at the mall yesterday we ran acorss a shoe store that sold both Vans and Converse. We stood there for 5 minutes and has a 'discution' on which was the superior shoe. Needless to say we didn't agree.

I said Vans were outdated...
She said Converse were for flat-footed people...
Then we found a Lady Foot Locker and both liked the purple Nike's...

Not the point...

Anyway, I figured I would settle the debate once and for all. Come one, come all, and cast your votes!

I had a very humbling experience over the weekend.

On Sunday, after church my family and I went to the Harvest Crusade in California (my home planet...I MEAN town).We waited outside the gates for 3 hours just to run inside and get front row seats. It was while I was catching my breath from bolting to get our seats, that I began to notice the stadium we were in filling up and fast. Apparently the night before they had reached a capacity of over 47,00 people in the stadium. Only the stadium only held 45,000. That means over 2000 people stood in the isles for the revival.

During one of the artist’s performances I looked up and saw that the entire field was loaded to the max. It was loud enough with the music going but once it was off it was still loud by the conversations that over 45,000 people were having above me.

Later that night, over 4,000 people gave their lives to the Lord. Over the weekend alone over 11,000 people because followers of Christ. It's an emotional thing to see so many broken people take a big step like that and openly give their lives to God. Tears, family being restored, it's an amazing site that would bring tears to anyone watching.

On the way home at one point, the radio cut out and we shut it off. I9 began to realize how unnervingly quiet it was. Over the past 7 hours, all I had heard was people talking, yelling, singing, preaching, or crying.

When you think about it, only 45,000 people can make a lot of noise. But imagine what heaven will be like? There are for sure over 45,000 people there. Yet while I imagine heaven to be a loud place I also imagine an overwhelming sense of peace. It's the kind of noise you like to hear, loved ones coming together, people singing praises to Jesus...it's a pretty eye opening revelation.

Always remember, this world is loud. It's screaming a bunch of useless stuff at us, but God's words reign louder than anything. As long as we follow that voice...we are going heaven. Where the streets have no name - and where it's probably extremely loud, but I don't think I will mind