worship at workplay 7/27/09

worship at workplay was so good. it was good to worship as a tool for intercession.
i loved these lyrics.
i would say more but i don't have time.

later.

reflection

so as i was driving to meet candace & her sister for worship at workplay i saw this. how cool is it to see the clouds on this jeep?! you probably don't think this is anything special but i do. i got see the Lord's creation in a reflection. i loved it!

i guess it's good that i get easily amused by the smallest things. :D

nations

Lord give me a heart for all of your nations even though i will never set foot on most their soil. give me an intercessor heart for the nations i will never get to visit.

update from panera

i'm sitting in panera & it's a little cold in here.
i'm listening to the forerunner music podcast and matt gilman is featured in this episode. i am so encouraged by it that i could cry. thank you Lord for delighting in us.

i love driving. our road trip to arkansas was fun and it was so good to see andrew again. i must say though, when i drove, it was my favorite part. not because i was in control but that is where i get to space out and just drive. when everyone was either asleep or listening to their ipod i got to listen to my praise & worship music and just worship the Lord. the drive up there and back was so beautiful. i was so amazed! the Lord never ceases to amaze me by His creation. it makes me giddy and fills me with joy. as i was driving home and we got to see arkansas in the daylight, this verse came to me: The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord. (ps 45:11). i started to think how the Lord just loves on us and enthralled by our beauty. as i thought this, i just started talking to the Lord and telling Him how enthralled i am by HIS beauty, HIS creation. His creation shows the beauty of himself. i love that! i love being reminded of it. this little thing is one thing that speaks to me the most.

also, when we got into arkansas, it was dark and we got to see the stars! i got so excited because we don't get to see that many stars here in b'ham or tuscaloosa. the only time i see the most stars is when i go to mentone once a year. to see that many stars was just breath-taking. i started to think of the lyric "In Your hands, You hold the stars" in King of Glory. i just started to sing that to Him silently. it was so beautiful.

i was a little kid this weekend seeing all the beauty of His creation. i'm pretty sure everyone got annoyed with me repeating how beautiful the clouds looked and stars. what i just wrote is why i got so excited.

the simplicity of the Lord's love also captures me. creation is one way for me to grasp onto His love for me. he has blessed me with the nature that is all around me. it's so beautiful that i'm in awe. he delights in me when i'm in the mundane period and when i'm in his presence. i'm so thankful for Him.

here is a taste of what i got to see:
(i wasn't able to capture all of what i wanted since i was driving for the most part).

a long week update

i kind of don't know where to start right now. i feel like so much has happened this past week. some heavy things have been laid upon my heart from the Lord.

we had a creative/praise & worship time. it was wonderful. i'm not much of a painter but this was good. if you want to see them, go look on facebook. i'm a little lazy on posting them right now on here.

Birmingham Prayer Furnace was this past weekend. this was my first time to actually go alone. it was at my church (which i love when it's there). it was weird for me being there but then it was really good for me to be there alone. i can't really describe the feeling.
night watch was great!
midnight-2am set was focused on nations and i dedicated a page in my journal for all different nations that i thought of. i wrote them down & put prayers on the sides of the page.
then the 2-4am set was all about the people who live in the "margins" of society. homeless people, prostitutes, & those who live in poverty were the main subjects focused on in prayer. we mainly prayed for prostitutes. the Lord gave me others to focus on to pray, mainly the foster kids. i feel like they are the ones who are forgotten about the most in our society. so i just prayed for them and the girls who will most likely end up in prostitution and for the generational curse of prostitution to break. it was really awesome for the Lord to give this to me.

i was reading Amos 5 again earlier this week. three times it says to SEEK the Lord and LIVE. then i just start praying and i see God as man crying out to us saying, "SEEK ME AND LIVE! SEEK ME ASHLEY, SO YOU CAN LIVE." show me how to fully seek You Lord. i hate that this can be so hard to do. my heart is heavy with these words. SEEK HIM. wow.

i saw harry potter opening night. we had to get to the theater two hours early! so we sat in the theater an hour and a half before the movie started. it was fun though... being with mal, kimber, kendall, & kristen. i have missed tuscaloosa and my friends. what's even better is that i didn't get any nightmares from the movie. i prayed i wouldn't.

kate left for her family vaca in cali yesterday. i miss her so much already. but we got to text tonight which i loved.

the Lord is moving in my friends' lives. i love it! especially since it's my group of friends from high school.
i'm trying to learn how to desire what the Lord desire's and not my own desires. it's hard! i'm learing though!

i'm off to arkansas for the weekend with eric, kendall, and todd. this should be fun!

"i've been praying... i'm on hold right now." -elliott

love it. i should start saying this when people ask me what i'm doing next.

wow, so the Lord protected christy and i tonight as i was driving her home. we were leaving tip-top after a great night with us two, marc, and katelyn. we had a night of honesty. stuff that we had gone through and what we thought about everything. it was great because we are uniting as a small group and wanting to seek after God. so we pretty much broke down walls between us. we ended up at tip-top since everywhere we go we get 'kicked out' since nothing stays open late.

so christy and i leave. the way we went to her house was nothing new to either of us except for that we passed two recycle bin trash cans laying on the road (which i almost hit one of them) with trash on the road. so we backed up and christy got out to put the trash back in the bins and put them where they belong. but as she was doing this, we both got these horrible feelings and we thanked God for protecting us and we both knew that demons put those bins there in the road. we did something right tonight. the four of us are uniting, especially us three girls. after i dropped her off i still felt them in the car so i rebuked them in the name of Jesus and they dissapeared. i love that our God is bigger than them. HE helped me get home tonight, he protected me, i have no fear because of Him.

THANK YOU DADDY FOR BEING THERE FOR ME!

cabinets

today has been somewhat productive. i guess.

some of you may know that three days before i left for China last summer my mom had a small grease fire in our kitchen. so, over a year later we finally painted it. which means i paint it. i actually wanted too since i am kind of in a painting mood. so here are the before and after pictures of the cabinets:

before:

after:



now off to the bank to deposit my check from dog sitting/walking last week.
hopefully Christy, Katelyn, and i will be able to have our Revelation Bible Study tonight.

see you later!