Grace

Familiar Phrases

Posted on October 16, 2015 by lainamunoz

For your listening enjoyment while reading: No Longer Slaves

At Team Night this week I told G-d that I was done doing things for Him. I am done waking up early to do devotionals and I’m done with Leadership College. I’m done attending and serving at church for Him. I’m done striving to do what I can to make sure that when I’m 50 I’m still faithfully serving. Why?

~~Because this whole gig isn’t working for me.~~

So I sat. I didn’t tell Him that I was done in the context of ‘Stuff You, this is isn’t something I want to be apart of’ but, I sat there telling G-d I was done because it’s exhausting to try to work for grace. It actually accomplishes nothing. My personality type is a ‘doer’ I want to accomplish things and find an organized approach to make sure that no one sits in a pointless meeting longer than they ever have to.

I forget something so special when I live in fear that if I don’t wake up and read and write every morning that somehow I no longer have the Spirit actively with me. Or if I forgot about Him for a moment I maybe somehow would have a day where I wasn’t being used for anything worthwhile.

“You need to trust His ability to LEAD you more than your ability to follow Him.”

My faithfulness is no reflection of His.

Teamnight was all about songs, the ones we sing to connect to G-d, confess truth of who He is and who we are, and the song that G-d sings over us (Zep. 3:17). So I asked G-d if I could listen in. I wanted to know what G-d was singing over me. It blew my mind when I felt like He was responding with something already dear to my heart, “His banner over me is love”. I don’t know another person or thing on earth that knows what the melody of love is, but He does. He resonated that in my heart and it felt as if my heart responded to the familiar chorus. My mom used to sing a song to me ages ago with those lyrics (His Banner Over me Is Love – I could have found a better version… but these outfits! I also found it extremely appropriate that it was children singing)

Almost everything in my walk with G-d has something to do with Grace, my sister. As we sang No Longer Slaves and proclaimed “I am a child of G-d” over and over, I thought about what it truly means to be a child of someone. I don’t DO things for my parents to get them to love me, in fact I’m sure I’ve done things that would give them every right not to love me but they still do. I think about morning cuddles and that wonderful age of 2-4 years when you just run up to your parents and throw your hands above your head and wait to feel weightless. I’ve never been super emotional or sentimental but at no point in my life do I remember not just waiting for Gracie to throw her arms up towards me. It overwhelms you with love for these little squishy beings when they CHOOSE you. You feel cooler than the other people in the room when they throw a fit until YOU pick them up.

Guys, I shamelessly go on and on about my sister frequently because my heart actually has never understood more of G-d’s love than when I think about her. I legitimately ACHE when I think about how much I love her… and shoot, she’s not even my kid. But a long time ago I asked for something tangible from G-d to understand His love, He gave me grace… and He gave me Grace. And if I don’t even fully understand how much parents love their kids then this is just the beginning of G-d’s love… like the VERY VERY small and humble beginnings.

How great is His love?

“I am surrounded by the arms of a Father

I am surrounded by songs of deliverance”

At this point in the evening I might have started crying at the thought of my sister and the thought of me being G-d’s child, I couldn’t even process or express how much I loved her and then I got a nudge in my Spirit, “I love you more”. Again, my mom used to say this phrase to me (and still does via 9,000 miles of iMessaging). More than I love anything on earth, He loves me MORE (than I understand). G-d knows how to get my attention.

I love you more

I cannot fathom the depths

I sat after telling G-d I was done working for something I already had, and was just there, listening to this song I left up at the top for you all. The bridge starts to sing;

“You split the sea so I could walk right through it,

you drowned my fear in perfect love”

I stood, letting go of the fear that somehow if I didn’t DO something to get His attention I wouldn’t have it. I lifted my hands knowing that He couldn’t leave me there.

((He always picks me up.

((His grace is always enough.

((I am a child of G-d

Out Of The Context: Christmas

Posted on April 8, 2015 by lainamunoz

Welcome to my #ThinkBackThursday this week, I wrote it shortly after my 19th birthday around Christmas time (totally on Christmas day). It’s more of just a prayer and not entirely a Jesus sermon, but it is where I’ve found my heart lately, in full surrender and hopeful request that G-d would be G-d and allow me to be me and hopefully use me everyday along the way. It’s all I really know how to do is lay my requests before G-d and wait on Him; and even with that I am terrible. G-d help me even now, 5 years later and a little bit farther into the path with you. Grow my heart towards You and let there be even more of a willingness to serve Your people and fill me to overflowing with grace. I am needy, but You think about me. Thank You.

For what it’s worth, I give you all I have.

I’m sorry it isn’t pretty, or all that much in the long run.

But I’m willing and ready to change if you want or need me to.

I give you a moldable me. I give you who I am in hopes that You’ll make me better. I give you me, praying that You’ll make me more like you. I let go of fears to give honor and awe to you. I let go of distractions so that You might have my full attention, not out of obligation but out of the LEAST I could give you. Starting now and going into the rest of my life I give it to You. May I never take lightly my service to You and help me to see and re-define who I should be for You.

I love you G-d and I know you love me too.

-Laina

Christmas always reminds me how ridiculously, and undeserving-ly blessed I am. I like all the gifts I got today and somehow I usually sit wishing I had more money or saved better so that this year I could give more. I’m always left with a few people to give presents to AFTER Christmas is over. I don’t see much wrong with that, I just wonder sometimes who stopped today to offer what they could to Jesus? It is after all – – About Him.

Blah blah blah… I’m not about to get on a Christmas lecture on how He is the reason we celebrate, if you don’t know that by now then you’ve been driving with your eyes shut and listening without ears for the months that led up to today. But, for what it’s worth, what have you offered to Him? Not because it’s Christmas, but because He deserves it? Daily. Ha <I can’t believe I started a sentence with a laugh. 8APR2015>, honestly take a look at yourself (I’m looking at my life thus far and the future promise I know I can hold onto) what can you legitimately offer to make the space you’ve taken up worth it? Nothing… Yet somehow when we mix who we are with who G-d wants us to be, HE makes us worth something. But He won’t force himself on you or change you without your allowance. You have to GIVE Him the gift of yourself. Which is almost comical when I think of my life ever being a gift I’d want to present to anyone.

((It’s ALMOST embarrassing))

I don’t understand why G-d chose to love me. All I know is that He did.

I don’t understand why I would somehow make an acceptable gift for the Creator. But somehow He sees it in me.

I don’t understand how G-d orchestrates all of our lives into a beautiful array of hope and progress. But oh, He does.

All I can do is be thankful that I live FREE, with a family that loves me, with friends that miss me when I leave, with jobs that are teaching me how to become who I’m supposed to be.
And despite how messy it is, I have a Creator who is constantly changing the image of who I am into who He is and what He wants me to be.

Jesus, I’m not much and I don’t understand what you see in me, but here I am.

My whole heart for You… Happy Birthday (ish)

Ephensetical and Ephesiastical Thoughts (Revisited)

Posted on March 18, 2015 by lainamunoz

Please enjoy this revisited post from 15 August 2012, I know I (re)learned some things about living with the LORD and realizing how BIG my savior is. He has excellent plans for us and He also has commands for us to live out. He is good.

“As a prisoner for the LORD, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; bearing with one another in love.” Ephesians 4:1-2 (NIV)

Well, dang… The Gospel just cuts straight to the point there. Paul urges us to LIVE. Not to wait around or get by – but, to take the ‘todays’ and live them out in a manner that is worthy of what we have been called to. We’ve all been given titles and responsibilities that we don’t deserve, as well as given the chance to do our best with them. While we are doing all of that we are told to be completely humble, not just a little bit but with all of who we are. We are told to be grounded and to be level minded. I think the second verse here is completely to remind us to fight human nature – being patient and bearing together in love? Really?

((Yeah, because we all know we are naturally awesome at that…))

**Again, this is grace – we use up what we should and then some and we are given another chance AND love and encouragement to try again.**

We’ve been given to give it. We have been show how and told to repeat it and G-d’s gifts are the only way we can accomplish this. His love is SO BIG.

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of G-d. Now to Him ((all of it… all praise and honor and glory that is in His son, let it be given to Him)) who is ABLE to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:17b-21 (NIV)

Thats a meaty mess of intensity.

(Thur. 19 Mar 2015) – G-d has been reminding me of this constantly lately. That He is ABLE to do more than I can imagine or ever think. He has so much good in store for me and His good is beyond my greatest thoughts. I’m learning how to receive, I’m learning how to ask and expect things from Him. His plans are always better and I get to be apart. I don’t want to step on my own toes and talk about what is rattling in my brain for tomorrows post… But dang. G-d is just good. (end)

Story Time With Laina