Awakening - The story behind the title

John 14:21 - Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.

I don't know if you've heard Chris Tomlin's song, Awakening (lyrics are at the bottom), but it is truly what the Lord used to speak to my heart while trying to come up with a title for this blog.  If you haven't heard it, I highly recommend that you find some quietness in your day and just let this song minister to your heart.  It is a major prayer that I pray for our family.  This song will eventually be on the blog...I just need to figure out how to do that :) 

An "awakening"....it's what happened to our souls...they were "awakened" to adoption.  Adoption has always pulled on my heartstrings, but almost 2 yrs. ago, the Lord lifted the veil and it was time.  We were awakened.  Our eyes were suddenly opened to glimpses of how near this is to His heart....how much of a need...how much He cares, and how He was choosing us to do this. 

As we were "awakened," and I was listening to this song, I felt the Lord saying to me, "This is the Christian  life, Kristi.  Life is made up of constant awakenings."  It moved me, and it's been ringing in my ears since.  If we are passionately living for Jesus, then shouldn't our lives be constantly awakened?  Constantly becoming more like him...seeing more like He does and loving more like He does.  We should consistently be in the midst of an awakening to something.  Consistently having these moments of, "Ok God, that's what you're teaching me!"  These moments where we feel our souls being awakened to His will...the Holy Spirit speaking and veils being lifted.  It's as if we were in the dark before, and then suddently the sun comes bursting through.  And if we don't feel like we are, then we better ask, because the awakenings that He has for us in this life are endless.  As I look back on our (Cole and myself) lives together, I can see many of these awakenings.  Awakenings to being a Biblical wife, financial brokenness, moving to the inner city of Peoria, parenting, the Lord's will in expanding our family, and adoption.  The list could go on, and I pray that it does!

My question to you would be, what is God currently awakening you or your family to?  If you don't know, then I would encourage you to ask :)  We are privileged to serve such a loving Savior that He just loves when we ask for him to give us some glimpses of Himself!  He is the one that sent His son to die for us so that we are able to spend eternity with Him.  Creator of the universe....HOLY!  And HE longs to speak with US.  We are so unworthy...what a privilege!

As we desire this, we must consistently be putting ourselves in a position to be awakened and to hear from Him.  We must consistently be in His word and spending time with him.  Praising him and involving Him in ALL areas of our lives.  Surrounding ourselves with Him.  I referenced a scripture at the top in John.  In this scripture, he says that whoever has God's commands and keeps them is the one that loves him.  The major way to know His commands and keep them is to be in the word consistently.  If we truly are passionately in love with Christ, then we will long to be in his word and spend time with Him.  He goes on to say that He will love us and show himself to us.  This is exactly what an awakening is...Him showing Himself to us.  A powerful upclose and personal experience with the Almighty and our King.  How amazing that He would do that!

Oh how I pray, that He would continue to awaken our souls and we would continue to hear His voice.  That not only our families and city would be awakened but that the nations would. May His will be done and may we desire that and trust it, even when things look messy and don't make sense.  May HIS will be done even when it's not our own.  May our prayer be for him to make HIS will ours.  That we would get smaller and HE would get bigger...lifted high and glorified in our lives! 

The amazing part is that we don't deserve any of this, and He pours out His mercy and grace on us and reveals Himself to us anyway!  You see, only Jesus can truly awaken.  And when He does, it's powerful, and we are different because of it...a little bit more like Him and less like us.

Awakening Lyrics
Chris Tomlin

In our hearts, Lord, in this nation Awakening Holy Spirit, we desire Awakening
For You and You alone Awake my soul Awake my soul and sing For the world You love Your will be done Let Your will be done in me
In Your presence, in Your power Awakening For this moment, for this hour Awakening
For You and You alone Awake my soul Awake my soul and sing For the world You love Your will be done Let Your will be done in me
For You and You alone Awake my soul Awake my soul and sing For the world You love Your will be done Let Your will be done in me
Like the rising sun that shines From the darkness, comes a light I hear Your voice And this is my awakening
Like the rising sun that shines From the darkness, comes a light I hear Your voice And this is my awakening Awake my soul
Like the rising sun that shines Awake my soul Awake my soul and sing From the darkness comes a light Awake my soul Awake my soul and sing
Like the rising sun that shines Awake my soul Awake my soul and sing Only You can raise a life Awake my soul Awake my soul and sing
In our hearts, Lord, in the nations Awakening

Time to Confess...

Thank you so much to all of you involved with and following this amazing journey the Lord is leading us on!  You are amazing and so precious to us.  I know this for sure...this would NOT be possible without God's people!  THANK YOU!!!

So I am FINALLY doing this blog thing.  Those of you that know me well have heard me say over the past year (seriously), "I'm really wanting to start my blog soon."  Well, it's not so soon, since it took longer than a year, but I AM finally beginning.  The truth is that there is a part of me that has resisted this and for a variety of reasons.  I feel that the facebook and blog world (which can both be such good things) often have us all portraying only the really good things about our families...you know only what we want people to see.  While I am a HUGE fan of positivity, it's not the whole picture, and I often fall into the comparison trap...the comparing myself to others instead of Jesus.  I am just so easily entangled into the comparison thing.  For this reason, I limit so much of my time doing these things. 

However, I have felt prompted by the Lord to do this.  Some reasons....1. To update those of you that are wanting updates 2. To document the amazing way the Lord carries us through this 3. To look back on this and see God's hands all over it!  4. To share with our precious child just how many mountains God moved to get them here. 5. To glorify our MIGHTY Savior.  6. To create awareness.  We are NOT at all saying that all Americans or Christians should embark upon the adoption journey.  We ARE saying that you should care about what God does...and that includes a variety of areas. 

There are so many important and amazing things going on with all of you and this is not at all more important than any of those things.  We have been so encouraged by so many of YOU and your faithfulness and obedience to the Lord.  I am not assuming there will be any huge following...all I know is that I am supposed to write it and let God take care of the rest. The truth is, I'm not a blogger, and I really don't follow blogs all that much.  I truly have no idea what I'm doing, so your patience is appreciated :)  I have so many things I want to add to this blog...music, videos, and more but I just don't know how to do it yet :)  We'll get there!

Bottom line...I don't want to portray a perfect family picture.  I'm not a fan of fake, and boy would that be fake if I portrayed our family that way.  We are fallen, broken, normal people...unable to do nothing remotely good without Him...striving after Christ and completely not doing that perfectly.  For those of you that know us well, you are very aware of this :)  That's for sure.  If I'm honest, there's a little fear of putting all of this out there.  It's raw, and it's real.  There are so many places this journey will take us that I've never been with the Lord.  It's a risk...and even to my own surprise, when I really thought about my hesitations, I discovered that the really tough things I like to keep "in house."  You know that stuff that I might lose it on if I talk about it in front of people...the raw stuff.  My heart is that we're honest and that God is glorified through this.  That it's HIS name and not our own that is lifted high!  Oh, how I pray that I won't get in the way of this blog thing...that I will get OUT of the way and that you'll truly see our precious Jesus through this.