Kaitlyn – Page 4 – Thoughts from Blue Eyes

About Kaitlyn

Hi. As a follower of Jesus Christ, my desire is to glorify the living God of the Bible and point others to him through the thoughts and musings of my broken life made whole by him. I'm a blue-eyed thinker and graduate of Moody Bible Institute where I studied Bible and women's ministries. This current chapter of my life involves working as a church administrator in the Big City of Glorious Deep Dish Pizza, supporting our missionaries and local outreach initiatives. I love British period dramas and sharing the gospel with random strangers, and I would like to move back to Wisconsin someday. My prayer is that you know Christ more because of his work in my life.

“Wake Up, You Need to Make Money”

M and her family are missionaries in Africa. Their life has been characterized by moves and shifts, encountering the most broken people, and utter reliance on the Lord.

She didn’t finish her degree at Bible college and is in the process, after almost 20 years, of completing her last two semesters. Because, hey, there was no money, and then they got good jobs and had kids, and then they moved overseas where ministry happened. Now she walks into brothels and shares the Gospel and rescues babies from their pimps and brings them home.

We were eating dinner at Dr. G’s apartment, and I was fascinated by her story. Her husband’s business is what completely supports her ministry to these women, and because of his connections, he’s been able to get them out of trouble on many an occasion.

She said, “What God redeems, he uses.” Her husband’s terrible childhood and exposure to the

Sometimes Quiet is Violent

I remember sitting with Luke on the steps to the alleyway last semester. He was dying inside for lack of peace. Over the next few weeks, we talked and prayed and cried out to God together. I fervently read the Psalms with him. We’d eat french fries and wonder when God would respond.

We didn’t doubt, we just wondered.

I’ve been confronted with the idea that God suffers inconsolably with us, and that discontent breeds love, so we all must be discontent, including God. That he’s impatiently pacing back and forth, waiting for the day when perfection can be restored in heaven. Eden made us lose our innocence, and now we have to face the tragedies and sufferings that accompany knowledge of good and evil. He’s going to wipe our tears away, but I denote a problem with this image of a suffering God who is out of control, doesn’t understand, and doesn’t

Travesty

Sometimes I read something and have to blink back tears.

Tonight I was scanning the news and saw an article about mass illegal immigration from Serbia and beyond through the Hungarian border to reach Western Europe. This has probably been happening for a long time, and I don’t ever pretend to be on top of things. But, tonight, the article was highlighted because of Hungary’s recent decision to seal the border with massive barbed wire and walls.

Accompanying this article was a brutal description of deaths: refugees found floating to shore from capsized boats in the Mediterranean, photos of little girls with hair tangled up in barbed wire, a freezer truck dumped at the border oozing decomposed bodies of Syrians who were trapped inside. They found a baby in there, by the way.

What is this dark world? Why? Sin? Evil? Travesty after travesty?

I can’t call it tragic because it’s expected. Sin has infected

The cross is an instrument of torture. It’s the symbol of who we are in Christ, God’s love, his sacrifice, his awesome grace and cleansing blood. We wear it around our necks, paste it to our walls, build wooden versions of it on our church steeples. We see it so much….have we forgotten what it means?

Bible studies, sermons, small groups, fellowship, even communion and baptism….we have become desensitized to their significance and purpose. Our society has gripped the church and turned it into a selfish, experience-driven buffet that seeks to stuff us with bloated, boring, banal.

We are tired. We refuse to admit it. We are hungry. We don’t know why.

Oh, how the American church has lost its focus! Who can ascend the holy hill of the Lord anymore, as the Psalmist cried out?

Do we pray for Paul’s words to be true in our lives, that we might count everything as loss compared

T-minus

Year 3 is flashing a cruel smile of daunting proportions.

The City has welcomed me back with its usual carelessness. My friends, and Bible College as a whole, however, have been shining the light of Christlike encouragement back into my heart. I am not alone, and am surrounded by precious souls, kids, really, seeking to minister to the broken and chase after the face of our Lord.

I am eager to dig in. I am frightened about what I have to do. I am delighted in what papers, what research, and what projects I have before me. I want to crawl in a hole and let someone else do them for me. I don’t want to have to do an internship. I’m scared.

At the end of summer, and the beginning of a new chapter in my life, God led me to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians. Sitting here and feeling unprepared, insufficient,

Wanted: a way to see beyond my sunglasses

Everyone wears sunglasses of perspective.

It’s hard to value your own at times. The big trendy thing to do is to take pictures with kids in Africa and/or post a Bible verse/indie song lyric on Facebook with a #vscocam landscape photo of some obscure beach. Meanwhile, back in the backwoods, God is moving quietly and has me singing in church on Sundays, hosting a couple ladies’ breakfasts, and selling toys in the next tourist town over.

Is this as exciting as spending my summer feeding widows in Guatemala or travelling the Southeast putting on Gospel camps for kids? Is it as meaningful as interning at a megachurch co-leading worship or studying abroad in the Mediterranean or serving at a family camp in Michigan?

God’s Word tells me the answer is yes. When I started working fast food at age 14, this was a verse I quickly memorized and treasured:

“Whatever you do, work at it

Wanted: balance between relying on God for my future and going after it myself

I want to do well. I don’t do things halfway. I want to be known as someone who is reliable, able, competent.

A drive for excellence is still important — wanting to do well, putting all our effort into a task, seeking to honor God by giving him our best — but we must pray for discernment and conviction t0 make sure these things do not morph into idols of perfectionism.

Especially in a ministry setting, I’ve realized that this can be an iron wall: wanting to do your best, but relying on the Lord means that it’s not in your own power. Add in the the fact that there’s always going to be someone who is “better” than you (read: with writing, teaching, knowledge, gentleness, hospitality, Scripture memorization, master of the Greek text, everyone they talk to gets magically saved and you can’t even manage to effectively communicate your college major

Drinking root beer and hanging with pastors on a Friday night

How can we not be excited about God?

I’ve been working on a short message from Ephesians 1:3-10 that I’m teaching on at our church’s monthly ladies’ breakfast. As I prayed about what to discuss, this subject kept floating back into my head: regaining our awe and wonder of God. Enter in the magnificent blessings we have in Christ.

The apathy is easy. The laziness is easy. Skipping our faithful reading of the Word is easy. And then we grow numb and forget who our Lord is and what exactly he has done for us. No wonder the Israelites were commanded to REMEMBER HIM:

“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that

Today I ran errands

It’s too easy to worry. I hate it.

Sometimes I look around me and wonder if other people are even thinking about some of the things that drive my mind to oblivion. Like, the kind of thinking that just snowballs races runs jumps until I’m standing teetering on the edge of anxiety. Where are the brakes on my thinking?

I know I’m analytical. I write to help me understand what’s going on in my life and what God is doing. Sometimes, though, the analysis slowly draws my head downward until I’m navel-gazing and trapped inside a melodramatic bubble where I forget Jesus is still Lord and that he’s in control because, hey, he made the universe and holds it together. Col 1:15-20.

I’m reading Luke. I’m taking each piece and just studying it, instead of glazing over and neglecting to ask questions: what does Jesus mean? Why did Luke choose to include this

We’re having leftovers for dinner tonight

There is so much left to know about God.

Until about two years ago, I was sort of “yeah-okay-cool” about reading the Bible; I was frustrated that I had a hard time reading it, and I dutifully tried my best to please God by reading it. I didn’t really “study” a whole bunch. I didn’t invest a lot of time into thinking about what I had read, how it affected my beliefs, and what it all meant for reality, for life.

After all, growing up in church, I had essentially heard it all before. Right?

I think that, all too often, we as Christians forget about why we do what we do. Why do you read the Bible? Why do I?

“…that I may know Him,” wrote Paul in Phil 3:10. For too long, I was really only reading the Bible to check it off a list, to feel better, to assuage my own personal

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