simple things.

As I sit down in a Nashville coffee shop with my headphones in and pen ready, I think my thoughts are headed towards my usual prayer-type journaling. That's all that seems to come out when I write anymore. Not that it's a bad thing; it had just been awhile since the "inspiration bug" hit me to really journal again. It was a line in a song by Elevation Worship that gave me the itch.

"Show the world that Mercy is alive."

How incredible is it that we worship & praise our God by using seemingly simple nouns...?
Sounds silly when put that way, but how many songs do we sing that regard Him as "love", "mercy", etc. These words, these nouns that we use on a daily basis, are not ones that we use without meaning. We use them because what they stand for, what they mean, fully encompass who He is.

I can't count how many times I've been in situations where I've written off someone's actions as "Oh, that's just ___________." There's no telling how many times my friends have had to explain my choices, my weirdness, and my outspokenness as "Well, that's just Katie." My name encompasses my personality, my actions, my thought processes...everything about me. Now, think about how we were using those "simple" words interchangeably with the name of our God.

It doesn't belittle Him into some easy-to-understand, one-word version of God that we can pick out of our pocket when we need said "love", "mercy", "grace". We would be completely missing the point; misunderstanding the God we claim to know & forming Him into a slightly more holy version of ourselves due to our understandings & definitions of these words. Worse yet, we would depreciate the Almighty Creator of the universe by placing Him in our selfish lives when we deem it convenient, instead of understanding that He needs nothing from us. And never has.

Plainly said, "This is His world, [& strictly by His grace alone] we are just living in it."

We use these words to speak His name because He is the epitome of each of them. His true & unchanging character gives them their definition; not the other way around. That is, if we can separate the world's standards of these words from what He claims. We must use Him as the plumb line to define what these four & five letter words mean. Words that have themselves been belittled in our culture when we claim to "love coffee" (which I most definitely do on a daily basis). But now, in order to understand in full our Father, we must look to His character, His actions, & His promises. We must dig deep into His word so that it reveals who He is in relation to our misconstrued version of Him we see in our world. All of the things we as humans crave in this world: love, hope, refuge, grace, & even the physical like water, bread, shelter; it's not a coincidence that these are all names that even He gives to Himself.

He knows our needs. He sees our struggles.

...and He wants us. Seek & you shall find Him. He promises that.

And praise God that His promises can be trusted.