Struggling

Each time he said,
'My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.'
So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.
That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that
I suffer for Christ.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.

He's in the whisper..

RS for A Level has challenged me so much this year..
My teacher continues to inspire me everyday, an incredible woman with a heart
the size of Jupiter and a laugh that could reach that far, who everyday stands up for her faith when being criticised by atheists and teens who dont want to listen..

Recently we have been learning about Jesus' miracles..
We studied the miracle of the Widow at Nain, one no one really knows but has such
a beautiful meaning to it..
As Jesus passes through Nain he arrives to meet a funeral taking place to which the
dead boy is being carried out with a concession of mourners and his weeping mother
walking along side him..

This is my favourite part. When Jesus steps in.
Luke tells us that
'When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, 'Don't cry.'

Oh sweet goodness..
He then raises the boy from death.
Something he was never asked for, but he chose to do just because he LOVED her
and his HEART went out to her.

Jesus' heart goes out to you and I..
When we are crying, feeling alone or just lost, Jesus is filled with compassion
and gently whispers to us 'Don't cry'

He longs to heal our hearts..
He wants to direct our paths..
He cries every tear alongside us..
He looks after us when we dont even look to him..
He reaches out to sinners, outcasts, athiests and steals their hearts..
He looks after the poor..
He looks after the rich.
He never leaves even though we walk away again and again.. and again..
He DIED for us..
He cant wait to party with us in Heaven..

Listen for Jesus whispering your name..
He wasnt in the fire, he wasnt in the wind, he wasnt in the quake..

He's in the whisper here.. 

I'm so unworthy...

 Isaiah 53 ; The Suffering Servant..

'Who has believed our message?

To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm? 

My servant grew up in the Lord's presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground.

There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him.

He was despised and rejected - 

a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.

We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.

Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.

And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins!

But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.

He was beaten so we could be whole. 

He was whipped so we could be healed.

All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God's path to follow our own.

Yes the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.

He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. 

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. 

And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth.

Unjustly condemned, he was led away. 

No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream.

But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people. 

He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a 

criminal; he was put in a rich man's grave.

But it was the Lord's good plan to crush him and cause him grief. 

Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. 

He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord's good plan will prosper in his hands. 

When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. 

And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be

counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.

I will give him the honours of a victorious soldier, because he exposed himself to death.

He was counted among the rebels.

He bore the sins of many and interceded the rebels.'

You are holy, 

great and mighty, 

the moon and the stars declare who you are.

I'm so unworthy, but still you love me. 

Forever my heart will sing of how great you are... 

I havent written a blog in a long time.
I was in Uganda for three weeks recently and when I came home I busied myself with meeting people and keeping my mind off it because I knew i'd only cry and not stop.

Over the past few days I've been feeling distant, upset and just generally quite down.
Tonight, after reading, I felt a nagging to go and write a blog.
I'd just prayed and knowing God wanted something I got up and turned the on.
Going onto blogs I follow and a friend suggested I would like, I began to break down.
I havent stopped crying and am yet to finish.
I read a 'love letter' from God which was completely everything that I needed to have spoken into my life.

I feel that God has placed me in certain places during my life for a reason. There are times that I can look back on and know why God put me there.
Right now, I dont have a clue.
I can only pray and trust that God, who knows me more than anyone, will eventually reveal it to me.

I sometimes forget that God already knows, he knew I was going to look at that blog tonight and he knew that it would be exactly what I needed, so here's what i've learnt.

God loves me.
He knows my heart
and still through all my crap, LOVES me.

It's God's job to change them..

Last year at Summer Madness, an artist called Paul Colman was telling a story about a gay man he had met on one of his flights across the world. There he had said,
        'It's our job to love them and God's job to change them'..

At the time I loved this saying. It became my motto, what I was going to base my life on, loving people and letting God change them.
But its not really that easy. I'm the type of person who wants to fix things, to make them the way they should be and to try and make people feel happy.

Recently this has challenged me, to just love people and not to try to change them. Not to try to fix all their problems, which always stresses me out way too much, but to let God do his thing which is far better than I could ever do.
I think that sometimes when we try to help or 'fix' people and dont succeed we think we havent done our best or have failed at making them happy..

The thing i've realised is that even though God loves my attempts to help people, he knows what they need and he is the only one who can provide it. So, its time to sit back and allow God to change people..
It's my job to love them.

You make beautiful things..

I was told to listen to this song 'Beautiful Things' by Gungor the other day by a friend.. He said I'd like it and usually he's right when it comes to songs I enjoy..
But this one really spoke to me.

The chorus is so simple yet brilliant, it says...
'you make beautiful things out of the dust, you make beautiful things out of us' 
That simple, wonderful line pretty much sums up God.. He took what was once nothing and made the world. He made light and dark, he made every single animal on this earth.. How many species of bird is there? Never mind the bears and the dogs and the ones in the ocean! He made everything..
And out of the dust he made you and me..
Me. Silly little Leah glover, a girl who deserves nothing, yet he makes me new..

And this is the thing. No matter how much other people tell us about being beautiful and about what beautiful looks like, we already are.
God makes beautiful things.. He didnt make you and say 'you're not so beaut, but you'll do'
He made us all uniquely beautiful.. Whether that is to be able to sing, draw, play sports, talk to people, encourage people or any other gift, he made us beautiful.

Another friend asked me the other night what my favourite thing about God was..
My favourite thing about God is that he didn't have to make our world beautiful, yet he chose to..
He didn't have to give us the amazing world we have, but he wanted to.

He didn't have to paint the skies with blues, greens, reds and oranges or sparkle them at night time with the stars, but he wanted to..
He chose to give us something beautiful to look at, as a reflection of him and his majesty. But also as a reflection of us.

If God took so much time to make our world this extravagant and mesmerising place, then he definitely made you and me with more precision, delicacy and love..

I talk to countless girls - and guys sometimes - every week who are so insecure and doubt their worth..
But when I look at them, all I see is God's handiwork.. His artists hands that framed and sculpted every part of them even before they were born..
They are so precious, if only they could see it.

Psalm 139
'You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mothers womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvellous - how well you know it.
You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!'

We were made beautifully unique and with a purpose.
God doesn't make mistakes.
You make beautiful things out us...

Nameless

I was in the library the other day 'studying', well, trying to find anything to do but study..
To the left of me was a bookshelf that had biographies on it of many famous stars including Jordan, Lorraine Kelly and Kerry Katona..
I began to look at the biographies and wonder how anyone could write a book solely on their life and the trauma or whatever that they have experienced, and how anyone would want to read it!

But then I remembered that God's wrote a book on my life, I just am yet to live it out.
Will I always follow his page after page plan? No, not at all, because sometimes I like to do my own thing and shy away from God.. But even still, God took the time to think out this plan for my life, a plan for me to prosper and to live my life to the full.
Its then that I realise the enormity of God and how the same God who created everything on this earth, loves and cares for me.

We each have a story. A story that God has planned and made for us. We may face the future terrified of what it will bring, but we can know that God's already seen it.
I dont want to become like those celebrities that you can remember the face of but never quite the name..The ones who have left impressions on this world for the wrong reasons and the ones who will look back on their lives and regret a lot of things.

I want to look back on my story, sitting beside God and hear him say 'you done good daughter' ..
Yea, i'll fall short, we all do. But knowing that God holds me in his hands makes me feel so comforted and loved that I forget about my worries and my fears and just let God be God.

God, lead and guide me, for your plan is greater than anything I could ever imagine.

How does the heart break?

Recently I have been asked this question a lot and been asking myself this a lot as well.. 

What makes a heart truly broken? And who says that its been broke in the first place?

Looking back over this past year, I have gone from highs to lows to highs and lows again.

A roller-coaster of emotions that seem never-ending and at times, been the most challenging of my life. But it has been through it all that I've learnt to cling to God..

For He is the only thing that remains constant.. 

Nothing can compare to the heartbreak that God felt, the day he put his son on the cross and had to turn his face away..

And none of my mediocre 'heart breaks' can begin to describe what God felt.. If he did that for me, then why do I question his love? Why do I question where God is or what he's doing? He had a plan from the beginning, so now I'm ready to allow it to happen.. with Christ living, IN ME.

In my RS exam today, the final question was about mercy and how it may be challenging and difficult.. It was there, in that stupid exam hall, that God helped me to understand that its never gonna be easy, but if we are to be like Jesus and follow his example, then I'm ready to try until my heart breaks for those who require the mercy of God and his love in their lives.

No matter what comes my way, if Gods there, then why should I doubt? Why should I even pretend that I have it all together? Because when I fall at his feet, he picks me straight back up, dusts me down and guides me to the place he wants me to be. 

My nanny used to say to me, 'love is limitless', and she is right. 

Jesus loved limitlessly so why do we still find things to limit people with? God never sets limits for who He loves, and so this is what I am going to do.. 

I'm going to love, and not only love, but live with love. I'm going to live my life surrounded by God's love and only then, will I truly begin to love others without limits.

I want God to break my heart...

I want it to break for the lost,

I want it to break for those who need God, 

for my friends and family, 

for those who are in despair,

for those who break my heart..

'I am not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward - to Jesus. I'm off running, and I'm not turning back..' Philippians 3 v12