It's Time for a Change...

After a few years of blogging here (and a few years of ignoring you!  I'm so sorry!), I've decided it's time for a change.  I feel God leading me into a ministry that hopefully, one day, I can do full-time, and I've decided to reformat my blog to coincide with that.  If you'd like to follow my Jesus adventures (and all my everyday-ramblings), you can find me at aimersansfin.blogspot.com.  My plan is to blog there much more frequently than I have here in the past several months.

You might also notice that over there I go by Lise, rather than Ashley/Ash...  It's just a new nickname I'm adjusting to, and that I rather like.  But feel free to continue calling me Ashley or Ash if you so desire.  I'm still Ashley, after all.  :)

Here's to talking this new journey with some friends.

With love,
Ash (or Lise)

A Greater Grace

I am really good at sabotaging myself. I mean, scary good.

How easily I mess up. How easily I lash out at others--even across the face-less internet--in my righteous indignation, how easily I waste the moments God has given me for opportunity to do good, how easily I fall into temptation. Sometimes (heaven forbid!) eagerly. Why do I do the things that I do?

In Exodus 33, Moses says to God, "If you yourself don’t go with us, then don’t send us away from this place. If you don’t go with us, no one will know that you are pleased with me and with your people. These people and I will be no different from any other people on earth." I saw that in a devotional I get sent to my email inbox and it nearly stole my breath away. Moses refused to leave that mountain without God, and yet I don't even remember to bring Him to work with me.

How easily I fall.

And how easily I hate myself afterward. And how easily I could take a stand for the truth, for the good, how easily I could be the change I want to see in the world. But I don't.

Sometimes I make myself sick. (Don't we all?) Who among us doesn't cry out with Paul, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst"? I do.

Sometimes I hang my head in shame and just weep. Sometimes I don't even know how to talk to Him, when He is so holy, and I am so... not. I can even see the good plans He has for me, and I seem to sabotage these heavenly dreams that have become my own. Why do I do the things that I do?

But oh, how I love the words of James 4:6: "But He gives a greater grace."

Oh, praise God for the greater grace. How lost I would be without it--the very air I breathe.

Love,
Ash, the (Redeemed) Dreamer