Hello friends.

A brief praise report.

Today was moving day.  My July sublease in Brookline ended, and I will be moving into a new apartment in Cambridge tomorrow.  In the meantime, I helped my roommate move today and was able to store my few belongings in her moving van.

Funny how one simple factor can throw your whole day off: rain.  Buckets and buckets were pouring down come 11:30am this morning.   We knew there was a thunderstorm forecast, but I didn't realize how debilitating this would be.  Running back and forth between the apartment and moving van, we found ourselves and our belongings drenched.  

12 noon--Enter prayer task force.   I sent out some text messages, asking you to cry out to God on behalf of this wet Boston weather.   Thank you for your prayers girls!  It was a unique feeling, knowing that a cohort of people were uniting in specific prayer for a specific request!  It was a powerful feeling.  Unfortunately, after I sent out the text messages the downpour suddenly increased.  Now I know what they mean by "sheets of rain." 

12:30-- waiting in the apartment by myself.  Cut off from my roommate who was waiting out the rain in the moving van outside.

1:04 --Jenny sends me a text message, "Let me know how things go.  : ) Elijah was a man just like us, he prayed earnestly and God answered."

1:15 --Rain stops!!!

Yay!  Today was a simple demonstration of answered prayer.  Practical prayer for practical matters.  It was SO exciting to be completely humbled on God by prayer, and to feel the power of prayer from others, and then to SEE prayer answered.  Thank you God so much for reminding me of your realness.  

Thanks so much for all your prayers today girls.  God heard us.  Let's not hesitate to share prayer requests with each other...then we can experience the excitement of receiving God's answers!

Can't wait to come back to *sunny* California.

love

Rach

Sisters

I am so blessed that God is working in me and MY SISTERS, not just Jenna and Melissa, but all of you. Most of you have now probably seen this 100 times, but for those who haven't, I thought I would post an email I sent to Allison and Rachel about what God is doing in my life:

"Hello to my currently non-Davis sisters,
I have some exciting news, which may come as shocking, but to me is exciting and which I hope will encourage both of you. Last Tuesday night, Grace Alive! had a great worship night, which I felt kind of dead during. Afterwards, I went and confessed some sin to the Perrys that I had held back... I was there from about 10pm-12am and felt that God was done with the revival in my life. Yay! But no.
Over the next few days, I shared my frustration with Mrs. Perry that God still felt so distant, even though I had made such a huge sacrifice in my own eyes. I was upset. Why was God still not speaking? Everyone was telling me to just obey, to seek God with all my heart, and that he would reveal himself. But that if he wasn't, I had sin in my life that was preventing his presence. I was getting pretty ticked off at what I felt was conflicting messages. Maybe this really was just a hope thing, where maybe God would reveal himself, but maybe I was just doomed to a life of mechanical obedience.
On Thursday I left for the high school/ college backpacking trip. I was so excited! I was able to be the oldest girl there and have such a huge role in some young girls' lives. Maybe since I had gotten rid of this sin, God was going to do AWESOME things through me. I could do it and be there and touch someone, I knew it. I gave a great sounding testimony on Thursday night, and then contributed some amazing sounding things to our conversation about devotions on Friday morning.
Then Friday afternoon came around. I was on a hike, and screwed up pretty badly. I was given a very clear direction and chose to disobey it and ended up spending an hour and a half and six extra miles lost in the woods. Alright, so after self-reflection and a firm word from Mr. Slaughter, it was clear that I had compromised my testimony and that God was speaking to me I had a proud, rebellious heart and problems with authority. I thought God was just showing me more sin and spent time on Friday night praying in a group of girls rather self-righteously about how glad I was to be part of the revival and that God was speaking to me.
Saturday afternoon. We get home and I was pretty exhausted and had a message from Mrs. Perry on my phone. I called her back and she encouraged me to consider whether I was actually born again or whether I was just backslidden, as I had thought. I was pretty mad. How dare she ask me that? After all my service? I even babysat her children! Whatever, I knew where I was with God. I was just backslidden. After all, he had been showing me sin. That meant he was working in me. I began to read my emails, one from Sharon that she was having a worship/prayer night that night at her house and another from Jessica Blizard saying she had become a Christian. I thought it made sense, no wonder Mrs. Perry was asking me. It was just on the back of Jessica's conversion. She wasn't really worried about me, just trying to shake me up a little.
I really didn't want to go to Sharon's that night, but Jenna had given me Jessica's bible/notebook to return and I felt like I had to. When I got there, I was ready for another meeting that I could endure and then could go hang out with friends or rent a movie to watch at home. But then I got there, and Sharon was crazy! She was talking about being filled with the Spirit and not sleeping or eating. I was like, this is ridiculous. And then she begin to rebuke me for always having on a veneer and not being real. She asked me over and over whether God was calling me to turn or to return. I was furious. She didn't know me. Didn't she know I had just confessed sin Tuesday night? I was untouchable. Mrs. Perry was there as well. I begin to pray, God I don't know what you want, but in my head, I was thinking "duh, return."
Mrs. Perry called out in the middle of the prayer "Angela, do you want to be born again?" "Yes!" "Angela, are you born again?" (silence). "Angela, have you ever committed your mind, body, soul and spirit completely to God?" (silence). I then prayed that God would draw me, because I didn't feel him. I didn't feel him drawing me. Mrs. Perry challenged me: "This is not a feeling, its a decision. A choice. You make that decision now and you drag your feelings behind you." Wow. All of a sudden I felt a release. I felt the Spirit inexplicably call me, show me the hideousness of my sin, and Saturday night I turned. I gave my life to Christ in complete and total surrender. My eyes were opened and all sorts of things began to make sense that never had before.
On Friday, I had read a verse from Isaiah 9:18,19a "Surely wickedness burns like a fire; it consumes briers and thorns, it sets the forest thickets ablaze so that it rolls upwards in a column of smoke. By the wrath of the Lord Almighty, the land will be scorched and the people will be fuel for the fire." I kept getting this picture in my mind of a blackened, charred, smoldering field throughout Friday and the next day. I have never had a visual picture of anything spiritual as clearly as that before. I prayed, "God, if that is my life, show me that there is some green there. There must be something alive. I don't want to have to ask God for life, I want to cultivate what is already there." But every time I saw it: black. charred. dead. smoke. On Sunday morning I woke up, and God gave me this picture again. The same field. But this time, a very small, very weak, very feeble looking sprout coming out with a single leaf.
I am so excited that God showed me what I was missing, why he felt so far away. There was nothing green! I couldn't cultivate a dead field. But praise be to God! He saved me! For the first time! After 19 years of being in Grace Valley, 2 years of leadership in Grace Alive! I am currently going through a lot, and trynig not to depend on emotions. I am struggling with doubt, with pride, with the veneer coming back on. But this time, unlike any other false confession I have made, I know that "Our God is Mighty to save!" and that God is faithful and will carry out to completion this work what he has started in me.
I would like to ask for both of your prayers as I start this new life and "make every effort" to enter into His rest, while putting off a great multitude of sins he has shown me and is continuing to show me, especially pride and a desire to return quickly to a reputation of being a strong, independent Christian. Thanks, Angela"

Praise God I have sisters in a whole new way now!

Recent Happenings...

Here are some things going on with me lately (email I sent out to a few people)...
from Psalm 10...
2 In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak,
who are caught in the schemes he devises.
3 He boasts of the cravings of his heart;
he blesses the greedy and reviles the LORD.
4 In his pride the wicked does not seek him;
in all his thoughts there is no room for God.
5 His ways are always prosperous;
he is haughty and your laws are far from him;
he sneers at all his enemies.
6 He says to himself, "Nothing will shake me;
I'll always be happy and never have trouble."


Not all of you know, but lately God has really been speaking to me (through the elders, related to a confession of serious sin that came out about a month ago) that I need to change and have Him as Lord in the realest sense possible. I have been struggling through what this means, blaming my sin on other people, and a lot of the verses above apply to me: I have ensnared others in my sin, I have boasted of it or at least said things in a way that was not truly repentant--made light of it, etc. I have spent more time with those who would excuse my sin and less time with those who would confront me, I have not left ANY room in my thought life for God (yeah, I was thinking through/struggling through things, but I put other things in priority above Him, I failed to have real, powerful devotions and let Him speak to me, and I failed to see His will as more powerful and more necessary than my own). Things have been going relatively well for me and I thought that was all because of me, not God. Yet my life hasn't been reflecting God--I have been ashamed of Him and have not obeyed His laws. Unfortunately, even sin did not shake me. I was content rebelling and drawing further and further away from Him.

Yet praise God for His sovereignty and His divine appointment in authority for my life!! He's given me a new opportunity to turn to Him, and He is proving that He is a bigger God than I thought He was! I have committed my life to Him like never before and asked Him to be MY Lord like never before! Girls, it's going to be a long. hard. road. I am going to be tempted to lie and tell you that everything is ok when it is not. I am going to be struggling against sin that I have delved into and now must face the consequences for. I am going to be struggling to listen to Satan and give up and not work hard at this new life. I am going to be (and am being) tempted to sin in my thought life, to hold onto idols, to hold onto some sort of facade that I am ok when I am not. I am struggling even now to see what God wants me to give up--there are the obvious areas, but there is so much more in my life that needs to come under control. I want to serve God for His glory not for any type of third thing--and there is so much more that I, in my flesh, want! Please pray for me as I struggle with all these things; from the most obvious to the smallest. From the most mundane to the most difficult. Please continue to pray that I give EVERYTHING to Him--not a piece but full surrender. I want to not be emotional but to serve Him wholeheartedly.

Feel free...

...to share what God is doing in your life!
God has been working mightily and I want to give HIM the praise for His mercy to me!

Your mercy, my God, is the theme of my song!
The joy of my heart and the boast of my tongue
Thy free grace alone from the first to the last
Hath won my affection and bound my soul fast.
Alleluia!!