Beauty & the Beast in 3D = Revelation for Sarah

      Go figure that I go to watch Beauty and the Beast in 3D tonight and I come back gaining more revelation on the topic that I will never cease to pursue with all my heart. It's inevitable for you to watch a princess movie without seeing it as a love story. I mean, it's every girls dream! A prince comes and sweeps you off your feet, la di da di da. But this is not that kind of love story. There was a whole lot of selflessness that took place in this movie. It wasn't a "love at first sight" emotion that drew Belle and the Beast together. It was pure selfless love.

   Lets recap on the movie a bit. So beginning of the movie it's the prince's selfishness that gets him into his little enchanted predicament. Then you add self pity on top of selfishness, this guy really is a beast! Poor enchanted objects, they gotta put up with this guy. Then here Belle comes along already doing a selfless act to save her father. Then we have selfless act #2 where she takes the place of her father so that he can live. (Who does that sound like? *cough* JESUS *cough*). Then after all this, the Beast acts out of his selfishness and tries to force Belle to do things with him. We all know in the back of his mind he was just using her to break the spell. How does Belle react? She continues to show compassion for him! She chooses to look past his self pity induced grumpiness thats added on to the already present selfishness. She saw him for who he was! Not what he was acting like. Now don't get me wrong, the beast was totally in the wrong. There is nothing right about mistreating people to get your way. Selfishness is never love, but here is what Belle knew (and Jesus I might add).
"Love loves to love and the reward of love is love." Love will love even the most difficult and undeserving people. Love will treat someone as though they've never been hurt. And when you sow love, you're going to reap love. The reward of love is love! You can't sow love and get hate. It just doesn't work. It may take days, weeks, months and even years but love ALWAYS reaps love.
(Insert Galatians 6:9 - "Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.")
We see this happen in the movie. Finally, Belle's constant portrayal of love starts to melt the Beast's heart. He doesn't seem to care about himself and breaking the spell, he begins to care about her heart and her desires. When she expresses that she really misses her father and would love to see him, he gives her a way. And when she sees that she's needed, he lets her go.
Let me just say at this point in the movie I began to tear up. All this revelation of what God has been teaching me was being unraveled before my very eyes and it was just the most beautiful thing ever! (and it wasn't just the 3D glasses). After the beast let's Belle go, and Cogsworth comes in and asks why he let her go what is his answer? "Because I love her"!!!!!!! At that moment my entire being lept within me and screamed "HE LEARNED TO LOVE!!!!!!!!!!" It was no longer about breaking the spell for him. He genuinely loved her enough to put her before himself, even if it cost him everything! If it came down to the end and Jesus looked him in the face and asked the Beast if he learned to love, he would be able to say YES! It doesn't even matter that his past was spent as a selfish beast, he learned to love and THAT is what it's all about. You can be the most successful person in the world but if you don't learn to love, it's all for nothing.
Well, we all knew that Belle already loved him. She showed him love and her love didn't return void. It's the best happily ever after there can be! Their love is a love that can last because unlike Cinderella, it's not a love based on a one night stand. It's rooted in selflessness. Ugh! Now THAT is a love story!

Your destiny isn't tomorrow. It's today.

    Lately I've had to face a lot of closed doors. It seems like every door possible in my life closed in a matter of just a few months. I went from the fast pace of leading a School of Worship, to leading 6 weeks of prayer and worship and recording an album, and working like a maniac to being trapped in my house pretty much 24/7. Clearly God is trying to say something and I think it's about time I listen, but I'll be honest, all these instances have left me with a great sense of loss. Most of us know, especially in this economy, how hard it is to count your blessings when the list appears to keep getting smaller and smaller. It's easy to praise God and trust him when everything is going good and you have everything you need, but it's a whole other story when you're searching frantically to find something to be thankful for. I guess it's through experiences like this that Paul learned to say that he was able to be content with a lot but also with little. (I would say nothing, but that's never true because no matter how bad off we are, as long as we still have breath we have something to be thankful for.)

       God has really been teaching me that instead of looking ahead at where I want to be (or really just where I think I should be) I need to focus more on what I can do right now with what I've been given. It's so easy to get caught up in striving to reach goals when that's where your eyes are fixed. But that's not what God tells us to do. He says that when we seek His Kingdom first and make that priority, everything else just falls into place. 

  So lets look at the parable of the talents for a minute. Most know the story, God gave them each a certain amount of talents. One buried his, another doubled his and the other like really multiplied it. (like more then the second guy because he was trusted with more). My point with this is, God gives stuff to us all. Some have more then others but we all have been entrusted with something. Even if all you have is breath in your lungs, you have something to offer the world. You have something to help bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth. That is the goal. I really feel like instead of always looking ahead at where we are not at, or what we don't have, it makes us a slave to the future. If we focus on what we have been given right here, right now and steward it well (meaning do everything possible to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth with what we have right now) then God can trust us with more. But if we are always focused on what we don't have, its like burying what we do have. It's a lie from the enemy to believe that you're not useful until you've reached your "destiny" because you will always feel like you need to be better at something or have more of other things. But what if your destiny is everyday waking up and looking at what you have in your hands and saying "God, thank you for everything you've entrusted me with. How do I bring your Kingdom to earth with all this?" This mindset frees us from the lie that we haven't yet arrived and are useless until we do. It also frees us from the expectations and opinions of where others think we should be. There is a reason you are alive today. You have a destiny. Don't wait for conditions to be perfect for you to walk in it because they never will be. Do it NOW!