Put it in its Place

This semester I have had a constant whisper from that still small voice: "Put it in its place."

Worrying about school?  About work?  About money?  About illness?  About politics?  About time?

Put it in its place.

God did not create us to live anxious, worry filled lives.  He created us to live lives full in Him.  God didn't declare "You shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3) for His benefit, but for our benefit.

When you worry, are you elevating the subject of your anxiety to a place that it doesn't deserve to hold?  There is a place in our lives for worry, for work, for studying, for money, for political analysis.  There is a place for most of what we fill our lives with, but where it becomes harmful is when we make it more important than it is.  Put it in its place.

For me, this semester, it's one of my classes.  It's a business simulation that runs on a weekly schedule, where competition results come out on Sunday night at 9PM and then we spend the rest of the week analyzing what happened in the simulation and making decisions for the next week.  It is one of those things that could truly never be done.  No matter how much time I put in from week to week, there is always more analysis that I could be doing, more calculations that I could make.  When I get caught up in the simulation I can easily spend several hours doing nothing but staring at the computer screen and moving numbers around.  Do I get any fulfillment from this?  No.  Does it make me a better person?  No.  Does extensive analysis help me to learn the class objectives better?  No.  Could my team do better if I were to do nothing but look at these simulation results?  Maybe.

It's in these times when I am so caught up in this simulation or other classwork that God tells me to step back and put this class in its place.  I wasn't created for this class.  This class does have a purpose, but elevating it to a level outside of its rightful place in my life does nothing beneficial to my learning or to my character development.

For the first eight weeks of this class my team consistently was not seeing results that matched up with the amount of time and effort we were putting into the simulation.  I felt beaten down and exhausted by this class, and by the time week eight rolled around I was ready to quit, feeling pretty bad about myself and my abilities.  Together with my team and professor I put a final push into week eight, exerting more time and energy on this simulation than any week before, vowing that I would do nothing but the bare minimum from there on out if the week eight results weren't better.

Week Eight was a roaring success.  The results came out Sunday at 9PM, as per usual, and I was overjoyed.  A funny thing happened as the week went on, though.  After the initial excitement, this success didn't fulfill me, and much like our prior failures didn't define me, this success didn't either.  I laughed at God when I realized that even though I had been trying to listen to Him all semester and put this class in its place, I really had believed that everything in my life would align and go well once this class went well.  But that wasn't true, and even with this personal "win" I still had to put the class in its place.

The only thing that defines us is Christ's love for us, not anything that we can do or say in this life.  When facets of life begin to take over, don't let them.  Keep them where they belong, and keep your eye on the prize (or, rather, gift): eternal life with our Savior.  Worry as necessary, work as necessary, study as necessary, but don't let any of those things take over.  Put it in its place.

No Motivation? The King is Calling!

I don't post here often enough because, quite often, when I sit down to write the inspiration just doesn't strike.  I usually try to force some words out and put together the semblance of a blog post, but it all sounds unnatural and wrong, so I backspace and stare at a blank screen for a while before giving up. 

Sometimes this upsets me and throws me into moments of doubt.  When I started this blog I could feel God inspiring me all the time, sometimes several times a week, or even more than once a day, but it just doesn't come that way anymore.  Do I not pray enough?  Am I reading the wrong Bible verses?  Am I not listening for God throughout the day?  I panic.  Why doesn't this come easily anymore?

I'm beginning to find that motivation and inspiration for many things in my life may not always come easily, but I have to push through it and make it work anyway.  I have to write English term papers whether or not any of the works from class inspired a literary argument in my mind.  I have to find a way to push myself through a workout whether or not I have much motivation that day.  And I should sit down and think about how God is working in my life and the world around me and take time to formulate it into words even when it doesn't come easily.

This blog has been such a gift throughout my formative years, in that it caused me to think deeply about God's presence in my life and how He was working on me, and I am so blessed that He used it to not only help me, but to reach others.  Now is my time to be faithful to Him and continue listening and using this gift that He's given me despite His voice only seeming to be a whisper.

What gifts has God given you to further His Kingdom?  Are you using them to the fullest to serve Him and those around you?  God calls each of us to serve Him in different ways, and we must answer His call to us even when we lose the motivation and inspiration.  He is constantly calling you to something, even if it isn't what you want to do or be.  He's never going to let you waste your life.  If it feels like He isn't calling you to anything listener longer and harder.  I know that He's going to use you for something great, even if you have little motivation, desire, or even ability to do it.  He will provide.  He will call.  His Kingdom will be grown.

God's Glory Revealed

Look outside.

Isn't that incredible?  Isn't God great?  He created all of that.

I have a tendency to let my mood reflect the weather.  When it's bright, sunny, and even the sky is happy, so am I.  But when it's gloomy, misty, and threatening floods all day, my attitude dampens.  Just a few moments ago, I was standing in my dorm room, folding laundry, staring at the gloomy sky outside, but then the skies opened.  God revealed His mighty greatness and roared for the clouds to open in a mighty clap of thunder, and then it was pouring.

This didn't dampen my mood at all, though, in fact, it made me happier.  There's something about the kind of thunder that's almost loud enough to hurt your ears that just shows God's power in a new light.  The rain that follows, the heavy pouring and the subsequent steady drizzle, is no longer depressive, for it is the herald of God's power.

It's the same with every kind of weather, though I don't always recognize other types of weather for what they are.  God commands the skies, and creates the flow of rain, snow, sun, and wind that we ultimately see.  God is revealed in even the smallest things in life.  Where has He revealed Himself to you today?

Becoming New

We're twenty two days into the new year, and if the crowd at my college's fitness center is any indication people are working on their New Year fitness resolutions, myself included.  I've been working out most days of the week and trying to eat less junk food in an effort to get healthier and stronger.  Phrases like "a whole new you!" and "transform your body" are all over the place, and people are looking at their post-holiday bodies thinking "yeah, that could be a good idea." 

Everyone wants a beautiful body, but what gets overlooked at this time of year, and any time of year for that matter, is that no amount of body fat (or lack thereof) and no amount of muscle mass (or lack thereof) is going to make you more beautiful.  It might seem that way, but it just won't.  You're already the most beautiful thing in the world.  You're a child of God.

"So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them" (Genesis 1:27).  You don't need to lose ten more pounds to be lovable, you don't need six pack abs to be beautiful.  God made you in His image, and you already are absolutely beautiful.  God has the power to make you new in so many ways, not just physically, if you'll ask Him and let Him into your life.

Colossians 3:17 says "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."  Think about this while you're working out, and really while you do anything else.  Worship isn't just singing, worship is glorifying God in everything that you do, whether that be studying, working, singing, dancing, working out, or anything.

Think about altering your New Years Resolution to ask God to transform your mind, body, and soul, because He can and He will make you new this year, in all kinds of ways.

If He Comes Suddenly...

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heavenly host:
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

 

On campus, we have times of worship that are set aside to just sing God's praises together.  It's incredible to stand in a room, or outside in the middle of God's creation in one instance, and worship the Creator all together.  I find that so many of the lessons that God teaches me comes not through the sermons and messages that I hear on Sunday mornings or in Chapel throughout the week, but through the songs that we sing to praise Him.

 

God is so deserving of worship, and no doubt He takes joy in His children when we join together to sing for Him, but our journey with God can't stop there.  At the church that I grew up in, the verse above, the Doxology, was always sung after the offering had been collected, a form of thanking God for the gifts He has given us and offering them back up to Him.  I have learned to associate this Doxology with a monetary offering, however, at the end of each worship session on campus we join together in singing the Doxology, despite the fact that no offering has been collected.

 

The first time we sang the verse together I was confused, but quickly realized that this was just yet another form of worship.  This was offering our lives up to God, rather than our money. 

 

There is so much more to following Christ than simply praising Him through song.  We must follow Him and join Him in the mission field, regardless of where we are, because the mission field is all around us.  God didn't give us the most amazing gift in the world for us to keep to ourselves, He sent His Son so that we may live in Him and spread His love to the people around us.

 

Some people are called to follow and serve Christ overseas, but so many of us are called to serve right where we are.  God is always calling us to His mission, there is no "someday" about it.  Jesus could return at any moment, and Mark 13:36 says "if He comes suddenly, do not let Him find you sleeping."  I was told by someone recently that if you aren't actively doing God's work in the world, then you aren't truly following Him.  There is so much more to worship and following God than just singing and attending Bible studies.

What I've Learned Beyond the Classroom

As I sit here in front of my computer on the eve of my high school graduation I'm not quite sure what to say.  How do you sum up eighteen years of life, or twelve years of schooling, or even just three years in high school in a blog post?  

High school was...an adventure full of highs and lows, exciting times and disappointing ones, days complete with life lessons and days totally void of purpose.  There are two lessons, I suppose I'll call them that, that I kept coming back to since tenth grade.  The first one relates directly to God, and the second isn't as direct.

I'll start with the more direct one, I suppose.  In middle school I felt so close to God, I had days that I could almost hear Him in conversation with me.  In high school, though, life began to fill with so much more than in earlier years, and I could feel God beginning to get pushed into the periphery of my life, but even when I put everything else aside and focused on God things still felt...different.  Very rarely did I feel that closeness that I used to feel in middle school, and there were moments that I began to doubt God's presence in my life.

Only recently did I truly begin to understand why this was happening.  As we progress through the stages of life, God progresses with us.  While He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we are not, and because of that God reaches us in different ways.  Middle school was a time full of developing out of childhood, finding out where I fit in, and discovering who I was going to be.  It was awkward, and, at times, it was difficult to navigate, and I needed God to be, well, extremely loud and incredibly close.  While personal development continues throughout life, and certainly in high school, it's a much different experience, and we are beginning to prepare for the rest of life, gaining much more independence than in years prior.  

My faith through high school was about just that, having faith.  It was as if God was saying "Okay, we got through these three years just fine, but now you need to trust me when I tell you that I will always be near just a little bit more."  

Perhaps I can create an analogy to a story that my mom told me when we were going through photographs from my younger years.  There was a picture of me in a row boat in the lake at my grandparents' mountain home, attached to shore by a long rope.  Thinking back on that vacation I didn't remember being attached to shore, I remembered rowing independently on the lake, and I giggled, thinking that I was attached to this rope and didn't even know it.  My mom, however, told me that I had desperately wanted that rope attaching me to the shore (not that she would have let me go out unattached, anyway), that I needed to know that that rope was there reigning me in.  Middle school was like my mom's (true) version.  God was obviously there, and I was comforted by knowing without a doubt that He was with me.  High school was more like my (false) thoughts.  I didn't realize that I was attached to shore all along, but I trusted that my mom would make sure nothing bad would happen to me.  I could have gotten too far away, though, to a point where I felt like she wouldn't be able to reach me if she needed to, but all along I was attached to where she was.  I have to trust in God that He is always here, and recognize even in the times that I am unsure I am still anchored to the everlasting Lord.

The second lesson from high school is about priorities.  Tomorrow when I am beginning to tear up during Graduation it will not be because I will miss the structure of high school, or because I will miss the subjects (if I really wanted to I could take similar classes at Grove City).  I will be crying because it is a goodbye of sorts with the people who I've grown to hold so dearly.  The people in life are the important part.  God sent us here to interact and love one another, and to develop a relationship with His Son.  That is our first purpose in life, not mastering rotations and torque in Physics class (though that could be a means to fulfilling our first purpose.) 

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be focused on academics or careers, anyone who knows me knows that I would never say that those things are unimportant, but this year especially, my senior year, I've learned that it is easy to put our priorities in the wrong order.  Years from now it is unlikely that I will remember how to solve the integral of an exponential function, yet I know that I will remember the people in my life right now.  Before senior year I often put academics ahead of anything else in my life, but now I see that there are some things that can come before, or at least equivalent to, them.  There is one thing that must come before them.  God.  In all things God must be the first priority in my life. With God first, everything else will fall into place, as He'll guide me towards the proper path.

So I suppose the first lesson that I learned was about my relationship with God, and the second was about following and serving Him, neither of which is much different from the other.

Above all remember this - "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

Senioritis: A Shorter List

They say "senioritis" is a bad thing.  You get into college, and you stop trying.  You get lazy.  But I think that they're wrong.  Don't get me wrong, the traditional definition of senioritis is something to avoid, but that doesn't mean that senioritis that doesn't affect your school work is awful.

Since getting into college (Grove City College class of 2018, wooho!) I have not felt the need to slack in my schoolwork.  Since starting senior year, however, I have found that I no longer feel the need to live up to the standards of everyone around me.  I don't need to be actively involved in six different friend groups to be happy.  In fact, all that does is burn me out.  So why was I doing it until this year?

That answer is simple: because, up until this year, I was holding myself to the standards of my friends, my parents, myself, and God.  This year, I've been trying to narrow that list down to being only God.  I want my standards for myself to reflect God's, so that's an easy one to attempt to check off.  I may not have realized it until this year, but my parents' standards for me have reflected God's all along, so that one is even easier to check off.  

Ah, but then there are my friends.  I spend approximately thirty five hours a week in school with these people and then however more time after school and on the weekends, how am I supposed to just ignore them?  But, there, my friends, is the problem.  I'm not supposed to ignore them.  I'm just not supposed to be focusing on who they want me to be.  And this year has shown me the importance of that.  How many of these "friends" will I actually be in regular contact with after a month or two of our freshmen year in college?  Five, six, maybe?  So if I'm only going to remain friends with five or six of these people, why have I been struggling so hard to live up to the standards of so many more?  So there I can cross off most of the people from the friends part of my list.

"What about those five or six, though, Abby?" you ask.  Ah, well here is the best part.  Those five or six people don't have standards for me beyond the most basic of God's standards.  They just want me to be, well, me.

So now my list of standard setters is down to just one.  God.  And man, do I wish I had figured this all out a while ago, because it is just so calming to know that they only standards and judgements that matter now are God's, and His standards will only lead me down a path that I want to follow, that will not leave me weary. 

So call it some form of senioritis, if you may, but it is far from laziness and a feeling of being done.  It comes from a realization that God is the only true judge, that there is no use in exhausting myself to live up to the rest of the world's standards.  Isaiah 40:31 says "But those who hope in The Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."  Narrowing my list of people who set standards for me to God and only God is not lazy, it does not lighten the workload, but it gives the strength needed to do everything that God wishes me to do and strive to live up to each of the standards that He sets.

I Love You More

My senior year in high school will be starting in just a few days, and it seems like all of a sudden, there is very little in life, other than trying to plan for college and summer reading. 

The pre-college process is stressful.  I am currently looking at a short list of colleges, all of which are Christian colleges, and there are so many different details and options that have to be weighed when trying to choose the one that I want to go to.  Of course, if you know me, or if you are familiar with this blog, you'll see that I have a constant desire to know the future, to have life planned.  I have this deep urge to be able to plan everything in my life, and right now, not knowing where I'll be living or going to school in a year is quite daunting.  I haven't even visited all of the schools that I'm considering yet, but already I feel like I should have a college picked out. 

I'm so worried that I'll make the wrong choice.  What if my favorite school ends up being the most expensive?  What if I can't tell which school God wants me to be at?  Even worse, what if it really doesn't matter to God which school I go to, so long as I'm still following Him?  And how am I supposed to find extra time to pray about this process with school starting in just a few days, with my most challenging schedule yet?

And then, once I've figured out where I'll go to college, how do I figure out what I'm going to do there?  How am I going to decide what I want to do for the rest of my life?  What if I do what I love, but then I can't get a job?  What if I do what will lead to a lucrative career, but end up hating it?  How do I make all of these decisions before I'm even a legal adult?

On Wednesday, after I had just gotten home from a college visit, and feeling the pressure to know where I'll be in a year, I turned on the radio in the car, and this song came on.  There was an initial peace that fell over me when the song began, and the first verse said "I am with you wherever, and where you go is where I am."  The chorus was another part that really spoke to me.  "I love you more than the sun, and the stars that I taught how to shine, you are mine, and you shine for me too, I love you.  Yesterday, and today, and tomorrow I'll say it again, and again, I love you more."  It was like God telling me to calm down.  If He can set the stars and the sun to shine each day and night, He will surely guide me through this process.  He will guide me to the right decision, whether or not it matters to Him exactly which college I'm learning to use the gifts that He gave me to use in order to shine for Him.  He will also guide me towards finding what exactly it is that He wants me to shine with.  He loves me no matter what, and I am His.

Time for God

Life gets busy sometimes.  It seems like there's always something that needs to be done, something that is next on the to-do list.  And when there isn't, there's TV, and Internet, and books, and journals, and all kinds of things to do to relax.  There's always friends and people to be around.  Time is always being filled.

When I made the transition from middle school to high school, I fell out of talking to God before I went to sleep.  I've never been coherent enough in the mornings to focus on Him, and with the start of high school bedtime turned into whenever I finish my homework, not after I've had time to read my Bible.  So I shouldn't have been all that surprised when I found that there was distance between God and me.

It wasn't that I decided that God was less important, consciously, at least, my prayer time just kind of...slipped away, I guess.  If you look back on all of my posts, there is a noticeable gap in the recent history, a gap during which I wasn't really making time to grow closer to God, so I had very little to share.  When prayer was no longer a part of my day to day life, it was only a matter of time until I couldn't write anymore, until I couldn't feel a purpose anymore.  God breathes life into me, and without Him, there is no life.

Starting to talk to God again, on a consistent basis, was the best thing that I have done recently.  I started a devotional reading plan on the YouVersion online/app based Bible, and starting taking some time to talk to God not only at night, but all throughout the day.  I'm making an effort to be in constant communication with Him.  Someone once told me that you are always moving when it comes to God, it's just a matter of whether you are moving towards Him, or away from Him.  For a while, I was moving away, but now I'm definitely getting closer to Him.

So today, I encourage you to make more time for God.  Do a daily devotional, read a Bible verse or two, take a few minutes to tell Him how your day is going, to thank Him for the blessings in your life, to ask for help in your trials.  He will breathe new life into you.

My Autumn Rainbow

Last year, at this same time, I posted about this very same tree.  Time goes on, and yet another year flies by.  I remember watching this tree change, the leaves darkening into deep blood reds and pumpkin oranges.

It's the most beautiful tree that I saw, by far, two years ago, and now it stands as a sign to me that God never leaves my side.  As the perfectionist walls that I built so carefully around myself in 2010 came crashing down, my self-worth with it, this tree was being taken up in the flames of Fall.  I didn't know it at the time, but I would need God more than ever that year.

Eventually the year had passed, and I grew from the experience, however dreadful it may have been.  Then Autumn 2011 came around, and the tree began to change again.  The first time I noticed the leaves were no longer green, it was as though God was speaking to me, reminding me that He's here every moment of every day with me.  His message was so loud and clear, a symbolic version of Moses' burning bush, if you will.

And now it's year three of this beauty, and God is reminding me of His everlasting presence in my life yet again.  The changing of the tree is serving as a rainbow in my life, a promise from God, just as after the forty year flood and Noah's Ark.

This orange and red rainbow reminds me not of the worst times of my life, but of the way God worked and healed me throughout that.  God never leaves, He never forsakes, and He always loves.

Trapped

It happened years ago, anyone else involved has forgotten, or at least gotten over it, but you just can't get beyond that past self of yours.  You're wracked with guilt every day, or at least fairly often, and you just can't believe that you were once that person who would do something like that.  Since then, you've found God.  He's taught you a lot, and you know that He loves you enough to absolve all of your sins.  That's so difficult to believe at times, though.  You just can't shake the guilt.

It can seem impossible to believe that God loves us just the same after we've sinned as He did before we sinned, but it's true.  God does more than just forgive our sins when we repent, He completely forgets them. 

Sometimes it can be difficult to realize that it isn't God binding us to our sins, but ourselves.  We cling to the mistakes that we've made, feeling almost guilty if we keep them from people, even if it doesn't matter anymore.  Our sins trap us, imprison us, and we cannot leave the past in the past.  This is exactly what Jesus died to save us from.  He died so that we didn't have to be trapped by our sins, but sometimes we still choose to be.

It's time to choose not to live our lives in chains anymore.  It's time to pray.  Even if you've already asked for forgiveness, it's time to ask for help in finding self-acceptance.  If God can forgive our sins, then surely, with His help, you can, too.

Arms Wide Open

On one of the retreats that I went on this year with my church, the speaker passed out index cards to each of us, and asked us to write what we believe that God thinks when He thinks about us, and after the session, we went into our small groups.  While in our small groups, we were asked to share, if we were comfortable, what we had written on our index cards.  As we went around in our circle, reading out sentences out loud, my heart nearly broke at each of the negative beliefs.

It can be impossible to truly understand how deep God's love for us is.  He loves us no matter what.  No matter what we've done, no matter who we've been.  God loves us.  No.  Matter.  What.  God wants us no matter how broken we are, no matter how unworthy we feel.  He loved us when He created us, and so many years later, when sin had entered the world, He loved us enough to send His son to die on the cross in our place, and nothing, absolutely nothing, can change that.

Consider the story of the Prodigal Son, found in Luke 15:11-32.  The younger son takes his inheritance and leaves his father's house to go and squander the money, and years later he returns to his father's house, and the father immediately forgives him.  I think what is really amazing is found in verse 20:

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
 

Not only was the father able to accept his son back into his house, not only is he waiting outside for the son to arrive home, but he runs forward to meet his son and embrace him.  We are like the son, and God is the Father.  God isn't just waiting for us to come back to Him, He runs toward us with arms open wide the minute that we come into view. 

It doesn't matter how far away we were, it doesn't matter what we did while we were gone.  All that matters is that we've come back home, and God loves us no less than He did before we left.  He's waiting with open arms for us to return.

Jesus Loves Me

Sometimes being a Christian is hard.  Sometimes it can seem like there just isn't time for it, sometimes God can feel distant, sometimes we don't understand how things in this world can happen if God exists.  Sometimes we just don't get it.

And that is okay.

Some days, we are not meant to me the hard core Christians who have it all together.  Some days, the only thing that we can and have to cling to is the fact that Jesus loves us.  When we can't keep it all together, when we just feel like falling apart, we need to focus in on one thing that will always be true and will never change, Jesus's love for us.

Nobody is perfect, no matter how much we try to be.  But the good news is that Jesus took care of all of that for us.  He is there with open arms even when we're at our worst, and sometimes, we don't need to go any further than that.

Mark 10:13-16 say "And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them."

Children don't worry about the things that adults begin to worry about as they grow older.  Children accept ideas without question, a feat that can sometimes be all but impossible for an adult.  Children don't usually have a difficult time questioning God's love for them, and that is somethings special.

Jesus loves us, and that is forever true.

Give It All to God

I've probably written this on here a countless number of times, but I'll say it again, I am a worrier.  I stress myself out, and I get knots in my stomach over the smallest of things.  I've been a worry wart ever since I was a little kid, and I still remember times when my mom would tell me "Just give it all to God."

I worry over things that I can't control, and things that I can't change.  And I'll tell you, this time of year, I worry the most about the logistics for the mission trips that I've been attending with my youth group each year.  I worry about how the group dynamics will affect the trip, I worry about the drama that we'll carry there, start there, and bring back, I worry about who will be in my car and in my work group.  And it gets to a point where I'm just worrying in circles, but you know what?  I can't do anything about it.  Especially before the trip actually begins.

Last year was no different from any other year, and I had completely stressed myself out by the time we got to the trip.  As things played out on the very first day in Boston, I felt the knot in my stomach tighten and loosen multiple times.  And then, on Monday morning during devotions, I felt this overwhelming sense of peace come over me as I spoke to God.

"Lord, I have absolutely no idea what You're doing right now, and frankly, it scares me.  I don't like not knowing.  But what I do know is that You are all-knowing, and You have a plan for all of this.  So I'm just going to have to trust You.  I'm giving this worry to You.  Please, help me."

If I didn't just trust God, I would have let my worry and stress overwhelm me, and take over my trip.  My focus would have been on worrying, not on doing God's work.

I think that that happens a lot, that we let stress, or worry, or guilt, or sadness, or whatever emotion it is, take us over.  We can't do anything but wait and see how things turn out, but still, we frantically obsess. 

1 Peter 5:7 says "Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you."

God is there to take it all from us.  We just need to be willing to give it to Him.  We need to throw up our hands, and say "God, I can't do this without You, and I don't want to.  I need you to take this from me, and I need you to guide me."  God knows what He's doing, and once we get rid of our worries and give them to Him, He's going to do amazing things in our lives.

Faith: We are Never Alone

For a while, things in my life have been going great, which makes me very happy, for obvious reasons, but it seems as though God hasn't been as close as He is during the tough times.  I've prayed, and I've read my Bible, but no matter what I did, I just couldn't find that calming reassurance that has pulled me out of the worst times in my life.  I began to get worried.  I couldn't let this separation happen, just because there aren't many challenges in my life at this moment.

I didn't want bad things to start happening, but I wanted to feel God again,  I didn't want this slow drift apart.  Then, today, Never Alone by Barlow Girl came on when I was listening to music.  At first thought, it seems like it's meant to help during the low points in our life, times when everything seems to be going wrong, when no matter what we do, we are constantly falling down.  Then I thought, no, I can connect to this, even though I've had very little to overcome recently.



It has always been fairly easy for me to have Faith in God, because there have been very few moments when I haven't felt Him, so this has been an extremely odd experience for me.  But, of course, God is still there, and that's what Faith is, isn't it?  Hebrews 11:1 says "Faith is confidence in what we hope for, and assurance in what we do not see."

I'm beginning to learn that having a strong Faith has very little to do with how we respond when we can feel God's presence, but how we respond when we cannot.  Deuteronomy 31:6 says "Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you."  God will never leave us alone.  Never.  Not when we're furious and screaming at Him, not when we've locked ourselves in our bedrooms crying, not when we're filled with nothing but joy.

Our Faith can be tested at any time, not just in our struggles, as I believed until just recently.  So even when it seems as though God has abandoned us, we must trust that He is still with us, still walking through life with us.  When we believe otherwise, we are believing lies.

Absolutely Terrifying Beauty

I'm part of a small group/Bible study for high school girls in my church, and as we were talking about having positive self-talk last night, my mom, one of our leaders, was responding to another comment that was made, and she said "Sometimes, faith is just having the courage to keep going." and for whatever reason, it has stuck with me.

Actually, I know the reason. It's because of how true it is. There are moments when the only two options that we have are to keep trying, or to quit, and in most of those situations, quitting would be so much easier. It's like life is some sort of maze, with wonders and terrors strewn through.

Sometimes it would be more fun, easier, to sit down right were we are in the maze and say, "Nope. Not anymore, God. I quit. I don't know what's coming next, and if it's anything like what's come before, I don't want it. It isn't worth it." We refuse to listen to God, and we sit stubbornly right in the middle of that maze. All we see when we look back at where we've been are the monsters that have tried to tear us apart, but what we're forgetting is that we've picked up those gorgeous gardens along the way, and keep them in our pocket right with us. So we quit. We've all been there before. I know that I sure have.

But then, there are times when we don't quit, when we trust God, and walk through this maze. We widen our eyes at ourselves, and shake our heads, in disbelief that we're actually choosing to continue on, but still we know that God has amazing things planned for us. This maze has twice as many wonders as terrors, and even more in disguise.

Sometimes it seems as though we're walking through the maze alone, or blindly, but truly, I tell you, both are lies. We are never alone, never. God does not leave our sides, not in the good times, and most definitely not in the bad times. He's no fair-weather-friend, this amazing God of ours. And best of all, not only is He with us, but God is leading us through it. If only we would let Him, He'll take our hands in His and lead us through the twists and turns. It's only when we stray from Him that we get lost and hit these dead ends, but eventually we'll find that He's following right behind us, just waiting for us to turn around and fall into His loving arms.

There's nothing more beautiful than the love of Jesus Christ, and there's nothing more terrifying than living the life that He has for you. But when you put it together you aren't left with monsters and horrors. What you're left with is absolutely terrifying beauty. And there isn't anything more amazing than that.

So, yeah, doing God's work in the world takes an explicit amount of faith, but sometimes just continuing on takes even more. You'll see, though, that He never fails, never ever, and if you just turn around in this maze, you'll see Jesus waiting with arms outstretched to hold you and love you. So answer me this, will you turn around and let Him carry you?

"But" Vs. "God"

A friend shared this video with another friend who posted it on Facebook, and it was like a brick to the head for me, one of those "AHA!" moments that we talked about in Confirmation class.



"God, I'm doing the best I can! But..."
"I'm doing the best I can! But..."
"The best I can! But..."
"But..."

We start with the right intentions, but a few failures will leave us with nothing but ourselves and excuses to quit. When we're left with nothing except "buts" we lose our God-focus, and see imperfection after imperfection, failure after failure.

But what happens when we go the other way?

"God, I'm doing the best I can! But..."
"God, I'm doing the best I can!"
"God, I'm doing the best!"
"God,"

And it's then, when rather than going from the beginning to the "but" that we go from the beginning to the "God" that we have reason to keep on going. No, we are never going to be perfect, that's how it is, but when we focus on the "God" part, rather than the "but" part, we find the strength to continue God's work, rather than the excuses to quit.

He Knows How Much it Hurts

This may not be a new post to some of you, though I'm not sure when the last one started to malfunction, so maybe it's new to all of you. The song that I embedded in the last one would automatically redirect to a new page, so I've switched the link, in hopes that this will cure the issue. I apologize for any issues you may have had in viewing my blog.



"He knows how much it hurts". Every time that we cry out to Jesus, "Why?" remember, that he knows exactly what we're going through. For two reasons...


1) God was human too, we call Him Jesus. Jesus lived on this very Earth, breathed this very air, and had many of these very pains. Jesus has been there, done that. He made it through, now it's our turn, and He is guiding us through it all, not leaving our sides for a single moment. "In this world you will have troubles, but take heart! I have overcome the world." ~John 16:33 and

2)God loves you so, so much, and anything that hurts you, hurts Him just as much. We cry "Lord, why are you letting this happen to me?" and He cries alongside us, knowing that we have to make it through these trials to make us stronger. God doesn't like to see us in pain, He sent his one and only son to take our places on the cross. But that doesn't mean that He's going to take away our pains and aches, because they all have a purpose in our lives. My mom often gives the analogy of an infant getting a shot at the doctor's office. That needle hurts the little baby, and he doesn't understand why his mommy or daddy let this stranger do that to him, but his parents know better. The baby's parents know that without the shot, the infant is at risk for diseases so much worse than the prick of a needle. Does that mean that the parents want to hear those cries of betrayal from their child, that it's easy for them to hear their baby cry? No, of course not, that's ridiculous, right? Right. That's what God is doing for us now. We don't understand it at this moment, but God knows that what is happening is for the better, and He knows that what is happening is better than the alternative, no matter how much it hurts the both of us.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11. Trust in the Lord, give your whole heart to Him, and praise him through the storms in your life. God is never going to let us go, so all that's left is for us to trust in him.

A Team Sport

I've just felt an immense urge to write about this, and I can't hold it back, so I'm just going to let my fingers fly across the keys, and let God lead them.

The above song, as well as this quote (from the To Write Love on Her Arm facebook page), popped up on my phone right in a row "I needed someone to tell me 'you're gonna get through this' . . . to mean it, to really want to help me." and I think that this is God speaking to each of us. We need to be there for the people around us. No matter how close we are to any given person.

I think that sometimes it can be easiest to forget to be there for the people who we are extremely close to. We just grow to expect things to be a certain way, and we don't think much of it. We expect everything in a usually optimistic person's life to be fine and dandy, and we tune out the negative complaints of a usually pessimistic friend because we think everything they are complaining about is really no big deal. But what if we listened? What if we honestly asked our friends how they were doing? Would we get the answer that we expected?

I don't know. I'm sure that sometimes we do get an answer that we would expect, but I'm also pretty sure that too often we would get an answer that we didn't see coming. Do we really know the people closest to us? Just knowing someones favorite color and shoe size, what makes them laugh and what makes them cry, doesn't mean a thing if they are dying inside and we miss it.

And sometimes we are sure that our friends would come to us if they really needed us, but I don't believe that that is always the case. Maybe they don't want to put more weight on our shoulders, maybe they don't want to show any signs of weakness, maybe they, as I had done for so long, thought that they needed to be perfect, and letting down their defenses was equivalent to messing up. We can't always trust that the people who we are closest to would come to us when they needed us.

There is another side to that, as well, though. When you are falling apart, and you feel as though nothing is ever going to go right in your life, talk to the people around you. Don't go through all of the pain in life alone. God put us here together for a reason, He didn't want us to live this life on Earth alone. And that brings us to another point, don't ever lose hope, because even when it seems like all is lost, God is still there, cheering you on, wiping your tears away, telling you that you can do it. We just need to listen.

Listen to your friends, and let your friends listen to you. This thing called life is a team sport.

Our Amazing God: Time Goes On

Last year, right around this time, a lot of craziness started in my life, and it's difficult for me to believe that that was a whole year ago now, while at the time, I didn't think that it would ever end. Today I looked out of the window and saw a tree beginning to change colors in my back yard, full of bright reds and oranges and yellows, and was transported back to last year.

I had my computer staying on the dining room table during this era in my life, and I would do my homework, and work on National Novel Writing Month outlines and whatnot each afternoon in this room with this big window facing this big beautiful colored tree. I watched as it went up in flames in the oranges and reds of Fall, then as the leaves fell one by one to the ground, Winter approaching slowly. Then, as if to prove that there was still life under those mounds of snow, I watched this tree slowly bud into small flowers that quickly turned to healthy green leaves, the image of the reds and oranges from Fall stuck in my head for all of these months. Throughout all of the junk in my life during this time, it was the image of that tree that was running through my head constantly, and now I see why.

The tree began to change colors again just a day or so ago, and I am beginning to see the bright colors of Autumn once again, and I can not believe all that has happened in these twelve months. I think this is God's way of showing me that it was truly Him who got me through those trials, even when I thought I was alone, He never left me. Now I look at myself, and I'm a different person because of it, and a much better trust in God. If only I had stopped pushing against our Creator in my time of trouble, and trusted that time would move on and that He would bring me through it, I would have had a much happier year. Every Autumn when this tree begins to change, I will watch it, and take a few moments to praise our wonderful God.

I wasn't stuck in that time of troubles, and neither are you. I know it's difficult to look past the here and now when you're in those moments, believe me, I know, but God has your back in everything. Remember, time moves on, and with time, God brings healing. Let the fiery trees that will soon be surrounding us remind you that God's love for us burns brightly and fiercely, and that He will never let us go.