A Call To Change

I believe I'm very much in the midst of a one foot in one foot out generation. The amount of us who are completely sold out for Christ has dwindled down. We are kind of in and kind of out. We can try and blame this lukewarm behavior on the fact that being a Christian isn't easy.  You will go through trial and tribulations of numerous kinds, but we were warned. John 16:33 says; “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world."  I also have gone through a period of wavering back and forth between the world and my walk with Jesus. I am far from perfect, but I do serve a perfect God.

With the beginning of a new year and the end of 2014 approaching quickly I want to strive to be sold out for Christ like never before. Taking the initiative to put my relationship with God first and keep it first. What would it look like to be completely sold out for Christ? What new levels will God take you too when you devote time and effort into pursuing a relationship with him? How much stronger will you be by the end of 2015 if you turn to God and don’t look back? I want to challenge all my readers to look at their list of goals and aspirations for 2015 and put God first. Not just for a moment but for the whole year. There are two reasons I can think of that might stop people from changing in 2015. 

1. They are fearful of change. But God didn’t give us a spirit of fear.

2 Timothy 1:7 says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” Don’t be fearful God has a great plan for you. Jeremiah 29:11 confirms it by saying, “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.” He has a specific blessing to give to you, but will you do what it takes to receive it?

2. They are too comfortable.

People can be so comfortable in their current circumstance that they stop   trying and better themselves. There is a story in Matthew 14: 22-33 about Peter who was the only disciple who stepped out of the boat (out of his comfort zone) to walk on water towards Jesus. Everyone in the boat watched Peter take a life-changing step of faith. In 2015, DO NOT be the person who is watching people change their lives. Do not be the person inside of the boat, but be the person walking on water. Step out of your comfort zone and trust in God to take you to new levels in your relationships, in your job, and in your life. Lets look back on 2015 this time next year and say I took that step of faith and it changed my life for the better. People in the boat will try to keep you in the boat. But you have been called to do so much more!

 God Bless You All!

Direct Deposit

I am sure everyone knows what a direct deposit is but just in case....
A direct deposit is when your money goes straight from your work place into your account. You don’t have to make the transfer it automatically goes in there, it is dependable and convenient. You can withdraw it when you need to because it is already in there. 

Sometimes we need to make direct deposits into our spirit. This is when we take the word of God and directly deposit it into our spirits. So when we have to make a withdrawal we have what it takes to cover the cost. These cost include trials and tribulations but not just your own trials but also other people’s trials. People may come to you seeking advice on a situation and if you have not deposited anything into your spirit then do not be surprised when the advice you give is insufficient. You don’t have enough of the word of God in you to give Godly advice. You don’t have enough of the word of God in you to cover that trial your going through. Your coming up short and you don’t know what to do. Every time you give out advice that does not line up with the word of God your account is in the negative. Every time you tell someone something that goes against Gods word you have sinned against God. The only way to avoid this happening is by knowing what the word of God says and live by it. Psalms 119:10 says it best “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you”. Have Gods word stored up in your heart so when you need to withdraw a scripture to pass a test or to help someone else pass a test you give him or her the truth.  John 8:31 says, “So Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “if you abide in my word you are truly my disciples.”” We have to know the word of God to be disciples.  

With all the shootings and killings of innocent people is this not a time to band together as a Christian community and say look I know the world is a pretty messed up place, but let me introduce you to a man who can take the pain away. Let me point you to a God who loves you no matter what. Let me point you to the scriptures where God says his grace is sufficient. You are loved, you are beautiful, you are unique, you are a child of the most high, isn’t it time we start acting like it. How many more shootings will it take for people to realize this world is corrupt and the only true protection we have is that in Jesus Christ? Given our current circumstance we don’t need to just do a direct deposit once a month, we need to directly deposit the word of God into our spirits every day.

Lets pray,

God I pray for my sisters and brothers who are reading this. I pray that they know that you love them and care for them more then they will ever be able to understand. I pray they know that your grace is sufficient. I pray that they will be encouraged to read your word and have it stored in their hearts. I pray that you will strengthen those who are going through trials and tribulations. Let them know Father that they are not alone. It says in your word Lord that we should not be afraid or discouraged because you are with us and you will never leave us nor forsake us (Deuteronomy31:8). Bless them to hold onto you God and to be unashamed to proclaim your name. I pray these things in Jesus name.

Amen

Choosing To Love

Recently my fiancé bought a book for us to read together called, Love and Respect,  by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. The entire book is centered around Ephesians 5:33 which says, "Husbands love your wives as you love yourselves and wives submit to your husbands." Ladies before you role eyes at the word submit let’s look at its meaning within the text. There is usually a negative connotation related to the word submit. People tend to think submission means they have to bow down and take any type of treatment from their significant other but that is not true. If your husband loves you as his self, and loves you like Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5:25) he will not subject you to intentional physical or emotional abuse. The New Living Translation of Ephesians 5:33 replaced the word submit with respect, so it says, “Wives respect your husbands.”  The bible instructs wives to show respect and husbands to love. Sometimes we can be guilty of taking scripture and bending it to say what we desire for it to say. So some people might read Ephesians 5:33 like this, Husbands love your wives IF they show you respect and wives respect your husbands IF they show you love. A MAJOR REASON FOR THE 50% DIVORCE RATE IN AMERICA TODAY IS BECAUSE LOVE IS NOW PLACED WITH CONDITIONS NEXT TO IT. We have to make the hard choice to love those who are unloving and to respect those who are disrespectful.

LET ME BE REAL!

I am not a perfect example of this. I will admit to being disrespectful to my soon to be husband.  I’m not proud of it, but I believe in being transparent and he has forgiven me. The only person who has given us a perfect example of love without conditions is Jesus! When Jesus died on the cross for our sins his love for us was not dependent on our actions. JESUS CHOSE TO LOVE US. We need to make sure our actions are pleasing to God when dealing with someone.  Every day we are faced with thousands of choices. But one of the biggest choices we make is whether or not we are going to show Christ love and be respectful.  Regardless of our past and our sinful nature Jesus chose to love us and to die for our sins. He chose to give us hope and an opportunity to be made into a new creation.  No matter where you have been or what you have done Jesus still wants you and he still loves you! I want to encourage everybody to choose wisely and to choose love because while we were still sinners Christ died for us(Romans 5:8). The gospel fills my heart with unexplainable joy because it gives a dying world hope! No matter where you are in your spiritual life whether you have a relationship with Christ or not I want to extend an invitation to you! I want to invite you to let go of your past, and to give your life to Christ. I want to send out a message of hope that you too can be redeemed!

Let us pray;

God I don’t know whose heart this will touch but you do! I thank you so much for the words you have given me to write and I pray that someone who was about to give up won’t! I pray that they will see their ways have not been working and that they will try yours. I pray that their hope will be renewed! I pray that you will speak to them through this message and bless them to know you love them by choice, and that they don’t have to do anything to earn your love.  Touch those who are struggling to love people who hurt them and bless them to let go of the pain they are holding onto. For the people who are ready to accept you into their lives, bless them to find a supportive church family. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

Hard Times

1 Peter 4:12 says, “Dear friends, don't be surprised about the fiery trials that have come among you to test you. These are not strange happenings” Even though the bible warns us that we will encounter trials I am still surprised when trials arise in my life (Are you?). When we encounter trials I believe we have three choices;

1. Try to handle whatever is going wrong alone

2. Let the circumstance overwhelm us

3. Call on the Lord and ask him for his help (trust he will help)

God has promised in his word that he would never put more on us then we could bear (1Corinthians 10:13).  But he did not say we would not put more on ourselves then we can bear. We have to-do list from here to China and are constantly wondering why we are overwhelmed. We sometimes can be spreading ourselves too thin and pouring ourselves out but not always in the name of Jesus or for Jesus but for ourselves. Sometimes we try to be superwoman and superman and by the end of the week we are exhausted because we put too much on our plates. We have to be aware when we are putting our to-do list before God.

Something I have noticed about myself never the last month is I will wear myself out for my soon to be husband. Last month he got into a car accident and it was by God’s grace that he made it out alive with no broken bones. But when he first got into the accident and I got that initial phone call from the hospital I went berserk. I was running around getting this for him, and doing this for him. He did not ask for me to do much of anything, but I wanted to show him that I could take care of him while he was banged up. I love him so much and my desire was to make sure he was taken care of down to the last detail (I get this from my mom). He got into the accident on Monday and by Saturday afternoon I had felt like I was the one in the car accident. I was so empty and tired.
 
I had completely neglected my need to sit before God and get refilled. It is like not eating for a week your body starts to shut down. My spirit needs to be fed daily and I had not fed my spirit for over a week. I was giving God these short prayers then quickly getting up to find another way to comfort Kyle. All the while, God is watching me and is saying, “Come to me and let me give you rest, Kyle is fine I protected him let me refill you, can’t you feel your spirit crying out for me.”  I neglected these calls for what I believed was my “wifely duty”. Sunday came and I went to church in no mood to worship. I was exhausted and overwhelmed. I put unfair expectations on myself to be the perfect caregiver after his accident.

This is a call to everyone out there that is doing too much or is feeling overwhelmed! For anyone and everyone feeling exhausted or absent from Gods presence.  STOP! SIT BEFORE GOD AND ALLOW HIM TO INSTRUCT YOU!

Matthew 11:28–30 • “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves. My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.”

Forgiveness??

One very difficult thing about relationships is the mistakes you make. I made mistakes in relationships before Kyle, and he made mistakes in relationships before me. And we both made mistakes in our relationship with each other. Forgiveness can be hard. Even though we love each other when I feel like he has wronged me I can and sometimes will hold a grudge. I am not proud of my behavior, and am trying to better myself in that regard but it is not an overnight process. Learning how to love properly takes time. When you love someone you don’t need to bring up past arguments or situations to prove a point. You have to leave the past in the past.  Forgive your others and forgive yourself. When we sin God doesn’t list the amount of times we committed that same sin against him and then badger us with questions like, when are you going to learn? He forgives us and shows us grace. It is so crazy how we want people to forgive us and not bring up our past mistakes but lack forgiveness in our hearts for others and even ourselves. Every day we wake up in the morning it’s a new opportunity to leave our past in our past and live for today.

No matter how hard I try I will never be able to erase the mistakes I’ve made. I have often caught myself trying to earn peoples forgiveness and most importantly God’s, but I can’t. Just like I can’t earn the love God freely gives me I also can’t earn his forgiveness. When we get stuck in past events it becomes very difficult for us to move forward. And when we lack the ability to move forward we become angry, depressed, discouraged, and so many other things. I know because there are so many things in my past that I am not proud of. One day when I was sitting in my own self-pity after reflecting on some poor decisions I made God spoke to me. He said, “No one has to accept you past but you. You’ve asked me for forgiveness and I have gracefully given it to you. Be relieved for I have rescued you and I love you just as much now as I did before despite of your sins against me. Nothing can separate you from my love.” I was in tears. God has forgiven me, but I am still very much on the journey to forgiving myself. Do not allow your past to dictate your future. Don’t hold grudges in your heart towards others when God has freely forgiven you. Allow God to heal the wounds that may still be open in your heart.

My prayer for you is that you will be free from whatever is in your past that still haunts you and hurts you. That whatever you have not forgiven yourself for that God will bless you to see yourself as He sees you. That you will be able to freely forgive others as Christ freely forgives us.  I pray you won’t look at your past the same way. And I pray that you will be able to openly share your story of redemption to others.

Two Imperfect People

My fiancé and I are not perfect people, and in no way do we want to present ourselves as perfect through the internet. Perfection is something we will never obtain and I don’t want to present to you a picture perfect couple. We have disagreements, we don’t always understand each other’s point of view, and we express our love in different ways. It’s the differences that we share that make us unique. It’s a brand new month and I want August to be all about transparency. I want my readers to know where my fiancé and I have fell short, so they can see God’s strength prevail through our weakness. I don’t want this blog or any of my social media outlets to paint a perfect picture of two imperfect people. I want you to know that we desperately need God in every area of our lives. He is our strength and our shield (Psalms 28:7). Don’t look to us but look through us to see Christ. By covering up our weakness we are not showing people where God has worked in our life. Replaying nothing but the highlights of our relationship won’t necessarily challenge you to grow in your relationship with Christ. How can we truly help and minister to people without relating to them, and allowing them to hear about our weaknesses, our defeats, and our trials. The saying God has brought me a mighty long way is not detailed enough to lift anyone’s spirits who might be going through trials similar to mine.

So let’s dig in! I am blessed to be engaged at such a young age. Not everyone I meet is super happy to hear I am in such a serious relationship at the tender age of 20. I usually brush it off and say they are just concerned for me. Recently I went home for a visit and while I was looking for wedding venues and seeing family and friends I ran into more negative comments then I initially expected. I prayed about it and tried to carry on with a cheerful attitude for the rest of my trip. I didn’t want the comments to affect me, but they did. The devil began creeping into my thoughts and started having me question my relationship. Kyle and I had a disagreement about something totally ridiculous and I started to think oh no is this going to work out. I started to question God’s intentions for blessing us to come together. I started to questions myself and ask if I was ready (because that was what everyone was asking me) and before you know it I was confused. The devil had got me in a mental and emotional funk. Kyle was so persistent on getting me to see that everything was ok and I was overreacting. I made several mistakes, BUT God stopped me from sabotaging my relationship based on the opinions of others. Listen here folks;

1 What God has for you is for you. Not everyone is going to understand God’s plan for your life and that is ok because it is His plan for Your life.

2. Don’t let people’s opinion cause you to question yourself! Put your trust in God and leave it there.

3. Love people anyway! People will be negative but you have to love them anyway if they were hard on Jesus they will be hard on you sweetie!

4. God’s timing is the best timing. He knows when to bless you with a man, a car, a job, a house, or anything else you desire. Wait on the Lord!

5.  Do not compare yourself to anyone else. God made you unique, He made you beautiful, and He made you with a specific purpose in mind. Love yourself enough to know that you don’t need to be anyone else besides who God made you to be.

Those are something’s I learned and I hope you can take something away from this blog. Please share it because you never know who needs this. Stay tuned for more blogs this month.

Are you loyal to God or nah?

Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking at my home church. I was honored when they asked me and also very nervous. I reviewed my notes, I asked God what topic he wanted me to speak on and the word loyalty came to me. After having a few moments of weakness and self doubt I went to my room and closed the door. I prayed that I would only say what God wanted me to say and that He would give me peace. Finally the moment came and I was surprisingly comfortable and excited to spread His word. He took away all self doubt and anxiety that I had. I soon realized that the message wasn’t about me, I was just the messenger it was all for Him.  I asked the church and now I ask you, who or what are you loyal to? Are you loyal to your family? Are you loyal to your friends? Are you loyal to your job? Are you loyal to God? Loyalty is a commitment, a deep devotion, a fearless faithfulness to a person or thing. Every day we face choices to be loyal to God or to be loyal to someone or something else.  Mark 10:17-24 give a good example of someone who said they wanted eternal life but when faced with a decision of loyalty he choose money over God.

Mark 10 17-24:

 ^“As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.  You know the commandments: "You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.”“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!”

The young man made the decision to remain loyal to his wealth instead of being loyal to God. Sacrifices have to be made when building a relationship with anyone. But how much more should we be willing to sacrifice for Christ since He sacrificed His life for us? His blood was the ultimate payment for our sins. He died for the same people who beat Him, spit on Him, and disrespected Him.  And He did it so that we could be freely forgiven for the sins we commit every day. We will never be able to fully pay Him back. But how awesome is it to know that He found you so precious and loved you so much that he died for you.

Our loyalty is tested when we start going through trials of various kinds. When we are struggling, and it may seem like God is not listening. But, I want to encourage you to remain devoted to Christ and pass the loyalty test. It is through our hard times that our character and perseverance is developed. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it! That’s why it is so important to encourage each other, and if you’re going through something open up and talk about it. You don’t have to go through alone. We are here to be helpers to one another.

I NEED YOUR HELP! I can’t reach everyone alone but with your help there is no limit to how many can get ministered to through this blog. Share it with your friends and family today.