Fearful?

"It's okay to be fearful.  Some of God's strongest warriors were frightened.  The difference between a believer and the rest of the world is that we press on.  We can be shaking in our boots, but we don't turn back.  The hopeless-that's what they do.  They give up on their mortgage.  They give up on the unemployment line.  But I can sit here and know that my God saves.  And no matter what I go through, if I keep pushing through, he's there in the end.  So, honey, having fear doesn't mean you're on the wrong path.  It just means you put on your helmet and your jersey and you plow right on through."

-Jenny B. Jones, Just Between You and Me

Just one question today... 

  What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Break My Heart

        God wants our hearts to be broken so that we will understand the great love he has in us, even during our brokenness.  He doesn't always do things the way we expect, and we can’t control his plan; however, we do know that, “in all things, God works for the good of those who love him,” (Romans 8:28).  As you go through difficult times, look for ways that God is working for your good.  You may not be able to see it at first, so that’s when you have to trust him.  You eventually learn to thank God for the bad he puts in your life because you finally can see his purpose.  He is only building you and crafting you so that you learn to live a life that he is proud of. 

        
        As we go through this journey of becoming a representative of Christ, he will equip us with what we need to carry out his will.  Because he loves us and gives us what we need to succeed, we welcome others, even strangers, into the plentiful love that he wants us to share.  He is our warrior, and he is willing to fight for us; therefore, rejoice in the splendor of his holiness, even when enemies attack.  When we forget to worship him for all he has provided us with, God seems to feel so far away.  We don’t have to pretend with God, but we sure do it anyway.  We feel the need to build up this perfect image when we come to our perfect creator in prayer.  You don’t have to pretend to him that things are okay when they aren't.  A lot of people suffer when they don’t deserve to; however, when you pray to God and tell him that you need help, he hears you.  Sometimes, things happen to us that we can’t immediately find a way out of, but we learn to not be afraid, for he is with us, willing to be our warrior.  He sees and feels the things we suffer, so it is not time to give up hope.  Keep looking for ways that God is with you and loving you.

Keep Your Head Up

Concert Moments

Never forget to remind yourself of the real reason you pursue your passion.  Oftentimes, I have to ask myself if I’m doing what I love to please God or to please others.  If my motivation for anything in life comes down to being better at something than someone else, then I’m doing it for all the wrong reasons.  I have to stay true to myself while I grow into the person God created me to be with all my hobbies, talents, and faults.  Never sacrifice the opportunities to serve Christ with your passion for a chance at being better than someone else.  The most important truth I remind myself is to stay true to me when doing what I love. 

When you pray and read scriptures, are you really trying to make it a part of your life, or are you just going through the motions?  Sometimes, we make ourselves try too hard to pray or read the bible that we forget we have fallen in love with our savior.  We cannot fall into this lonely pit of being just a good bible study girl.  We have to go beyond religion and truly desire a relationship with Christ. 

Most people know that I love to write.  Ever since I discovered my joy for writing, I have expected this grand piece of excellence to rise from my heart and perfectly explain my relationship with Christ, the top subject I love to write about.  I keep imagining that it will be an inspiring work of art:  a make-people-cry, make-people-want-to-change, and inspire-people kind of writing.  I’m so focused on studying and engraving my Christianity into my writing that there is no passion connecting it all together.  It has turned into a chore.  I’m waiting and waiting to escape this pit-stop on my journey as an author, but it feels as though I won’t ever see the ending.  Every time I sit down to write about absolutely anything, I fall in love with writing all over again and am reminded why God has given me the gift of words.  Even though I have not created this magical piece of writing does not mean I never will.  I have faith.  I can pray all I want to and read all the scriptures I want, but if I don’t have hope and faith, then I won’t ever learn to be at ease with hiking my mountains. 

I need to stop trying so hard to make everything perfect so that I can let my feelings be real.  As soon as I come to face my problems and accept them as a part of me, failures and success in all, then my relationship with Christ will become even more real to me than my depth of thinking.  It’s like a concert moment:  when you are standing in a sea full of people, but the only one who you see is God, as he’s reaching out to you and your hands are straight up high reaching for him.  It’s the moment when you can see what things in your life really matter – a moment that couldn’t be worth any words.  A concert moment is not only a moment, but it becomes a piece of my heart.  Whether I want to make it real or not, those concert moments in life are what keep me so intrigued in my faith because I can see all at once just how much he loves to see his precious daughter give him glory – and that is why I am so in love with my savior.  He gives me those moments when I least deserve them.  He makes me feel so loved when I haven’t earned anything, and it is in this moment when I can see just how much I am called to love him.  He wants to see good things out of me, and it is in the heart of these moments that I decide to let that side of me win.  We’re not perfect people, and these concert moments won’t change that; however, the moments do show us how unfailing God is.  I certainly love him.  In some ways, I don’t have the image to say that because I put his name to shame with all of my sins, sins I commit every day.  No matter how many times Satan tries to be my so called, “friend,” I learn to ignore it.  I get stronger every time the temptation shows up, and it’s all due to what I feel in the moments where He is the only one I see.  In just a moment, my life becomes so simple.  I’m not worried, sad, or mad but completely joyful.  My main goal with my time here is to make the concert moments my life, my reality.  There will always be bad happening in the world, but it is people like this – making their realities different – that end up making the most impactful change.  I want to be one of those people, and I know I can be because I’m in love with the savior who gave up his life for mine.  With the worth and power of Christ invested in me, I can be unstoppable for God’s glory.  There are times when we get lazy and resent to give him the time that he deserves.  With that, we start to feel really alone, no matter how many people are actually supporting us.  After the lonesome comes, we begin to forget our purpose and why we do the things we love.  God exists in the center of our lives and when we lose him, we lose everything else. 

Make him real; you’re the only one who can.

Loving the Least

A barefoot child walks along the shore of what used to be his home.  His eyes are stained with profound images of love escaping his whole world.  Who knew that love could instantly be removed from life so easily?  The sparkle that every child's perception should have is gone from this boy's breath.  The answer that his question awaits lingers through his damaged mind.  "How long will it be before someone loves me again?"

His life has only begun, yet it feels that he has lived through enough to be infinite.  His dainty hands have so much responsibility for an impoverished adolescent.  He endures abandon over and over again with each day he is grateful enough to survive.  What if someone actually extended a helping hand?  Would he live longer if someone loved him enough to show him how to live, not just be alive?  He lacks confidence, and he is decaying from the outside in.  He craves love, but there isn't one who is courageous enough to be his helper.

Can we really just leave the innocent behind to grieve on their own?  They are on the run from life.  They are hopeless, yet their lives have only started.  I can feel their hearts beat in rhythm with my own.  No matter how much is hidden, every child has a dream to belong and be loved.  I know that God has a plan for these kids, but I can't help from thinking that I am a part to this plan.  I look around me everyday.  Do you know what I find?  I find people who are fortunate enough to own glimmering hearts that recognize love, that recognize Jesus, that recognize grace.  I am blind, yet I ask that He would open my eyes to a whole other way of living.  I couldn't ask enough for Him to help me see into the world of these kids.  Their realities are so far from mine that I forget they even exist.  Right now, open my eyes...despite my blindness.

These are meager lives that suffer from constant shortages.  Who should have to struggle to find their next meal?  Who should have to fight to receive love?  Who should have to compete for belonging?  No one should have to brave these things, especially not alone.  Boys and girls can feel like kings and queens when we reach out with enough heart to love the least of these.  

Sometimes it is good for us to have broken hearts, for it reminds us of how much we still have in spite of our brokenness.  I often need reminding that I was once a child in need of a friend.  These lost lives are real, yet the world has somehow forgotten them.  These kids keep waiting for a door to open, but they keep running out of hope because they have been misguided so often.  This is the chance for us to be the hands and feet of God!  Let's do it!  Let's make a change in a child's life.  Every one of us is a wave in an ocean of a world.  All we need to do is create more waves.  

Waiting

Sitting in the comfort of my kitchen, I wait for the moment in which I will need to dash to the tornado hiding spot.  At any second, a storm could come crashing into our house on our hill and wipe away everything I own.  There are five windows lined side by side on the far left side of the kitchen.  I can hear the force of branches and whatever else collide with the stillness of the windows.  I stare at the closed blinds inside the window frames and create an image inside my head.  I see the windows falling in with the blinds being swept away by the 80 mph winds.  I think that maybe it would be smart to head to the tornado hiding spot a little earlier than we plan, though I continue to sit firm where I am...waiting for something to happen.

Sitting on the kitchen couch, I listen to the faded sound of the weather channel on the television combined with the screech of the tornado siren outside.  I hear the voices of my family discussing safety procedures while exclaiming short prayers for our protection in between my dad's strong voice making keen weather predictions.  All throughout the interior and exterior noises, I cannot escape the whirlwind of the rushing rain outside.  No matter how hard I try, my ears focus in on the pitter patter of each rain drop on the deck beyond the kitchen door.  There is a clink hitting the window every few minutes, and it makes me rethink my decision to keep planted both nervously and comfortably on the kitchen couch.  The power flickers a couple of times, yet there is still no urgent weather threat near us.  So, we wait.

As I write this, I am still waiting.  Considering that I am reliving the procedure of a previous tornado, I wait eagerly for the tornadoes to finish their course.  At the same time, the nervous side of me waits for the storm to come and clear out everything I have to be thankful for; however, Jesus keeps whispering something to my heart.  He keeps saying that He is my shield, and I am in the hands of the creator of the universe.  I am being held in the hands of the one who created these storms in the first place.  My God will not let me down. Even if a storm were to wipe away everything I know of, I would still have a reason to be grateful.  I still have grace, and I still have the ability to serve for Christ.

It's reassuring.  It really is.  I'm truly thankful that I hear God during these moments of anxiety.  Waiting is a part to God's plan for us.  We are meant to experience the desires of patience through every segment of our lives.  Waiting is a way for God to show us his faithfulness.  We just need to trust that his faithfulness is true.  I'm glad that I can sit on this couch, in the middle of life's storm, and still be calm.  In the midst of the storm's danger, I have peace.  Is this even possible?  Of course...but only with the one who holds my heart.

It's Love

        I am ashamed at who I am for you in this world of wonder that is trying to give me an identity that doesn’t belong to me, yet I feel so blessed even through this confusion; therefore, I will strive to be a disciple who puts one foot after the other in great effort of making her father known in this life.  The faint lights that give the streets a glisten of perfection after a spring rain shower give me hope that heaven’s lights will shine with much more altitude for my soul.  These feet have been in an infinite number of places wearing a countless number of shoes, yet the identity of this depth is mutual through every unique step.

        I crave more of Him to be seen in me, as I see more of how His strength defines me.  Going from one side to the other, I ask myself if I believe in bridges.  I put one foot in front and step onto a bridge that seems to whisper to me with the cracks of each step.  It gives me an indescribable fear that pushes me to think farther than I want to.  All of the sudden, I imagine myself falling beneath this bridge with my heart still tethered to the rails.  I want to be a disciple, but it comes down to what I really can do for God.  If only I knew how to cross the bridge to get to the side of freedom; however, the one thing that my mind has yet to explain is that I am already free.
       
        The moonlight is a fierce reflection of the sharp, yet broken, whispers that my eyes send out to each detail of creation.  These broken whispers creep up my spine and sneak into my heart due to the glimpses of being unwanted.  I sometimes have to let go in order to find myself, for I know I am not defined by my flaws.  The bind of my hand intertwined with someone else’s gives me an unexplainable strength in my identity through Him.  Whether it is the naïve hand of my brother that has so much more to feel or the strong, courageous outline of my father’s solid fingers, I feel the love that is contained inside two of these different hands belonging to two different beings.  Trying to find a way, love seeks the unity of coming together in one God.  The only problem that lies within every idea is that we are weak to see that God has already made a way.  Always are we constantly trying to be something, to do something, to fight for something, yet we have already been set free, yet we fail to see it.

Jesus has already paid the fine that we did not have the ability to pay.