I just want to be an encouragement

I have lived a cynical, walled in life for far too long. Lately I have been really trying to branch out and make new friends. For a long time my closest friends have been just like me. They are heavily involved in church and various ministries, love Jesus, and live a "Christian life". In the past few months I have noticed that I am suddenly not close to many of those people anymore. It hurt at first, but I think I am beginning to understand it more now. I had closed myself off to non-believers, and sadly that is common for Christians. It is easier to spend time with people who think the same way as you do.

From now on, I want to live a life that is an encouragement to those around me, whether they believe in my God or not. I want my character to scream Christ, not my mouth. I want my life to represent my Jesus without it coming out of my mouth constantly. Don't misunderstand me, I still intend on talking about him, but it is not my main focus. I just want to love people like Jesus did.

In college ministry I had a friend tell me that so many people that were Christians were obnoxious about it. She made it clear that she didn't want to go to church because of the way God's people represented him. I asked her if I had ever made her feel that way and if I had I wanted to apologize. She said "actually I don't think you and I have ever had a conversation about God. And I know you wouldn't shove it down my throat anyway." At first I felt like I had failed to do my part, but I realized that she was actually giving me a compliment. The name of Jesus didn't have to come out of my mouth for me to show him in my life.

From now on I want to look for opportunities to encourage people and show them Christ without verbally laying out the gospel for them. Don't get me wrong, there is a time and a place for that and it is important, but it isn't always what people need right then. Sometimes we just plant the seed in someone's life, other times we water it, and sometimes we are fortunate enough to reap the harvest and see someone come to Christ. Sometimes we are all 3 in someone's life, but most of the time we are only 1 of them. Isn't it important to do our part, even in the small things?

Pray for the girls of Cabin 2

I just got back from a full week of camp with the teens from my church! This is the first year that I have been able to go as a counselor and I was nervous. I was praying that God would give me an easy group of girls to lead. I prayed he would hand pick them just for me and my co-counselor Bethany. I prayed that we would get along and no one would cause problems. I even prayed for my cabin to be filled with "church girls", the ones that have grown up in church and have gone to camp most of their lives and know the drill.

I ended up getting a mixture of a few church girls and some unchurched girls. I was nervous that they would not get along and I would be breaking up fights and counseling them on the necessity to be nice and get along. We had no issues! They were good girls! They stayed in the cabin when I asked them to, they were quiet (for the most part) when I asked them to be, and they got along and encouraged each other! Praise God!!!

I found that it was the unchurched girls that I fell in love with the most. They are so real and straight forward. They have questions and aren't afraid or too proud to ask them. They have struggles in their lives that I have never known and they need a real God to rescue them.

Please pray for them: Hannah, Madison, Lauren, Amanda S., Adrianna, Sydney, Lore, Raven, Rainie, Shelby, Amanda D., Kaylee, and Genasys. And of course my co-counselor Bethany! But especially Genasys. She broke my heart and really needs to know a real Jesus to show her that her Heavenly Father loves her, even though her earthly father and step-father are not what they should be.

Push fear aside, not just farther down the road

Fear is a huge issue in our lives, I don't have to convince anyone of that. We fear everything. People breaking into our homes. Getting into a car accident. The unexpected. Losing our jobs. Spiders. Losing our homes. Death. Being alone. Snakes. Not living up to God's standards. Our children getting hurt or losing their way. What the doctor is going to say about the test results. Never getting married. Not being able to have children. I could go on and on and so could you.

But God says to cast your fears on him. Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall. {Psalm 55:22} Sometimes that is just a nice "Christian" sentiment that is actually really difficult to live up to.

At church this weekend, we sang a song that said "Casting my fears aside" and that got me thinking about what I do with my fear. Do I cast them aside or do I just push them a little farther down the road to deal with them later? And if Jesus is always by my side, wouldn't casting my cares to the side be casting them on Him? I definitely do the latter most of the time. I push my fears down the road a little farther each time and eventually they are going to pile up so tall that they will turn into a solid wall of fear that won't let me pass.

Anxiety does the same thing. We cannot control every aspect of our lives which wells up anxiety about the future in our minds and hearts. But what does worry get you? Does it help solve the problem? No. Does it help us to gain insight into the situation? No. Does it help at all? Absolutely not!

I know that I have a lot of fear from the baggage of my past. There are things that I have to work on right now, but there are also things that I will need help unpacking. There will be plenty of awkward and incredibly not fun conversations I will have in my future. But it has to be done!



What are your fears? Are you casting them on Jesus today or are you just pushing them a little farther down the road to deal with later? Be careful, those fears could turn into a wall of fear that threatens to consume you if you're not careful!

Steps to change the world

Have you ever come to a place in life where you have only 2 options: walk away or make a change? I am at one of those forks in the road right now and it is not an easy place to be. A big part of me wants nothing more than to walk away and not look back, but I feel like God keeps showing me that is not His desire for me. I have been trying to walk away, even run away at times, but it's just not working! Something just keeps pulling me back to where I don't really want to be. I have no other option but to recognize that it must be a divine intervention in the path of my life. Sometimes God interrupts a life to direct it back to His path when we have strayed.

There is a famous quote that says "Be the change you wish to see in the world" and I have to agree. If you see something that is wrong, don't sit around and complain about it, do something about it!

This is where I'm stuck: what now?
I've made up my mind to change, but how? Where do I start? What can I do to change something that is so much bigger than myself?

This is what I have so far:
• Start small
     No one can change the entire world at one time. Start by changing the things you have control over first, then work from there. Changing one person will eventually spread and grow and begin a revolution. Think dominoes!
• Realize that you have to change yourself before you can hope to change others
     No one is going to take you seriously until you become a role model of change
• Understand that you might ruffle some feathers along the way
     As long as you are going about things in a godly way it will eventually turn around. Don't take things too personally
• Pray
     Pray that God will teach you and guide you and speak through you in all situations, and that He will open doors and bring change in His timing. He is faithful in all things.
• Settle old issues
     It is like trying to roll uphill if you try to change things before resolving things in the past
• Read God's words
     We cannot bring change for God when we don't know what He has to say
• Do everything in humility and love
     The Bible says that if we lack love we are like a resounding gong or smashing symbols. No one listens when they feel threatened or put down.

What are you willing to sacrifice for your sin?

Deuteronomy 9:21 "I took your sinful thing, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain."

I read this verse last night while preparing to teach our small group of ladies next week. (I'm teaching chapter 10, but wanted to get a handle on the chapter before in my preparations!) This verse stuck out to me like I haven't experienced in a while. I even woke up this morning with these words running through my mind, that never happens to me! These words are so true in our lives. It is a great picture of what we ought to do with the sin in our lives and what sin can do to us.

Here's the thought that I had about this: The Israelites were wandering in the desert with likely nothing more than the clothes on their back and whatever they could have easily carried with them from Egypt. (One of God's provisions to them was that their clothes never wore out in the 40 years they wandered! So cool!) So Moses goes up into the mountain to speak to God for 40 days and nights and God gives him 2 stone tablets that He personally wrote the 10 commandments on with His finger. How awe-inspiring is that?! While Moses is up on the mountain, God says to him, my people are doing stupid things down there and I am ticked. (Clearly paraphrasing!) But basically, God saw what they were doing and was so angry that He wanted to completely destroy them and start over, but He doesn't because Moses intercedes for them. (But that's another post for another day!)

So Moses goes down with the 10 commandments to confront the people. The Israelites gathered together all the gold that people had with them and created this golden calf. This got me thinking, gold wasn't exactly cheap or easy to come by, especially in this desert, so they must have passed it down from older generations and through families and brought them out of Egypt with them. I can imagine women giving up their wedding rings, and the earrings that their mother gave them and the necklaces and rings and bracelets that had memories and meaning attached to them. And they gave them over to make a golden calf to worship while Moses was on Mt. Sinai.

So my question is, if they were willing to give over the things that were precious to them for their sin, what are we handing over to the devil in trade for our sin?

I also noticed Moses' response to the calf they made. He throws down the 10 commandments (which is also another post for another day) and utterly destroys it to the point that there is nothing but dust left and he sends it down the river. There are 2 ways of looking at this that I see:

1. This is what sin does to the things that are precious to you that you chose to compromise for sin. Sin has a way of mangling everything that we hold dear. It tears relationships apart, rips everything away from you, and pulls you away from God. It is a destroyer of hopes and dreams and all things precious.

2. This is what we must do to the sin in our lives. When we recognize the sin or idle in our lives, we have to destroy it completely. Get rid of it! burn it, crush it, grind it up, and send it down the river. God says that His grace is like an ocean without a bottom or shores. It is huge! Drown that sin in His grace and we will be forgiven. His grace is sufficient enough for my sin, your sin, and every single person that has ever been or will ever be! That is exciting!

We are Hosea's wife

I recently read through the book of Hosea and I was surprised at how much I didn't remember from the last time I read it (which was shamefully long ago). When I think of Hosea I think of the Brooke Fraser song "Hosea's wife" which says "We are Hosea's wife, we are squandering this life, using people like ladders and words like knives". We are living to please our flesh and not to glorify God. 

Hosea isn't just about his wife being a prostitute and Hosea's continual struggle to keep her from chasing other men and their wallets, it is a picture of God and Israel at the time, and can also be a picture of our relationship with God. Israel was living far from God and He finally got fed up. 

I can relate so much to Israel at points in my life. I can easily find myself chasing after my own pleasures and desires, and living outside the will of God. I know there have been times when God has turned from my shameful acts and could not watch as I made a mess of my life, but He never stopped loving me and longing to have me back by His side. His word says, "But you! Return to your God with faithful love and justice, and wait continually for your God." {Hosea 12:6}

God spends a majority of the book proving that He will not stand by and watch as Israel disgraces His name, and then the last chapter is a beautiful picture of God's grace and mercy that comes with repentance. He says, "I will hear their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them." {Hosea 14:4}

Are you living in a manner that causes God to have to turn away from you? Are you going to choose to repent and return to God or will you continue to attempt to get back to God on your own time?

Love... or the lack of

I used to think  of myself as a loving person, but recently I have been confronted with some hard to swallow realities about myself and my so-called "love". I love my family (most of the time), I love my friends (most of them), and I love my life (more times than not). Isn't that enough? I love more than I don't love. Don't I get some credit for that? 

Last night was a big wake up call for me. At youth group we do a lot of outreach, which means that we get a lot of kids that have never been in church and are largely brought up in less than spectacular homes. These kids are truly hard to love. But last night I realized that because of that fact they need the most love. Their parents probably don't show them the love they need. Their teachers are just trying to manage the classroom and don't have the time to show love to each student. Their friends are just as unloved as they are, so they can't show the love they each need either. Looking out over the sea of middle school and high school students I realized that we see them once a week, and our love for them could be the only love they get from an adult all week. They don't need more hugs or presents, they need the love of Christ. 

The kids test our patience and sometimes they make us want to scream, but if we want to impact them with Jesus, shouldn't we show love like He shows love?

I know that in my years as a child of God I have tested His patience and given Him a reason to want to scream! I have violated His commands and gone against everything He has asked me to do. Yet He still loves me in such a huge way that I can't understand. 

Think about it this way: Before God sent His Son to the earth to die for sins, He knew I would be born and that I would do terrible things, yet He sent Jesus anyway. He forgave me of every sin that I would commit thousands of years before I was even born, and He wouldn't change His mind. 

I think we can all agree that our families or those closest to us get the brunt of our anger and least of our love on a daily basis. It is easiest to hurt the ones we know will love us anyway, but does that give us the right to?

I know that I need to do better at loving my friends too. I can love them when I feel loved by them, but that's not true love. Love is not a feeling and should not be based on their love for me. I have a friend that I know that I have hurt in the past, and since then it has been very tense between the two of us. I find myself avoiding situations where I know she will be or leaving a room when she walks in. This is not truly loving her. In my mind, it's over and done with. But for her it isn't. If I truly loved her like Christ loves me, I would do better to ease that tension or pull her aside and work things out. But I don't know how to do that without making things worse. This is something I need to work on. Loving when it is difficult, or when my pride might get hurt, or when I may not get that love back. It is not possible to waste love. It always has an impact.

If we really want to show love to people, we must remember that there is no way to love them enough in our own strength. We have to turn to the Spirit and say "I know that You have called me to love like You have loved, so I am going to need your help in doing that." We are not able to love people enough on our own because of our flesh that fights against the things God has called us to. We can only do that with His love coursing through our veins and His words bouncing off our lips.

There are 2 places that come to mind when thinking about love. The first is obvious, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (the "Love is" passage). And the second is also a well known passage, Galatians 5:22-23 (The fruit of the Spirit). I encourage you to look into these passages and find something that you have never seen about them. I know for me, every time I read them I see something or make a connection that I hadn't before.

blessings and failures

2011 was a year of major failures and a few great blessings.

It is easy for me to focus on the bad of the past year. I could tell many more stories of my failure than I could of my successes. I failed God, I failed my parents, I failed almost everyone I know it seems. Many don’t even know how many times I failed in the past year because I was embarrassed and kept them to myself. But overall, I am learning that I have to move beyond them and seize the potential of this year. Through my failures I have learned so much, even when I was allowing them to define me and tell me that I did not deserve the blessings that were in my path.


Coming out of 2011, I was so excited to start over and leave those failures behind. But what I have already realized is that I can't simply leave them in my dust. It's not a new concept that our past has a tendency to follow us around like a shadow, casting gloom on a sunny day. If I don't ask for forgiveness and then forgive myself, I will never be free of those failures.


I would guess I am not the  only one that holds on to things far past their usefulness. What baggage are you still carrying? Is it a relationship that ended badly and you just can't seem to get any closure? Maybe you were fired or laid off from your job and can't seem to find another one because you are holding on to the old one? Or it may be a drug addiction that still haunts you. Or maybe you just feel like an all around failure and can't see around the pile of crap that you have built around you to keep people out.


Whatever it is, I encourage you to talk to God about it. Realizing that He already knows what is going on, but that he wants to hear it from you is oddly comforting. He loves you so much that He desires an open and honest relationship with you. He is our Heavenly Father. Think about the best dad you know. I hope that it is your own father, but some people are not that lucky. That dad that you have in mind, does he get mad when his child comes to him with a problem he needs fixing? No! He is excited to help in some way to make his child's life a little easier. That is what God desires of our relationship with Him.

Consider the prostitute

   You are not defined by what has happened in your past. You may wear the scars of something that you willingly entered into, or something that happened to you without your permission, but those scars don’t have to define who you are. A good example of this lesson is recent Dancing With The Stars winner J.R. Martinez. At 19 he was serving overseas in the military when his vehicle exploded. He made it out alive, but now wears the prominent scars of that experience. He has very visible scars covering majority of his body, but that does not keep him from living a very full life.

  

  He is an inspiration to so many people that think that because they are scarred so badly, they can never live a normal life. Martinez brought his charm and deeply moving story to every dance he performed, and because of it, captured the hearts of the viewers early in the competition. He does not let his scars define what he will accomplish.

    God uses our scars to bring Him glory in the end. Take a look at any person in the Bible and you will be able to see this so clearly. If the men and women in the Bible were this scarred and still made it into the most widely read Holy book in the world, I would say that is clear evidence that God uses the broken along with all of their junk to do amazing things.

   Think of Adam and Eve. The first people to walk the earth, and they literally “walked WITH God” on a daily basis. If they can be broken and scarred in such a major way and still be the parents of the entire population, what can God do with a sinner like me who has never had the pleasure of literally walking along side the real and visible God?

   I have many scars that haunt me on a daily basis, and sadly I lose the battle with them more times than I win, but God is still using me. He has never let me fall so far away that I can’t get back to Him. There have been times when I have been serving in ministry and trying so hard not to let the junk show, because I knew that I really should have been removed from that place of leadership. But, God knew that if that would have happened I would probably have been less likely to work out that junk by falling to my knees and letting God take it off my shoulders.

    One example in the Bible that reminds me that my past does not affect my future impact for the glory of God is Rahab. She was likely a prostitute, yet if you look at the lineage of Jesus, her name is listed as one of the few women in the direct line to the Messiah. If that isn’t testament to the hand of God using our past I don’t know if you are reading it correctly! She was the only person in Jericho that could have hidden the spies the way that she did. She likely lived in what we would consider a brothel, therefore to have men come in to her house would not have raised any red flags, it was probably a common occurrence. But because of her act of courage, she was saved from the slaughter of the other people living in the city, and she was able to save the lives of her family as well. Her story comforts me on my dark days when I feel like my past actions have somehow disqualified me for the grace of God.