Jesus Makes The Darkness Tremble

Suffering Doesn't Destroy Faith, It Refines It          I heard this quote in a movie I watched this week called "I Still Believe" based on the true story of Jeremy Camp's life. In this movie and his life, his wife is suffering from ovarian cancer that ends up being terminal. She passes away 4 months after they had married. It taught me that suffering brings you closer to God after it takes you away from Him. When we suffer we turn away from God, but then realize how faithful He was in the suffering. In my life, I have gotten to the point where no matter what happens I still believe in His promises. I chose to still believe, even in the trauma, even in the storms, even from the abuse, the PSTD, the chronic pain, and more.             How do we come back to God after suffering made us take a detour? I don’t have the perfect answer to this but those who are saved have a hard time not eventually coming back to God. It's because...

Live Intentionally       What does it mean to live intentionally? It means living purposely to be like Christ. It means living life with a passion to live for Jesus and not for the world. The world is temporary and Jesus is eternal, Earthly things don't matter as much as spiritual living. Live life with a purpose to glorify God with your actions and love. This doesn't mean we can't make mistakes and we have to be perfect. If God wanted us to never make a mistake then we would have an instruction manual on how to live. Although the bible is like a guide on how to live like Christ did. The bible is also filled with the mistakes of everyone, the doubts, and the struggles but besides all that it's full of redemption, grace, salvation, resurrection, new birth, and much more.          Living intentionally doesn't mean you have to have a purpose for everything and make everything perfect. It's the mindset that counts, it's what you're giving to God ...

Open Your Heart           There is so much going on right now and it can be hard to handle or grasp. During times of uncertainty, we are asked to pursue God and open our hearts up to receive him. We're not just asked to open our hearts to God but to others as well. Even with a pandemic or not, we are called to love like Christ loves you, not turn bitter. You have to open your heart to be willing to give others love in times of difficulty. We also have to open up our hearts to receive God's love for us, if we're not receiving his love we will be unable to fully love others.          Whenever difficulty strikes we tend to turn our hearts away from God because we can't make sense of it all, and we blame God for the storms. It's okay to be upset, fearful, confused, uneasy, sad, or any emotion you feel. It's okay to feel all these emotions at once even, but we still have to trust God and open up to him. Speak to the Father in all ho...

Die to Self to Live for Christ!         Have you died to yourself to become fully renewed in Christ? If we're being honest a lot of us still hold onto ourselves rather than letting go and letting God take the reigns. We get caught up in living life by our own will that we drown out God. We do this because we don't trust God to give us the life we want, except it's not about that. God isn't going to give you the perfect life because it's not his will. We also need to die to ourselves because we're stuck in the ways that don't honor the Lord. If we're not allowing Christ to live within us we're robbing him of blessing us with his presence.           When we die to our flesh we allow spirit to take over us. When we are stuck in the flesh we can't experience God to the full extent. God can't guide us if we're stuck in the flesh. The flesh is the raw part of us, the sinful part, the brokenness, and more. The spirit is full of renewal, Ch...

In Christ I Am         There are many things in life we chose to let define who we are rather than what Christ says. We base our identities on things we achieved, things we do, disabilities, mental health diagnosis, whatever might be it’s not what gives you your identity. Using these identities just puts a label and a limit on what you think you are capable of. Not saying that our achievements are invalid and unrecognized but they don't give us our identity.        When someone asks us who we are we always start off with I do this job, or I do this hobby, or I'm (fill in the blank). Why do we never start with God? I think a lot of times we don't feel we meet the requirements to be who God says we are. However, if we didn't meet those requirements then God wouldn't give us his identity. I think also we focus too much on what we're incapable or capable of doing that we don't see God's full picture. God sees the full picture which is why he gave ...

You're Never Too Broken For God           How many times have you asked yourself, why does God need me, I'm too broken? We get stuck thinking that when we're broken that we're undeserving of love. I want to stop you right there, this thinking does not come from God! Even if you feel like you are shattered to pieces, God sees it so much differently. God broke you away from the parts of yourself that weren't honoring him, to sculpt you into his masterpiece of salvation and redemption. However, God does not see you as broken, God sees broken pieces as stepping stones to him. God trembles us to shake the spirit of fear and renew it with the spirit of strength and faith.            God needs you and nothing is going to stop him from seeking you no matter how "broken" we are. We aren't really broken rather than just wounded, because when we break we can't get back up again. Wounds can take time to heal from but we can get back on our...

Seeking God When Your Heart is Troubled and Mind is Distracted       Often times when things are going on in our lives and we're stressed God can sometimes be the last thought in our brains. Sometimes we even forget to acknowledge God's work in our lives. Our minds can think up to 50,000-80,000 thoughts in a single day, that's insane, but more often than not most of those thoughts don't have God in them. Distraction is one of the hardest things to combat. We often tend to set our minds on other things even while praying to God. We started praying then all of sudden we're thinking about food or whatever and we're stuck with forgetting the prayer altogether.         Why do we get so distracted? There's no right or wrong answer to this but I think it's because we're not taking control of our thoughts. We let anxiety in and let it control our thoughts. We have to capture our thoughts and set them on God. We have the complete ability to capture our o...

Erasing Lies And Growing In God's Truth.           Many things can set us back from hearing God's truth, such as lies. Lies can derail us from speaking God's love and truth over us. We hear lies and believe them because they sound like the truth. That's satan's way of getting into your head and making them sound convincing. Satan likes to mess with your head but you have the power to speak truth over him. He hates it because it means God is winning. You have the power to shut Satan down and put God in control.           To erase the lies we have to understand the difference between truth and lies. The truth would never lead you to hate who God has created. Yes, the truth can be hard to hear sometimes but it is also so freeing. Lies can cause you to speak badly over yourself and not love yourself. We've got to stand up and combat these lies because they can mess with your head. Every lie can be broken down and truth corresponds ...

20 Years Of Life!        I can't believe it's been 20 years since I came into this world. There's so much that has happened in that time, there's so much that I've learned. There's been so many trials, hardship, God, loss, life changes, friendships, etc. Although there were many rough times in 20 years there's a lot of noticing God's work in my life. God has been apart of my entire life and I've always had God in my life even as little 4-year-old memorizing verses for Awana. Although he was apart of my whole life I didn't fully experience him until I was 15 and wanted to get out of being alive. That experience was a God-stop moment and flipped my life around to want God and thirst for his love and grace! Never had I known in my entire life how much love could come from God.          Finding God encouraged me to be able to come out of my darkness and step into God's light. The main thing I learned about God all these years is that God is ...

Trusting God Knows What’s Best For You, Let Him In!         Trusting God can be one of the easiest and hardest things to do in our lives. Trusting God is like going through a corn maze. You trust that the one guiding you knows how to get you out of the maze but you still chose to pick a different path that gets you lost. God leads you down his path then you see a short cut and get yourself lost again. Then God finds you and puts you on the path and then you get lost again. If you really trust that God knows what he's doing you keep walking in his ways.         We often don't trust God because of doubt, lack of faith, hard time trusting anyone, trauma/difficult life experiences, fear, etc. We feel at times that avoiding difficulty is avoiding God. We all know that we open our lives to deeper difficulty without the Lord, yet we still chose to keep God out of it for lack of trust in him. God doesn't lead us through difficult times for joy o...

Why Is It So Hard To Be Strong?          Being strong takes a lot of work, it can be mind consuming to put faith over fear and strengthen your mind. Throughout all my life I had the thought process of I need to be strong, no crying, no showing emotion, no being afraid, etc. Most of the time it was manipulation from my father for these thoughts to come into my head. Well, what I learned is faking it until you make it doesn’t give you real strength. Real strength comes from allowing God to use your emotions as a pathway to let go of stress. When you let go of stress your body is able to function better and you become stronger. I also had to learn throughout most of my life that showing emotion is not a sign of weakness its a sign of trying to be strong for way too long.           God doesn't call us to be strong all the time though, he allows us to be able to break from time to time to show us how strong he is working in us. Being str...

Learning How To Love/Forgive Yourself.       Loving others can feel a whole lot easier than loving yourself. When loving others we learn usually to look past their flaws and love them how God does. Why is it so hard for us to do the same? I think a lot of times when we look at ourselves we just can't see what God sees in us. We pick everything apart until there's no space left to pick. I think we just can't get a grasp on gracing ourselves with God's grace. Every mistake we make we allow shame to creep in and sit on top of grace. Why do we do this? I think a lot of times we do this because of the lack of forgiveness for ourselves. Often times believing that God has forgiven you isn't enough, so we dwell in unforgiveness of ourselves.       Forgiving yourself for sin habits is just as important as forgiving others for wrongdoings. We ask ourselves often how can God forgive me, I messed up too bad? We get trapped in the lies and so we aren't able to ...

Letting Go And Letting God      So many times we hold onto things that keep us from trusting God and letting God move in our lives. We feel a sense of security when things are familiar and we hold on tight to being secure. We feel like if we have control over the situation it will turn out the way we want it to. God wants us to step out from those secure feeling places and walk into his ways! We have to fight the feeling of being secure because although it may feel safe it's not what God wants for us. Why do we hold back from taking God’s outstretched hand and walking with him? Many things can get in the way such as unwillingness to hear what God wants for you, doubting, fear of the unknown, lack of forgiveness, believing lies from satan, stubbornness,  etc. Any of these can hold you back from hearing and receiving God.       Why do we hold onto these things? I think sometimes we do this unconsciously, or in a non-purposeful way. Like for example f...

Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover, Love Instead!       This world sometimes can be so full of judgment we get judged by just about everything we do, say, wear, etc. More often then not we get judged by our outward appearances. This world can be pretty harsh including Godly people. These days some people feel they can't do anything without being heavily judged for doing so. Even if someone is in sinful habits it's not our place to judge them, we can help them to know that it is wrong in a loving way, but to shame them for it wrong.       People get shamed for being overweight, having glasses, having disabilities, being religious, sinful habits, etc. Why is our world like this? Honestly, I think its because a majority of our world is without God, and those who have God haven't learned how to love as God loves us. Now I'm not saying all Christians are like this of course, but a lot of us can be harsh to other members in church communities. So many people nee...