• Faith,  Life

    True Life: I Hate The Unknown

    August 24, 2015

    It’s true. I hate the unknown more than anything. When I don’t know the details of things that are happening in my life I get anxious. I love to be prepared and when I’m prepared I think that I’m the one in control of what is happening in my life. Obviously this isn’t true in the slightest. God’s in control, no matter how much planning and preparing I do. He ultimately decides how things happen in my life.

    Planning and preparing aren’t bad things in themselves of course, I think God honors us when we are responsible and plan for things that are happening in our lives. But I believe it’s a sin when we plan and plan and plan so much that we think we are out planning God. I don’t know if anyone else struggles with this but sometimes I think I know better than God does. I know what I’ll enjoy and I want to enjoy it when I want it. I can be very impatient at times.

    The most frustrating part to me is that I KNOW Jesus’s ways are better than my own. I know that waiting on His timing will only bring me more joy, but sometimes I still feel that I know better or maybe it’s just that I can be selfish at times and I want what I want more than I want to wait for whatever Jesus has prepared for me.

    I’m having a hard time with this but I know that Jesus will carry me through. What do you guys do when you struggle with waiting on Jesus? I’d love to hear from you.

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  • Faith

    A Secret About Your Fears

    August 15, 2015

    I felt like God wanted me to write about this specific topic earlier today but I reasoned with myself and told myself that I didn’t really feel in the mood to write at the time so I decided not to write about it.

    What I wanted to write though was that God has really been trying to show me the secret of why I fear things is because I picture the fear without God being there. 

    God’s really been telling me over and over again lately that He is always with me. And that this is the most important thing that I can remember, especially in those times that I’m worrying about something in my future. If I think back to my past, about the hard things I’ve gone through (and there have been a lot if I’m honest), and I realized that He was always there through all that, and that He is still here for me now, then I need to start picturing Him in the future as well.

    I just read my devotional, Jesus Calling for the day and I want to share it with you:

    Sit quietly with me, letting all your fears and worries bubble up to the surface of your consciousness. There, in the light of My Presence, the bubbles pop and disappear. However, some fears surface over and over again, especially fear of the future. You tend to project yourself mentally into the next day, week, month, year, decade; and you visualize yourself coping badly in those times. What you are seeing is a false image, because it doesn’t include Me. Those gloomy times that you imagine will not come to pass, since My Presence will be with you at all times. When a future-oriented worry assails you, capture it and disarm it by suffusing the Light of My Presence into that mental image. Say to yourself, “Jesus will be with me then and there. With His help, I can cope!” Then, come to the present moment, where you can enjoy Peace in my Presence”

    Once I read this I knew I had to write about it. This is the secret to conquering our fears. There’s no reason to worry about the future because He will be with us and He will give us the strength to get through whatever may cross our paths. What an awesome God we have.

    “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.” –Deuteronomy 31:6

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  • Faith

    To The Perfectionists

    July 28, 2015

    It’s okay.

    It’s okay not to have it all together.

    Sometimes I know this but for me to actually believe it, it’s impossible. There’s a verse in the bible about being perfect isn’t there? Oh yeah…

    “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” – Matthew 5:48

    But what does “perfect” look like in the eyes of God? What is He expecting of us? This is something that I have struggled with trying to understand for quite some time now. But God has finally freed me from the slavery of trying to be perfect. All I had to do was ask…

    I prayed about how much I struggled with trying to be perfect and how I felt that I needed to be for Him to love me. I got that Jesus died for me because I wasn’t but I also knew that it wasn’t okay for me to keep sinning either. So I wondered, what did God expect of me?

    And he answered my prayer, He has led my heart down an amazing path of healing from perfectionism. He knows I’m not perfect, and He knows you’re not perfect.

    Yet He loves us anyway.

    What God cares most about is your heart. He desires to know the real you. The messy you. The you that you don’t even like. He desires for us to let Him in and ask Him to help us to be better. Only He can do that anyway, we can strive and strive all we want to be better, look better, feel better. But without letting Him in and asking Him to change us, we can’t and we won’t be better.

    “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'” – 2 Corinthians 12:9

    This was the verse I was missing. The perfection I was looking for and God expected me to strive after was already completed in Jesus’s work on the cross. Now that’s all that’s left to do now is:

    REST.

    In his grace. Because it is sufficient.

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