• 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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  • Faith

    For Those Of You Who Have Anxious Hearts Like I Do….

    July 14, 2015

    This post is for those of you who know how it feels to be anxious. Anxious about life. Anxious for no reason at all sometimes. This post is for those of you who want so badly to trust in God’s good promises for you, who want to experience the peace that Jesus offers – but just can’t seem to grab a hold of this peace and keep it in your hearts.

    Instead you know how it feels to keep repeating the same anxious thoughts over and over again not sure how to make them stop.

    “If only…”

    “What if…”

    Now I want to let you know I am no expert on this. I too struggle with grabbing a hold of the the peace that Jesus offers. I’m on the same journey as you but I want to share with you what God is teaching me along the way.

    I don’t know about you guys but sometimes when I’m feeling anxious I think that I can figure out God’s plan if I think hard enough about my life. Now I realize how ridiculous this sounds admitting it but I’ve realized that that’s exactly what I am trying to do when I can’t stop my anxious heart from worrying.

    Sometimes I even examine other people’s lives and think that I can figure out how God works.

    So she grew up in a Christian home and has had a good life so far so ultimately something bad has to happen to her eventually, right?

    Or, I’ve had a really good year.. that must mean that something bad is lurking around the corner…

    Or, I better not enjoy this too much because then it might get taken away from me…

    Just admitting those thoughts out loud and bringing them into the light makes me realize how ridiculously wrong they really are.

    ” He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.”

    – Acts 1:7

    This verse hit me hard when I read it today. No matter how hard I try to figure out what is going to happen, I simply cannot. It is not in my ability to do so. That again is reserved for God alone. Just like I mentioned in my post “If God’s Ways Are Higher Than Ours Why Does He Allow Bad Things To Happen To Us?”.

    God must really be trying to tell me something huh? Our jobs aren’t to figure out our future, what might or might not happen. Our jobs aren’t to go over every bad thing that can happen to try to figure out how we are going to deal with them if they do.

    Our jobs are to rest in His great love and provision for us. God is faithful guys. He promises to always meet our needs. That’s His job, not ours.

    But more than that, let’s remember how good our God really is. What I’m learning is that this is at the root of our anxieties and worries – we do not ultimately believe that God is good…

    And how wrong we are. God is really transforming my mind about who He is and the main thing that He’s showing me is that He is good! So good we can’t even fathom. If something bad is to happen to us, He’ll be there – every step of the way.

    Holding us, loving us, and growing us.

    We’re never alone, and never without what we need.

    “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”

    Pray that God will open your eyes to just how good He really is – it will rock your world.

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  • Faith,  Life

    I Wish…

    July 9, 2015

    Some days are harder than others. For no reason at all. Today is one of those days. I feel crushed by my own desires. Contentment is what I struggle with. Some days more than others.

    I wish…

    I wish I was prettier.

    I wish my skin was clearer.

    I wish I was married.

    I wish I had a job that was more stable.

    I wish my home life wasn’t so stressful.

    But then I hear a still small voice whisper, “You are exactly where I need you to be. Stop wishing your life away.”

    Sometimes I so easily forget how far I’ve come and how much I DO have.

    I have…

    I have a loving mother.

    I have a job that I love.

    I have the best boyfriend I could ever ask for.

    I have awesome friends that I can have fun with.

    I have Jesus.

    Isn’t that the most important of all? He is all I need. How easily I forget that sometimes. He is my fulfillment. I do not need any of those things I wish I had. I need to rest in His love.

    “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 

    This is what He’s been trying to tell me. Be content with what you have now, there’s a season for everything and you are exactly where He needs you to be.

    Rest.

    Enjoy where you are.

    Love.

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  • Life,  Marriage

    4 Ways To Keep Your Relationship Centered on Jesus / Meet Tommy!

    July 6, 2015

    Hi Everyone! Meet Tommy, my other half/the best guy out there.

    I wanted to write about something a little more personal this time and something I’ve been struggling with this past week.

    I wanted to write about idolizing someone in a relationship because I haven’t been able to find too many posts about this topic and my hope is to help others that might be struggling with this as well.

    What I’ve come to learn about this is that it is much easier to idolize a relationship than I had originally thought. In the past I have been in relationships that were not pleasing to God and I thought that because of that sole fact was what made me idolize those relationships since I had replaced them with following what God had wanted for my life.

    But I’ve been dating Tommy for 8 months now and we both have realized that even though are hearts were in the right place (we wanted our relationship to be centered around Jesus) that didn’t mean that it was just going to happen by itself. We realized that this meant that in order for our relationship to stay centered on Jesus we needed to be intentional about it.

    So me and Tommy sat down and wrote a practical list of how we were going to start doing this. Here’s our list – 4 ways to keep your relationship centered on Jesus:

    4 ways to center your relationship on jesus

    Now we only made this list last week, so we are starting out small to make sure that we don’t set unrealistic goals for ourselves but my plan is to hopefully build on it once these things become habits for us. I think the most important thing we did though was to ask Jesus for help with these goals because we know that without His grace there’s no way we can do this.

    Oh and I almost forgot, after we finished making the list we came up with two other ideas that we thought might help us. We decided that it was important for us to make time for ourselves and make our friends more of a priority so that we have more to focus on besides of each other.

    But how about you guys? Does anyone else struggle with this/have any other tips that might help?


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  • Faith,  Life

    Trusting That God Really Is Good…

    June 29, 2015

    This is something that I struggle with on most days if I’m honest. I’ve gone through some tough things throughout my life and sometimes I blame God for allowing these things to happen. I mean don’t get me wrong I know “logically” that God is good. I am completely thankful for the fact that Jesus died for me. It’s such an amazing truth, but sometimes I struggle with really grasping that truth and keeping it in my heart.

    I notice that the times I’m struggling with this truth I tend to look for my happiness elsewhere. A lot of the time it’s either in my boyfriend or just in having a comfortable life. Sometimes I think that if I do the right things or am “good enough” God will allow my wishes and dreams to come true. Other times I deceive myself and realize that I am living for my own dream and think that once I’m married I will finally be happy.

    How wrong I am.

    Good things come to us because God is good and He loves us. True happiness comes from believing that.

    We truly do not deserve any good thing that we have. This is something that I am trying to remember more and more. I notice the more time I spend with Jesus the easier it becomes.

    What about you guys? Does anybody else struggle with this and if you do what are some tips to help me to stay on track and get my identity solely from God?

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  • Faith

    If God’s Ways Are Higher Than Ours Why Does He Allow Bad Things To Happen To Us?

    June 27, 2015

    I just want to start out by saying that I’m really excited about starting this blog. I have been going back and forth with the idea of having it be a blog page or a devotional page but I think I decided with a mixture of both.

    “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” – Isaiah 55:9

    This verse is an interesting one because it is probably one that we read really quickly and be like okay got it, I already know I don’t understand God’s ways because well.. He is God. He created everything and I didn’t – that’s an easy one. But I wonder how much more we would get from verses if we just sat down and took the time to really ponder each one of them.

    My pastor said something a few weeks ago that really stuck with me that ties in with this verse. He said:

    When a dog sees his owner leave the house, he can’t comprehend what or where his owner is going or doing. The owner is more advanced in his or her thinking than the dog is therefore the dog cannot comprehend the depths of his owner’s actions.

    When we really think about this it reminds us that there are just going to be things that God does or allows that we just do not have the ability to understand. We have to remember that God literally created everything we see from nothing.. absolutely nothing. We as humans have the ability to recreate things but never create anything from nothing. We always have to start out with supplies in order to create something. The ability to create from nothing is reserved for God alone and something that we just do not have the brain to understand.

    So when something so awful happens in our lives that we just cannot understand, maybe instead of trying to understand why, we can just rest in the fact that God’s ways are greater and more importantly that God is love.

    Jesus came to the earth to die for us, because he so loved us that he couldn’t stand the idea of us being separated from him. Let’s rest in that rather than our current circumstances if they are difficult. Remember that God’s ways are never easy and sometimes beyond our comprehension but one thing we do know is that He loves us more than anything.

    When we remember what God has done for us it helps us to realize that God really does love us and does not want to see us hurt. He promises that “All things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).

    And trust me, I know this can be a lot easier said than done. I do not want to come off sounding ignorant or insensitive to anyone or their situations. I have been through some hard times too but I do know that God is greater than anything we’re going through. If you’re going through something difficult, I do not know why God allowed it but I do know that it is possible to glorify God through anything. Let’s pray for his help to do it.

    Pray: Jesus, sometimes our circumstances are too hard for us to even comprehend. Help us to remember that your ways are higher than ours and help us not to dwell on finding an answer to why they may have happened. Rather, help us to look to the cross and be reminded of what you did for us and help us to rest in your love instead.

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