Being Vulnerable

2  Cor 6:11
"We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. 12  There is no restriction in our affections, "

What does it truly mean to be vulnerable? For so many it is so hard to tell people what they really feel. I'm not talking about blurting out your grievances at any waking moment. I'm talking about being honest with people around you with what is going on in your life. There are people out there who truly care for you. It could be your parent's or your friends. Maybe a sister or brother, a youth leader or a teacher. Whoever it is when they ask 'How are you?" it's because they care. They want to know and even as Christians we find ourselves putting on a fake smile and saying great even when our world as we know is falling down around us. So why? You see, me being someone who is an open book, people who keep everything in drive me crazy. They drive me crazy on so many level because I care for them and want to help them, but also they make me feel like I'm crazy. Being a leader in the church I can't see how you can't be vulnerable, yet so many people aren't. So many members of the body hide painful struggles or mistakes because they feel like they have to be perfect in order to remain on God's good side. They don't want people looking at them like they are broken, like they're weak. However we are called to live like Jesus and that is exactly how Jesus was when he saved us. He was vulnerable and broken when he carried our sins. He was honest in his fear and because he loved us he found courage and strength to take our sins on the cross. So if Jesus was vulnerable in the worst way possible, to pay for all our sins and not only did he pay the price he had to venture into the pits of hell to truly set us free. If Jesus can do that why do we continue to put up fake walls to protect ourselves. Now I get it some of you are reading this and think that you don't trust people cause you don't want to get hurt. My response to you is two things. One I completely understand. When you have been hurt it is so hard to rust other's especially when you are sharing something like sin or a struggle, but instead of feeling overwhelmed by the stress of not knowing trust rest assure in God. my second point is that god will provide the right people in your life to be vulnerable with if you ask for them. You cannot live your life afraid of what people might think. I know that is way easier said then done, but If you can do it, if you can be vulnerable without worrying what others think you will be able to experience true freedom. For we all make mistake every one of us no matter what position we hold we are sinners it's our nature. So my challenge for you today is to be vulnerable. Put your testimony out there not for notice or for fame, but to be like Jesus and to reach others. For me it is inspiring to hear what other people have been through and see them where they are today. It let's me know that everything really is going to be ok. It reminds me of God's faithfulness and how he will see me through all my trials. I always try to be vulnerable with my small groups girls because I want them to know my heart. I want them to see me for who I am and not who I could pretend to be. I am a mess, I am a sinner who needs God in everything I do. I cannot do anything without Him and I'm not afraid to admit it. I love that we have a God so much bigger than anything the world throws at us and as I continue to live I will speak my story for his glory so that maybe one person's eternity is saved because of it. So show your heart to someone allow them to show you theirs and who knows maybe the world might be a better place when we all begin to see that we aren't all that different after all. 

Stress the Silent Killer

Philippians 4:6-7.  
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

If we truly have Faith why do we stress? Why do we doubt the word of God? You see I am not writing this from a place of judgement or condemnation I am writing this from a place of vulnerability and understanding, my life is filled with stress. To me stress is normal but I was taught that it shouldn't be. God didn't intend for us to be stressed instead, he wanted the complete opposite for us. He wanted us to experience a life filled with joy and peace. To be able to walk in his light and rest assure in his promises and his teachings. Yet sin entered the world and thus life is different. The enemy uses stress to create doubt and to draw us away from The Lord. So truly stress is the Silent Killer, not in the way of causing illness, which it does, but as a killer of faith. I think sometime people get caught up on the enemy trying to bring physical harm such as illness to them when they hear the verse "...kill,steal, and destroy," but I think that the death he is talking about isn't a physical thing but an emotional and spiritual one. The enemy doesn't want you physically dead. If he was to kill you while you still had faith in Jesus then what would be the point. He wants to kill your faith, to rip you from the comforting arms of God and drag you down to the pits of hell. Sorry for getting dark , but it's the truth. I wanted to write this to share a piece of me and my hope is that by being vulnerable I can help encourage you. You are not alone. Not only are you not alone because God is always with you. You are not alone in your struggles. You are in the best of company because every great man or women in the bible struggled. David broke a commandment and then lost a child because of it, yet God did not turn from him. Peter denied Jesus 3 times and still he is loved by the Lord. I mean if anyone struggled look at Paul. He was blinded just so he could truly see and then he gave his life to the Lord and found himself persecuted and put in prison, yet he is the main author of the New Testament and in my humble opinion a man, just like David, after God's own heart. If that's not enough, and I am not saying I am like those men I listed, but you can always think of me.  I'm just like you, an ordinary person called to do extraordinary things because we all are. The things is we all struggle no matter who we are; we are sinner and thus struggles will come our way. Like it says in the song One Thing Remains "scars and struggles on the way..." It doesn't say in the past or they will happen once in our life it says on the way because we will experience them through out our lives. However there is one thing that keeps me going. The thing I remember even if I'm crying while I eat a pint of ice Cream is: God is always good! God is always good, he is never Bad. Bad things do not come from him, NO they come from the enemy and don't ever forget that. Rest in his goodness and know that the reason you struggle is because your under attack and rejoice in that. I know you're thinking Rejoice are you crazy, but I'm not I'm telling you to rejoice because the enemy is attacking, I mean rejoice because the enemy like to attack when something amazing is about to happen. He attacks when God is moving in you life. So rejoice because the Lord is doing a work in you. I challenge you today to find time to simply ask the Lord what plans he has for you. Ask him how you can serve him and glorify his kingdom. You see he will speak to you and once you know his plan you can hide in you heart his promises. Once you know his promises you can then rejoice even when you're stressed because God is alive and well moving in you life and that is something to be excited about. 

Still Stuggling

1 Peter 5:10
 "And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you."

I wanted to share a simple piece of my heart. I wanted to take a moment to be vulnerable and honest in hope that it might make some type of impact on one person. I have been a Christian since I was 8 years old. I knew at that young age that I believed in Jesus and that he died on a cross for my sins. Yet there was a time after that I questioned that decision. A time when my life was so low I didn't make sense because The Lord I was believing didn't seem to care. There were times in which I felt like death was the way out but my God is so good. He sent someone to show me the way. Someone to help sow the seeds that had been planted in my life and showed me what I was missing. When I was 16 years old God met me in my brokenness in the time in which I knew something was missing but didn't know what it was. He met me and showed me that knowing who He was wasn't enough. I had to learn who I was in Him to truly have a relationship with my Savior. So with that life should be easy right. Once you accept Christ and start a relationship with him your life is smooth sailing. Well I'm here to tell you that you're wrong. Life as a Christian isn't easy. There are moments in which I mess up. Moments when I find myself crying myself to sleep wondering what God's plan for me is. I still question things and try to take control when I know I shouldn't. Yet one thing remains the same my God still loves me. I'm still his daughter and nothing can ever change that. So what makes life different as a Christian. Being a follower of Christ makes life worth living. Accepting him didn't make my life easy it made it worth it. Knowing that My God is so much bigger than every problem makes my job easy. I just simply believe in Him and continue to peruse him the best I can. But I will always be a sinner and so what I need to do is continue to walk the path I know is right and forgive myself for the mistakes along the way. So I challenge you to do the same today. If today was a bad day tell yourself it was good because God gave you another day of this earth. Know that nothing can separate you from him and rest assure that he has it all planned out no matter what.

Worship the Great I Am

Psalm 86:9-10
All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, O Lord; they will bring glory to your name.  For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God.

I had this revelation over the weekend as to what it means to Worship God. As I stood in my children's ministry classroom I watched as the young students before me worshiped but as I looked around I noticed that as the ages seem to progress the older they got the less them seem to worship. Then I thought about my experience with my church's youth group and how it seems to be the opposite.  In that setting the younger students, those in middle school and starting high school, seem to struggle with worshiping where those who are older are giving all they have. So I thought to myself what is the secret ingredient to worship? When you think about it more in-depth every church has a different way in which they use the term worship. For some it might be what their Pastor or Reverend calls their offering. He might say something like " let us worship the Lord together in our giving and with our offering" as the plates are being passed around. Others might believe it is the prayer they say together or the moments in which they kneel as a sign of respect to the Saints. Where I go to church they refer to worship as the time before the sermon in which we as a congregation come together and praise God. We sing but to us its more than that. Its about having a few moments to completely connect with the Lord in an intimate way. So as I continued to ponder this I just brushed it off as everyone does it their own way and it can mean whatever we want it to mean, but then God reminded me of something. He reminded me that when it comes to His word nothing is gray and so ambiguous. Everything is black and white. In our modern world we like to cover up having to make a choice on things by saying that they fall within a gray area. However when it comes to truth that area doesn't exist. So what does it really mean to worship? Now before people start going crazy I understand that worship can be done in many ways and I have already addressed some of those ways above but that is not why I decided to write this. I wanted to dig deeper I wanted to know what it means to worship the Lord. I wanted to know what our heart behind it should be doing because sometimes we allow the action to simple be enough and I know that is not what worship means. If worshiping meant to simple do what the Pastor declared was worship then we would be a very legalistic society, but I know church around here are all of the same team fighting against an enemy bigger than we understand and I wanted to find out what it meant to worship so that I too could be armed in battle. So I dove into the word and time with God so that he could share with me what his thoughts on it were. Worshiping is complete surrender to the Lord serving him and allowing him to use you as vessel for his word. Those moments when you give it all to him and your faith is all you are relying on. As it states in Psalm its allows Him to be praised for who He is the Great I Am. He is the ruler of the universe,  creator of all things new and he loves us unconditionally. To worship Him is to love him in return knowing that you are loved despite your sin. You are loved because you were redeemed by the blood of the lamb. So with it being Valentine's Day I thought of what better way to celebrate then worshiping the one true King. Allow his love to fill us and spending time with him through worship so that we can then turn and pour love onto others. Remember today is a lonely day for some, it might even be lonely for you but remember you are never alone. You are loved by the one who created you so worship Him for he is good and loves you no matter what. 

Finding Strength

Philippians 4:13
"I can so all things through Christ who gives me strength."

Have you ever thought to yourself how do some people go through life the way they do? How do they still seem to smile and laugh when the world around them is falling apart. We as humans desire stability and comfort. It's not normal for our world to be so full of chaos and turmoil, yet to some of us that is what life has become. Worry, fear, and stress were all created by the enemy to make us doubt God. I don't know about you, but last year was one, if not the hardest year of my life. The struggles I faced were over such a wide-span of different areas it would be hard to say which one was the greatest. However in the hardest year I found myself still growing and changing for the better in ways I was not expecting. I would find myself a complete mess and God would speak into my situation. As different as each instance was and when my world seemed to be falling down around me my God was still there. You see God is good all the time no exceptions, but we as humans don't think of him that way because we can't understand his magnitude. So we picture him as a human and by doing that we give him limitations that he doesn't have. Even when he says no he is still doing it for our own good. He loves us unconditionally and because of that he wants us to have nothing but the best. However we are still going to face struggles they happen, but the great thing is that God uses them for good. We can't see the big picture but He has created it and knows that the journey is just as important as the destination. So you are probably wondering what does this have to do with strength? Simple, when you don't have the strength to carry on it's because you are trying to rely on your own strength instead of leaning in Him. I think people believe that they are weak if they turn to others for help, and in that case they treat God no different. Yet I think it takes courage to know when you can't go it alone, to admit that you need God to get you through. Yo walk through life with Him is not only life changing it allows us to have complete freedom. Casting the burden that Jesus already paid for on the cross is liberating and who doesn't want to be liberated. So my challenge for you today is to march. March to the alter with all your burdens strapped to you and dump them. Leave them there and don't pick them back up. Allow yourself to feel the weight removed from your shoulders and altered for the better. Trust in him for He is all the strength you need. 

Being Bold

Ephesians 3:12

"Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God's presence."

With today being MLK day I have found myself reflecting on what he was thinking. So many people see him as just a civil rights activist but forgot he was a pastor. He was a man of God on a mission to fulfill what he felt he was called to do. I love that. I love the fact that he follow God's plan for him with no fear, he was bold. So many people wonder to themselves why the world has stopped changing and I think it's because Christians who are called by God to do great things have stopped being bold. We all have a destiny but we try to find our own way in the world and end up coming up short. So today I say remember Martin Luther King Jr. And live for your dreams. Find your destiny and stand boldly knowing that God is by your side. My challenge for you today is to talk to God and ask him how you can be bold. Seek him and let him know that you are ready to do anything he has planned for you because you know he will led the way. I think Doctor King would agree with me when I don't forget to dream but when you do make sure your dreams are as big as the plans God has for you because nothing is impossible with Him by your side. 

Finding Value

Ephesians 2:4-9
"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,"

So I was thinking to myself as my 26th birthday fast approaches what have I done with the first 25 years of my life? I mean my goodness it's a quarter of a century and what do I have to show for it? As these questions continued to circle around in my head the enemy way quick to respond. He showed me what I was lacking: a husband, a full-time job that I love, a house, debt up to my eyeballs. As I began to feel down and depressed about my life God wanted to come to my rescue. His presence of peace and love was so overwhelming and the truth he revealed to me was so needed. You see before I allowed God to speak into my situation I was trying to erase my doubt and insecurities on my own. I was going to family and friends hoping that their encouraging words would help. They would mention college or church and for a few moments I would feel better, but it wasn't sustainable. The feelings of doubt and regret would still creep in. Then finally when my walls were down and I took a moment to be silent and still God revealed something amazing to me. It's not always easy to take a moment to simply stop everything to hear what God wants us to, especially with the way our lives are nowadays, but when we do it is totally worth it.  When God spoke into that situation I felt immediate joy and peace. I am always so amazed by what we find as valuable compared to God. In our world it's about what we have and we measure success based on how much we have compared to others. Yet God values how much you give, not in the financial sense, but in what you give to give to his kingdom. In the moment when I was looking for value he showed me that I had accomplished more than I had ever thought. He told me that I had been faithful and in my faithfulness my family had been saved. God showed me how he used me in my family lives to plant a seed. Knowing that 5 people who I love so much would spend eternity in heaven with him is more than I could ever ask for. To be a vessel for him is by far the greatest gift. So now as 26 approaches I'm not thinking about the past 25 years. Instead I'm thinking about the future and it excites me to see what God has in store. So my challenge for you is to find a moment to silent and still. God is always speaking to us, but we just have to listen. So take some time to listen because I guarantee that you will be amazed at all He has to say.