Let's Stop Insisting.

Why is it that we always insist on having our way on everything?

Why is it so difficult for us to let go of our plans for once and let God take over?

I feel like our society today loves to be in control. 

We love to have a plan. 

We love to know where we're going to go, what we're going to do, who we're going to be and what's going to happen.

But in the midst of that planning did it ever occur to us, that it....

Isn't for us to do?

Sure, we have things we want to do in life, places we want to go, things we want to accomplish, but in reality... our plans are not OURS.

Since our lives are not ours, our plans are not ours either. 

God has plans for us that are far beyond our comprehension, and we may not even have a clue as to what they are. We think our plans that we have for the future are set in stone. That they are what we've got to go after in our lives because we decided that's what we wanted.

But what if that of which we are standing on; OUR plans, get pulled out from underneath our feet? What if God shows up and makes it undeniable that our plans are about to change? What would we do?

Would we be willing to let go of the plans that we have set up for ourselves and let God begin to work even greater ones in our lives?

It's a crazy thought, because we long to be in control of our lives, and when it feels like we're losing any of that control... It drives us crazy. We feel almost lost in the sense that we don't know what's coming down the road. We don't know what we're walking into. We basically get scared...

But that's when we take that step of faith. That's when we decide to put our everything in God's hands and let go of ourselves. Our pride. Our fear. OUR PLANS. 

That's when God begins to work HIS. 

But are we really willing to surrender it all to Him for something far greater than we could understand?

Are we willing to let go of US?

What If....

SO many times in our lives when facing different situations, different issues, we constantly use the 'What if' phrase. What if this relationship doesn't work out? What if our plans don't turn out as we had anticipated? What if I lose this friendship because of my choice to completely follow the Lord?

I'm going to be slightly morbid for a second....

Since we say 'What if' in the midst of so many of our circumstances, I think I can ask this...
What if you died tomorrow?

I know. A little bit of a risky, sensitive subject. But really think about it for a second.
What if you died tomorrow, wherever you are in life, 
young, old, rich, poor...would you be satisfied with the life you lived?


As Christians, can we honestly look at our lives and say that we have lived out the life that God called us to? Would we enter the gates of heaven to hear 'Well done, good and faithful servant'?


Matthew 25:34-36 says, 
 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’"


Do we really do these things? I mean, how many times do we feed those without food? Do something as simple as bringing a drink to somebody? How many times are we welcoming or smile at those people we walk past everyday? And when we do these things, is it to glorify ourselves, or is it to spread the love of Christ? Let's let that be our goal when we do things for people, NOT ourselves.


On the flip side of the promise for us to enter the Kingdom if we do live a life of servitude for Christ, verses 41-43 hold a warning...
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’"


Yes, God's promises are so powerful but His warnings are just as strong and powerful. If we don't do these things. If we don't serve the Kingdom of God, when we reach the end of our lives, ultimately, He's going to reject us. He's SO loving and SO merciful and SO full of grace...... 
But He's also a jealous God, a consuming fire. (Deut. 4:24). 


If we are lukewarm, He's going to spit us out of His mouth. (Rev. 3:16). He wants all of us, not just the portion that's easy for us to give. It's easy to accept His love, His mercy, and His grace but we tend to 'put aside' the fact that His wrath is a large part of who God is too, and being 'spit out' of His mouth is not ideal...


So, we have to think about it... Is the life we're living now what God wants for us? 
Would WE get spit out of the mouth of this powerfully jealous God?


If you or I died tomorrow...
Would the lives we lived bring God to say, "Come you who are blessed by my Father..."?
Would we be satisfied with the people we were, the lives we lived?
Can we say that we have been spreading the love of Christ in ALL the ways we were called?


What if you died tomorrow?


Will you hear 'Well done, good and faithful servant'?

Sometimes, It's the Little Things.

God's super cool. Yes?

YES. There's no arguing that. At all. Ever.

Yesterday, God took something as super simple as pulling over to pray for a woman walking on the side of a freeway exit, and turned it into something incredibly encouraging. 

The story? Cool. Glad to share.

Jen and I went to coffee yesterday morning with some girls, to catch up and talk about how SO flipping cool Jesus is... We were on no time crunch. We just went with the flow of the morning. We sat and talked for about an hour before they had to leave. Then we headed home. As we're getting off the freeway, we see a woman walking alongside the exit ramp. Instantly our attention was drawn to her... Partially because she was wearing bright pink... But more so because it's not very often that we see people speed walking to get off the freeway.

We had seen her car on the shoulder a little ways back, and just felt like there had to be something we could do for this woman. We pulled over on the side of the road trying to figure out what we could do, what we could say, anyyything. So, we stopped, and simply began to pray that God would show us what to say or what to do. Cool God moment number one.

As soon as we finished praying, we began to look around for her... right as the Davis family pulls up in their Suburban right next to us. Impeccable timing. Moment number two. After explaining what we were doing randomly parked in the dirt on the side of the road, we hopped in their car and drove to where the lady had gone to call for help. 

As we approached her, she looked kind of hesitant to talk to us. I mean, I would too if a woman and two teenage girls started walking toward me smiling extremely largely... But that's okay. :) We asked her if she was okay, and explained that we noticed her on the side of the road, and felt the need to make sure she was okay and see if there was any way that we could help her. And seriously, moment number three was the smile across her face. She told us that she had run out of gas, and that she was waiting for her friend to come help her put gas in her car. 

As we stood there talking to her in the parking lot of this random Ripon restaurant, I couldn't help but notice the joy in this woman's life. Here she is in a super stressful, and irritating situation, and something as simple as a few girls asking her if she's okay, was enough to even more brighten her day. She was so excited to say how blessed she was to walk, to talk, to breathe, to live. This woman loved the Lord, she did, and it was SO cool how God took something like stopping to check on her to encourage her AND us. It was exciting. 

God is so faithful. From the beginning of the summer I have been praying that He would use me in Modesto. That He would work in and through me. That would He teach me how to be more like Him. And He continues to amaze me with the different circumstances in which He reveals Himself to me, the different people He uses to encourage me, the different people I have been able to encourage. This summer has been an incredible blessing and this woman was a perfect example of even the smallest things that God is doing through the summer that reveal His greatness to me and to those around me. 

Through The Darkness.

     "That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens." Romans 8:18-21 (MSG)

    

     Let's be blatantly honest. Life sucks sometimes. Period.

Nobody can argue with that. 

There are days for everybody where we sit and wonder what God's even doing in our lives. We get frustrated or confused or doubtful. I definitely think it's easy for us to go there in the midst of the struggles in our lives. It's easier to get mad at God for what we think He's not doing or what we think He's not doing right in our lives. 

It's harder to take what we go through, lay it at the base of the cross, and say, 'Father, this life is Yours. You know what I'm struggling with. You know what this life is throwing at me... But You also already know what is going to become of this situation. So, God I put my complete trust and faith in You. I know You'll take this and make it glorify You when all is said and done.' 

It shouldn't be so hard for us to surrender it all to Him. But because of our human nature that says 'surrender' basically means 'give up', we fear it. I feel like though, surrendering to Christ isn't giving up. At all. 

When we get to that point of utmost surrender of our everything to Christ, we then have a reason to fight. A reason to NOT give up. We're made nothing so that through us, He can be made EVERYTHING. We give ourselves over to a life where He takes the ugliness, the darkness, and the pain of our lives and transforms us to be made more like Him. That is a reason to fight.

Suddenly, the darkness of the world has no power over us. Suddenly, we see everything and everyone with a new perspective. Suddenly? Our absolute surrender changes us. We're made new. 

We no longer need to fear the concept of surrender. There's no reason to give up. Laying all of our hurts and struggles at the base of the cross becomes a sign of hope. The hardships of this world become NOTHING compared to the love and hope and faith that we have in the Lord. We're made completely available to be used to glorify God in our everything; the absolutely incredible God of the universe. We're forever CHANGED.

Loving the 4.5 Billion.

     There are roughly 6.8 people in this world. 6.8 billion people at different stages of life, different ages, different beliefs, different lives. It's crazy to think that there are that many people on this earth. But it's even crazier to think about the fact that of those 6.8 billion people... 4.5 billion of them don't know the love of Christ....... And if that isn't the most tragic thing we have ever heard, than we're totally missing something.

     We are incredibly blessed in the U.S. to be able to come home to a comfortable house, probably with air conditioning. To be able to eat 3 full meals a day. To get in our cars and drive where we want to go, not just where we need to go. To go to the mall and shop around for hours for clothing that we love too much not to buy. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying these things are bad, at allll. But how much value do we place on these things in our lives? How much time do we invest into them?

     I feel like we tend to let ourselves get consumed with what we have, or even what we don't have that we want, that we fail to acknowledge the people in other countries that maybe eat a bowl of rice for the day and that's it. We're blessed with SO much, and yet there are people around the world struggling to just to live.

     1 John 3:17 says, "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?" It should break our hearts when we think about those who don't have much or anything at all. And I'm nottt saying that we have to feel guilty for what we have that others don't. But if we realize how much God has blessed us with, and the power we have in that to change lives for Him... I think that's way more powerful than just saying 'we have a lot and they don't have much'. It's powerful to think that God blesses us so we can bring glory to Him. 

     So what does that mean in this context? I think part of the reasoning is that we can get to places like this, where we realize that we have a lot AND we have a relationship with Christ, but there are people that don't have anything AND don't have a relationship with Christ. And God blesses us so we are able to help with both sides of that spectrum. We're blessed so we can bless others and shine the light of Christ in the lives of those 4.5 billion people who don't know the incredible love of Christ. And in turn this glorifies God.

     We don't have to take all of our stuff and sell it or give it all away to know that we have so many opportunities to use what God has blessed us with to bless others. Just praying for and thinking about those 4.5 billion people more often than just when those commercials come on t.v. for the children in Africa, is a start to the process of how God can use us to spread his glory to the nations by blessing others.

    

An Incomprehensible Love

     How broken do we have to be to feel like we're completely lost? Lost to the point where we feels like we have no fight left in us, like we've nothing left to hope for? And when we're there... Where do we turn?


     We have all been in places where it seems as though we're going nowhere, and getting nowhere fast. And we all respond to this in different ways, some healthy, but SO many times unhealthy. We look at our circumstances, our failures, our heartbreak, and our disappointments and that's how we characterize our lives; based on those things. They continue to bog us down, basically tearing us up inside, we get extremely depressed, and we shut down. We get to the point where we don't want to hear advice, we don't want to speak about what's going on, we just want to be alone. Alone, to let these things continue to deteriorate who we are. It's ugly, and painful and yet even in those times we don't reach out to anything healthy to help us.

     So many times in our lives, when things seem to fall apart, that's where we go. And clearly, it's so stinking unhealthy, and in all honesty.... What good does it really do us? Why do we so often run in the opposite direction of what we KNOW is good for us?


     Even for me, at one point during my senior year, I was in that dark place. And for awhile, I didn't want to get out of it. I was 'content' in isolation, 'okay' with the circumstances, 'fine' with how I was feeling, and 'done' with the optimism. It literally wasn't until God stepped in that allll of that, changed. All it really took was two minutes for Him to intervene for Him to show me that this wasn't what He wanted for me, and truly not what I wanted for me. Because of that I've never been the same. Why? Because God is way bigger than anything life will throw at us. He's way bigger than our circumstances. Way bigger than our pain. And most definitely way bigger than us. He can and will take every single thing that has hurt us, every stupid thing that we have done, every moment of doubt; and if we let Him, He'll turn it into something incredible that glorifies Him and turns our lives around.


     Now, if that isn't powerful... the fact that the God of the whole universe loves us enough to step in and radically change our lives... then I seriously think we need a reality check.

Consider.

     Consider with me for a moment your past. That’s something out of the ordinary to think about right? We tend to try to erase our past from our memory, block it out, and not look back. But why is that?

     Honestly, it’s probably because we’ve been through extremely difficult circumstances, we’ve done many things we now regret, and we don’t like to see the person that we used to be. Because of all that, we move on and never look back… But I think every once in awhile it’s important to look and see where we’ve come from, what we’ve gone through, and the growth that has happened in our lives. God changes us, strengthens us, grows us, and teaches us practically every day, and because of that we won’t be the same people from day to day. As long as we take to heart and mind what He’s doing and wants to do in our lives, the person we were in the past will be completely different from the person that we are today. 

     I have definitely been thinking a lot about this in my own life lately. God has completely transformed my heart and mind even within the last month. Sitting around a fire last night just talking with a couple girls about what God has been doing in us within the last year, we have come great lengths. I can even look at who I was a little over a month ago and see that I’m not EVEN the same person as I was then. God’s SO good and took my even most recent past and changed me completely from that. And I can now look back and see how much I have grown and how much more I am chasing after Him. And I’ll never go back. Thattt is the great part about looking at our past. We can see that we’ve changed and we won’t want to go back. 

There is definitely a difference between looking at the past and seeing how far we’ve come; and continually dwelling on what happened in the past. I’ve been guilty of this too. We have to get out of the ‘pity party for one’ mindset. We have to stop living by what happened to us, what we have done, and who we used to be. God has already forgiven us for who we used to be and what we’ve done. But have we honestly forgiven ourselves? 

     The reason I asked you to look at your past for a moment with me is for us to really look at who we are now. Have we let our past depict who we are now? Are we still letting our ‘old self’ reign in who we are now? Or can we honestly say that we have taken who we used to be, let God completely change that person, and now can look at our past with joy because of how God used that to make us into who we are in Him?

     One glance at our past and a look at who we are now, and praise God for the transformation He has done in our lives. Getting to that point where we can praise Him for what He’s done and what He’s brought us through is the point where we can look at our past and decide that because of all that I have grown in the Lord and I will continue to do so. Everyyyday. 

“I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.  So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision—you’ll see it yet! Now that we’re on the right track, let’s stay on it.”

                                      Philippians 3:13-16 (MSG)