We are loved

We are loved. 

Today is the greatest symbol of love my soul has ever received. Jesus carried us and our every sins—past, present, and future—to the cross with Him. He bled and died for our sins. Our Savior endured the pain because He loves us. 

Regardless of what we do or don’t do, God loves us unconditionally. He proved His amazing love as He died for our sins. In Him, I find my worth. He is my everything. 

Today and every day, I want to live my life in His amazing love. While I can never repay His beautiful gift of love, I can live each day in His love. I can share it with others and feel the power of it in my soul. Every day I can live in gratitude and praise Jesus for His amazing grace and for my personal gift of receiving salvation for my sins. 

Regardless of what happens to us, we are loved. Beyond anything, we can measure. Therefore my heart whispers, thank you, Jesus! Thank you, God, for sending your Son to save me. Thank you, Jesus, for paying the price that I could not pay. Thank you for loving me when I was unloveable and dying in my sins. Thank you!

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Standing still, waiting on God

God wants me to stand still. Regardless of how I try to fix this situation, I can’t do anything with it. Every day I look for a possible solution, and when I can’t find one, I hear the voice of my Lord—urging me to stand still.

My flesh, however, does not want to stand still. It needs to know every detail, and wants to do something. Even though I know what I need to do, the waiting patiently on my Lord is hard.

My mind screams at me every day to do something, anything to take care of this. In the depths of my heart, however, I know that God has something better planned for me than I can even imagine. This is the hard part. Just waiting on God to move. 

Our flesh needs to do something—right or wrong it wants to move. The blessings come in the stillness. If I could make it happen in myself, then it wouldn’t be a blessing from the Lord. Therefore, if I want to be blessed by Him, then I need to wait on Him. 

During these times, we have to realize and to know that God always does what is best for us. He can see the whole picture. We don’t know what tomorrow holds. Maybe what we want could hurt us in the long run. Walking with God takes obedience. When we decide to do whatever He puts on our hearts, even when we don’t understand, then He will bless our obedience. 

So, even though it is hard, I am standing still.

Psalm 46:10 (KJV)

10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

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Do you ever feel as if you are on the wrong path?

Do you ever feel as if you are on the wrong path? 

A while back, I had that same feeling. I just felt as if I was wandering around in the wilderness—going in circles. Nothing really brought me joy. I was irritated all the time. I hated when the anger bubbled up inside of me and I felt as if I was going to explode. I judged others and closed my heart to them. I didn’t give or receive love like I wanted or needed. The whole process made me so miserable. 

My relationship with God, as well as my loved ones, suffered. I allowed the devil to make me so busy that I didn't have time to do what God wanted me to do. Even when I accomplished things it didn’t bring me the joy that I longed for because I was trying to do it in myself. 

Having a relationship with God and doing His work is hard because the devil distracts us continuously. Satan will persuade us to worry about our problems instead of praying about them. When I’m aligned with God, my soul is peaceful. It’s when I try to do things on my own that causes my heartache. 

Now that I am closer to God I understand the fruit of the spirit better. Being obedient to God allows me to work with Him. We are co-workers. I can’t do it without Him—regardless of how hard I try. God can take a little and bless it abundantly. He has blessed my efforts so many times and made me look good. The fruit of God’s spirit is love, peace, joy, etc. 

Therefore, when I am feeling irritated with others or trying so hard, without anything happening, then I know that I have been disobedient at some point and left my Lord. When I realize this I can keep going in the wrong direction, bringing misery and heartache upon myself, or I can ask for forgiveness and then ask God to show me the place where I made the wrong turn. 

God wants to help us. He wants to lead us out of the wilderness. But we have to seek Him with our whole heart. We can’t hold onto our ways or walk stubbornly in the wrong direction trying to find our way. When we find ourselves in misery, then we just need to pray and wait for God to show us the way. 

Deuteronomy 2:1-3 (KJV)

2 Then we turned, and took our journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red sea, as the Lord spake unto me: and we compassed mount Seir many days.

2 And the Lord spake unto me, saying,

3 Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward.

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God is with us always

God doesn’t always prevent us from going into battle, but He does go with us. Wherever we go we take the Lord with us. Nothing can separate us from Him. I love knowing this truth and feeling it in the deep marrow of my bones. 

Sometimes, however, God takes us through the battlefield to give others a little glimpse of our faith in Him. In the midst of our struggle, when we still seek after the Lord and proclaim His greatness, then we become a living testimony for Him. The loudest testimonies are those heard from the battlefield and by how we live our lives in the midst of adversity. 

I love seeing how God works in my life. Oh, friends, He gives me the deepest desires of my heart. When troubles come, God has a plan. I love it when I can turn my heartaches over to Him, and then become still and watch how He takes care of it all. So many times I just stand in awe of Him. Especially when I am close to Him and seeking Him with my whole heart. 

When I can surrender all of my heartaches and fears and trust Him to take care of me, then something wonderful happens. God can give me peace in the midst of the storm. The true joy of this life is to walk this journey with God. He can open doors that are sealed shut and make a way when there is no way. When my mind tries to doubt His power, then I just open my eyes and take in the world all around. God created it all. Therefore, He has the wisdom, knowledge, and power to take care of our every need. Turn to Him. He has grace for your every need. 

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Finding the joy

Things are not always what they seem. On the outside, someone may appear like everything is fine. People often smile and laugh and act like they are fine when the turmoil is raging inside of them because they want to be fine. We all want to be loved, accepted, and happy. 

The problem is that we often look for happiness outside of ourselves. We search for it in things, people, and circumstances. This type of happiness is fleeting, and it doesn’t reach our soul. It is a brief interlude of what we desire. So we notice what gave us that brief moment of happiness and we try to reproduce it continuously. We want to live in a constant state of happiness. Then when we can’t achieve this long term, we feel as if there is something wrong with us. 

Being happy all the time is just not possible. Honestly, I don’t want to be happy all the time. Sometimes I need to cry. I need to feel compassion for others who are struggling. I need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Learning how to be in the present moment with my emotions has helped me so much. Allowing myself to feel the heartache and the sadness, without trying to push away has been so freeing for me. 

The worst thing that can happen to us is we might feel an emotion we don’t want to feel. But the emotion is there for a reason. Instead of stuffing down inside of ourselves, we need to be brave and feel the emotion. What is it trying to tell us? Usually, my anxiety is just my subconscious mind telling me that I am on the wrong path. If I continuously push the emotions inside of me and never explore them, then I will stay in the place of pain. If I write my emotions down and explore them, then I can understand them. 

Learning to silence my mind, even for a few minutes at a time, has been one of the greatest things I have learned. The more that I meditate and try to understand things, the more that I feel the love and peace of God in my soul. Living in the present moment has helped me so much. Noticing the world around me helps me to find the joy at this moment, and to release the heartache of my past as well as the worry of my future. This moment is all that we have. Let’s search for the joy in it. 

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God loves us all

If you are different in some way and feel as if you will never have a happy life, let me take a moment to encourage you. Honestly, I don’t feel as if anything in my life is missing. Even if my scars were removed, I don’t think that my life could be any better than it is right now. 

Living with scars has taught me that I don’t need the approval of society. The love and acceptance that I need are within me. Everything that we need to have a happy life is inside of us. God loves us. He accepts our every flaw. We don’t have to be something different for Him to love us. God loves each and every one of us—just as we are. We have a place in Heaven and a spiritual family who loves us conditionally. As we walk through our daily life, we need to radiate His loving energy to everyone that we meet. 

It breaks my heart that anyone would be treated badly by others because they are different in some way. We are all beautiful flawed. Therefore, we should treat everyone we meet with love and compassion. Everyone—not just the people that we deem worthy.

Yesterday, I had a man approach me and ask me to buy him some food. Since I was going into a different store, I didn’t want to reroute my shopping trip. So I gave him some money. My son asked me later if I thought that he bought food with the money or something else. I have learned that it doesn’t really matter. He asked me to buy him some food. I had the money to help him. So, I did. I gave out of love for my fellow man. What he does with the gift is up to him. It’s not up to me to judge someone else for their actions. That is God’s business. And I felt the Lord as I offered him the money. Normally, I don’t share what I give, but this story was on my heart to share this morning. 

Anytime that we have an opportunity to show someone else love, then we should take it. I want to be a light in a world with darkness. Not because I am good, but because my God is good. We are His body on this Earth to do His work. And in God’s eyes we all matter. He doesn’t turn away from us because we are different or make bad choices. God loves us all unconditionally. And that is how I desire to love others. 

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Who is watching you?

Sometimes I forget that how I live my life speaks louder than what I say. Someone is watching us. They see what we do, what we say, and how we treat other people. 

Yesterday, my three-year-old niece, decided that she is going to be gluten-free like me. It made me stop and think about my life for a moment. She is watching me. And I want to be a wonderful example for her. Therefore, I need to make sure that I am living my best life in front of her. 

If my loved ones adopted my habits, how would they act? If my boys acted like me, would I be proud of their actions or ashamed? 

Sunday, I repeated a bad word in a conversation. And everyone in my house pointed it out to me. In fact, they are still talking about it. The boys were so shocked that I had said it because they had never heard me say anything like that before. I tried to explain that I was only repeating it. I wasn’t mad or using it myself in a sentence. I repeated the word for the conversation, but they were not having my explanation. While other people say bad words in their presence all the time, it was a big deal to them because I don’t say thing like that. Why? Because when they were born I wanted to set a good example in front of them. I knew if they went to school saying bad words that they would get in trouble. So, I vowed when they were babies to not say those words at all. 

We can’t really get on to our children for doing things when we do them as well. If we truly want to lead our family and have influence with them, then we need to be an example of how we should live for God. While we can't live a perfect life, we still need to show up and do our best. When we mess up, then we need to show them how we deal with our imperfections. 

Our children learn so many things by watching us. Kids love to mimic us. Therefore, I want to be an example of what they should mimic. I hope my children see love, kindness, compassion, faith, forgiveness, and generosity when they watch me. I hope that my life reflects God in some way. 

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