Category: Self-help

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Blessings

Friendship is so important in this life.  There is a reason God created more than just one human – because He knew we needed companionship.  As you walk through life with people, ensure that you are truly adding something positive to their life.  And ensure they are adding something positive to your life.  That is the purpose of friendship – to bless each other.

“Do to others as you would like them to do to you.”

‭‭Luke‬ ‭6:31‬ ‭NLT‬‬

“Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭12:10‬ ‭NLT‬‬

“As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.”

‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭27:17‬ ‭NLT‬‬

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Under Cover


Beware of venturing off on your own.  It will leave you exposed and unprotected.  Remain in the place God has you even if you want to be somewhere else.
“The name of the LORD is a strong fortress; the godly run to him and are safe.”

‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭18:10‬ ‭NLT‬‬

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Give it over

I am an independent person. When I was a baby my aunt gave my mom the book How to Raise a Strong-Willed Child.  This is a true story.  I was that kind of kid.  I wasn’t mean, but I wanted my way & found ways to get it.  This can be a good trait to have in order to survive life, but it also can be a thorn in my side.

One of the hardest things I’ve learned as a Christian is that my way is not always the best way.  I must rely on God.  I’ve learned that the key to relying on Him is having a rich and fruitful prayer life.  Going to Him when I want to take care of something myself.  It is hard for me at times, I must admit.  But it is necessary.

I encourage you to try this the next time you want to take control of a situation.  Spend some time on your knees talking to & listening to Him.  Allow God to fight your battles and teach you how to handle situations His way.  You will see change in you & in those around you.

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.”

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭4:6‬ ‭NLT‬‬

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.”

‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭3:5-6‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Be blessed, dear friends!

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The tie that binds us

The world is filled with so many different people.  Different races, genders, nationalities, socioeconomic statuses, and lifestyles.  Our differences make this life interesting.

There is a good chance that, any given day, you will meet several people as you “do life” that are very different than you.  They think differently, want different things, have a different history in this world.  If you tried to sit down and find something similar, it may take you a little while.  You know what I mean??  You ever met someone like that?  Someone you don’t agree with in almost anything?  Seems like you have nothing in common, right?

Here’s the deal, no matter how different you and I may be, there is always going to be one thing that we have in common: we are a broken sinner in need of a Savior.  We are battered, hurting, broken people desperately in need of being put back together.  It is in our brokenness that find our connections.

I will raise my hand and wave it around in order to signify that I am one of the worst people when it comes to making snap judgements about someone.  Believing that I am somehow better than another person because their poor choice in actions doesn’t mirror my poor choice in actions is no excuse.  The connecting factor is that brokenness.  It is the fact that we are all hurting people that act out that hurt in destructive ways.  No, not just some of us, all of us.  That is what sin does to us.

What if we all understood that?  If we all gave people a little grace because we would want grace if the tables were turned.  How different would this world be?  I am going to suspect that this world would be drastically different if that type of kindness was prevelant.

John 3:30 says: “He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.” If we allow God to shine through us (if we are born again Christians who have the Spirit of the Lord inside us), do you think it would be easier to show more kindness?  Yes, absolutely. When we allow God to heal our brokenness in the secret places of our heart, we can start to gain understanding.

Allow God to start working out your brokenness and maybe you will start to see the relationships in your life change.  Start looking at people as someone who is as broken as you are and allow empathy to grow.  Because we are all a work in progress.

“He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭147:3‬ ‭NLT‬‬

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Count it all Joy

Life isn’t all great times.  I wish being a Christian meant all things worked out for me every time and all the things I wanted, I got.  It doesn’t work like that, though.  Life with Jesus has it’s ups, downs, and surprises.

My favorite verse of the Bible is James 1:2-4:

“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.”

Paradoxical?  Yes.  But that is a major theme in the Kingdom.  Things aren’t as they seem.

So, when you a friendship ends, you face rejection from a position you want, you have money problems, the person you thought was “the one” walks out, or your family is acting crazier than usual – don’t get discouraged or depressed.  This is quite possibly a test of your faith.  You are being set up to grow.

Like a plant being pruned, we must allow God to set us up to bloom.  That may be painful, but it will be worth it in the end.  Let your endurance grow so you can finish this race.

Be blessed, my friends.  God has a plan & a purpose for you!


Definition of endurance: the ability to do something difficult for a long time

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Love Defined

I know you’ve probably heard the Easter story.  But do you understand it?  Do you know that it is a love story between us and God?

RomComs are filled with men standing up for their ladies.  It is heroic and beautiful.  It makes some women swoon.  Somehow, in most cases, the couple live happily ever after no matter what the man had to endure.

The story of Easter is different.  It isn’t a love story between a man and woman, but between the God and His creation.  A story about the lengths and depths the one true God of the universe will go to have full access to His beloveds after they (we) turned their (our) backs on Him.

A man, Jesus, fully God, perfect in all His ways (John 1:1; 1 Peter 2:22) bore our sins on the cross even though He had no sin (2 Cor. 5:21).  That is unconditional, undeserved, mind-blowingly amazing love!  Take a moment to really absorb that fact – that a sinless God died for us (all of us) so that we may spend eternity with Him.  So that we might have eternal life (John 3:16).

“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

‭‭John‬ ‭15:13‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Remember that Easter isn’t about candy, bunnies, or outfits.  It is about the love God has for you.  Don’t let this season go by without truly understanding how loved you really are.

Be blessed, dear readers!

  

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Currency of the Kingdom

I wish I could tell you I am always good and never make a mistake.  I wish.  Reality is that I fail daily.  Yep, daily.  It’s terrible.  No matter how good I am, there is always some bad in me.

Part of being human is understanding the bad parts of ourselves.  Understanding that we will fail.  No matter how hard I try to deny that I do bad things (which I do too often), I will always have to eventually admit that there are parts of me that are awful.

Don’t get me wrong, this blog isn’t all about how awful we can be.  There are parts of me (and parts of you) that are amazing.  There are attributes to us that God put in us – that God loves about us, that make us incredible creatures.  We are God’s precious creation, one He is proud of.

But if we do not admit to ourselves and be brutally honest to ourselves and to God how awful we can be, then we cannot accomplish what we need to accomplish in this life. If we allow these sins, discretions, or mishaps to go on without working on them/correcting them – it can actually derail us.  I don’t want to walk through life allowing pride to defeat me.  What about you?

How do you and I defeat this foe called us?  We use humility.  We go to God and ask Him to not only forgive us, but to help us turn from our awful ways to become better people.  If we live our lives on a culture of humility, very few things can get is down.

Paradoxical?  Wouldn’t it be better if we were our own constant cheerleaders no matter what we do? In the world, maybe.  But in the Kingdom, putting others first and allowing yourself to learn from your mistakes so you can grow is vital.

Don’t let your failures and sins get you so down you can’t get up.  But don’t allow yourself to take those mistakes so lightly that you decide not to acknowledge them.  Repentance and humility are the best road!

“The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭51:17‬ ‭NLT

Be blessed, dear readers!

 

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There is Purpose in the Scars

Have you ever dropped a glass and it shatter?  After it shatters, does it serve a purpose anymore?  No, not really.  It’s pretty much ruined.  My next step after it drops on the ground is sweeping up the mess and throwing it away.

When we sinned in Eden and ate from the fruit (and every time we sinned after that), we were like that glass hitting the floor – broken and shattered.  Our ability to serve the purpose we were put on this earth to do became questionable.  We could have easily been swept up and thrown out.  But God didn’t do that.  He decided that, even though we were broken, we were worth keeping around.

In fact, He sent His only Son to earth so that we might be saved and made whole again (John 3:16).  It would be the equivalent of us trying to glue the 1,000 tiny pieces of the glass that shattered on the floor.  That is a special kind of Love!

The rub is, though, no matter what we do, we would always see the glue marks on the glass we are trying to glue together.  Our glue marks are our scars.  These scars serve a purpose.  If we were made whole again, without those scars, how would we be able to be a walking testimony for our Lord?  It would be hard to show people where we once were if there was no evidence. Even Christ kept His scars so that others would understand what He endured.  (John 20:27)

Luke 14:27 declares that we must take up our Cross and follow Christ in order to be His disciple.  Part of that Cross is our bearing those scars.  It is turning from those ways and helping those who are walking in the valleys you once were walking in.  Part of the reason we need to remain marked up until we reach Heaven is because those scars share what our God can do.  It is for His glory.

Even though scars indicate that we have sinned, it also means that we have been put back together.  It means that what once were wounds are now healed.  Thus we are a walking testimony of the Grace of God.  Next time the enemy tries to shame you for a scar, for something God has forgiven you from, remind him that these scars are there to glorify God and show how great He is!  Have faith that God knows what he is doing.

“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭8:1-2‬ ‭NLT‬

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It’s how you see it

My current job is in insurance.  I take policies and ensure they are completed accurately following the laws and regulations before booking and then in the actual paper policy that is sent to the insured.  Sounds fun, huh?  

It’s not all that bad.  The one part that is the most stressful is a checking system set up to grade our quality.  This process ensures that everything set up either in the pricing or in the paper has no error.  If one is found, then you get a bad score.  You can only get 10% incorrect.  That’s not a lot when some policies are 200+ pages.  We strive for perfection, but even my company knows that humans cannot be perfect – we will fail at some point.

When we fail, there are two choices we make at how we deal with the failure.  We either choose to look at it from a conviction standpoint or a condemnation standpoint.  One is of God and one is of the Devil.  

I just completed reading the book – Crash the Chatterbox by Steven Furtick.  Great book about how our thought patterns can really get messed up and how we can fix that problem.  Pastor Steven spends some time talking about the difference between condemnation versus conviction.  I’d like to share with you what I learned.

 Let’s look at two people who both made the same mistake: Peter and Judas.  Both were Jesus’ disciples and both betrayed Jesus.  One chose to deal with this failure through condemnation and the other through conviction.

Judas betrayed Jesus by working with the Pharisees to get Jesus killed.   (Luke 22:3-6)  For 30 pieces of silver, Christ was betrayed.  After his eyes were opened to the severity of the situation, Judas gave the money back and hung himself. (Matthew 27:5)

Peter’s betrayal did not send Christ to his death, but it was hurtful for another reason.  Peter was essentially Jesus’ best friend, His closest friend among the 12.  When Christ told Peter that he would deny Him, Peter refused to believe it (Mark 14:26-31).  But, in the heat of the moment, Christ’s prediction was fulfilled and Peter denied that he knew Christ three times as Jesus was on trial.  After he realizes what he did, Peter ran off and wept. (Matthew‬ ‭26:69-75‬) After Christ’s resurrection, Peter ended up leading the early Christian church in it’s infancy. 

You see the difference?  Where one desided he no longer was good and ended his life, the other was able to step into his purpose.  Was it because Jesus loved Peter more?  Personally, I don’t think so.  I believe it is because Judas saw his betrayal through condemnation (you are no longer good) and Peter saw his betrayal through conviction (you are better than that).  

God operates in conviction- showing us our mistakes and telling us we are too good to do what we did and should hold ourselves to a higher standard.  The Devil uses condemnation to tell us we are no longer good and therefore no longer worthy, keeping us locked up in personal disdain.  

I encourage you to recognize the difference next time you mess up.  Know that, regardless of the sin, God loves you and still has a plan for you.  Don’t ever give up.  

“Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭12:9-10‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Be blessed, dear readers!!  Remember whose you are.

  

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Seen vs Unseen

Remember that our lives are eternal and our God has it all worked out.  Never allow your temporary circumstances to cause you to be in despair about your long term future.