It's time to begin

Time.

It seems to slip away in the ever changing days. I am amused, yet vexed, knowing that time seems to pass faster than I care for it to. What is my life? But a vapor, a mist. (James 4:14)

My heart knows this far too well, yet I still get so preoccupied with things of this world, things far less important. I get caught up in schedules, busyness of the holidays, so on and so fourth. But what am I doing that is actually imperishable in the grand scheme of things?

What Matters?

It will not matter what actions I performed in my busy days unless they are done with love to glorify God. Everything else is perishable, what I build up for eternity is imperishable. What matters on this earth is the way that we love and through that love, the way that we pursue people. Our hearts should be in anguish for those who do not know the Lord, feelings Paul felt in Romans 9. If they are anything far from that, something is terribly wrong.Those are things that we ought to desire and pursue through prayer and action.

But prone I am to continue with my day passing people and opportunities intentionally placed in my life by the Lord. I pray that our hearts would desire for all to know the Lord, those among the nations, those who the Lord has called to Himself, His treasured possessions. 

It's time to begin a pursuit of those we claim to love. To make God known to those around us and those around the world.

All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name.
Psalm 86:9

Thanksgiving

Friends, Happy Thanksgiving!
I know that I myself can think of over 100 things I am thankful for, so today let's sit and dwell on the blessings that the Lord has lavished upon us.

One thing I am thankful for is friendship! I spent my Thanksgiving with my best friend :)

I love this girl.

creaky bridge, I really though it was going to break

being kids again and swinging

my hometown has quite a bit of historic areas.

swing set I use to play on as a kid.

boots and fedora

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Who am I, but Yours.

Who am I, that you would care about me?
Who are you, but Mercy to pardon me.
Prone I am to forget, the blessings you continually bring.
So undeserving, unworthy, to be graced by thee.
Still you care and still you love.
You give new mercies everyday, as if I give enough.

Who are you?
Oh Lord, who am I?
But Yours, only Yours.

It's inevitable, I feel it.

It's inevitable, I feel it.
They shift, sway, and flow, never ceasing.
Feeling, emotion, wreckage, it tends to stay.
An infinite abyss that wraps me in strings, tending to hold too tightly.
It has encompassed me before, yet it pursues me.
Like the wind, it passes, dancing around the leaves and autumn air.

It's inevitable, I feel it.
I chose this, not redemption, but capture.
But salvation persists, lovingly taking hold, I am now a slave.
Not a prisoner of death, but of life.

It's inevitable, I feel it.
I am free. I am His.

Romans 16:17-18 :: Galatians 5:1

dear beloved, remember.

Failure.

A word I am all too familiar with. My failure tends to make itself known, even though I try to keep it in hiding. It digs deep, tending to bury itself into my thoughts until I willingly recognize it. Failure, sin, my disobedience, all in the same.

As I sit here spending an overwhelmingly amount of time just contemplating on how much I fail everyday, the spirit shifts my thinking to Jesus.

Jesus.

The Lord who has lived a perfect life and died an undeserving death. Jesus, who has risen in glory and the same Jesus that is coming back in all of His righteousness. That Jesus, loves me. The one who fails and fails constantly.

 I understand that truth, my mind may grasp the concept, but my heart is dubious. A holy, righteous God loves a sinner, undeserving and unworthy. Do we ever just stop to think about that? How unbelievably absurd yet beautiful that is? I am prone to forget.

In my heart, my doubts are ever before me. I lack in loving Jesus on a daily basis, but His love for me is never lacking. I need a reminder to live in light of this. Even with all of the instability in my heart, this I know, Jesus loves me. I am humbled and astonished at this truth.

This is who I am because Jesus loves me. I am viewed as righteous in Christ, no longer a slave of sin, but a slave of righteousness(Romans 6:17-18). I am looked upon as if I have never sinned, yet live perfectly as Jesus lived. I am  holy and blameless in the eyes of Christ(Colossians 1:22). I am His beloved and it is all for His glory. I am loved, so that I too can love (1 John 4:19).

The depths and heights of His love is something I shall never fully comprehend. But as He continually reveals more of himself to me, I continually become more in love with Him. This is a pattern that I welcome in expectancy, a pattern my heart yearns to know. 

being altered to love

What is love? Do you do it well, or even at all? How are we to love? Who are we to love?

Those questions have been constantly in my thoughts for the past month since I have read the book Altered. I have asked myself those questions everyday and yet I still find myself consumed on the concept. After much thinking, I have become fully aware of the fact that I do not understand the full concept of love. And all that I do know about love is that it is crucial in life, not some mundane feeling or passing emotion. Love is challenging and difficult, something we cannot do on our own. 

What is love?
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Now that we see that the definition of love is given from the authority of scripture, we know that it is our truth. After reading the verses above, I find myself thinking about how difficult it is to live a life that loves in that way. Quite frankly love is something impossible to do or live out in our own strength. We read in 1 John 4:8 that God is love. God is completely faithful and able to love relentlessly and divinely, it is His character and it is His being. We are humans who consistently and constantly fail. In order to love divinely we need the gospel, we need the Spirit to work within us. The gospel should affect how we love and if it does not, then something is terribly wrong. 

Do you do it well, or even at all?
When I asked myself that question I found myself coming up short on answers. When I look at my life, I realize that I do not love like God has called me to. People in my everyday life should see that I am a believer by the way I joyfully and passionately love and interact with them. This is something that the Lord has continually convicted me of, something the Lord is still working in me. 

How are we to love?
We are to love like the Lord loves us. This is a commandment (John 15:17), not something Jesus says in passing. Love is everywhere in scripture, it is crucial to our faith, in the New International Version the word 'love' is mentioned 697. We are to love and are able to love because God first loved us. The way that we love should be evidence that the gospel consumes our lives. Christian love is grace anchored, if we love like Christ our own notion of love is replaced with Christ's love.

Who are we to love?
We are to love God and to love our neighbor. We are to love those who strike us down, resent us and ignore us. We are to love those who do not love us in return. If by grace we seek to love in a Christ like manner, those around us will radically see the difference in our lives. Of course, this is something that the Spirit must empower in us. But what I have come to realize is that the more I love God, the more I tend to love people. This is something God commands and therefore something we should want to be passionate about. So I urge you to pray and ask God to give us the desire to love Him and our neighbors. We need to place our affections in Christ, and let Him direct the way we love.

We are to abide in God's love and through that love others.

" If by grace we seek to live out a love for God and our neighbor, our natural love will gradually move closer towards Christ's design, and the confusion of our own affections will be replaced by the clarity of His. His love will radically change both whom we choose to love, and how we choose to love them." - Altered

I've been thinking...

I've been thinking, thinking about how short this life is. The Bible tells us that our lives are like a vapor (James 4:14), here and gone. But do we live like that? Do we live to make every moment on this earth count? Do we live to joyfully make God known to this broken world? I know that I don't.

It's hard, we're prone to get caught up in routines, schedules, just everyday life, thinking that we've got plenty of time to tell people about Jesus in the future. But we don't, and even if we did, I'd want to spend everyday of my life sharing God's glorious name and story of redemption to people. 

So this is my plea, I am earnestly praying that God would help me to love people more, that He would make me bold. I am praying that throughout this I will be spirit led and I am praying for you, praying that God would give us the desire to do this together.

And so I challenge you, go out and pray for someone you don't know, believer or unbeliever, they need your prayers. Go out and tell a friend or stranger about the gospel, so that God can bring about hope. He will use you! Remember that God has commanded us to do these things. He has commanded us to go out and make disciples (Matthew 28:19). Therefore, when we do not do this we are sinning, being cowardly disobedient children. So lets come together and live out God's command in unity. Let's live as God has called us to, being bold children of God reaching out to those in need for someone to call them His beloved.

I am praying this not only for you, but for myself. May we be spirit led every step of the way. May we allow our fear of rejection and craven hearts to wholly surrender any doubts or fear that we may possess, fully knowing that God has prepared every good work for us already. (Ephesians 2:10) Let's be filled with the spirit in unity and let our lives be the overflow of that.

Hungry Hearts

The more I seek to understand people, their hearts and just humanity in general, the more I realize how desperate and inclined we are to want. There is an insatiable yearning to attain more and more, always. We pursue that more by doing things we believe will make us happy. We hunger for that happiness and it drives our every pursuit.

There are many examples of this throughout history, the first, and I think one of the best example is from the very beginning. We look at Adam and Eve, who are living with God's presence before the fall, before any reconciliation was even necessary. They lived in peace with God and there was no sin. Yet, they wanted more and they tried to attain more by being disobedient to God. In the end, it led to a fallen world full of lost people who need to be rescued.

Because everyone seeks for the more. Whether you are old, young, rich, poor, healthy or sick, we all want more and we complain when we don't receive it. It is a universal dissatisfaction that has continued for centuries. Even if we could attain everything we think we could ever want and need, our hungry hearts would not be satisfied. All that we crave is so vast we cannot attain it ourselves. This shows us that we were not made for earthly things, things that soon will perish. This clearly shows us that we are unable to reach satisfaction by our own efforts. The only way the worldly hunger we experience will vanish is when Christ invades our hearts, and all of the emptiness our hearts possess. Then and only then will we rest in the satisfaction of Christ.

Also, whats beautiful about our hungry hearts is the simple fact that God designed them. When we become believers and our hearts start to crave, we pursue Christ and we can feel satisfied. And although that satisfaction is complete, if we crave more, God can graciously give more. When our hearts hunger and we pursue more of God, we get more of God and that is amazing.

May we pray that our every deepest desire would be to want more of God and that our lives would display that, all for His glory.

It's not about feelings.

Sometimes I just don't feel it. Whatever "it" is suppose to feel like...
Sometime I just don't feel that close to God, or feel his presence as strongly as I have in the past. As if there is something that has trapped me and is keeping me from feeling the full power of His presence. An unavoidable feeling that is far from escape.

Am I humbly confessing any sin in my heart that may be standing between God and I?

Am I praying that God would give me more of a desire for His heart, His glory and truth?

The answer would be, absolutely, I am. But yet I am still just not feeling "it." But can we ever really trust our feelings? My heart is an idol making machine, I am bent to pursue things of this world. Even though God has given me a new heart, my flesh and spirit will be in battle, waging war against each-other until I die. Therefore, my heart is not trustworthy of making decisions based on how I feel.

Salvation is not based on feelings, it's based on truth, Jesus, the gospel. Salvation is based on the fact that God imputed righteousness in me, adopted me into His family through Jesus and nothing on earth or in heaven can break that bond- nothing.

It is absolutely absurd to doubt my salvation and rob God of His glory because I am just not feeling "it." God is God, regardless of how I feel. However, I have something far more precious than feelings. I have the Spirit, the same spirit that searches the depths of a incomprehensible God. (1 Corinthians 2:10) Given as a gift from the Father to His beloved child, sealed forever, completely and utterly trustworthy. And I will be lead by Him, even when I don't feel "it." Rest assured, I am His. That simple statement will always bring me to my knees in worship and complete surrender.

Nothing can snatch you from your Fathers hand, even when you may be feeling like He's not there, He is. Ask God to open up your heart and to give you the desire to love Him more. Be obedient, stay in The Word and pray like crazy. Be obedient children, because out of love comes obedience. (John 14:15)

Jesus loves

Yes, Jesus loves me.

It's a simple song sung by many children throughout the decades and it will continue to be, but how profound the meaning of this is. I remember as a child singing this song, singing only because it was an easy song to remember. If only I would have understood what all Jesus' love for me meant.

That once simple verse, is now my meaning for life. 
Jesus loves me.
A sinner, uncleaned, undeserving, broken, battered, searching and seeking destruction.
He loved me anyway.

Yes, Jesus loves me so much that He thought of me, knew me and made me in His image.
Yes, Jesus loves me so much that  He created me to glorify Him forever, fully knowing that in doing so I would be completely satisfied and happy in Him.
Yes, Jesus loves me so much that He became sin, who knew no sin, so that I might live in righteousness.
Yes, Jesus loves me so much that He bore the wrath of God that was meant for me.
Yes, Jesus loves me so much that He rose three days later and sent the spirit to dwell in His people.
Yes, Jesus loves me so much that He is coming back one day.
Yes, Jesus loves me so much that I will be spending eternity with Him, in awe and astounded of Him.

Jesus' love isn't just a simple song to sing. Jesus' love is an indescribable, incomprehensible thing.
I do not know what all this love entails, but I am fully willing to spend the rest of my life finding out.

We're not worth it.

Its a common misconception, a phrase I hear quite often...

"Christ died on the cross for you, you're worth it!"

This phrase is usually used when a believer is trying to encourage another, but it is simply not the truth and not the gospel. 

What makes grace so unbelievably beautiful and yet confusing is the fact that we weren't worth it.

Romans 5:8 says "but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

 That scripture blatantly points out our unworthiness and insignificance. We need to focus on the part that says "that while we were sinners" and try to understand what all that entails. When I read this verse, I do not see any kind of worth in the position of "sinner," because it's not there. There is no worthiness in any of us.

When Christ saved me, I was selfish, unrighteous, continually pursuing evil, without recognition of  my  actions I was simply doing what felt natural, running from God.  There was absolutely nothing inside of me that made me worthy of Gods love, yet He saved me. Not because of my position, but because of His grace. 

You see, its not because were worth it. It's because God is so indescribably loving, good and righteous that He saves us. It does not matter how many "good" things we think we may do in our lives, the bible says our "good deeds" are like filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6) We're not good people and we're not worth it. But when God performs the miraculous gift of rescue and grace, we become worthy in Christ. God then looks upon His children as righteous, holy and beloved. We are at right standing with God and no longer enemies because we were not worth it, yet Christ chose to die.

You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. - Colossians 2:13


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. - Ephesians 2:4-5


In these scriptures I do not once see anything about our doing and our worthiness. Its all about what God has done, because He is rich in mercy and love. That's the gospel.

Restlessness

I am restless. I continually search for things, and I am so unaware of this disquitude inside, that it doesn't seem obvious, until I start to examine my heart.

It is indeed a fact that the human heart is prone to search for things that we think may satisfy our idol making hearts. Things much smaller than Jesus.
It is natural for a human that is bent from birth to seek for satisfaction in things other than God himself.
Even after God saves us, we still tend to turn towards idols for completion and rest.

What we need engraved on our hearts is that Christ has already secured everything we will ever need. And every single thing that we feel like we may be missing. When Christ saves us, we are set free and we are His. There is nothing better than the fact that we are his children, his bride, his beloved.

Any emptiness, holes or void that we try to fill is not because Jesus did not completely give us everything we need In Him, it is only because we are seeking things other than Him.

"Typically, it's not that Christians seek to blatantly replace the gospel. What we try to do is simply add to it." - Tullian Tchividjian

Smart man, that Tullian. So what are you trying to find rest in? What are you trying to add to Jesus to find satisfaction? Let's examine our hearts, pray that the Lord will shed light on these idols, then repent and live fully satisfied and in awe of our God.

"Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God." - Martin Luther

Thoughts freeflowing

Psalm 73:25-26
Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Recently I have been going through a period of confusion and as I was reading today, this scripture hit me like a ton of bricks. The more that I have meditated on what this verse truly means, the more knowledge I gain of who Christ is, what he has done and what that means for me. My thoughts instantly turn to think about how this verse pertains to my life and how God is actively moving all the time.

Whom have I in heaven but you?
- I have noticed quite a bit lately how I continually seek to find my fulfillment and pleasure in things that are of this earth, things that will soon perish and fade away. After chasing these things, I am not satisfied, but I am empty. So why do I continually pursue perishable things? Because I am human and I always feel like I need more and more. I so often forget that I have been saved by Jesus, a completely sovereign and powerful God who calls me His. I constantly try to add things to Jesus, which is completely and utterly ridiculous. All I need for satisfaction is Jesus, that's enough, nothing needs to be added or taken away, I just need Jesus. It's really quite simple.

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
- Oh how I wish I could say that with all honesty, but my heart is far from it. I want Jesus to be my all in all, but it seems I lack the love for this desire. My prayer for the last few months is that my desire for the Lord would increase immensely. If I pursue Jesus and live with this verse engraved in my heart, Jesus will be my only desire. I am striving by the strength of God that I will no longer stray or be tempted, but my focus will be completely on Jesus. I will run to Jesus with my focus being an imperishable eternity with a everlasting God.

My flesh and my heart may fail.
- This verse is so true. This week as I was reflecting over who I am and who God has called me to be, I have come to the conclusion that I try to fix myself. I search for answers and solutions to change myself, fully knowing that I am unable to do so. I need to be dependent upon God for everything. He will always come through, I on the other hand will always fail when I try to lead myself. God is continually teaching this to me and I am finally starting to grasp what it means to live a life completely dependent on Christ for all things.

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
- God provides strength and deserves all the glory. God has lavished me with strength, grace and mercy everyday, although I am not worthy. I have started to realize how broken and messed up I really am when I am not fully dependent upon Christ and not pursuing him. My heart wanders which causes my mind to be filled with unwanted, sinful, fleshly things. But he alone is my portion forever, and the strength of my heart. His praise will be unending and my hope is to glorify Him.

This verse has really tore at my heart and I am anxiously waiting for the day that I can truly say wholeheartedly that I desire nothing besides Jesus due to the strength that He has provided and that He is truly is my portion forever.

Regardless of my flesh and heart failing, I have nothing but Him, He who is enough.

Mistakes. Sin.

Mistakes. Sin.

Two words I am far too familar with that continue to be a part of my life. It seems that I cannot dispose of either of them. The more I try, the harder my flesh fights. For awhile I had a relapse. Sin that once consumed my life started to take hold again. Sin that I had repented of seemed to slowly creep back into my life. It all just made me angry, frustrated and very confused. But then I realized, I have hope.

My hope is in Christ.

To be honest, I am a walking disaster. I sin all the time, I make mistakes and I am so far from perfect. And although old sins started to consume me once again, I realized that it was due to my lack of desire for Jesus and the gospel. I kept putting myself in situations that I knew I would fail in because I did not want truth. I chose deceit and sin over truth and love. Something I have been doing since birth.
But my hope is in Christ. I am sealed with the spirit to be lead by the spirit. I have been redeemed, saved and am being sanctified. I may have fallen in love with Jesus recently, but He has loved me all along. If I could only engrave this into my heart and remember it daily, my life would change. I need to remember truth and stop pursuing worldly things that only bring about death.

 So, whenever sin starts to make way, I now resort to three steps.
1. I preach myself the gospel, every hour of every day. I repeat what I know is true about God and slowly the sin, the doubts and fleshly desires don't seem so overwhelming anymore.
2. I pray all the time. If I don't have the desire to pray, I pray that God will give me the desire to want to. I pray while I'm in the car, on the bus, walking to class and anytime possible. And I now feel God's presence so much more throughout my day.
3. I also have fellow believers along side me in this battle. They hold me accountable, encourage me and love me in an unbelievable way. The body is so important and we were made to come along side each other in this life to live out the gospel together as a family. This is crucial.

Although I will never live a sinless life, I find that preaching the gospel, praying and community has helped me tremendously with repenting of sin and knowing what is true. I am just praying that God continually increases my love and desires for Him, so that I can live life in a manner worthy of the gospel.

What's The Story?

My life was empty. Full of void. I knew something was missing, that something just wasn’t right. My heart had a huge empty abyss that only seemed to get larger. I fully believed that in order to attain happiness and to fill this gigantic gaping hole, that I should fill it with things that I thought I needed. So thus began my journey. My journey to feel satisfied and complete.

I began this journey by filling that empty void with alcohol, a relationship and material things. The more I filled, the more empty I felt. Nothing ever seemed to make me happy or seemed to satisfy. I resorted to abusing myself. I cut, to relieve the hurt, the emotions and the emptiness. I had called myself a Christian, without ever knowing what that really looked like. It was just a title. 

One night, after a day of partying, fighting with my family and the breaking up of a relationship, I was hurt. So I resorted to the thing that always made me feel better. Cutting. As I began, I felt twisted. I knew that this was not helping, but only hurting and bringing pain. As I sat there broken and confused, I began to pray. I asked God if he existed, there was no response. I asked him to reveal himself to me, there was nothing. I sat there defeated. I had finally given up. I felt that I had tried everything, but nothing seemed to work. Nothing satisfied me or gave me happiness. 

I sought everything, but the one who created everything.

This is when I actually felt something, something I’ve never been able to describe. Happiness. Joy. Surrender. Completeness. The feelings were indescribable, like a massive mix of emotions suddenly invaded my heart and truly changed me. I finally felt complete and the empty hole that always haunted me, was full. I knew instantly that I was loved, by the creator of the universe. I was given grace, although I was so undeserving. I am forever changed, not by a decision, or praying a prayer but because Jesus pursued me. God gave me a new heart. I have joy like never before and I can say that I am truly and completely happy. 

collages

decided to try my hand at doing some photo editing.

here's a few

Jesus fulfills all things

Okay, so I admit it. I often think about getting married, too often actually. I think about when I will meet him, who he will be and what he will he be like. Thoughts like this often consume my mind and many minds of others. And although it is good to be thinking and praying in advance for your future spouse, it should not consume our thoughts. Today the service at Cornerstone brought so much conviction and truth, it blew my mind(this happens every Sunday).

 It was brought to my attention how often I worship the gifts given, rather than of The Giver of the gifts. It’s idolatry. It’s sin. But how prone I am to thinking in this manner. Concerning marriage, I realize that one reason why I am looking forward to meeting the one and being married is because I expect some sort of satisfaction or fulfillment from him. I expect that when I get married that little spot inside of me that feels empty will finally be filled. But how wrong was my thinking…

 No man, no woman, no person will ever fill that emptiness. Only Christ will fully fill it and completely satisfy. Marriage is a gift and so is singleness, but I rarely see it as so. Oh how I pray that God will change my thoughts and view of himself and the gospel. If I continue to ever so anxiously wait for a spouse that God will give me rather than anxiously wait for the Savior who gives all the gifts, I will be continually disappointed. Jesus is everything, nothing needs to be added or taken away from him, he is complete and perfect. My future spouse is not everything, will never be everything and is not perfect. Why am I looking for comfort and fulfillment in a imperfect gift, instead of seeking and pursuing the Giver of every good gift. It’s obvious that my view of Jesus needs to be changed.

 So as I continually learn and grow in Christ, I will not seek happiness in worldly things. I’m praying that my heart, my mind and my focus will be inclined to Christ as he changes me for His glory. I pray that He will continually fulfill any emptiness I may feel and if he does bless me with the gift of marriage, my hope is that my marriage will display the gospel. How excited I am to be thinking in a different manner, a way of thinking I should of had all along. It has changed my whole day and I am excited to get a better glimpse of who Jesus really is.

If anyone is interested in hearing today's sermon or any other Cornerstone sermons, you can get them on Itunes. Just search Cornerstone Ohio podcast, the sermons usually take a couple of days to get put on.

Live as You Are Called

I need to remember who I am, who God has called me to be.


I am redeemed.


I am loved.


I am sanctified.


I am justified.


I am regenerated.


I have been made new.

Oh, how often I forget who I am and what has been done for me. I ever so easily get caught up in life, that I forget how I am called to live. My thoughts are focused on worldly matters, things that are useless, things that will soon vanish. I need to remember daily that my satisfaction is in Christ, not in worldly things to come.

 How different our lives would look if we would remember who we are in Christ and live like he has called us to.

kony2012

Please, take the time to watch this short film and bring justice to the children who no longer need to be invisible. Then, take action.


"Where you live, should not determine if you live."

Grace.

The more I seek to understand the depths of it, the more I realize how hard of a concept it is to grasp. I have and will fail thousands upon thousands of times, but God is lavishing me with grace continually. He is sanctifying me daily.

God has already forgiven me for every sin that I have committed and every sin that I will commit. It’s so unbelievably hard to wrap my mind around that! I am so undeserving of this unconditional love! I am blessed and truly thankful that my purpose on this earth is just to bring glory to God.

“Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.” 
― John Piper

because you love

We are called to love. We should share the gospel because we love people. We should tell them the good news because we know how drastically it has changed our lives. God revealed himself to me and gave me the gift of salvation, I have been made new. Saying this brings such joy to my heart, so why isn't that joy overflowing out into the lives of people around me? You see, I lack in loving the gospel.

"We don't share the gospel because we don't love people. Instead, we wrongly fear them. We don't want to cause awkwardness... We protect our pride at the cost of their souls. In the name of not wanting to look weird, we are content to be complicit in their being lost." - Mark Dever

Now to clarify and not be misunderstood I am not saying that we change people by speaking the gospel. God does the changing, but we are his tools. God uses us to do that process. What a privilege! There has been so many times that I have had opportunities to share the gospel, but I do not, for the sake of myself. Instead of fearing a response, I should be fearing the fact that I am being disobedient against a Holy God.

God calls us to love and out of that love we should make disciples and share the good news. We should constantly be praying that God will give us opportunities to speak the gospel to others and we should not fear them. If you were changed by Jesus then you know how miraculous grace and the gospel is, so don't keep it to yourself. Share the gospel, be obedient and love people so much that you come along side them in life and tell them about the most important thing in this world. The Gospel.

Rise Up

The Passion Conferences blew my mind. Passion brought renewal to my relationship with Christ. It also brought knowledge, hope and fear. All good things, things that I will write about in the near future.
But first let’s talk about Ephesians 5:14

“ Awake, O Sleeper
  and arise for the dead,
And CHRIST will shine on you”

Passion’s main focus was Ephesians this year, which I thought was beautiful and needed.
I constantly notice that many scriptures that speak truth about how sinful and dead humans are get looked over so easily. Mainly because people don’t want to recognize how bad we really are. Humans want to be looked at as good, not sinful or evil at all. Truth is we all are, we all have a sinful nature due to the fall. We are slaves of sin. (Romans 7:14-25)

Now here is the beautiful part.

Look at Ephesians 2:1-10
4 “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-”

Only one could reconcile us back to God and that is Jesus Christ. We have no part in it. It is a gift from God. I love how Piper described it. We aren’t half alive, were dead, completely dead. That means we can’t change ourselves or choose God.We are sinful, we wouldn't choose God anyway. We are dead, we need a resurrection and Christ tells us to rise up and we live! It is a gift, it is grace.
Beautiful. Wonderful. Miraculous Grace. 
And by this grace we are no longer slaves to sin, but we are slaves of righteousness.

Romans 6: 17-18
“But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves slaves of righeousness.”


Now instead of receiving death, we receive life and eternity with the one who made it all.
23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

God receives all the glory!

Results of My Winter Break part2

So results of my Winter Break Part2 is finally here!
                                                                     ( i know, i know, hold the excitement) 
Sorry it took so long but school work prevails when you miss the first week of class for PASSION2012. Which was so worth it, by the way.
So I'm going to try something a little different this week.
After leaving Passion so many deep thoughts and concepts cluttered my mind.
The best way to organize my thoughts is to write. So here goes.
Each day I will write about a certain subject that has been making me think, fall on my face, pray, search, challenge and strengthen my relationship with Christ.

But in the mean time, here are a few photos from the rest of my winter break!

I really got a tiny(not even close) glimpse of what it will be like one day to worship God with thousands upon thousands of believers and with all nations. I cannot wait for that day. 

Slavery still exists today. The hand is a symbol of hope+action. It takes people caring to make it known that slavery still exists, to help stop it, then to restore those effected by it. May we all act as God has called us to and rise up against this injustice.

"We'll be a light to the world, shining your glory! Im not ashamed." What beautiful lyrics. But how many of use can say that we are a light and that were not ashamed of the gospel?


So many things to think about,
pray about,
write about,
 and hope for.
Stay tuned.