Tag: Christian

Don’t Be Afraid to Dive

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Childhood summers. 

Days filled with friends, relaxing, and the local swimming pool. The feeling of walking on sun-kissed pavement into the coolness of the water. You know you have to go all the way in, no matter how cold it feels. So you take a deep breath and go under, your hair drenched with water and chlorine. You see kids jumping off of the diving board, which looks like great fun. You get in line, climb the stairs, and look down into the water. Somehow, you muster up the courage to jump. You hold your breath and cannonball straight down into the water. Finally, you accomplish the next great hurdle of the swimming pool. Diving. You aren’t allowed to dive from the diving board (Ironically), so you go the edge of the swimming pool. You put your hands up, bend down, and fall headfirst.

You go headfirst into deep water. You don’t know what will happen. But, you come up again. You swim to the top, with a wave of determination rushing over you. And, you come up, greeted by sweet victory.

Diving can be scary. Letting ourselves fall seems counter-intuitive to everything instinct seems to tell us. We don’t want to let go. We don’t want to loose our grip on gravity.

It can be the same way with our faith sometimes. The thought of committing everything to a God who we can’t see or touch sounds foreign to us. The thought of letting go of the reigns sounds downright frightening. Nonetheless, I’ve come to find that when we surrender to God, we become more fully ourselves.

God made each of us with great potential, but what we do with that potential is up to us. He wants to work in our lives in ways that we could never even dream of, but whether or not we let Him is our choice. Surrendering to God does not mean losing ourselves, it means becoming more authentically us than ever before. God gave us our personality and passions for a a reason, He’s not going to call us to something that we hate. He takes seeds buried deep in our heart and waters them.

I’ve always loved stories and I’ve always known that someday I want to write professionally. When I became a Christian, I realized that I could use my passion for written word in a way that makes a difference, both in this life and the next.

Another thing that I’ve gotten into is lyric-writing. I wrote my first “song” when I was about seven or eight years old. When I got to high school, I began writing song lyrics as sort of a personal diary. As I’ve grown in my faith, my songs have reflected that. Someday, I hope to get those lyrics out there as songs that inspire and encourage others, just as songs by people like Britt Nicole have inspired me.

Whatever your goals, whatever your personality, and whatever your passions, I urge you to grab onto them, and dive into the ocean of faith. God can take those things further than you can dream, and use them in ways that are beyond what you can imagine.

So look into the water, bend down, and don’t be afraid to dive. 🙂

 

Lessons From Bethlehem (Part Three)

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Imagine this scenario: An angel appears to you to tell you that you’re pregnant.

Not only are you pregnant, but your to-be-born child will save the world.

You’d probably be scared. Like, what-the-heck-is-happening-scared.

What complicates this situation even more is that you’re engaged to be married. Somehow, you’re going to have to try to explain all of this to your fiancé and hope he believes you.

If you’re a guy and reading this, imagine that your fiancé is telling you all of this. You may be a little suspicious. You may wonder if she’s completely lost it when she tells you that an angel appeared to her.

This is more than just a crazy what-if scenario, this is what happened to Mary and Joseph in the midst of the very first Christmas 

I don’t know about you, but if I were Mary, I’d be really freaked out. I think we can pretty much bet that she would have been at least a little scared during that event, if not completely terrified. By the Jewish law of the time, Mary could have been stoned to death.(http://www.scripturestudies.com/Vol4/D7/d7_nt.html)

Nonetheless, Mary trusted that God knew what was best. “”I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.” Luke 1:38. Joseph also chose to have faith in God, and faith in his to-be wife after an angel appeared to him and explained that Mary’s child is from the Holy Spirit. Matthew 1:24 says “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.”

Sometimes, we don’t know why things happen the way they do. Life situations don’t always make sense to us in the here and now, from our perspective. But, God can see the whole picture. It’s kind of like a story. In book POVS, the omniscient narrator can see the entire story. With books written in this point of view, you can see every characters’ thoughts and actions. However, in first person, we can only see life through one character’s perspective. In real life, we can only see a tiny piece of a greater story in our own limited point of view. Nonetheless, God can see the entire storyline. He knows exactly how things will affect not only our own lives but the lives of others.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Even if we don’t understand life’s many unusual circumstances and wrenches in our plans, God does. Romans 8:28 reads “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” This doesn’t mean that all things are good, or even make sense to us in the natural realm. But, it does mean that God’s ways are higher than our ways, and He holds the pen to all of our stories.

Sometimes, our job is to put down the pen and let God narrate, trusting that He will turn our lives into a beautiful masterpiece. 🙂

This is the last installment of the Lessons From Bethlehem series. There are many more things that we can learn from the Nativity, as well as many other events from the Bible. I highly encourage you to read the Bible on your own, letting God speak to you in a way that only He can.

I believe this song really captures the emotion that must have taken place on the night before Christmas. It’s also one of my favorite modern Christmas songs.

The Night Before Christmas by Brandon Heath

 

Lessons From Bethlehem (Part Two)

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Hey everyone! Sorry it’s been a couple of days since my last post! I’ve been busy wrapping presents, Christmas shopping, and baking cookies. The usual Christmas stuff.

The last post was all about how God can use anyone, no matter how small. This post is all about humility, and how God left all of Heaven for us.

John 15:13 says Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

While this verse is speaking about Jesus’ death on the cross, He laid down His life in multiple ways each and every day just by coming to earth. He left all of Heaven’s glory to come down as a baby, be born in a manger, live his life as a carpenter, preach the good news, and eventually die on the cross for our sins.

Jesus didn’t have to make such a humble entrance. He’s God, so He could have just as easily come as a king, not a baby. Yet, that’s how He chose to enter the world. And, not only did He come as a baby, but he was born in a manger!

Interestingly enough, His entrance into the world is consistent with his preaching later on.

So the last will be first, and the first will be last.-Matthew 20:16

But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests.-Luke 14:10

Jesus lived and preached a message of humility. Now, I’d like to clarify that humility does not mean having a poor opinion of yourself. God created us and wants us to have a positive self-confidence. Psalm 139:14 says “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.” 

To be humble simply to be the opposite prideful. It means to put others before yourself. Jesus sacrificed his life for us, and because He did that, we’re called to sacrifice in small ways each day for others.

This could be something as small as letting your friend or sibling have the last cookie or holding the door for an elderly lady. Or, it could be something with a greater cost, such as standing up for someone whom no one else will.

However God may be calling you to sacrifice or give, I challenge you to accept that call. When God is leading us, it may not always be easy, but it will be worth it. The holiday season is always a great time to give back, so I challenge you to think of some way that you can make someone’s Christmas season a little brighter. 🙂

Here are two Christmas songs/music videos that I think apply to this post. I used two because I sort of ended up combining two different post ideas into one.

You’re Here by Francesca Battistelli 

Somebody’s Angel by Mandisa

P.S. I would highly recommend the movie that Mandisa’s song is from, called Christmas Angel. It’s a really sweet Christmas movie 🙂

Lessons From Bethlehem (Part One)

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A young peasant girl. 

A carpenter.

A shepard boy.

These are the people that God cast in the grand story of bringing the Savior into the world.

Jesus didn’t come into the world sitting on the throne. He didn’t come with a loud, grand entrance. He came in the form of a baby, whose parents were ordinary people just like you and me.

But, why? Why would God use such ordinary people to raise His son? Why not a king? Why would a Shepard boy be the one to take this family in? Why not at least a real inn and a bed, rather than a dirty old manager?

One reason could be that it had to be this way, in order to fulfill the prophesies, but why would God use his people to prophesize such a grand event this way to begin with? I believe that part of the reason he did this may have been to show us that no matter how ordinary our lives may look to us, God can use them for great things. Everyone’s life has a purpose. I bet the Shepard boy had moments when he saw his life as ordinary, but today, we still talk about him, and he’s known for his generosity in letting a tired Mary and Joseph stay with him.

Never think that your life is insignificant, because God just may use it in big ways that you never could have dreamed of 🙂

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.-Ephesians 3:20-21

A Strange Way To Save The World-Rascal Flatts 

As I was writing this post, I decided to stretch this out into a series, so keep checking back for new posts! I plan to post more on the Nativity in the near future. 🙂

A Walk In Someone Else’s Shoes

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“It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge and my job to love.”
― Billy Graham

Some years back, I saw the iconic movie, Freaky Friday. A lot of you may have seen it, but for those of you who haven’t, it’s about a mom and daughter who don’t see eye to eye. When they go to a Chinese restaurant and read their fortune-cookie-messages, they wake up the next morning as the other person. As they live in each other’s bodies for a while, they learn things about each other that they did not previously know, and find that the other person has a lot more challenges than they would have suspected. Aside from being an awesome chick-flick, I believe that there’s a a lot we can learn from this movie. While it is highly unlike that any of us will ever wake up as someone else, it can be helpful to try to see life through another person’s eyes.

Oftentimes, it’s easy to get caught up in our own lives, and not see what life would look like through a different lens. But, what would it be like to actually take the time to put yourself in someone else’s shoes who is different than you? It can be easy to judge a person based on what we see, but what if we tried to understand people beneath the surface? I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use discretion in who we choose to hang out with, I’m merely saying that when we try to understand another’s life, we’re almost always going to gain compassion from it.

One of the biggest stereotypes of Christians right now is judgmental. I find this very sad, considering that it’s God’s job to judge, not ours. We cannot change the attitude of every person, but we can change our own. What if, every time we are tempted to judge another, we instead looked at their circumstances and tried to understand them. We don’t always have to agree, but we ought to always see people for who they are.

Fearfully and wonderfully made by our Creator. 

Just because someone has a different struggle than we do, doesn’t make them any less of God’s masterpiece. John 3:17 says “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” If Jesus himself did not come to the world to condemn it, than we certainly aren’t in a position to do so. We’re called to love others as He did, which often means taking time to try to understand them and their situations. And, it always means cultivating compassion for our fellow humans created in His image. 🙂

Pray For Paris

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Hey guys, sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted. I promise to post another article very soon. Nonetheless, I’d like to take the time in this post to ask you to pray for the families who lost loved ones and people living in fear in Paris. Two days ago terrorists killed so many lives and it was very heartbreaking to hear about. I believe that through times of tragedy, God is with us, and let’s pray that the people in Paris feel His presence through all of this.

#PrayforParis

Uplifting Article

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I was amen-ing this all the way through. It’s so refreshing to hear people positively and Biblically talk about what has been such a divisive, hot-button issue.

Stories like his need to be heard in Christian circles.

#Peace #ChurchFamily #BrosAndSistersInChrist #GodLovesAll #BeautifulLifeForAll

http://www.crowncross.org/2015/04/17/finding-love-in-the-church-reflections-of-a-gay-celibate-christian/