Tag: Truth

Choose Kindness

Courtney2 Comments

I have never considered myself to be a bully. I’ve been on the receiving end of bullying and to put it plainly, it sucks. There are few things on this side of eternity worse than feeling rejected, or like an outsider. Because of this, I try to do the opposite of bullying whenever I meet someone new. I try to make them feel welcome. I try to make them feel comfortable. I try to show them the same kindness that Christ has shown me.

However, recently, God has revealed something to me that caught me by surprise.

I do not always show that same level of kindness towards myself.

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Just recently, I was praying for God to reveal to me anything in my life that is wrong, and not of Him. I started praying that He would point out any area of my life where I was falling short, so that I could correct those areas and walk in the path that He has for me. And as I was praying, I found myself saying things like “God, forgive me for the way that I talk to myself…forgive me for the words that I speak over myself….”

This was almost shocking to me, because I hadn’t previously thought of myself as being mean to, well, myself. But as God was pointing these things out to me I realized that everything I was saying was correct. Without even realizing it, I have been bullying myself. 

I was saying things to myself that I would never dare say to another human being. About my abilities. About my talents. About my appearance. About the way that my personality is wired. When I thought about myself, I wasn’t looking at myself the way that Christ does, or through a lens of godly humility, but through a distorted filter that had come straight from the devil. Odds are, most of us would never consider ourselves to be a bully, but how many of us have bullied ourselves with thoughts that are not of God? How many of us have remembered the first part of Mark 12:30-31 (to love your neighbor), but forgotten the second part (to love yourself) of that same passage? 

It’s funny how easy it is to justify bullying towards ourselves—to write it off as simply having high standards for yourself. But Biblically, there’s a big difference between striving for excellence and speaking destructive words against yourself. Look no further than Psalm 139:13-18 to see exactly what God has to say about you.

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—when I awake, I am still with you.” 

When we start to speak negativity over ourselves, we are speaking words of destruction against a person that God created, loves, and died for. We are speaking against a son or daughter of God. We are speaking against the very temple where the Holy Spirit resides. Few people in the Old Testament times would have dared speak against the Tabernacle, where God took up residence under the Old Covenant.

It was considered holy and anyone who spoke out against it would have immediately drawn shock and absolute horror from the people around them. But as New-Covenant Christians, we believe God lives inside of each one of us. 1 John 4:12 says, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” This means that God’s Spirit literally makes His home inside of every person who believes in Jesus and trusts Him as their Savior. So why would we feel it’s OK disrespect God’s dwelling place now? And if God has called us treasured, unique, and beautiful, why would we choose to see ourselves any differently? 

This week I want to challenge you to change the way that you speak over yourself. I want to challenge you to love yourself—not in a conceited way, but in the way that God calls us to love and value ourselves in the Scriptures. To remember that you are immeasurably loved (John 3:16), chosen and adopted into God’s family (Ephesians 1:5), and created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).

So choose to rest in God’s love. 

Choose to live in His freedom. 

And choose to remember who HE says you are!

“We have become his poetry,[a] a re-created people that will fulfill the destiny he has given each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny and the good works[b] we would do to fulfill it!” – Ephesians 2:10 (TPT). 

Praying At The Mall

CourtneyLeave a comment

“I’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody all about a somebody who saved my soul.” – Casting Crowns.

Hey guys!

Recently I had a really incredible experience and I wanted share it with you. It kind of breaks the format of my usual style of blogging, but I want this blog to be a place where I can share everything that God is doing in my life—and sometimes, the best way to do that is through writing about my own life experience. The ways that God is continuing to move and breathe and work in my own life and the lives around me.

So, if you would like to see one of the most recent God-moves in my life, read the post below!

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About four months ago, God placed it on my heart to do a prayer walk at my local mall. I had an assignment for my Youth Ministry class with Liberty University to go to a secular environment (e.g. not church or a small group) and observe the people there. And as I walked around the mall with my mom, God opened my eyes to such a need there—as I witnessed people who seemed, just in casual observation, lost, broken, and alone.

To give some backstory on this, a couple of years ago, I had the chance to do something similar on a mission trip with my old church. We walked around a town in the inner city of Jacksonville Florida and witnessed to people who were in desperate need of Jesus—prostitutes, drug dealers, and hardcore addicts. You name it, we saw it.

It was an incredible experience where I saw the Holy Spirit moving in powerful ways, and I realized that I could do that same thing right here, right in my home town. So, I talked to my youth pastor about the logistics of putting this together and began reaching out and inviting people—in hopes of putting together a prayer team. And this past Sunday, it all finally came together. And I saw God show up in a powerful way!

There were about five of us (all girls—it just sort of happened that way) and we met in the food court, praying together before we started. I was feeling a little jittery (just being totally honest here), but I strongly believed that if we went, God would work in and through each one of us.

We started off as one group, but eventually split up into two groups. We (the girl I was with and myself) walked through one store waiting for God to tell us who to talk to. Finally, she stumbled across a mom and daughter that she felt led to speak to. The mom was experiencing pain in her foot and said that she’d love for us to keep her in our prayers—but my friend offered to pray for her right then. So we prayed for complete healing over this lady’s foot. We didn’t get to see the outcome, but I’m fully believing that she was healed in Jesus’ name!

After that we walked around for a little longer—and suddenly felt led to pray for a lady who was about to leave. We managed to catch her before she did and asked if we could pray for her about anything—explaining that we were doing a prayer walk and that we were part of a local church in the area. She asked us to pray for her niece who was struggling with her identity and after we finished she looked grateful and almost about to cry—as if God brought us to her just at the right time. I take no credit for this but this is the Holy Spirit’s power at work!

After that we finally met back up with our group, and wound up going together in a trendy, well-known clothing store and talked to two more people—one who asked us what church we were from (she let us pray with her once we told her) and one who we talked to for quite a while. The second one asked us to pray for her with school and her relationship with her dad and told us that she used to be plugged in with a church, but hasn’t gone in a while. We had the chance to share our testimonies with her and invite her to our church. We also just had the chance to talk about Jesus and His love.

Lastly, we prayed with an older lady who worked upstairs. When I first started talking to her, I soon realized that she didn’t understand English very well, and admittedly froze. I took one semester of Spanish for college, but didn’t know the language well enough to speak it fluently. Thankfully, at that point one of my Spanish-speaking friends stepped in and came to the rescue, and she was able to carry on a full conversation with the aforementioned person. She seemed thankful for our visit and we had the chance to all pray over her and encourage her.

If there’s one thing that I learned from all of this, it’s this; don’t be afraid to be bold. There was a time when putting together an event like this would have really made me nervous but God has shown me time and time again that when we’re faithful and just show up, He’ll take care of the rest!

“So, what does all this mean? If God has determined to stand with us, tell me, who then could ever stand against us?” – Romans 8:31-33 (TPT).

“The Lord is my revelation-light to guide me along the way;[b] he’s the source of my salvation to defend me every day. I fear no one! I’ll never turn back and run from you, Lord; surround and protect me.” Psalm 27:1 (TPT). 

How about you? How do you feel God is leading you to be bold in your sphere of influence? I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below!👇🏻❤️

Christmas Classics: It’s A Wonderful Life

Courtney4 Comments

*Warning, this post contains spoilers

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” – Ephesians 2:10. (NIV) 

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“When the bell rings, an angel gets their wings.”

Today is officially the last day of my Christmas Classics series, and I am closing it with one of the most well-known Christmas classics of our time: It’s A Wonderful Life. 

It’s A Wonderful Life is a (black and white!) Christmas movie created in 1946 about a young man named George Bailey who learns the meaning of Christmas after being visited by an angel named Clarence. George is at the end of his rope and contemplating suicide, after being faced with a lot of disasters at work that feel too big for him to handle. He sees no point in continuing to live until the angel shows him how his life has touched others—and what the world would be like without him. Through this he learns to see the value of his life and goes back to be with his family—and celebrates Christmas with a renewed hope, joy, and purpose.

It’s A Wonderful Life asks the timeless question that many of us have probably asked ourselves at some point: Does my life matter? Am I making a difference? Would this world be different if I weren’t there? And despite the notion that an angel “getting their wings when the bell rings” might be a little theologically shakey, there are a lot of good lessons that we, as Christians, can learn from this movie.

Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (NIV) and 1 Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (NIV).

God has plans for each one of us, and whether or not we were ‘planned’ in the natural sense, God knew and formed each one of us before we were born! Though Jeremiah 1:5 is speaking about Jeremiah, it applies to each one of us—before we were even formed God knew us, and had an incredible plan for our lives! And in 1 Peter 2:9, Peter is speaking to every believer who has been called out of darkness, into God’s glorious light! God’s desire for each one of us is life, and that we live out the dreams that He has for us and impact those around us! 

If you’re reading this today, and asking any of the same questions that George Bailey asked in It’s A Wonderful Life, than I want you to know one thing above all else: your life matters! God would not have created you intricately and divinely in your mother’s womb if it didn’t. If you are alive and breathing today than God still has plans for you. If you just look around to those that you see each and every day, you will find lives that God wants you to impact—in your school, in your friend group, and in your family. And, there is no one else on this planet that can live out the life God created you to live! You matter. To God, and to so many people that see and interact with you every day! 

Maybe you’re reading this today and thinking ‘I already know this. I already know that my life and every other life on this planet matters.’ If that’s the case, than maybe you’ll find yourself in a different character in this story—Clarence. Maybe God wants to use you to encourage someone in your sphere of influence today, and remind them that their life matters! Maybe God wants to use you as someone’s guardian angel. God will often use us to speak to those who are hurting, and maybe as you’re reading this, the Lord is putting someone on your heart that you need to talk to. If that’s the case, than I want to challenge you to be obedient. You never know how God might want to use you in another person’s life! Maybe you could be somebody’s Clarence! 

If you get nothing else out of this post, than please remember this: God loves you, your life matters, and God wants to use you to impact the lives of others. In the words of the pastor/writer Max Lucado, “You weren’t an accident. You weren’t mass produced. You aren’t an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on the Earth by the Master Craftsman.” 

May we always remember this; this Christmas, and the rest of our days!

#RelationshipGoals

Courtney5 Comments

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:13

As human beings, we’re naturally and innately wired for relationships. 

From the time that we are children, we’re motivated to forge relationships with those around us. No one has to teach us that we need other people. It is something that we instinctively know; whether introverted, extraverted, or somewhere in between, regardless of culture, gender, race, or ethnicity. It is God’s fingerprint on His creation—and one of the clearest and most incredible ways that we are made in His image.

We were made for relationships with other people.

And, even more importantly, we were made for a relationship with God. 

While it is often easy for us to remember that we need to be in close relationships with those around us to flourish, it can often be easy to forget the importance, and life-altering significance of our relationship with God.

Many of us, if we’ve been in the church for a long time, have heard the old cliche ‘Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship’, but in our real, nitty-gritty every day lives, this can be a difficult truth to live out. It’s all too easy to fall into routine with our faith. To read our Bible, go to church, and pray—all while missing the breathtaking beauty of it all. That the God of the universe wants to know us personally, and loves each of us more than any human being on this earth ever could. 

And until we shape our lives around this truth, nothing else will ever be enough. 

The truth is, in my own life, this has often been a struggle that I’ve personally dealt with. Though I know this truth deep down in my heart, there have been far too many times that I’ve tried to place something else where God should be. In some seasons, it’s been an achievement. In other seasons, it’s been a close friendship. Yet in other seasons, it’s been my own struggle with perfectionism. There have been times when I’ve been so focused on what my life looked like on the outside that I’ve totally neglected what was really important—the condition of my heart on the inside.

Sometimes, even really good things can distract us from deepening our relationship with God. Things like pursuing a talent that God has given us, or a relationship with someone God has placed in our life. The problem isn’t always the thing itself, but the weight that we give it. Anything can turn into a negative thing if it keeps us from turning our hearts most fully to the one most important thing.

No matter who you are and no matter what you’ve done, God wants a deep, personal relationship with you. He sees you as His beloved child and friend and would die for you all over again even if you were the only person on earth.

As you go throughout your week, I want to challenge you to fall more in love with Jesus. To see your faith and quiet time with God as a way of growing closer to the One who wants to know you, rather than just a list of tasks. To never stop being captivated by the heart of the Gospel.

To never stop pursuing a relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

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“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7