stillbeingsanctified

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I got a job!

Answered Prayers

I’ve been given the opportunity to do another year of school

My anxiety levels are so low compared to last year

I am learning to trust again

I have people in my life who speak life into me

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God doesn’t tolerate you, He loves you.

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"I prayed for you" is one of the sweetest and most beautiful things someone could ever tell me

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People love to say that they love Jesus, just not His people. While I understand having some issues with the messy people who follow Him, that’s not how relationship with God works. How can you look at God and tell Him “I love you God, but your kids just suck.” What kind of parent would be okay with that? Much less a perfect parent like the one we have in God. Yes, church hurt is real. Yes it is allowed to affect us. No, we cannot turn our backs completely on the people of God. We were not created to do this life alone. We are designed for community!

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Just because you’re in the valley doesn’t mean you’re off the path

Sometimes we tend to think that our struggles and valleys mean that we are doing something wrong and straying from God, but in reality valleys are a necessary part of the Christian life.

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Every time I walk back into a “pet sin” that I have repented from repeatedly it is discouraging, but I have this image in my head that is both beautiful and heartbreaking. In the church we talk a lot about Jesus washing the disciples feet, and about His response to the woman caught in adultery. The image that comes to mind in those moments of shame is one that meshes the two a little. I picture Jesus (sort of, I don’t have a clear picture of what He looks like) kneeling in front of me with a washcloth, offering to clean me up. When I picture myself honestly in that moment, I see myself trying to dissuade Him.

“Please no, Lord,” I say, and maybe even recoil or try to push it away, “please, I don’t deserve to be cleaned.”

But Jesus is not afraid to kneel down in the dirt when we find ourselves there. Rather than sit back and leave me when I ask, He gently calms me and washes me. In this image in my head we are both crying.

Jesus does not get tired of being our Savior. He knew of every time we would reject Him or screw it up and still chose to die for us. He does not call us to repentance with threat of punishment, but rather He stands with open arms and tells us to come home.

The wrath of God is real, but God does not punish His children. He disciplines them, but He does not punish them.

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Answered Prayers

I’ve been given the opportunity to do another year of school

My anxiety levels are so low compared to last year

I am learning to trust again

I have people in my life who speak life into me

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The Way Back to God It’s common in today’s culture for people to believe that all roads lead to God. Many believe that all different sorts of religions and belief systems will ultimately lead us to God. While this sort of belief is widely accepted, it does not agree with what Jesus says in John 14:6. Jesus says that He is the only way to God. No one can come to the Father unless they come through Jesus. Jesus also says that He is the Truth, which means that all other truths must be measured against Him. He is objective truth. In other words: Jesus is the standard by which we can judge the rest of the world’s truth claims. Lastly, Jesus says He is the Life. This means that it’s only through Jesus that we find true and eternal life. True life comes from following Jesus’ words and His path for our life. A true and meaningful life begins with knowing Jesus. He alone has access to the good life that God intended us to live, as well as everlasting life with Him in heaven. Spend a moment thanking Jesus for revealing the true path to life and salvation, and for making it possible to have a relationship with Him. Continue to learn from Jesus through His Word, and share the hope of Jesus with others in your life.

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Every time I talk to Koda I realize something new about myself and my faith that I hadn’t thought about before. Often we’re talking about things I know/am familiar with, but she’ll word something in a different way and it clicks on a new level.

Today:

We are not created to be transactional beings.

We were created purely to receive. To receive His breath, His creativity, His image, His love, and now His Son. God did not need us. We were created to be vessels for Him to pour His love into. The fall was the first inherently transactional event in creation. That event turned our nature on its head. We have become transactional beings. But God continues to give! His love is never transactional, but He gives it to us freely.

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Another reminder from Koda:

As a believer, you will never be closer to God than you are right now. You will never be further from God than you are right now. God dwells within you. You are the temple, you are the tabernacle.

If someone from the Old Testament met you they wouldn’t even be able to comprehend it. For them, direct communion with God was something reserved for one man, the high priest, once a year in the holy of holies. We have direct constant communion with God just walking around in our daily lives.

I think it’s important every once in a while to have someone look at you with a loving smile on their face and say “who cares about your emotions! Who cares what you’re feeling!” Because we can so often get caught up in the way we feel about God that we miss the truth about Him. Even when we don’t feel like He is near, He could not be closer. We can gain a deeper relationship with Him by investing in intentional communication with Him through prayer and the Word, but he is so close to us and we do not lose that just because we don’t always feel it.

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A shower thought on conviction vs shame:

There is a huge difference between conviction and shame in the life of a believer

The voice of conviction might sound like “I shouldn’t say that. I need to stop this habit. This thing is bad for me. Doing this is not glorifying God.”

The voice of shame might sounds like “I’m an awful Christian. I can’t believe I’m doing this again, I should be stronger than this. I bet God’s tired of me.”

Conviction is healthy, shame is not. Where conviction guides us closer to God and His will, shame pushes us further away, and often leads to us becoming more engrossed in our sin than ever before. Conviction is the voice of the Holy Spirit in us. Shame is the voice of the enemy attacking us.

Often when we are convicted, shame tries to sneak into our thoughts and hearts. It is the enemy’s tool to keep us from turning to God in repentance and moving forward in His grace. Satan knows that those moments bring us into closer relationship with God, which is the last thing he wants. We as Christians have to consciously choose not to believe the lies of shame.

As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:5 “we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”

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A lesson learned from m a woman not even two years older than me that has changed my perspective so much:

Expect grace.

We were sitting across from each other in a coffee shop having our first ever real conversation and I asked her what her favorite thing about the year before was. She didn’t say the community at school, or the classes she got to take, or even meeting the man she’s planning to marry. Instead, she told me about the darkest part of her last year in high school.

TW: eating disorder, infertility

She told me she struggled with an eating disorder to the degree that she had lost her period entirely. She was several months into recovery and should have gotten it back before she started college. She opened up about thinking that she had become infertile because of it. I vividly remember her saying that she thought it was only just that she couldn’t have kids because of how she had treated her body.

And then she told me about the day about a month into school when she got it back. About the healing that took place in those months, both physically and emotionally.

And then she said, “I learned that we can and should expect God’s grace, not punishment.”

Something clicked for me in that moment. She could have given me the easy five second answer, but she didn’t, and I’ve grown because of it. Too often we see our chronic struggles with sin and think that whatever bad things might happen to us are deserved because of that. But that is not how God sees us. Yes, we sometimes do get His discipline, but He does not punish His children. Christ took our punishment and God sees us as perfect. We don’t need to expect punishment when we screw up. That doesn’t mean we should go around sinning like it’s nothing, but His grace is sufficient for our mistakes. We as children of God could never do something that His sacrifice can not or did not atone for.

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I spent the last week volunteering with an organization that helps homeless people, and these are some moments that I think have permanently affected my perception of life:

1) a woman declining a hot cup of coffee on a cold day because there wasn’t a restroom in walking distance

2) the joy on a man’s face when he told us he was homeless until two days prior but he had housing now

3) the realization that the people we were partnering with had been doing this for years before we came and would be continuing to do so after we left

4) seeing an older man in a recovery program light up at the opportunity to swap stories for a couple hours with a college kid about a hobby that they had in common

5) the way the crowd outside thanked us when we left after serving dinner

6) seeing the passionate faith in God of these people who have been through more in a couple months than I have in my entire lifetime

our lives intersect so briefly with the lives of others in this world and we have little choices to be a light in those moments or not. we may not see any affect in them from our actions, but that doesn’t mean we should forsake our responsibility to represent our Savior well. we’re going to screw up and have bad days and there is so much grace for that, but we can be purposeful in our continued growth

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It’s crazy the way sin and loss and grief can take your gifts and turn them on their heads.

For example: I have this amazing mentor who is so incredibly supportive and encouraging, it’s just in her soul. Encouragement is definitely one of her spiritual gifts, but in high school she was the school bully. She was in an incredibly rough place emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, and in that insecurity and struggle she acted so opposite to the gifts given to her by the Spirit. Since she got out of that place, she is possibly the most encouraging and uplifting person I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. While it is not effortless for her by any stretch, it is natural. She has her hard days and her tired days and the days when she just wants to go home and cry, but it doesn’t change her encouraging soul. She walks with God so much closer now and it makes a huge difference in her life as she depends on His strength to maintain the gift He gives

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Sometimes living in Christian community is just silly and fun in the way that things happen, and that is no bad thing!

For instance: tonight we got to listen to a really encouraging word from our dean of women, immediately followed by watching Finding Nemo and eating pizza, and then our dean of men led us in some worship songs and sent us to finish packing and get some sleep. All of this came after the most chaotic grocery shopping trip I had ever taken part in.

All this to say, being silly is by no means outside the purview of a Christian!! Having fun is a gift that God has given us! There is something incredibly fulfilling about laughing so hard your stomach hurts with the people you get to spend eternity with. God delights in His children, why would He want us to be somber all the time? There is a time and place for solemnity, but Christian fellowship does not need to be without silliness and joy