Unfathomable

How do humans with such tiny brains (no offense fellow earthlings) grasp such huge concepts such as eternity, unconditional love, the creation of the universe, and a plan that was created for us far before we were born? It can definitely be hard sometimes and we forget all too often how truly righteous our God is, but diving into scripture is the best way to get a clear picture of God's greatness.

What's God's next step for ME? What does God want of ME? Why did God create ME this way? How can God help ME in this situation? Why is God doing this in MY life?

I ask myself each of these questions at least twice a day...which is great and so important if I want to whole-heartedly follow God's path for me...but I so often forget the most important part and that's who God is. I get so wrapped up in my life and making sure that I center it around Christ and me, me, me, that I forget to simply worship God for His greatness and reflect on the beauty of who He is and what all He has done.

I think the main reason we so often forget how truly glorious God is is that we are constantly surrounded by flawed, broken, messed up humans. Seeing the self-seeking, greedy, and envious nature of humans, including ourselves, makes it hard to imagine a perfect God without all of that junk. When Genesis 1:27 tells us that God created us in His own image, that means that He put some of His compassion, love, grace, unselfishness, and wisdom into each of His children. But because sin was brought into this world we also all have some evil characteristics about us. But God isn't sinful, He is perfect. Think of the most kind-hearted, cheerful, God-seeking, "wouldn't-hurt-a-fly", type of person you know. Even they have a sinful nature and cannot compare to the perfection of God. His love is immeasurable, His beauty is indescribable, His wisdom is infinite....and He is worthy of all praise and worship, even though the world often fails to give it to Him.

I encourage you to think of everything beautiful about the earth, the universe, yourself, your life, others...God created it all and should be worshiped for it.
Here are things that remind me of God's greatness

• the colors He paints in the sunsets/sunrises
• the smell of rain
• how every single person on earth has a different laugh
• the way He has an individual plan for every single one of His children that all weave together to create a even bigger plan for the earth as a whole
• the way He created the Heavens and earth in only 6 days and I can't even finish a novel in 2 weeks

That's only a teeny, tiny fraction of the list of amazing things God has done and created. He's awesome, just awesome. It's so important to focus on what God is doing in your life and how you can follow Him and what He wants you to do and what's best for you but sometimes we need to just stop, breathe, and thank God for who He is. I personally like to jam to worship songs in the shower and then lay in bed and count the reasons why God is worthy of praise. But however you choose to worship Him simply for who He is, my prayer is that you will have a renewed spirit. If this awesome God is for you, who can be against you?

"Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations." Psalm 100:4-5

Yes, Lord.

Good afternoon everyone! Hope y'all had a blessed long weekend! :) I know mine was definitely full of blessings.From the title you might guess this could be a boastful story of a time I was obedient to the Lord and was so proud of myself. Instead I want to share about a shift in my life from a time when I ignored what God wanted of me to a time that I began to be obedient, and how God blessed me through it. I want to share this not to brag about my following the Lord but instead about how dumb my plans and thoughts can be in comparison to His infinite wisdom and perfect plan.

For the past few months my life has been a series of "Yes, Lord"s. What I mean by that is that I have heard Him and felt Him wanting something of me multiple times and I have simply replied "Yes, Lord."

Now to get things straight, I have definitely turned from Him in this time period and "Yes, Lord" wasn't always my reply the second I heard something Him telling me to do something, but for the majority of this time period I've been able to follow Him. Not because of my own works, but because He answered my prayers and made changes within me.

Anyways, before I learned to say "Yes, Lord" my response to His commands was usually "I love you Lord, but I'm scared the world will judge me if I do that" or "I love you Lord, but I don't really wanna give up time to do that" (the list goes on and on). Essentially what I was saying was "Lord, I know what's best for me and you don't. Your plan for me isn't perfect and I don't need you to have a good life." (harsh but true). What I've learned is that when I set all of my doubts, fears, insecurities, and own selfish desires aside and know that God is bigger than all of that, He truly does bless me and knows what's best.

I could give numerous little stories of times I've said "Yes, Lord" (as well as times I've said no), but I'll just keep it at three...

I've always been very shy and uncomfortable around people I don't know well and I've always been really insecure about it. I hate to be places without one of my best friends and I really hate talking in front of people I barely know. I hadn't really been involved in a youth group since like 8th grade (I'm a junior) and never really wanted to be because I was too shy. About 3 months ago, a friend from school invited me to go to a youth thing at my church and even though I was really nervous, I felt like the Lord really wanted me to go. I said yes and I'm not gonna lie I was a little bit awkward at first but once we split up into boys and girls and started talking about our walks with God, I felt like it was exactly where I was supposed to be. I shared as well as listened to some of the other girls talk and now three months later, I'm very involved in the youth group and have made some amazing friendships that I wouldn't have had I ignored God's voice telling me to go.

My baptism is also another "Yes, Lord" story. After officially committing my life to Christ in October, I saw several signs that baptism was the next step for me. In a matter of two weeks, everywhere I turned seemed to be the word "baptism": I heard some sermons on it, I read stories about it in devotionals, I found scripture on it, and I just couldn't get it out of my mind. It took some time for me to realize that this was obviously God's next step for me. "If I go in front of people and get baptized, are people going to judge me for just now committing my life to Christ? Are they going to think I was a bad person before? Is it even necessary since I did it when I was little?" I let these thoughts take over my head until I finally realized that professing my new-found faith to the public by getting baptized is exactly what God wanted of me and is exactly what was best for me. I got baptized on December 16, 2012 and can easily say it was the best day of my life.

Last but definitely not least is the story of my blog! For about two years I've been reading other Christian blogs and love them and consider the people who write them some of my biggest role models (even though I don't know some of them). Once I committed my life to Christ and began learning so much about Him and about what it's like to live surrendered to Him, I felt like He wanted me to start a blog! Although I didn't think I'd be able to think of something to share about each week and didn't think anyone would actually take the time to read it, I went ahead and made it. I was embarassed and scared that nobody would like it at first and didn't tell anybody but my best friends but they encouraged me to share it on social media! Once I did, I got so much encouragement and multiple people told me my blog inspired them. Yes, I did get negative comments but honestly one person telling me that my blog pushed them closer to God would outweigh a million negative comments. The thing is that God is the one speaking through me onto here and knows that a lot of people need to hear what I write about each post. I'm so thankful God gave me the gift of blogging because I definitely don't have the ability to verbally share my stories.

This blog is not my doing and neither are any of the other great things that have happened since I've committed my life to Christ. His path has many treasures and blessings along the way that far outweigh any trials. When you surrender every part of yourself to Christ and are obedient, He will bless you with the time, money, strength, courage or whatever else you need to follow His plan. It might be scary and it will probably be difficult, but absolutely nothing is better than saying "Yes, Lord" when He is calling you because He is the infinitely wiser than us and His plans are infinitely greater than our own.

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you." Psalm 32:8

Surrender

Happy Saturday everybody! I apologize for my lack of blogging these past few weeks but I am back and excited to share with y'all! :)

First off, Happy New Year!!! I decided not to make any resolutions, not because I'm hipster or anything, just because when I've tried before I either just picked something that I knew would be pretty easy for me to do or something way too challenging that I gave up after a week.

Last year, however, I made a commitment to develop a much more intimate, stable relationship with God and I would say I succeeded....well, scratch that...I didn't succeed, God did. The beginning of the year started off great and that was probably because I had no real struggles. I was just happy with life; therefore, happy with God for blessing me so I spent a lot of time with Him. But when things got tough, I turned from Him and tried to find my happiness in things of this world. Despite having an empty feeling in my heart, I convinced myself I was happy. But one night I reached my breaking point, cried out to God and He did what He had to do. After a few weeks of pain and heartache and being angry at God, I realized that He broke me because I asked Him to. I asked Him to draw me back to Him and He listened, giving me more than I could ever dream of. The last few months of 2012 were the best few month of my life...not because of my own doing, but because of what God did for me. I finally understood that absolutely nothing is better than devoting your whole heart, soul, mind and life to Christ. And now when I think back to last year when I made a commitment to myself to grow closer to God than ever before, I imagine God smiling and thinking, "my darling, you have no idea what's to come."

So in 2012 I truly committed my life to Christ, learned to find my fulfillment and identity in Him, began to listen to Him, and was extremely blessed with many new people and opportunities. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a very broken human with a multitude of flaws and shortcomings. The only difference is that now I truly know God and am made whole through Him. Despite the fact that there was definitely hardship and my year was far from perfect, I consider it the best year of my life because my heart is now in God's hands.

2012 was awesome...but where do I go from here? Now that I know God and have let Him take over my life, how can I follow Him more? How can I grow even deeper in Him? How can I give back to Him? I hate to admit this, but I really have no clue.

My YoungLife leader encouraged us to all pick a word to describe how we want our upcoming year to be. After some thought and prayer, I chose "surrender." I have no idea what God's next steps are for me and that frustrates me. But whatever the future holds, I surrender to His plan. I surrender my heart and ask that He fill it with Himself so I can desire nothing but Him. I surrender my mind so that I can have spirit-filled thoughts rather than negative, doubtful ones. I surrender my body so that I can act more like Jesus and walk with Him daily. I surrender my own plans so that I can whole-heartedly follow His.

I engourage you all to pick a word or phrase to describe how you want your year to go. Or maybe even just pick a new one each week. Reflect on what it really means to you and why God might have put it on your heart! My prayer is that this year will take you to new heights in your walk with God and that I can be a part of it! Thanks for reading:)

"My son, give me your heart. May your eyes take delight in following my ways." Proverbs 23:26

"The man answered, ‘You must love The Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind." Luke 10:27

 

After my baptism. Glory to God in the highest!