Monday, October 28, 2013

Unchanging

Hello everyone! I am so excited to finally have time to sit and write (or type a should say) about all the things God has been teaching me and showing me lately! Instead of my usual long intro, I'm just going to jump right into things! :)

Something I have learned recently is that as believers, we often go through so-called "seasons" in our relationship with God. There will be seasons where we feel very clear about where the Lord is calling us and we are passionate about submitting ourselves to His plan. There will be seasons where we experience immense heartache or suffering and God is the only thing that we have to cling to. There will be seasons where God is just rocking our world with one blessing after another and everything seems to fall into place. Unfortunately, there will also be seasons where we try to do life on our own or cannot seem to turn away from a certain repetitive sin. There will be seasons where we have grown to be content in our relationship and can't seem to find the passion to reach for more. Sometimes these seasons will only last a few days or weeks and sometimes for a year or longer.

The point is that we, as humans whose attitudes and moods are constantly affected by the craziness of this world, waver in our relationships with Christ. But He never ever ever changes. From the time our God created the universe and breathed life into man, to when He sent His only Son to carry the burden of our sin, to this very second, He has remained the same. His power has not strengthened nor weakened over time, His love for us has not increased nor decreased, His creativity and His beauty has not faded. He is the God who was and is and is to come. He knew the plan for this world and for every single person in it before it all came to be. And this is why He is the strongest foundation to build our lives on.

Reading stories like Jonah and the whale, or Noah's Ark, or the parting of the Red Sea, it was always hard for me to comprehend that the same God who worked all of those miracles is the same God who loves me today. Those stories seemed ridiculous to me and I never thought that miracles like that could still happen today. Obviously God is not going to flood the whole earth or part a sea any time soon, but He is working miracles all around us that make it so difficult for us to deny His power. Let me just describe to you a few of the miracles I have gotten to witness recently...


A few weekends ago my church did a three-weekend long series called "Unashamed." In this series, people who had committed their lives to Christ but had not been baptized yet were challenged to get baptized in order to show the world that they are unashamed that their heart belongs to Jesus. The cool thing was that people could get spontaneously baptized along with the people who had already signed up in advance to get baptized. There ended up being 842 people baptized at the three campuses of my church over just two weekends! It was truly a miracle that God was able to speak through our pastor to that many people, and that all of those lives were forever changed in just two weekends. Getting to play the honorary role of a "towel girl," I had the privilege of getting to see people's immediate joy when they came out of the water and I got to personally congratulate all those who took this next step with Christ. The most special part of the experience for me, however, was watching my little brother and parents get spontaneously baptized. They were there to support my sister and I when we got baptized so it was amazing to get to be on the other end and support them. I consider a miracle in itself how much God has moved in my family, individually and as a whole. 

"This messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River." Mark 1:4-5 

In the same way that God spoke through John the Baptist to the people of Judea and Jerusalem, convincing them to repent of their sins and get baptized on the spot, God worked the same type of miracle at my church. It's so beautiful that the stuff we read about in the bible is happening today and God is using people like you and me, even if it's just as a towel girl, to play a part in His miracles.


This past Wednesday FCA's annual "Fields of Faith" was held at Texas Tech's Jones AT&T Stadium. Thousands of middle school and high school students from all different churches and schools in Lubbock and the surrounding areas came to worship and to hear students, athletes, and pastors give their testimonies. When the last speaker was finished he called for every student who wanted to commit or recommit his/her  life to Christ to come down on the field. There have been at least a thousand kids receive the gift of salvation that night but the even cooler part was the way the other kids in the stands cheered and even shed tears for their new brothers and sisters in Christ. Thousands being saved in one night is no doubt a miracle, but it doesn't stop there. The fact that a bunch of students from competing schools, belonging to different groups of friends, all involved in different activities could come together and lift praises up to Our Father in a division 1 football stadium is also a beautiful miracle and proof of God's glory.

Whatever season you are going through in your spiritual life, I hope you are encouraged by the fact that God never changes. He never gives up on you and never changes His glorious plans for you, no matter how much you drift from Him. He makes all things work together for your good! No matter how messy your life is, He wants you to play a part in the miracles He is making happen today!

Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. James 1:17

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Hebrews 13:8




Pictures of each of my family members being baptized

My sweet family

My friend, Georgia Beth, also got baptized! So happy for her :)

All the kids who were saved at Fields of Faith

My friends and I at Fields of Faith

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Choose Truth!

Hello all! Over the past few weeks, I've been praying for guidance on what to post about next and was, honestly, just kind of hoping for God to reveal to me something my readers needed to hear. Instead, He gave me a huge reality check and shook my brain. I felt convicted and challenged and definitely humbled so now I would like to share about it with y'all!
This is my best attempt to paraphrase what The Lord was trying to tell me: "Mary Catherine, you cannot hold onto worldly thoughts and desires any longer. This world tells you the complete opposite of what I tell you. Worldly thinking and heavenly thinking cannot coexist."

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9
Ever since my senior year started, I've been trying so hard to live a life based on worldly desires and to satisfy opinions of worldly people while at the same time trying to seek out what God wants of me and to please Him. Let me tell you...it's exhausting. Absolutely exhausting. Don't try it. What I've discovered through this is that this broken, fallen world is the complete opposite of the Kingdom of God. It sounds silly saying that I didn't realize that until now; it's such an obvious fact told to us over and over again. But it's not so much that I didn't know it to be true, it's that I didn't live in that truth.
I'd like to take this post to compare some of the lies that the world tells us to the truth that God has shown us over and over since the beginning of time.
What the world tells us:
  • Titles, labels, status, and stereotypes matter. Try to be someone who impresses people and who people feel cool to be around.
  • If you cannot please the people around you, you are doing something wrong.
  • You must do everything you can to try and find someone who will love you and make feel important. Life will be better with a significant other to lean on. If you cannot find one, lower your standards.
  • Beauty is a clear face. Beauty is a cute, skinny body. Beauty is pretty long hair. Beauty is a cute nose, good smile, tan skin....(I could go on forever). Beauty is important, people must not see your flaws.
  • Don't ask for help. Don't be vulnerable. You cannot trust people and you cannot look weak. You must rely on yourself to keep it all together.
  • You have your whole life to figure things out. If you're young, make mistakes and don't worry if you feel like you're doing the wrong thing...you have so much time to do the right thing when you're older.
  • Do whatever you can to make yourself happy. Your happiness is what matters most and if that means the expense of others' happiness, it's worth it.
  • Gossiping is normal. It's okay to talk about people who you believe aren't as good as you or seem to make mistakes more than you.

What God tells us:
  • You are His child. That is the only title that matters. All other titles and statuses that seem to be important now will fade and God's children will be exalted.
"But many who are the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then." Matthew 19:30

  • He loves everything about you and is completely pleased with who you are, after all He made you. Instead of exhausting yourself trying to please people whose attitudes and opinions are constantly changing, spend time doing what is pleasing to God whose plans for you are solid and unchanging. 
"Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant." Galatians 1:10

  • An intimate relationship with your Creator is the most precious, fulfilling thing. One day He will provide someone who will love you in the best way a human could, but no human love will bring the satisfaction God can. Singleness is a gift. Spend time falling in love with Him. 
"Your unfailing love is better to me than life itself; how I praise you! I will honor you as long as I live, lifting up my hands to you in prayer. You satisfy me more than the richest feast. I will praise you with songs of joy." Psalm 63:3-5

  • Beauty is exactly how God made you. A beautiful person is one whose heart belongs to God. That is the beauty that lasts and that is the beauty that matters.
"You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you." Song of Solomon 4:7

"But let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." 1 Peter 3:4

  • We must surround ourselves with people we can lean on and we must reveal to them our struggles and our flaws. We are not designed to do life alone and we are not designed to be invincible. Humans are weak and our lives are messy; the only way to survive is to let God speak to us and comfort us not only through our relationship with Him but through our relationship with others.
"As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend." Proverbs 27:17

  • We are not promised another day. We cannot be selfish and put God on the back-burner for when we are older so we can have "fun" and make mistakes now. We must surrender each and every day to Him, not just the future.
"How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, 'If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.'” James 4:14, 15

  • Loving on others and serving them will bring you more joy than you could imagine. God's two greatest commandments are to love Him and love others...loving yourself isn't part of the equation.
"We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters." 1 John 3:16

  • We tend to gossip when we are insecure about ourselves. But slandering our brothers and sister breaks God's heart, because we are insulting His precious creations. Everyone is equal in His eyes and it is not our job to judge those around us. Focus on your own shortcomings and love others in spite of theirs.
"Does anyone want to live a life that is long and prosperous? Then keep your tongue from speaking evil and your lips from telling lies!" Psalm 12, 13


These are just a few examples of the lies the world tries to tell us. I could give you more, but my guess is that you have probably picked up on the fact that most everything the world tells us is completely the opposite of what The Lord tells us. The difference is that the word of God is truth and this truth is the way to a fulfilling life. I knew a lot of these things before my reality check, but selfishly, I caved into the world believing that it could bring me more joy than living righteously could. Now I have made the choice to live in the Truth. I'm going to stumble and I'm going to stray, but I have faith that my God will pull me right back like He always has. I pray that you will desire to live in the Truth and will find tremendous joy in doing so. Thanks for reading. God bless you all :)


"And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?" Matthew 16:26