NEW BLOG

I have moved my blog to try out word press. No worries I imported all my old posts so nothing to worry about! Here is the link http://kec0028.wordpress.com/

Into the Light

I love that moment when you are talking to someone and you say something that you have no doubt are words from God. Well that happened to me tonight. I was talking to a friend when I said something and as soon as I texted it I was like wow that was good preaching, God. I knew there was no way I came up with it, but instead God working through me. This is pretty much what was said...

Everything happens for a reason. I don't necessarily like a lot of the things in 

 my past, but I don't keep them under lock and key and try to forget them. I know that 

through those experiences God worked something out for the good and turned 

that experience into something that grew me. So maybe while you are trying to shove 

things into the dark, God is trying to show you it in a new perspective, in His light. 

Things always look better with light shining on them. 

But really that is good preaching. Maybe that same concept can be applicable to your situation as well. Maybe you need to stop shoving all of your regrets deeper into darkness and instead let the light shine upon them to see what God has to say. In the Bible it says to boast in our weaknesses so that we can see Christ's strength through them (2 Corinthians 11:30 and 2 Corinthians 12:9).  So let God's light shine off it and reflect to everyone around.

One Candle

Sometimes I wish I could drop it all and move somewhere dark and lost. I saw a post today from a long term missionary in Haiti and that said "I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light." I LOVE THAT! When I was in Haiti for a week it was so incredible to be that source of light in such darkness. A lot of the time I don't feel like that here. Living in the Bible belt everyone has heard of Jesus. Not everyone truly believes and understands the Gospel but still everyone sees the light. In a way I feel like I am shining without purpose here. If my light went out would it even matter, because we live in the light? I don't know. I just feel like living here in America everything is so self focused and I get tired of it. I just want to be able to live God focused. I want to give everything up to gain even more. I really am jealous of that missionary. I know it is not always easy for her, but I would love to be her. Yeah, I am not supposed to covet and I know God has a purpose for me here but it is just easy to sit and wish. I wish I could escape all of the stress of trying to be "successful." I just want to drop it all and live in nothing but for something, which is being the light each and every day. How amazing would it be to do nothing but love people and share God's love. I mean that has to be the life! Right?

Excellence not Perfection

Excellence is working like everything depends on you, but praying like everything depends on God!

Some thoughts:
We have the free will to do whatever we want to do, but if God sees our hard work I think He gives us more to work with (Luke 16:10 ""Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much."). God isn't asking us for perfection. He is asking us to try. To give it our all and to rely on Him. Secondly, we must pray hard, not to receive blessings but to receive life. Everything in our life depends on that relationship. Nothing we do will succeed if it is not God's will so we must pray so that the hard work we do will line up with God will. Through this excellence (NOT PERFECTION) can be reached. Perfection is not something that we should even strive for because the only person that was and every will be perfect was Jesus, but we can reach excellence in our lives. So strive to live a life of excellence not perfection by making an effort to work like it is all on you but pray like it is all on God!

Faith to Believe

Give me the faith to believe You
When I'm stuck here in my fear
Give me the strength to trust You
When my vision's blurred by tears
Give me a hope for tomorrow
Cause today has gone so wrong
I'm on my knees
Give me the faith to believe

Even when I cannot see You
You're still shining, You're still shining
Even when I cannot hear You
You're still calling out my name
Even when I cannot feel You
Your arms are open
Always holding on to me
Give me the faith to believe

You say You'll never leave me
That Your love will conquer fear
You say Your day is coming
When You'll wipe away my tears
Give me a hope for tomorrow
Cause today has gone so wrong
I'm on my knees
Give me the faith to believe

Even when I cannot see You
You're still shining, You're still shining
Even when I cannot hear You
You're still calling out my name
Even when I cannot feel You
Your arms are open
Always holding on to me

-Faith to Believe by Shane and Shane

I stumbled upon a new playlist on Spotify and heard this song. So good right? Sometimes are faith just needs a little boosting. God never leaves us, and He has never left us. Even while we were still sinners He was seeking after us. Before we were even born, He gave up his only son so that we could be with him forever and always. But there are those moments when He seems distant or it seems like He was never there. In those moment we need to work on a few things.

The first is how we see what is going on/our perspective. If your staring at something close up you cannot see the entirety of it. Like our problems when they are right in our face we can't see past them they are right  and they are blocking everything. Yet if we back away we can see things better. We see how we will be able to deal and how our problem isn't going to be the end of the world. This change in perspective can change our faith.

Another thing we need to work on to lift our faith is to start focusing on believing in the little things and growing to the belief that nothing is impossible. If you want your faith to go from "I guess God can" to "God already has" you need to first believe him for the little things. For example going to bed believing that God will wake you up the next day. Or believing that you will have safe travels. etc. Maybe you are already past this step but wherever you are figure out what level of faith you are at. From that point continue to grow from there. Seek to reach that faith where you truly believe anything is possible. 

          - Do you believe God has never left you?

          - Do you believe you were created for a purpose?

          - Do you believe you could pray and heal a paralyzed person?

I ask these questions to help you determine where your faith stands.

Lastly, you need to recognize and see that God is moving. God takes problems out at the root, so you may not always see that God is working because He works below the surface, deep at the roots of the problem. You need to realize that God is working in your life EVERYDAY. He is leading you, guiding you, and helping you. If you can't see that He is working everyday it is extremely difficult to notice that He is working from one day to another. Furthermore, your not going to see how God has worked out your entire life for your purpose if you are not noticing how He is working in each day. 

We all could use our faith to grow. Our faith can never top out. There will always be room to grow in it. Faith is what we need to make it through the rough days and situations. God can use a little faith to do big things but when our faith is exponential imagine all that God can do with us.

"He replied, "Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Mathew 17:20

 Our problems become smaller as our God becomes bigger!

Insecurities

Insecurities stem from an obsession of oneself in order to please others and a lack of focusing on the handiwork of God.

 It is so easy for me to tell you a hundred things I don't like about myself, but a million times harder to come up with 5 things I like about myself. Insecurities like these have not been drilled in us by our own thoughts, but through the enemy. He is a liar and a good one at that. He is so good at what he does that he can even convince you that his thoughts are actually your thoughts. And even more to the point where you believe people think those same thoughts about you as well. So it gets to the point where you get scared that people think the worse of you and you end up not liking yourself. Then you focus on trying to "fix" yourself. That never works though, because satisfactory is never fully reached. Satan always tries to give you a standard to meet and shoes to fill, but as you almost reach them, he makes the shoes bigger and the bar higher. So you fall right into the belief that you will never be good enough.

That may seems like one of those Allstate slippery slope fallacy commercials, but honestly it is simply a slope that about everyone goes down in one way or another. Those ideas become what we perceive as the truth, and so they turn into an obsession of either having to cover them up or fix them.

But all those things are lies! All those terrible thoughts you believe about yourself are lies. (You're not smart or too smart. Fat. Ugly. Dumb. Stupid. A failure. A burden. Worthless. A mistake. Broken. Messed up. Not good enough. Flawed. etc.) See God made you, and everything God makes is perfect. He knitted you together in your mother's womb and after He made you He stood in awe of how wonderful you were. When He made you, He gave you certain personality traits and features that he designed to help you fulfill your purpose. He made you look like you do, so certain people would be drawn to you. He gave you certain hobbies, so that through that you could be his light in those areas. He made you unique to reach people others cannot. And finally, He gave you a story so that through your story lives will be saved.

God spoke the world into creation, but He took time to make his people. You are a masterpiece of God. Every piece of you was made perfect. When God thinks about you, He has so many good thoughts that they outnumber the grains of sand on the Earth! Try to fathom that! So stop covering up what you see as imperfect and instead view it as the perfection God created it as. Embrace every little thing about yourself because the Almighty God,  the creator of everything, and the all knowing God made you like that for a reason! Don't get lost in worrying about what others think of you, because the one who knows EVERYTHING about you thinks the best of you!

Puzzled to Amazed

Today I had lunch with a friend I went through 252 with. I haven't talked to her in a while besides some small talk so it was awesome to actually get to sit and catch up. I love hearing how God is working in people's lives. It is probably my favorite thing. It is cool to have God work in me but to see and hear him work in others I find it even more amazing.  She is working in the Hispanic community to help bring them into a closer relationship with God and to hopefully lead enough people into a real relationship that they will be able to start a Spanish LIFE group for them. I think it is awesome how she is using her gifts of being bilingual to help reach people that not everyone can reach.

When I got home from lunch I started building this puzzle. While I was building it I was thinking about what all I was going to say in my devotional that I am giving tonight. I knew what I was going to discuss, staying amazed by God,  but I was just thinking about the little details. I then proceeded to have a moment of amazement with God. I realized our life is like a giant puzzle, except we only get to see it piece by piece. Sometimes we pick up a piece and think how dull and dark it is because it is just an all black piece. This could be like a dark time in our life. Then there are the pieces that seem to have be filled with so much like those crazy times in our lives when everything is going on. There are also those pieces where you can actually see objects or you can tell what it is. Those would be the times of clarity in our lives. This metaphor could go on and on, but the point is in our life we only see it piece by piece. God has all the pieces though and He knows how they are go together. When our life is in his hands, all the pieces of our life fit together, and in the end the dark, the bright, and the crazy pieces all come together to form a masterpiece, His masterpiece.