When God Reveals Himself in Simple, Unexpected Ways

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creation, creator, God's presence, inspiration, nature, purpose, revelation

If you’re like me, you may have wished more than once that God would reveal Himself to you in a grand, thunderbolt-like, voice-in-the-sky gesture. Maybe you’ve told Him that, too.

“Lord, I just want a sign from you; just reveal yourself to me in a clear, undeniable way so I know you are here with me and that you have a great purpose for me.”

Maybe you then turned away resigned to silence, in fact, not really expecting any sort of response at all. In reality, perhaps you were just venting from a long, hard day and weren’t directing your words toward God seriously.

But whether or not you realized it, He did respond to you.

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Quote of the Week | Do Extraordinary Things

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extraordinary, famous, Identity, inspirational, life, purpose, Quote of the Week, quotes, reflections

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.

~ Sir Edmund Hillary

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I just have to say, the guy who said this quote accomplished an extraordinary thing to come up with something this profound.

It’s really true. Maybe if we really understood this concept, we would all stop pushing ourselves and others to be so good and then beat ourselves down when we fail.

How Traveling Has Shifted My Perspective on Life

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experience, Identity, life, purpose, Travel, traveling

Have you ever had one of those experiences in which your whole perspective suddenly shifts and you now see life in a new and fresh way?

Most of us probably can look back to something in our lives that we consider a defining moment or event. A book, a trip, a conversation, a song, or even an imperceptible moment of change that we really can’t put our finger on.

Sometimes defining moments in life are not even a single moment in time.

Quote of the Week | The Greatest Quote Book

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bible, creator, God, Identity, life, light, pure, purpose, Quote of the Week, truth

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“For you are the fountain of life, the light by which we see.”

Psalm 36:9 (NLT)

I don’t normally post a quote from the Bible as my quote of the week, but you’ve got to admit, it’s pretty much the greatest quote book on the planet. Written by the Creator of the universe. So yeah, I’d say He’s probably worth listening to.

This is just some plain, pure truth from God.

He is the fountain of life, the light by which we live and understand. He’s the source of our everything. Without Him, we are nothing.

~~~

Hope you enjoyed what you read! Feel free to add your personal thoughts in the comments below. If you haven’t already, check out my About page, and I’d love it if you subscribed to my blog as well! That way you won’t miss any of my future posts, and you’ll completely make my day.

Thanks for stopping by!

You Are Loved and Accepted for Who You Are

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God, God's love, life, purpose

Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. ~ Luke 12:7

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. – Oscar Wilde

This post is an expanded and embellished version of the devotional that I gave several times during the summer when I was a prayer partner for the teen counselors. The role of a prayer partner is mainly that–praying for your counselor and her campers; but it also includes being sort of a second counselor to the girls: hanging out with them, getting to know them, eating meals with them, basically focusing on that particular cabin more than all the rest; and one of the main things you usually do is come into their cabin before lights out and lead the devotions for the cabin. So this was what I talked about with a few of my cabins.

~~~

One thing I have struggled with all my life is self-rejection, not accepting myself for who I am, trying to change my personality or my looks because I just thought I was imperfect and didn’t measure up to what I should be. I had enough trouble just battling my own thoughts of rejection, but added to that was a huge bundle of outside rejection, whether perceived or real. Throughout my childhood I had major struggles with feeling rejected, ignored, worthless, and generally unloved by my friends and other people around me. Thankfully, I have an amazing family who loves me and accepts me, and I’ve never had any major issues with feeling unloved by them.

But outside of my family, in my circle of friends at church and in other groups, desperate people pleasing on my part, constantly desiring and attempting to be accepted and wanted, that was the story of my life. More frequently than not, the rewards to my many attempts were to be ignored, forgotten, or looked down upon. I have never been part of the “in” crowd; I’ve never been the popular type. Maybe it’s part of my introvert personality or something, but wherever I go I never fit in with the cool crowd. I’m just too cool for them. They wouldn’t be able to handle my off-the-charts level of cool exuding from every pore, so I just spare them the distressing experience. In case you didn’t realize, I just employed the use of sarcasm there.

Honestly, I don’t really have what it takes to be popular, no matter how hard I may try. Not that I really want to fit in with the cool popular crowd. I don’t care about it that much now, but there was a time when that constant realization was a daily trial and struggle for me. I was always stuck in the out-crowd, and was often looked down on and made fun of by the in-crowd.

That caused an even bigger problem in my perception of myself, and I constantly wished that I could change my personality, my looks, and many other things about me that defined who I was. I worried about what people thought of me, constantly trying to do or say what I thought would bring me the most positive appearance to everyone around me. I wanted to be the one that everyone liked and wanted to be around. I wanted to be the perfect person.

I didn’t realize that in thinking about myself that way, I was giving in to one of the biggest, fattest, ugliest lies that Satan has ever invented. Satan wants us to dislike ourselves and wish we were better or cooler or more outgoing; he wants us to think we are worthless, purposeless, and unloved; he wants us to be discontent, and think we know better than God; he doesn’t want us to realize what a masterpiece of creation that we truly are and how much of a treasure we are to our Creator. He doesn’t want us to learn who God really is and what He really thinks about us. Because if we did, the weight of those lies would vanish and become meaningless to us.

If we truly understand God’s love toward us, we will know that He designed each one of us with intentionality, perfect precision, and the utmost care. Before the world began, our Heavenly Father was dreaming and planning of the infinite variety and uniqueness of each individual that He would create.

Psalm 139:13-18 is one of my favorite sections in the Bible that speaks to this issue and declares with certainty the absolute, irreplaceable, and one-of-a-kind treasures that we are in God’s eyes.

For you formed my inward parts;
    you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
    my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
    the days that were formed for me,
    when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
    I awake, and I am still with you.

This scripture passage presents an incredible truth that can change our whole outlook on life.

Eons ago, God looked through the annals of future time and saw you–He saw who you would be and lovingly designed you with your unique personality, your eye color, the shape of your nose, the family and place you would be born into–He purposefully designed who you would be and what you would look like and placed you in a particular time in history, because he loves you with an everlasting and incomprehensible love.

He created and designed you, not only as a unique and precious person, but also with a unique and special purpose attached to your life. You were born great. You have a part to play in the grand scheme of the universe that is absolutely necessary. Every aspect of you and your life has a purpose and a reason.

You are not a mistake or an accident. You were planned from before the universe began; you are the result of a deliberate and intentional act of God. Even if you may have been a surprise to your parents, you were not a surprise to God. God told Jeremiah at the beginning of Jeremiah’s ministry, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart” (Jer. 1:4-5).

You are valuable to your Father. He knows the number of hairs on your head. You are much more precious to God than the sparrows (Matthew 10:29-31). He doesn’t let a single one fall to the ground without his notice–how much more important are you than a sparrow?

He created you exactly how He wants you to be; you are perfect in His eyes–you don’t need to change a single thing about yourself. That’s an amazing thing. (I’m not saying you don’t need to change anything about your life–God knows that we all need change in our lives, we need to be transformed into His image; but those parts in your life that do need changing, God will take care of by His grace and in his timing) 

But, just as amazing, He didn’t just stop with creating you as a person. God’s love is so rich and multi-faceted. Even though He knew that sin and evil would taint you here on this earth, He decided that despite those flaws, He still wanted to keep you his forever and have a relationship with you; He wanted to make a way of restoration and healing; and to accomplish that He sent his son Jesus Christ to come down to earth and take away the punishment for all of your sins so that you could go to heaven and live with him forever.

If you have received that gift of eternal life and become His own child, you are in an infinitely better place now than you even would have been before sin entered the world. You are not only a treasured design of God’s creativity, but also a redeemed, righteous, justified, loved, eternal son or daughter of the Living God, your heavenly Father.

Another one of my favorite scripture passages that perfectly expresses this concept is Ephesians 2:4-7:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Eternity will never see the end of the immeasurable riches of God’s grace, mercy, and love toward us.

God knew what he was doing when he planned out your details, and He wants you to trust Him in them. His wisdom is infinite and vast, above anything we could imagine, and His love for us is beyond comprehension.

So in conclusion: Be who you are; love and accept who you are; not to the point of pride and excessive self-esteem, but humbly and gratefully loving how God has made you, with the personality, physical traits, time and place in history, that He’s given you; knowing that nothing that people may say or do to you will have the power to tear you down or strip away your intrinsic worth. Because you know you are valuable. You are accepted. You are worth more than gold; more precious than all the riches in the world. You are beloved to God.

A Summer Update and Some Random Stuff | A Writer’s Reflections

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camp, life, ministry, purpose, summer

After a long and busy summer working at camp as a media intern, I’m back home with some very good intentions of keeping my blog updated more regularly. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to write about during the past couple of months (quite the contrary), but I simply didn’t have the time or, honestly, the motivation, to write out a blog post. Whenever I did get a break from my job, I would spend it resting or reading or just doing something that was as far away from being “work” as possible. (Writing doesn’t usually feel like work to me, but in the midst of the busyness of the summer, it did.)

But anyway, lots of things happened and God gave me a wonderful summer that included many new, amazing friends and plenty of life lessons sprinkled throughout.

I’ll definitely be talking about many of those lessons in the near future, but for now I wanted to just let you all know that I’m still alive, back home, and for now I’m trying to figure out what’s next for me in life.

You know, just as a little random thought here, it’s hard when you’ve been living at a place of ministry for almost three months and your life has been so constantly full of activity and virtually planned out for you down to the hour . . . and then, just like that, it’s over, and you go home. Then . . . you feel sort of aimless, deflated, and wondering what in the world your life was all about before you went to that place.

I know that three months is pretty short, and there are probably many of you out there who have dealt with leaving a place after many months and years and you feel my predicament magnified many times. But bear with me, because it’s still a hard situation, regardless of the length of time you’ve been there.

I guess that’s why, as a Christian, your life can’t be all about one aspect of ministry, or one group of people, or one particular place. Because those things will eventually go away, and life will change. And if you are so consumed by those things to the point that they become your whole life, then when you lose those things or people, your life will suddenly be devoid of meaning and the ensuing emptiness will consume you. Being a Christian is not only about ministry or people. It’s about a person, one Person. And if He the most important part of everything you do and everywhere you go, then you’ll always be fulfilled and satisfied, even through difficult loss and change. Life will always have meaning.

That’s my little spiel for today. Hope all you readers are doing great and that you’ll hang in here with me while I try to get my blog going again!

Photo Credit: Yours Truly, using the camp’s amazing Canon Rebel T5i that I really really wish I could have brought home with me and I parted from with many tears (ok, not really tears, but I was very sad to leave it behind)

Oh, but if you are searching for a simple way to alleviate my sadness and make my day extra happy, and if you haven’t subscribed to my blog yet, you can totally go ahead and subscribe, and feel good for the rest of your day knowing that you just did your part in lifting me a little bit higher out of that pit of depression I sunk into when I said goodbye to one of my deepest and closest friends. Just saying. *sniff*

Week One — Summer Reflections

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camp, Christian, ministry, purpose, reflections, relationships, summer

I’ve been at camp for one week now, and there are countless little things running around in my head. I’m going to try to gather my thoughts a little bit and reflect on what has happened and what I’ve learned so far.

Don’t always believe first impressions. Whenever you meet a group of new people, there are always first impressions. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of taking a first impression of someone and letting that determine the future of your relationship with that person in either a negative or positive way. Volunteering at camp, I might meet someone and think something like, “Oh, they are totally my type–I’m going to get along great with them,” or maybe, “Hmm, I just don’t click with this person at all.” And many times I’m surprised that halfway through the summer, I’ve actually become super good friends with the person I wasn’t too sure about, or I actually wasn’t as similar as I thought I was to that other girl. So, keep an open mind about everyone you meet. Don’t assume that a first impression will always stay the same once you get to know someone.

Communication is vital. For a team to be a team, each member has to be willing to communicate clearly and often to one another. But not only do they have to share information, but they must also follow that information and apply it to their actions, or else they’ll just end up with misunderstandings and less-effective ministry.

Stay focused on what’s really important in life. Life is too short to spend it on self-gratification, entertainment, or a successful career. Only what’s done for Christ will last.

The people working in the background are just as important as the people on the front lines. At camp, the people on the front lines, like the counselors, program staff, and speakers, are the ones that seem to be doing all the work and usually get most of the credit for a successful ministry and positive results. But they realize that they are only doing half of the work, and that without the faithfulness and diligence of everyone behind the scenes, such as the kitchen crew, hospitality staff, and maintenance guys, it would be impossible for anything to get accomplished.

All members of the team need to work together toward a common goal rather than forming smaller groups or cliques and focusing on their buddies or themselves. We have to remember why we are here in the first place, and not let our focus get off track. It’s important to build relationships with the purpose of working toward the main reason that God has us in the place we are.

One is worth more than all. One soul saved from eternal death is worth more than the whole world.

Everyone is different, but everyone is equally valuable and needed.  Part of our staff training was taking a short personality test and being given one of four personality types based on our answers, which were put on a graph. The four choices were Expressive, Amiable, Analytical, or Driver. I wound up with Analytical/Amiable (not at all surprising), but the other members of our staff were a fairly even mix of all four (except for Driver, which only three of the group got). But it proved to show that every person is different in some way. Even people within the same group were never in the exact position on the graph. Everyone is different, yet equally valuable and necessary to complete the team.

You can’t have a unified team without trust. People who don’t trust each other are going to have problems with unity. Power comes through unity. For God to do great things in our lives, we have to be willing to trust the people that we work with, but that means that we also have to be worthy of each other’s trust.

Your boldness in speaking out the gospel is directly related to your level of brokenness and whether or not you are filled with the Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit is dependent on your relationship with the word of Christ and whether you are fully surrendered to His work in every area of your life (Ephesians 5:18-21 and Colossians 3:16).

On another exciting note, I also received my CPR/First Aid certification last weekend! So if you suddenly collapse or have trouble breathing or cut your arm while I’m around, I will (hopefully) be ready and prepared to assist you out of your life-threatening condition.

God has done a lot of cool and interesting things throughout these first two weeks of staff training, and I’m looking forward to what He will do as the summer continues.

You Were Born Great

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born great, God, God's plan, greatness, life, mission, purpose, with God all things are possible

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” (That was William Shakespeare, and I admit that I had forgotten who said it and had to look it up.)

Well, I’d like to take a different stance and say that everyone is born great. Yes, some may achieve greatness or have extra greatness thrust upon them at some point in their lives, but all people are born with greatness of some kind inside of them.

Everyone is a treasure in God’s eyes, each one of us special to Him for some unique reason. Our value in His eyes is not based on our outward appearance or our personality or accomplishments. God looks at the heart and He values and loves us each equally. You are not special because of your particular personality and achievements–He gave you those particular personality and achievements because you are special to Him. He intentionally designed you with the unique facets that make up who you are. And that includes your own individual form of greatness–capabilities and talents and dreams that only you can bring to pass.

Before the earth was even in existence, God saw you and designed you carefully and lovingly to be who you are. He gave you your unique hair color, your eye color, your body type, your abilities, your personality, your likes and dislikes, and he planned out the story of your life to the smallest detail (Psalm 139:13-16).

You were designed to be great and to do great things. All you have to do is decide that you are not going to give up or live for yourself, and instead purpose to live out fully everything God has planned for you.

Everyone has the potential of greatness in their lives. You may not be able to change your appearance, or your social status, or your career situation, but that’s not what is truly important. What is important is your heart, who you are because of how God designed you. And your heart is moldable, changeable, capable of great transformation. A heart transformed into God’s image can accomplish great things that would be impossible to achieve otherwise.

We can never imagine in our natural human minds the things God has made possible for us (1 Corinthians 2:9-13). But through His Spirit living and moving in us, all of that becomes visible to our spiritual eyes so that we are more than able to accomplish great things for God, wherever we are and whoever we are.

With God all things are possible.

If you’ve ever wanted to do something great, to make your life count for something, but you feel discouraged and weighed down by the cares and monotony of everyday life, you’re definitely not alone. But don’t let those feelings of inadequacy and despair become your reality. While you’re hunkered down feeling defeated and useless, God’s just waiting for you to look up and realize He is there, His arms outstretched and hands overflowing with all the blessings and power that you could ever want!

He’s given you the enabling, created you with the talents and capabilities that you need for your specific mission in life. Sure, you may not be able to command the attention of an audience with your oratory eloquence, you may not know the first thing about playing the piano or the mandolin, you may have failed miserably in calculus, but maybe that doesn’t matter a bit, because maybe you simply don’t need those particular skills for your life mission.

Nobody can do everything; but everybody can do something. You are the best there can be at being you, and at doing what God has appointed you to do.

Ask God to lead you into your personal, unique life purpose–He will, without a doubt–and then get out and do it!

And next time you think that you are not doing much in the way of anything, stop–and remember what is possible through the Creator of the universe and who you are because of Him.

~~~

Hope you enjoyed this post! Thanks so much for reading and please feel free to add your own personal thoughts in the comments below!

Photo credit: Lucie Commans

Reflections on How Not to Waste My Time

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God, joy, merciful, mighty, peace, priorities, purpose, rest, time

Photo Credit: myheartbelongstochrist | tumblr

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January 22nd. The end of the month is just 9 days away. Whether you realize it or not, we are already almost one-twelfth finished with this year, and it didn’t feel like it took that long at all, did it? It certainly didn’t for me. And the rest of the year is going to pass just as quickly.

I’ve been busy today and recent days thinking about stuff like what I’m going to be doing this summer, and that it’s my family’s dog’s birthday today, and that I really should clean out my closet, and trying to figure out the science of relationships (and failing miserably), and then all of a sudden I realized it.

This year is going by faster than last year. Faster than I ever imagined it could.

And what have I really done so far that’s worth mentioning? What have I done to further God’s kingdom here on earth? How have I impacted the lives around me? What have I done to cultivate and invest in my relationships with my family members? I hate to say it, but there are far fewer qualifying accomplishments in my life than I’d like.

Time passes so much more quickly than I really think. It’s so easy to let the moments slip by without really living. I can spend hours and days and weeks dreaming and planning my future out like clockwork, but then six months later I wake up and look back – and how much of that has actually come to pass? And how much of that time did I spend only planning things out instead of living them?

I hate the feeling of wasted time, of looking deep into my life and realizing that so much of what I’ve spent my time doing was useless. Just vanity and emptiness. I truly empathize with you, Solomon.

You’d think that feeling of regret would be enough to make me turn around and never waste another moment of my life; and yet, why is it so easy to see my mistakes, endeavor to change, and, a short time later, find myself wasting my time again?

I’ll tell you this, the pull of the world and the lies of the devil are so much stronger than we want to admit. That’s why an alcoholic or a drug addict or anyone struggling to be free from something is never going to get very far in their own strength. That’s why I’m never going to truly make something of my life, never wasting another moment of my life, in my own strength.

I have to have outside assistance. Who’s the only one strong enough to take a messed-up, full-of-regrets, up-to-this-point wasted life, and transform it into a life of purpose and hope and joy and peace? And how do I get to that point where He is the one leading and moving in every moment of my life so that it becomes a life of purpose and hope and joy and peace?

It is only by spending time with Him, instead of with Instagram; letting Him fill my heart with His plans and purposes, instead of Pinterest; saturating my mind with His words and truth instead of the world’s self-centered emptiness and the devil’s lies.

And how do I make that happen? Well, there’s definitely got to be a shift in priorities.

Yes, it’s hard to do, I know it from experience. But it is all worth it. With God in the forefront, life is never a waste.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

                                                Matthew 11:28-30

 

~~~

P.S. And now I am telling myself to go and take my own advice. ‘Cause I so don’t have this together. S-o-o-o-o . . . don’t . . .

I’m thankful that I have a merciful and mighty God.

~~~

If you are new to me or my blog, feel free to check out my About page and my Intro Post!

Thanks for visiting!

Personal Blogging Goals for the New Year

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blog, blogging goals, blogging101, Christian Living, life, mission, new year, perspective, purpose, writing

Happy New Year, folks!

I’ve undertaken a challenge to myself to redefine and focus in on my blogging goals for this new year. Part of that will be going through WordPress.com’s “Blogging 101” course through January 22. Not every day’s assignment is getting a post out . . . it’s more of a challenge to step back and look at the big picture of why I have a blog and analyze what I want to accomplish with it in the near future. And that will include a mix of blogging and fine-tuning the behind-the-scenes aspects of my blog and the blogging community.

I think this challenge will be a profitable and clarifying time for me as I focus on my blogging goals and aspirations for this upcoming year, and help you, as my readers, to see where my aim is and have a clearer idea of what this is all about.

I want to start out by outlining my aspirations and hopes for this little corner of the internet.

Here is my long-standing blogging dream: I would love for my blog to be a place where I can share my personal and unique perspective on life with the results of cultivating my own heart and mind, both mentally and spiritually, while also inspiring and stimulating my readers to reach higher in all areas of their lives and to take hold of their divinely-appointed purpose.

That’s a high goal. And I’m pretty sure I won’t attain that without some degree of difficulty. But knowing my goal, and writing it out in plain and simple terms is a great way of focusing my attention and motivating me to actually reach it.

I have a feeling that my blog purpose/mission will adapt and evolve over time, so don’t get stuck with a rigid idea of what will happen here. While it is beneficial to have a general idea of my blogging goals, I still want to be flexible and free to go with the flow and follow whatever God is doing in my heart and mind.

I would love to hear any thoughts or suggestions about my blog and goals, so please feel free to comment!

God bless you all in the new year!