Matthew 4:19 "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men."
So, I would first like to thank everyone who e-mailed or posted their support. It's not that I need the support to keep writing, it is just nice realize all over again how great my family and friends are...so...thank you!
Today was a pretty neat day. I woke up to the sun coming through the windows and I really felt like I was beginning something great. I felt like I was finally letting God direct my path and that I was doing something to better myself and improve my relationship with Him. And the good news...that feeling persists! One of the things that I was reminded of was just how well God places people in your life. I have already spoken about how grateful I am for the family that I was born into and I also want to say that I have some of the best friends in the world. I truly believe that I am blessed and consider the people in my life to be my own personal miracle from God. So again, thank you all for sticking by me through my peaks and valleys, I owe so much of what I have become to you all and I am so appreciative of your influence in my life.
I am currently staying on a farm of 120 rolling Kentucky acres and it has truly become a place of spirituality for me. I wake up in the morning and immediately have to take care of the animals on the farm and it just draws me closer and gets me centered in anticipation of a day riddled with worldly concerns and problems. When I am out here, I walk amongst the 60,000 trees with my 4-legged friend, Cairo, and I find myself able to shake off the worries of the day. I don't think this is purely due to getting away from work and away from people. This is to say that I think God has placed the opportunity to be in such a place in my life for a reason. Even this blog was created after walking on the property and being silent while trying to hear His voice speak to me. If there is one thing that I am certain of it is that our world makes it SO HARD to listen and hear God's voice. Most of you probably know what I mean. For me, after I leave church it is SO clear that I need to turn my life around and I feel like I have the spiritual fortitude to FINALLY follow through...then I get a text message and I lose my thoughts, then I remember I have a Sunday night meeting, then I realize that the work week starts tomorrow. Before I know it, I have forgotten what was so important and what was so pressing...I tell myself that I'll just pick it up again another day, another time, perhaps another way. I tell myself that I just wasn't ready and was only telling myself I was ready. My question? Are we ever FULLY ready to give up our worldly concerns and trust that He will provide? I am actually ashamed to say that this is one of the recurring themes of my life. I work myself up in a spiritual frenzy and I get so excited about changing my life around and rededicating my life to Christ...and then I fail! Of course, after not following through, I then wonder if I ever really TRULY trusted that the Lord would provide. AGH! I tell myself that my faith is unbreakable and yet I find it hard to completely give my life over and follow through with what I feel is God's plan for my life? Can I really say that my faith is unbreakable if what I just said is true? The truth is that I have NO clue and this scares me more than anything. If my "unbreakable faith" isn't enough to get me past my hurdles, what can? Perhaps my "unbreakable" faith is more fragile than I thought.
There is hope, however, because I know that the Lord is on my side and that He is calling me home. I can hear Him calling to me and telling me to run to Him, and run fast. It is not that I have turned away from His word and his teachings...but I do need to run from the world's concerns and I need to run faster from complacency. There is a leap that I need to take and it can feel that it's coming soon and I am so excited for this! I want for nothing more than to live a life free of regret and to live a life dedicated to making Jesus famous. Which, by the way, the phrase "Make Jesus famous" is a truly wonderful phrase. It is so simple yet so motivational and I love it. I heard John Sawyer speak these words at Southland Christian Church during his testimony. However, I also have a wonderful friend who for some reason felt it necessary to write this same phrase on a post-it note and stick it on a light in my room last year. I smiled every time I saw it.
I am finding that this blog is something that is quickly becoming a neat part of my life. Aside from my mission of hoping that people will read this and know that they are not alone, it is allowing me to process my thoughts and really flesh out my beliefs. It is allowing me to listen more closely, it is allowing me to hold myself accountable (thanks for the phrase, Chelsi) and I feel like I am going to make some major breakthroughs along the way. I am excited, truly and fearfully excited. :)
Hey! So glad to read that you're sticking with this!!
ReplyDeleteA few things came to mind while I was reading this and I thought I'd share them with you. First I was reminded of Hebrews chapter 11; it revisits the seemingly outrageous amounts of faith that some of the earlier accounts tell of. It also reminds us to not get so stuck in the now portion of our life and to keep our eyes focused on God -- through faith. This, however, led me to the same question that you presented earlier, "is my faith really unbreakable?". It can't be, I fall short so often. But, I'm then reminded of Romans 6. It tells of how the old self is crucified with Christ upon salvation. If this is true then how can I continue to do the things that I do not want to do? Well, my guess is that that's part of it... I really do not want to do these things and when I do them, I feel horrible. It goes against my nature, the nature that Jesus has instilled in me. So maybe, just maybe, I'm not losing my faith or resurrecting the old self; I'm acting in a manor that is not true to me and as long as that holds true, there might be hope for me yet.
I feel as though I'm rambling a bit and I didn't have much time to look these things up so I hope I've presented them correctly and that they do in fact relate to what you were saying.
Shalom
Okay, so I love quotes. And I found this one a couple of weeks ago and fell in love. It's from the movie "The Last Song" - book written by Nicholas Sparks. But don't judge the quote based off the fact that Miley is in the movie.
ReplyDelete"I have faith that God will show you the answer. But you have to understand that sometimes it takes a while to be able to recognize what God wants you to do. That's how it often is. God's voice is usually nothing more than a whisper, and you have to listen very carefully to hear it. But other times, in those rarest of moments, the answer is obvious and rings as loud as a church bell."
-Nicholas Sparks (The Last Song)
Whenever I get frustrated with not getting an answer from God, I remember this quote and realize that it's not that He isn't talking; it's that I'm not listening hard enough.