update

Life has been moving quickly lately. In the past three months, I have gotten married, moved to a different state, changed churches, and started two new jobs. While all of this is wonderful in it’s own way, and I am learning so many things through it, it’s also incredibly hard. It’s easy to just try and pretend that I’m nothing but excited about all of this change, but that wouldn’t be the truth. Change is so hard. Moving is so hard. New jobs are so hard. Finding new friends is so hard.

I guess I’m mostly writing this post as a way to keep myself accountable and honest. It’s easy to fall into the social media trap of only sharing the best parts of our lives with the world, and fake a better attitude and a better life than we actually have. I want to live an authentic life, a life that is vulnerable and real, whether I’m in person or online.

So here it is.

I’m struggling.

I feel really alone in a new city.

My husband and I work opposite schedules most of the week so I don’t see him nearly as much as I wish I did.

I’ve lost a lot of friends lately.

It’s cold all the time.

I keep gaining weight.

I’m tired of washing dishes every freaking day.

I miss my old coworkers.

I miss our families.

I only know how to get to our friend’s house, Target, Starbucks and work without a GPS.

I’m not making friends as quickly as I would like.

And I’m really trying. I am really striving to fit in here, and to make a good impression on people, and to be a great wife, and to keep the apartment perfectly clean, and to be healthy and cute, and to keep up with everyone back home, and to stay involved in my brothers’ lives, and to be a star receptionist at work, and to be the world’s best friend to everyone, and to all around be the epitome of perfection.

But I can’t do it. I fall short of each goal every time. And that’s okay. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again until the day that I die, there is room to fail in Christ. His grace is sufficient and abundant and unreliant on my performance. He wants nothing more than for me and you to stop striving and simply rest in who He is, and how deep His love for us truly is.

So that’s why I know that I can write this post. I can be vulnerable and honest because even if you read this and think that I’m failing, that’s not where my value comes from. The only approval I should be seeking is Christ’s. I want to be more like Him every day. That’s the only goal that matters.

And I have been so blessed. Being married is great. Preston makes it so easy to love him. While we don’t have as much time together as I wish we did, it’s okay because the time we do have is so sweet. While I don’t have a lot of friends up here, the ones that I do have are so lovely and make my life better just by being in it. While it was hard switching jobs, I am really happy with the job I have now, and I’m learning new things from it. While I miss Veritas Church back in Cedar Rapids, Salt City Church here in Minneapolis is causing growth in new ways, and providing opportunities to meet other believers and grow with them.

I guess all that I’m really saying is that God is good. No matter where I’ve been, or what I’ve been doing, He’s always been good and He will always be good. Even in the times when I’m struggling, He is good. Resting in His goodness and grace is where I want to be. He is my peace. That is enough.

why i stopped going to church (and why i went back)

I’ve been going to church for my whole life. (When I talk about church in this post, I am referring to the physical building, not the actual people that create the worldwide church.) I was born and raised in a Christian home and my parents really stressed to me and my brothers the importance of not only going to Sunday services, but being involved and volunteering at church as well. And while I am so appreciate and thankful that I was given that solid foundation for my life from them, I never really understood why it mattered until recently.

 
Sometime around freshman year of high school, I began to drift away from church. For the most part I still went to youth group on Wednesdays and services on Sunday, but I felt no desire to be there, and mentally I was checked out most of the time I was there. After a youth group trip my sophomore year, my heart changed a bit and I began to feel more connected to it, but after a few months, I was right back to being bitter and distant when it came to church. Eventually, when I had my own car and the ability to choose my own schedule I ended up going less and less. I went back and forth between two youth groups, and often just skipped completely.

 
And I saw nothing wrong with that. I had solid Christian friends, I knew all the “Christian answers”, I could pray in front of adults and sound like I was wise beyond my years, and I was overall a good kid. In my mind, I didn’t need to be involved in a Christian community, and I didn’t need the teaching or fellowship that it would have provided. I was fine on my own. After a while, I noticed the changes in my life that came from my self-imposed isolation. I had no accountability, and my choices reflected that. I had become calloused and cold, with no desire to follow God or to pursue a relationship with Him. I could fake it when I needed to, sure, but I felt so completely far away from Christ and like I was so utterly alone.

 

I blamed this feeling it on everything but myself. I blamed it on my family, I blamed it on my schedule, I blamed it on my friends, I blamed it on my relationship, anything to make sure that I wasn’t the one at fault. Most of all I blamed it on God. I didn’t want to admit what I knew in my heart; I was the one who walked away. I was the one who chose to turn away from a passionate pursuit of Jesus. I had decided that I would rather have what I wanted now then do the will of the almighty God. He hadn’t given up on me, I had decided that He wasn’t worth it. And I believe that decision began when I chose to stop going to church.

 

About a year ago I got to a point in my life where I realized that He was worth it. He is the only thing that is worth it. I had wandered away from Him and I realized that nothing I had pursued was even close to Him and nothing could fill the emptiness that I was feeling. I needed to get back to Him, and I knew that would begin with getting back to a consistent routine of going to church. I started calling Veritas my home church last June. My first few months there I felt out of place and nervous, because I didn’t know anyone there really, and I felt like I wasn’t good enough to be there. But at the same time that I felt those things, I could tell that I was growing.

 

Over the past year, God has revealed to me just how lost I was, and how lost I still would be without Him, but He has also shown me the beauty and simplicity of His grace in a new way that I never understood before. In Jeremiah 29, God says, “..Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” While this was said to exiles thousands of years ago, our God never changes, and I believe that this promise is still true today. God honors our desires to find Him and to come to Him. He wants to be found by us and known by us. However, we have to pursue Him. We have to earnestly seek Him and call to Him, and put effort into our relationship with Him. We have to honor Him and obey Him as Lord and Savior, and that includes following His commands. Over and over in the Bible, we see the importance of being a part of the church, both on a global and local scale. In fact the majority of the New Testament is instructions for how the church should work. I believe that being involved in the church is an essential and important part of being Christian.

 

I think that my generation specifically has a problem with the way churches in America are. For myself, and many people I know, the church was not a safe place for us growing up. Many of us felt judged, left out, or like the people were hypocritical and fake. I don’t say this to be offensive, I say this because it is a very real reason that people my age are leaving the church. And while I believe that this is a big issue in many American churches, and it’s a lot of the reason I stopped going to church, this is not a justification for leaving the church. It’s just not. For a long time, I didn’t want to take responsibility for the fact that as a member of the church, I needed to be contributing to the solution, not just complaining about the problems of the church.

 

In Romans 12, Paul writes (about the body of Christ, the church,)

“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”

 

The whole point of the body of Christ is to be in community with each other, leading each other in spiritual growth towards Him, serving each other, and reflecting the eternal community of worship the global church will experience in heaven one day. Without being involved in a community, we are not functioning as the body and as the community that God intended us to be a part of. When we withdraw from the local church, we ignore one of God’s primary intended purposes for us as Christians, and we ignore many of His commandments.

 

Since actively and purposefully committing to a local church, I have experienced more spiritual growth than any other time in my life. I have learned more about what the gospel truly is, how it should be impacting my life, and how to interact with others in the way God intended. There’s been many Sunday mornings that I would much rather just sleep in or have a late pancake breakfast than get up and go to church, but I have seen how God has changed my heart since I gave up even just one morning a week for Him. He has helped my heart keep more of a consistent focus on Him throughout the week, not just on Sundays, and He has changed the desires I have to be, I believe, more in line with His own desires.

 

I’m not promising that if you go to church every week, you will see instant spiritual growth in your life, but I am promising that God is faithful to who He says that He is, He can be found and known, and that He wants nothing more than for us to pursue Him with our whole hearts. He wants us to give Him every part of our lives, and I believe that includes following His commands and becoming a part of the local church.

a few reflections

It’s been a while since I last posted anything on this blog – about two years actually. In those two years a lot has happened. I’ve realized that life has a tendency to move very quickly, all at once, and with no warning. I’ve realized that often times the mental picture we have of how our life should turn out isn’t anything like how it actually will turn out. I’ve realized that there is a lot of pain and confusion and frustration involved in growing up but that there is room for growth throughout all of it. Last year held some of the darkest moments of my life, and there were times when I felt like I was stuck and unable to get myself out of the messes and mistakes that I had made.  I felt like I had fallen too far from God and there was no going back.

But then I realized just how great the grace that we’ve been given truly is. 

The grace that He’s poured on us so freely and without any expectations of us being able to pay Him back, and the grace that He renews every morning without fail, regardless of the mistakes that I made the day before, the grace that covered all of my sin. 

This overwhelming, wild, unfathomable grace is hard to accept sometimes. It can feel like it needs to be earned or that there must be some kind of catch, but when I realized that it is just a free demonstration of Christ’s love for us, it changed my life. What can I do in response to this love and this grace? I can never deserve it, that’s the mystery of it. I can only accept it and worship and be in awe of the Father who lavished it upon each of us. 

Last year I made it my goal to live with an awareness of the grace that I have been given. I even got a tattoo that said “grace” as a permanent reminder! When I started making a conscious effort to live with this awareness, an interesting this happened. God began to turn my heart towards others and remind me that they had been given the same grace and love. He began to show me that I need to treat others with grace, and treat myself with grace. 

There is room to fail in Christ. I’ve failed a lot over these past couple years. I’ve failed classes, relationships, jobs, and so many other different areas of life. But the beauty of the gospel is that it’s okay. God loves you regardless of what you do or how much money you make or what you look like or who you’ve hurt or how much you’re hurting. He is with you and loves you constantly, passionately, endlessly.

There is grace for you. There is grace for me.  He is forever faithful.

untitled

2014 was a hard year. It was a year that held some of the biggest changes I’ve ever faced. It also held a lot of the hardest challenges I’d faced, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Friendships changed, I moved out of my parents house, I started school, I started a relationship, and the community I’m a part of saw the loss of a beautiful woman. There were also some really good times. I loved spending two weeks at Summit in Manitou, graduating, getting to live with the Ertzs’, going to homecoming, state mock trial, and a lot of other good memories. If I was going to pick one word to describe 2014, it would be bittersweet. 

It’s bittersweet to graduate and start to grow up. It’s bittersweet to start making new friendships as old ones start to fade. It’s bittersweet to see people come together in the midst of pain. It’s bittersweet to make the hard decisions that we have to in order to face life head on. It’s bittersweet to look back on everything and see how God used the difficult times to bring something better into my life.

Even through all of the hard parts of life, and when it feels like it’s just too much, God is faithful. He can bring beauty from the ashes of our pain and our sorrows. He is unchanging and constant and always good. A verse that I am clinging to lately is Hebrews 6: 19 which says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”  It’s easy to look at all the hardships in the world and feel hopeless. But we have this firm and secure hope in Christ that He is who He says He is, and that He is greater than and stronger than any suffering we’re currently facing. And He is so loving. There’s nothing we can do or say to make His love for us run out. For me, that’s such an amazing truth, that I’m constantly wrestling with myself to understand. I can’t wrap my mind around the idea that the almighty, unchanging, set apart, holy, beautiful, perfect, strong, gracious, just, merciful, creator God loves me. He loves me no matter my weight, my grades, my thoughts, my actions, my talents, or anything else. He loves me because He created me and I am His.

Looking ahead to 2015, I often find myself wondering what the year will bring. Will it be full of pain or full of rejoicing? I don’t know. But what I do know is that God is already there. He already knows what’s coming and He is fully capable of bringing me through anything, and making me more like Him through it. The word I’m clinging to this year is hope. The firm and steadfast hope that I am forgiven, redeemed, and loved by a God who is beyond my understanding.

-thirty things 2014 has taught me-

1) even when I feel unlovable, people can love me.

2) people change and friendships change and that’s okay.

3) ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away.

4) even when everything seems more hopeless than it ever has, God’s grace abounds.
5) sometimes you need to get some space and distance yourself from a situation to see it clearly.
6) there is nothing more lovely than knowing you have a hand that’s yours to hold.
7) sometimes the only thing you can do for someone is sit in silence and let them know you’re there.
8) its hard not to love someone who sees your broken pieces and isn’t afraid of being cut by them but instead tries to put them back together with their love
9) pursue what you’re actually passionate about not what people say you should be passionate about.
10) the world so desperately needs the light and hope of Christ
11) its okay to completely walk away from things or people that are toxic to your mental, physical, or emotional health.
12) take time to rest.
13) being honest and vulnerable is one of the most beautiful things a person can do.
14) there are some really good days and some really bad days and you have to fight through the bad days with the knowledge that the good days are coming, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
15) pain is overwhelming and seeing others in pain is overwhelming in an entirely new way and it’s an unspeakable and unexplainable thing.
16) sometimes you realize most of the reason you were friends with people is because you saw them all the time and when you don’t see them as often it changes the whole relationship.
17) its okay if I miss the way things used to be
18) pursue knowledge and understanding
19) being an adult means having to manage your own sleep schedule and money and plans and when you eat and its really hard
20) getting third and having fun is better than winning and being stressed out
21) listening to sad music doesn’t make you any less sad
22) mental health is more important than grades
23) laughter heals
24) sometimes the emotions you feel don’t make sense and that’s okay they’re still valid
25) God can bring beauty from ashes
26) its okay not to know what I’m doing with my life right this second
27) letting people see the broken parts of me is a good thing even though its scary
28) working hard at something you love is better than doing something easy that you don’t
29) sometimes people don’t like you and there’s nothing you can do about it
30) i need to take hold of my own life and take responsibility for it because no one else can

loving and following Christ

The Christian culture in general has too narrow a view of what loving God really means. Loving God doesn’t just mean reading the Bible once in a while, obeying the “important” commandments, being generally nicer than the other people you know, and praying. Loving God means living in a way that brings Him joy. It means serving Him in everything that we do. It means that we are called to follow Him and obey Him day-in and day-out. Love is not a small thing, it’s a huge commitment. Loving God requires conscious decisions everyday. We have to decide to live for Him wholeheartedly and to fix our eyes on Jesus, and not on ourselves. That’s a hard thing to do. In our culture we’re told to always have our eyes on how we look or act or what we’re doing, and we’re told that our end goal should be to be successful ourselves. But that’s not what God says. He says to fix our eyes on Him. He says that our identity should be found in who He is, and in the grace and salvation that He’s given us. He says that the end goal is not our success, but His glory. That’s so counter-cultural that it’s hard to wrap our heads around. This backwards way of thinking and loving Christ like that requires us to take action, and to push past our apathy and passivity to really strive to follow Him.

The thing is, we don’t have to do any of this own our own. And whether or not we are seeking God,and even if we’re still living in sin or apathy, He still loves us so SO much. In Romans 5:8, the Bible says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” That’s the coolest thing about loving God. The fact that His love for us is our motivation. We don’t love Christ just to get something out of it, or because we have to, or because we’re afraid not to. We love Him because He loves us with an unfathomable love. And that love that He shows us compels to love Him and compels us to action.

Sometimes loving Christ is scary. It can mean sacrifice and pain and that we do things that put us in danger. It can mean people mocking us and thinking we’re crazy or stupid. It can mean that we might lose friends or even jobs because of our love for Him. But isn’t it worth it? He is so great and powerful that even if we lose everything else..wouldn’t Christ be worth it? I know it’s easy for me to say when I have been blessed with a lot in my life, and so you might just write off what I’m saying and say “oh but she doesn’t know what it’s like to not have (fill in the blank), it’s just too hard, Jesus can’t be worth THAT.” And you might be right that I don’t know your specific situation. But God does. And He still tells us that He is worth any suffering or pain or trial that we face on behalf of Him. He is holy and good and perfect and He is the creator of all and the ultimate Father and He loves us unconditionally and He constantly forgives us and renews us and comforts us and protects us and so much more. When I look at who God is and all that He’s done, I think that there’s every reason for me to wholly surrender everything to Him. I’m not saying I always do, or that I never struggle with loving God. I’m simply saying that even when it’s hard, He is worthy of all my love and all my life.

 

“If what we call love doesn’t take us beyond ourselves, it is not really love. If we have the idea that love is characterized as cautious, wise, sensible, shrewd, and never taken to extremes, we have missed the true meaning. This may describe affection and it may bring us a warm feeling, but it is not a true and accurate description of love. Have you ever been driven to do something for God not because you felt that it was useful or your duty to do so, or that there was anything in it for you, but simply because you love Him? Have you ever realized that you can give things to God that are of value to Him? Or are you just sitting around daydreaming about the greatness of His redemption, while neglecting the things you could be doing for Him? I’m not referring to works which could be regarded as divine and miraculous, but ordinary, simple human things – things which would be evidence to God that you are totally surrendered to a him…to be surrendered to God is of more value than our personal holiness. Concern over our personal holiness causes us to focus our eyes on ourselves and we become overly concerned about the way we walk and talk and look, out of fear of offending God “…but perfect love casts out all fear..” once we are surrendered to God. Once we are totally surrendered to God, He will work through us all the time.”
-My Utmost For His Highest

reflections

Sometimes life hurts. It doesn’t make sense. It can feel like nothing is right and everything that you thought was true was a lie. We can believe that all there is in this life is pain. We can feel empty and broken and alone. It can be hard to want to go on. 

I know. I’ve been there.

And this isn’t another self-help, you can do it, “just look on the bright side” type of post. Because sometimes the bright side just can’t be seen. Like when a loved sister, mother, and friend ends her own life. Or a newlywed bride loses her husband after only a few weeks of marriage. Or innocent children are killed in the middle east. It can seem like there isn’t a bright side to be found, there’s only darkness. 

The pain you feel is real and it is valid. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to admit that you are broken and that you hurt and that you don’t know what to do or how to go on. Because sometimes, that’s just the truth. It’s good and it’s healthy to acknowledge the way you’re feeling and the thoughts that you’re having, because guess what? A lot of other people have them too.

We live in a culture where we’re expected to always have it together. Where everyone has a smile on their face and if you asked them how they were, they would respond without hesitation, “Good how are you?” This is how we’ve been trained to live and trained to think. So many of us go through our whole lives feeling like we have to hide any part of us that’s broken, and that if anyone saw us for the flawed beings we truly are we couldn’t be loved. It’s a lie that our entire society has bought into. We believe unless we’re perfect, we’re not worth it. And that is an utter lie. 

Here’s the truth. You are loved. Whether or not you feel it, whether or not you are having a bad hair day, whether or not you go to college, whether or not you’re married, whether or not you fail, whether or not you slip back into bad habits, whether or not you make mistakes that hurt those around you, you are loved. You are loved by God the creator of the universe, who sacrificed Himself just for you. It sounds cliche but it’s so true.

You are loved in a way that moves mountains, that calms seas, that quiets winds, and that shakes the earth’s very foundations. You are loved in a way that guides minds, that provides peace, that comforts hearts, that saves souls. You are loved in a way you can never understand or comprehend. You are loved in a way that forgives all mistakes, that heals hurt, that transforms minds, that understands sorrow. The kind of love that people spend their whole life searching for. The only kind of love that can fill the emptiness that we feel inside. The love of a Savior. Jesus Christ, the only Savior. It continuously blows my mind how great, and wide, and deep, and high His abundant love is for each of us. And we all have the full measure of His love poured upon us, if we only accept Him and seek Him. His love is there, He’s waiting for us to admit that we need Him and that He is the only one who can heal our brokenness. 

A Long Overdue Post.

Alright. So every year I write a post about mock trial. This year of mock trial was amazing. And I haven’t posted about it yet! So here we go. It’s time to write it.

Let’s start at the beginning. This year, our program at MHSAP had 4 teams. Two who were more “competitive”, and two were less competitive. We were assigned teams before the case came out, and I was put on Jon’s team along with Jeshua, Ryan, Ben, Allie, Sebastian, Gabe, Mark, and Cole. We were all put on team J, (which we later renamed the Blackhawks,) because we wanted to work hard, compete, and win. We all worked well together, although we definitely had our moments of being super mad at each other! Anyway. The case came out shortly afterwards, and it was about a woman who was dying of cancer. A doctor at her hospital thought her cells had the ability to cure cancer, and took a biopsy of her cells. However, it was against the woman’s religion to have anything removed from her body. So the case was about whether she gave consent to the biopsy and whether she had the legal capacity to do so. SUPER complicated. We spent hours and hours writing directs and crosses, learning medical terminology, and doing the math on medical charts that we’d been given. We worked on memorizing objections and objection responses, we created characters for witnesses ranging from thugs to old guys to professional doctors….we put our heart and soul into the case. And then it was time for regionals. Regionals was our hardest competition in my opinion, because the teams we faced didn’t always know what they were doing and it got us off of our game. It was also really hard because some of the other teams in our program didn’t make it through which was really tough because I loved all of the people on those teams! But my team, and my brother’s teams both made it through to State competition which was super exciting.

STATE! It’s been the highlight of the last three years of high school.  Before state we put in hours and hours and hours of work. We met almost every Monday to work on mock at a coffee shop which was one of the highlights of my week. Before most practices we would pray, which was a blessing. I remember at the beginning of the season we prayed and dedicated the season to God, which was really meaningful for me. Anyway before State we practiced hardcore. Eat, sleep, breathe mock, right? 🙂 At state we faced Johnston the first round and beat them, moving on to face Dowling the next round. That round seemed pretty evenly matched and we didn’t have any idea how it had turned out until we walked into our next trial and saw that we were facing Robbins. Our goal the whole season had been to beat Robbins, because they’d beat us every year in the past. We had one of our best trials ever, but we had no idea how it’d turned out until the awards ceremony that night. WE WERE GOING TO SEMI-FINALS! And also. My brother had gotten all-state witness, along with Cole from our team. That rocked. 🙂 Semi-finals were the best, we got to go to the Iowa Supreme Court. We beat Valley 2 in finals to move on to finals against Valley 1. I honestly thought that we’d lost…but we made it. We won State. I remember feeling like it couldn’t be true, and just waiting for someone to jump out and say, “just kidding!”, but it never happened. We were going to Nationals.

So for the next six weeks we worked on getting an entirely new case together. It was crazy. I learned how meth production can involve propane tanks, how to roll with the punches during a tough trial, how to act like an expert, and most importantly, the value of being a team. Nationals was amazing, and we got 20th in the nation (along with Guam and South Korea,) and I loved every second of the competition. I grew so many relationships and it was so fun and I loved being a part of the Blackhawks. Each member of the team meant so much to me in so many different ways. I value and love each of them so much.

The thing that I took away from mock trial the most this year was how much we all had to rely on God. There were a lot of times before a trial when I would be shaking and terrified and then we would all huddle up and pray (and Jon would give us a super cheesy but awesome pep talk,) and I could feel myself calming down, and I know for a fact we couldn’t have won without Him helping us. I don’t know exactly why He helped us through, but I do know that it was through Him we did. The other thing that I learned this year is how important it is to be real and honest with people. Our team fought and argued and cried and got mad at each other, but that’s why were so close. We saw each other at our weakest and got each other through it. There were times when I wanted to just quit and punch everyone on my team in the face…but I knew that at the end of the day, we all loved each other and would support each other. I knew they were there for me and I was going to be there for them too. We became like a family and I loved it.

I could talk about mock for days. Probably even for months actually you. But I’ll just end with this; mock taught me that if you put your mind to something and put the work in to it, you can do it. It taught me that being confident is a good thing sometimes. It showed me that humility is crucial. It taught me God cares about the little things in our life, the things that don’t matter in the end. It taught me it’s ok to be real around people. It taught me to love people even when I don’t like them at the moment. It taught me so many things. And that is why I will always cherish the memories I have of mock, not just this year but past years as well. I will always love my team and I will always love mock. 🙂

Who am I?

I am a sinner.
I am weak.
I am guilty.
I am a jerk.
I am stuck in a rut.
I am not good enough.
I am exhausted.
I am overwhelmed.
I am sick.
I am deserving of death.

But there’s good news! Even though I am all of these things, the God of the universe loves me. I don’t know why He does. But because He does, He sent His only son, Jesus Christ, to die my death, on a cross, for my sins. He took all of my shame, and guilt, and pain, and hurt, and sin on His shoulders, and now He has overcome sin! I am redeemed. And even more amazing, He did this for all of us. And all He asks in return is that we believe Him, accept Him, and love Him.

In Him, I am REDEEMED.
In Him, I am LOVED.
In Him, I am CLEAN.
In Him, I am CHANGED.
In Him, I am STRONG.
In Him, I am RENEWED.
In Him, I am at PEACE.
In Him, I have ETERNAL LIFE.

What can I do to thank Him? Nothing. I can never deserve this gift. God knows that. So He just wants me to love Him. So who am I? I am His. I am just a girl striving to live whole heartedly for Christ in everything that I do. My heart will sing no other name but His.

Recent Lessons In Life.

God’s been working on me lately in a lot of different ways. He’s been showing me different aspects of His nature and who He is, He’s been giving me more opportunities to be His light to others, and He’s been working on my heart and showing me aspects of my life I need to change as well. I can’t even begin to cover all that He’s been teaching me lately in this post, but I’ll try to cover some of it.

I’ll start with God’s nature. I went to Summit this July (but that’s like an entirely different blog post,) and one of the things they really emphasized was how unchanging God’s nature is, and how when we read His word, we should seek to learn about God’s nature through the text (as well as other things.) At Summit, I also started reading through the Old Testament (currently in Leviticus,) and God has been revealing to me things about Himself that I never realized before. He is good, but He is just. He expects a lot from us, but He gives us everything we need to accomplish what He’s called us to. He is love, and He will always be love. And He is a jealous God who wants our devotion in every aspect of our lives. His nature is constant, so He’s been all these things since before the creation of time and He will continue to be all of these things through all eternity. Wow.

God’s also been giving me opportunities to speak the truth in love and be His light to others recently. Whether it’s showing love to others (even difficult customers!) at work, (which I’m FAR from perfect at,) or giving a friend a gentle rebuke when they need it, (which I’m also far from perfect at,) God’s been showing me that even though I’m “only” 16, I am to be a leader right where I am, right now. God hasn’t called me to be a timid follower, and go with the crowd, He’s called me (and every Christian!) to be a leader for Him, and go against the crowd by following His plan and speaking up for Him, even when no one else is. Which can be hard, but if He really is all of the things I said He was in the previous paragraph, why wouldn’t it be worth it?

The final thing I’ll touch on in this post is how God’s been working on me personally. Along with the things I mentioned in the last paragraph, God’s been showing me things that I need to be more disciplined in, people I need to be more patient with, and things I need to value less. Like John the Baptist said in John chapter 3, “He must become greater, and I must become less.” God’s really been showing me lately that I need to humble myself and exalt Him in everything I do. And humbling myself doesn’t mean beating myself up, (I’m a pro at that,) it means (I believe,) filling up every aspect of my life with Christ and emptying every aspect of myself. And that’s hard, and a process that is definitely not done in my life! But with God’s help, I will become more like Him, and bring Him praise.

So there’s the short version of what’s going on in my life. There’s a lot more if you ever want to know. Maybe I’ll blog again later. Who knows?