Good Enough??

I am one of those people that like to beat myself up. When I am not in a good place I can remind myself of every bad, stupid, hurtful thing I have ever done...the enemy doesn't have to attack me, I will attack me. I look at myself and wonder if people really knew me, would they still like me? At these times I struggle to with how can God love me when I mess up so much? How can God love me when He knows all I have ever done?

As I was packing I came across something from years ago that reminded me of why God can love me anyway. I had a copied page from a book and this was the story...It is a dialog between God and the writer...

The writer ask, "God How can I possibly accept myself, knowing everything I have done?"
God's response "How can you not? If my Son's blood was enough to cover your past for me, who are you to say it is not enough for you?"

When we refuse to accept what God has done for us through the blood of His Son, we are saying that our standards are higher than God's! We can never measure up to impossible standards we set, but that is the point. Jesus died to pay the price, the debt is paid in full. We are totally accepted, our past all in Christ!

Another article suggested instead of sitting there listening to the reminders, thank the devil for reminding you...see when you remember what God has freed you from, you can more greatly appreciate what He did and give Him the glory!

So was the price Jesus paid on the cross good enough for you? That is the question we have to ask when we throw our own past in our faces...

It is good enough for God, who are we to say it is not good enough?

Let's Take Our Cities for God

We were singing a song at church this morning that said if you ask God will give you the Nations. I thought Lord, I want my city. Don't get me wrong, I understand the importanceof reaching the nations and I pray for those that are called to go, however, I think each of us have a responsibility to reach our own cities for God. For sometime I have had a pull in my heart to pray for my city.

Matthew 21:22 says "And whatever you ask for in prayer, having faith and [really] believing, you will receive." So believing, I am going to start asking God to give me this city for God! There are tons of churches in my community and I am blessed to be involved with two of them. Both are small churches with lots of room for growth and a heart for God. I believe that we live in a community that has many strong holds for the enemy as do most of us. If we ask God to revela those to us He will and as beleivers we have the authority over our communties. We can fight and see God rise up in our cities...what better way to reach the nations, than for our cities to become Cities on our knees!

I am talking to all believers in this. I think for too long we have set back and left it up to our ministers..we are all ministers of the gospel. I am blessed to have two awesome pastors in my life that have hearts for my city, but that does not negate our responsibility to go to God for our cities.

I am runner as many of you know...I am going to make my runs a fight for my city and pray for God to invade the streets of Denver, NC as I run. I am going to fight to tear down the strongholds over my city that it will become a city where God shines, where our churches are not just social clubs, but houses of worship and houses of prayer!

If each of us, begin to fight for our cities, begin to pray and fight back we can take back what the enemeny has taken, we can change the world!

The disciples were told to go to Judea, Jerusalem and then the utter most parts of the world. Let's start with our 'Judea' and then go from there.

Will you pray for and fight for your city, your community, your child's school?

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made!

I would like to say that I have always appreciated the way God created me to be, but that would not be true. Coming to accept myself the way God made me has taken many years. For years I tried to change who I am instead of accepting myself. I tried to be who people around me wanted me to be, or I percieved they wanted me to be. I tried to manipulate my body by starving it into a size it was never intended to be. I studied things of no interest to me to please people...I wanted to be anything but what and who I was made to be. After years of this things began to change. I began to take the Word of God literally and applied it to my life. His Word says in Psalms 139

13 For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;[a]
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.

17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.

He made me wonderfully! He had a plan for my life before the beginning of time. A purpose in putting me here! It became important to me to find that purpose and to work to see myself as He created me.

I wander if I hadn't starved myself to be thin, what would I look like, If I hadn't wasted time trying to please man what would I have been doing. I know I can't change the past, I have to focus on the now. Yes I do still workout, watch what I eat, but now it is in perspective to life. I try to eat natural foods at least 90% of the time. The foods that I beleive God created for us to eat. I accept that I may never be tiny, but I am me and I will take care of the body God has given me, for it is fearfully and wonderfully made.

Recently I was really struggling with the time I spend running and studying for my trainer's certification, when I felt God say...you are right where I want you doing what I created you for..you are in My plan...trust Me!

I don't know how, but my love of God and the love He has placed in me for fitness/nutrition are going to be used for His glory! When we seek Him, He will give us the desires of our heart! He is constantly thinking about me! He wants me! Amazing!

Can you trust that God made you for a purpose, the way He made you? I think most of us have no idea what we should look like, because we altered it by eating junk and over eating/ starving or otherwise manipulating our bodies to look like society says they should look or to hide behind...it is time to come out of hiding and discover the wonderfully made person God created!

National Day Of Prayer

In the United States today is a day that is set aside as the Day of Prayer for our Country. Today it is hard to believe that we are a Christian Nation. Our history is one of faith, but it doen't seem to be a priority in our country today!

As a parent what I see, is that my kids are taught tolerance for what God calls sin, the values that were instilled in my, not just in the home, but in school, at friends houses, extracurricular activities are not taught any more. The argument being that it is not the schools place to teach our kids values...yet that is where they are learning their values.

There is much on my heart on this National Day of prayer to pray for...wars, rumors of wars to come, the devestation of storms, the families that have lost loved ones, our govermental leaders, our schools, our kids and teens (they are our future you know!), our churches (it is time that church be about God and worshipping Him, not making us feel good!), our economy, our military men and women...but above all my prayer is for God to move in America in such a way that we will fall on our faces before Him and return to the foundations of our Country...Faith in God..In God we trust!!

What is your prayer for our country today?

Nine and a Half Years Later

When I think back to the attack on September 11, 2001...I remember the shock and the panic that we all felt. I also remember the sense of unity that you saw form around the world. We saw churches overflowing with people seeking God in the middle of the week! Complete strangers risking their lives to go into the towers and look for survivors. We cried over the loss of lives and the loss of security we felt. We united as a nation to bring one man to justice.

This morning I awoke to the news...that Osama Bin Laden is dead! I will be honest a part of me was excited! This was justice for what he did to us. This was justice for the soilders who have died in the last 9.5 years looking for and fighting to get to him! This brought renewed hope that this war may end and yes selfishly I thought and maybe my son will not be deployed into it!

As the day went on, I felt something else...he was a person, an evil person, but a person none the less. He had people that loved him, family that will miss him. For those people I do feel sadness.

The Bible says not rejoice in the death of the wicked, but to rejoice in the salvation of a lost one. So I will not rejoice in his death, I will rejoice in the end of the man hunt, the hope that this could lead to the end of this war...

I will pray for his family and for all that remain to fight until they are called home...

To the soilders that have served, do serve and will serve...thank you for what you do and for giving me the ability to go bed at night knowing I am protected! It is an honor to call my son a Marine!

Believe

Do you Believe in God? Yes. Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Yes. Do you believe that Jesus died and rose again? Yes. Do you believe that God still heals miraculously today? Yes. Do you believe that God still speaks to people today (dreams, vision, audibly, through His Word)? Yes. Do you believe that God can do anything? Yes. Do you believe that God loves you? Yes. Do you believe God has a plan for your life? Yes.

We say we believe in a lot. We believe the Bible to be the inerrant, infalliable Word of God, from cover to cover. But do we? Really? I mean it seems like we pick what we want to believe...but then what does it mean to believe? According to the Amplified Bible other words that could have been substituted for believe are to rely on, to cling to or to trust in...the Amplified Bibles puts these words in parenthesis as other words that mean the same as the greek word that we translate believe...

So if you went back to the questions that started this and ask your self do I fully rely on, cling to and trust in the fact that God is God, that Jesus is His Son, died and rose again. That God heals, speaks and moves in my life today? Would we still say yes? It is easy to mouth a Word, it is another thing to live a life that backs up what we say.

Honestly some of this I had to learn the hard way. I had to learn God is faithful to heal because I have a child that can't take most modern meds...yes we fully rely on, trust in and cling to the healing power of God.
We lived 7 months with no income at all during the 'recession', we learned to fully rely on, cling to and trust in God's Word when it said that My God will supply all my needs according to His riches in glory. We learned His Word is true!

I have known for as long as I can remember that Jesus was God's Son and He died and rose again for me. It became real for me when I was 21. At that point I took my head knowledge and it became heart and life relying on, clinging to and trusting in what He had done for me...It was years before I came to a point where I really got what He really did, but I did come to the point that I rely on cling to and trust in the completed work of the cross....

really ask yourself when you say you believe these 'basic' facts of the faith...do you rely on, cling to and trust in them...or are you giving lip service to the Jesus who you say you believe died for you???

It is all about Him

I grew up in a traditional church that was confusing in what I learned. I heard the message of the gospel...I was taught that you are saved by faith, but then I also heard you have to do this and that. I was taught the law. I grew up dressing a certain way, living by this code of conduct set out before me in order to insure God loved and accepted me. For a long time I even questioned if I went to college and study to be a youth pastor in order to earn something from God...like how could God not love me I am in ministry!. My whole life was obsessed with trying to perform well enough and in my twenties I was burnt out and gave up! I quit trying and I quit seeking God. I didn't do anything extreme, I was just tired of trying to be good enough.

In my thirties I began to seek some counseling for some issues and ended up in a Christian Discipleship Counseling program. It was then that I began to understand the grace of God, the concept of His life exchanged for mine, of letting Him live through me...I began to see that nothing I could do was going to change God's love for me, but on some levels I still struggled with the legalistic stuff I grew up with and I couldn't just negate obedience to the Word...which is NOT the message of grace...in time I came to understand that God loves me simply because I am His child, like I love my kids. He loves me no matter what, but just like we have rules and expectations for our children, God has rules and expectation for His. None of these will save us, none of them will change His love for us.

We choose to obey His laws, to serve Him not out of a need to justify ourselves before Him, but out of our love and commitment to Him! Just like we tend to want to bless our children when they are doing all we expect or trying to...God wants to bless us as we seek to honor Him!!

Our salvation is based on what God did by sending His Son to die for us. Our faith in that is all that is required....everything else is just us loving God and wanting to honor Him with our lives.

Romans 28, 31 (Amplified Bible)
For we hold that a man is justified and made upright by faith independent of and distinctly apart from good deeds (works of the Law). [The observance of the Law has nothing to do with justification.]Do we then by [this] faith make the Law of no effect, overthrow it or make it a dead letter? Certainly not! On the contrary, we confirm and establish and uphold the Law.