YOLO [You Only Love Once]

I realize that the title of this post is sort of ambiguous, so let me get right into it and explain what I mean.

YOLO. Definitely on the top ten trends of 2012. It usually stands for You Only Live Once, which has been disputed and talked about by Christians others who think that it's just an excuse to do stupid things. That isn't the point of this post though..I've actually used the YOLO "reasoning" in my decision-making in the past few months and found it useful. (Should I have that brownie?..YOLO! ...On the other hand, maybe I should stop..) Though yes, people can use the term to make unwise decisions, I think the concept behind it is actually sound, and (bing!) Biblical.

To me (and maybe I'm digging too much into this, but bear with me), the philosophy behind YOLO - doing things you normally wouldn't do because you only have one chance to do them - speaks of boldness, courage, and taking advantage of the time you have. I think that's absolutely where Christians should live. Too, too often, people (Christians and non-Christians alike) fail to see the big picture of their lives, and get hung up on the small things. We have to realize that our lives are very short, often shorter than we know, and we do need to take advantage of every minute we have.

This can mean different things to different people. Sometimes getting "hung up on the small things" means getting irritated with them and forgetting to be thankful. It could mean not seeing the good in people maybe as much as you should. For others, it could mean generally living in a place of timidity. That's the one for me. Looking back on my life, I'm just now realizing how timid I've always been, and how afraid (usually unconsciously) I am of stepping out. If you know me personally, you may be surprised, but I'm really not very good when it comes to being bold and taking chances.

And I say, enough. I'm tired of being timid and being afraid. As a Christian, I may not only live once, but I do live with the people I do in the circumstances I'm in once. And the truth is, I may only be able to love the people I'm around once. Does that make sense?

Now, I'm not planning on living with reckless courage from now on - being bold and courageous is not an excuse to be unwise. I think, though, that sometimes our "wisdom" gets in the way of us loving others, and in being who we truly are. To give an example, I just started a Spanish class at the college, and in the first few minutes of the class, the teacher wanted all the students to introduce ourselves and say what we're interested in, what our hobbies are, etc. We could say anything. I could have used that opportunity to say that I love Jesus - that I love worship, that I love reading my Bible; I had the floor all to myself for those few seconds. But my fear got the better of me, and instead I said something about how I like photography or something. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that every chance we get, we should throw Jesus into the discussion or tell people how much we love to read our Bibles. I'm not saying we have to shove Christianity down everyone's throats. But in little instances like that...what did I have to be afraid of? The people in my class weren't going to pull pitchforks out of their book bags and chase me out of the classroom. My teacher wouldn't have expelled me. It would have been fine, and maybe it would have sparked a conversation about God later on.

I fully believe that God is in control, and He will work through me however He wants to. However, I also believe that in order for us to be fully used by God, we can't be standing in the back of the room, cowering. In order for us to be used by God, we have to be at the front, waiting, confident, and ready for battle.

Those who believe in God and serve Him have the Holy Spirit in them - the Spirit of the Living God. The God of all courage, of all strength. He is not the God of timidity. I personally am praying for God to give me courage - for the little things and the big things. Holy Spirit, let me be a vessel for you to flow through with your strength and boldness.

I'm only going to live here once, and I may only have one chance to love the people around me. I don't have time to be timid or afraid. Lord willing, I'm going to take God's advice in Joshua when he says, "be bold and courageous."

How about you?

Summer 2012.

Hey there. So, summer's officially over for me as of tomorrow. I know I mostly post about my deep (?) thoughts about God and whatnot, but as I was thinking about that and scrolling through on my Twitter, I saw someone I follow ask a question - What made you smile this summer? My summer has been pretty great, but I wanted to make a list of things that made me smile this summer, just for fun. I have a habit of only remembering the bad things and downplaying the good things sometimes, so this is more for my sake than yours. But feel free to read along anyway. But maybe some of the things made you smile as well. ;)

What made me smile this summer?
-getting to sleep in
-my hilarious parents
-my new obsession with White Collar
-sunshine
-my puppy
-Nationals and all that went with it
-precious kids at VBS
-finishing How To Kill A Mockingbird
-having good work-outs
-good music
-getting to have lunch with people I hadn't seen in a long time
-naps
-my birthday
-getting my iPhone
-crazy adventures with good friends
-making crafts from Pinterest
-friends' birthdays
-registering for college classes
-amazing worship services
-coffee
-La Madeliene
-square dancing
-spending time with my grandparents and extended family
-helping at debate camp
-making cheesecake and really messing it up with good friends
-graduation parties
-finally figuring out how to French braid my hair
-deep-cleaning my room


And there are many more. Thank you, Lord, for a blessed summer!

What made you smile this summer?

Guilt, Performance, and Righteousness

I struggle with feelings of guilt on a regular basis.

Maybe you do too, or maybe it's just me. Usually I lean toward the latter - I'm the only one who struggles with guilt, and that makes me...a bad Christian. (dun dun dun!)

You know what? What in the world does a "bad Christian" even look like? What kind of idiocy were we into when we coined that phrase? The term "bad Christian" is an oxymoron..and here begins my post.

The first thing I want to say to myself, and you, but mostly myself, is that there is no such thing as a bad Christian or a good Christian. I guess usually what people mean when they say bad or good Christian is what that Christian does with their life or how committed they seem to God - the "bad" Christian might not seem to get into worship at church, or maybe he only prays to God on Sundays. The "good" Christian goes to Bible study every week, prays everyday, and posts Scriptures on his Facebook. Maybe you don't categorize people like this, but I've caught myself doing it, and I'm just now realizing the flawed mindset behind it.

Maybe I'm just rambling here, but I think that we categorize Christians as good or bad, or maybe even whether they're "on fire" or not (did that hit close to home?) based on their performance. Let me ask you something. Does God love you based on your performance?

Hint: the answer to that question is a big fat NO. The Bible tells us that God's love is unfailing and unconditional, and Paul makes it very clear that nothing can separate us from God's love. Not bad performance. Not sin. Nothing.

So then why do we feel guilty?

Let me speak loud and clear by saying that we were made right with God through Christ - once and for all. If we start to think that we can be made right with God by doing good things, or that He'll love us more if we do more good, we are in tremendous danger of settling into a "works" mentality, instead of the faith mentality..and that's going back to the ol' "following-the-Law" mentality.

Just to be clear, I think there is something to be said for following the Spirit, and not the flesh, and spreading the Gospel, etc. But us doing those things or not doing those things does not affect God's love for us, and it does not affect whether we're saved by Christ or not.

I'm no New Testament scholar, but it seems to me that the Bible talks a whole lot more about the power of Christ's sacrifice, and the righteousness that comes from His sacrifice, than what we as Christians have to do to get God to love us. We have got to stop letting the enemy and our flesh work together and tell us that we are guilty and condemned, because our flesh is dead wrong when it tells us that, and the enemy has no right to speak that lie into us. I love how Paul puts it in Romans 8.. "If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for His own? No one - for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who will then condemn us? No one."

No one. No. One. If God Himself decided that, through the blood of Christ, we are good enough for Him (sins and all), then who are we to tell ourselves, and who is the devil to tell us, that we are not good enough for God? That we're too sinful? That we ought to be feel guilty?

I know I'm rambling, so I'll wrap it up. Here's the bottom line: God's love is not performance-based. He expects you to sin. One thing I love about God is that He sees things how they are. He knows I'm going to sin. I'm sinful. He knows that and He loves me in spite of that. I don't have to feel one ounce of guilt, because God chose me, warts and all, and He said, "I love her. Through my Son's sacrifice, she is good enough."

He loves you. Through His Son's sacrifice, you are good enough.

Encouragement shpeel.

It seems like a lot of people, just in the last week, have been going through a lot of, quite frankly, crap. Everyone's having issues, everyone's feeling down..it's like the dark rainclouds that have been hanging around all week have become personal rainclouds over everyone's heads.

Myself included. God is opening my eyes and showing me that He is good in every season, but when you're down, it's sometimes hard to see that. He's teaching and teaching me, and slowly pulling me out, and I just wanted to share some scriptures with you if you are (or were, or whatever) going through the same thing. It can be anything: for me, a lot of little depressing things happened and it amounted to one big cloud of depression, insecurity, and confusion - but in your life, it could be relationship drama, loss, plain dullness-of-life, whatevs. Fortunately, God's word isn't exclusive to one people group or one issue.

First of all, I want to encourage you that God places everything in our lives for a reason: for our good and His glory. He says in Isaiah that He "will not cause pain without something new being born". Good will always, always come out of this.

Secondly, this is all temporary. Like, super temporary. Honestly, I think that when we get to heaven, our lives on earth will just seem like a dream - like something that happened a long time ago that's so small in comparison to the present. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 says, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." The mindset of the agnostic world today is that if you cannot see something, it doesn't exist - but God says that the unseen things are the point. If something is unseen but it still exists, it takes more faith and more devotion to it to believe in it. The world says that believing in an unseen God is silly, but the Lord says that we will be rewarded if we keep that faith.


Thirdly, (this one really applied to me and what I've been dealing with personally), God promises to restore. He is a restorative God who wants to give us vibrant, abundant life. He will not let us be in pain forever and for no reason. He says in Jeremiah 30:13, "I will turn their mourning into joy. I will comfort them and exchange their sorrow for rejoicing." It's a full exchange. If, for example, at a store, I exchange a black shirt for a white shirt, I don't have the black shirt anymore, at all. The white shirt is mine now. God promises to fully exchange our sorrows for joy, and fully restore.


He's amazing, and He is unchanging. Praise Him for that. We are so fickle and all over the place, but He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God is greater than our feelings (1 John 3:20). Wow. Even when I feel insecure, depressed, uncertain...God doesn't, and He isn't any of those. I love it. He is, forever, a God of peace, and joy, and mercy. So hang on.


Peace is coming.


Joy is coming.


Mercy is coming.

Crushing the Head of the Serpent

So, in the past couple weeks, and literally just in the past couple of days, God has been teaching me about, opening my eyes, and giving me first-hand experience (don't you love how he does that?) in spiritual authority over the enemy. Honestly, it's not always fun, but it's so valuable. Let me tell you about it.

It started two weeks ago when I was working at the vacation Bible school that my church puts on every year. It lasts for a week, and Thursday is traditionally "salvation day" - the day when we share the Gospel story with the kids and give them the salvation invitation, etc. Personally, I was praying for the Spirit to come and fill our mouths, and open the hearts of the kids, and He definitely did. It was awesome. I didn't feel like I had a whole lot, practically, to do with giving the salvation message and praying with the kids, but I was okay with that. So the day went on and it was great, and that night I went home exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I went to bed early, figuring I'd just fall asleep and feel renewed the next day. Not so. I didn't fall asleep - instead, I was confronted with the deepest, most awful fear I've ever experienced; not fear of anything in particular, not in relation to the happenings of the day, not for any particular reason, just random, awful, fear. Not panic. Suffocating, deep-seated fear. Honestly, I have never felt so alone and so attacked on all sides. After trying to deal with it myself for a while, I went to my parents and as usual, received some of their wisdom - this was an attack of the enemy. It all made sense. That day, my friends and I had done some major spiritual warfare, and the enemy was angry. My amazing parents prayed for me, and God rescued me from the attacks. The next morning talking to my friends, I found out that I wasn't the only one who had suffered an attack - others had been attacked with random health issues, discord among them, and loneliness like me. So that morning we prayed for protection from further attacks, and rebuked the enemy.

That was eye-opening. I've heard that the biggest lie that Satan can tell is that he does not exist. How true that is. I think at times it can get so bad that he attacks us and we immediately blame God. How twisted is that? My friends, we have to constantly be aware that we have an enemy, and he isn't just sitting on his couch eating potato chips. He's active, and he's vengeful.

So what are we supposed to do? Be afraid? Shy away from doing anything that would make him angry and attack us? No! The enemy's attacks are just another opportunity to trust God and take hold of our royal identities.

But before I go into that, let me tell you the rest of the story. After VBS, I pretty much forgot about the attack of fear, and went on to the next thing in my life. The next week I went to Minnesota and had a great time. I was supposed to fly out on Sunday night, and on Sunday morning, my amazing friend and sister-in-Christ sent me a text with a Bible reference - Joshua 1:3. This friend knows how to listen to the Lord, and so usually the things she tells me in reference to God/Scripture/whatever are pretty spot-on. So I looked up the verse, and it says, "I promise you what I promised Moses: 'Wherever you set foot, you will be on land I have given you." Honestly, it didn't make much sense to me. It really didn't apply to anything that I could see in my life at the time, so I sort of forgot about it. Well. Fast forward to that afternoon, as I'm waiting in the airport to get on the plane...when all of a sudden a random fear starts to creep up on me. Honestly, I had no reason to be afraid, but for some reason, I was terrified and I didn't know why. Well hey there, Satan. Suddenly the verse that my friend had sent me that morning came to mind - wherever I set foot, I will be on the land the Lord has given me. I have authority where I stand because God has given it to me through His blood  - wherever I am, I have authority over Satan. Without me even intending it, God used that verse, and even that attack, to show me my authority He's given me over the enemy. 


Ironically, I have an application on my phone that's called Identity in Christ, and it posts random Bible verses everyday, and guess which verse it had for that day - Luke 10:19. "Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you." Heck yes. Thank you, Lord, for planning it all out and basically plastering it in neon in front of my eyes that you have given me authority over the enemy. 


Attacks from the enemy are never fun. And honestly, fighting him isn't too fun either - but authority over Satan is something that God has given us. A gift, but also a tool. God has given us all the weapons we need to have victory over the enemy, and they all come from His blood. It's time that we as sons and daughters of God, as princes and princesses in His kingdom, take authority and take hold of our identity!

I.D.: Holy

Flipping through my journal, I find that every few months, I write the same thing: I'm so sick of the grime of the culture, and I need to be cleansed. The culture might seem fun sometimes, but in the end, I want holiness. I need holiness. I think we all do. Once we've seen or heard about the holiness of God, suddenly the yuck and dirt of the world doesn't seem as satisfying. Honestly, I think that's exactly how God intended it to be - we all have a God-shaped hole in our heart, and a longing for God includes a longing for his holiness. But how does that transfer to us? I was struggling with that, wanting to be holy and clean like He is, but at the same time, looking at my sin and thinking, "How the heck could this mess be considered holy?"


Hehe..well, God knew about my struggle, and He had something up His sleeve. He brought me to Hebrews 10:19-22.."And so we can boldly enter heaven's Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God's house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean and our bodies have been washed with pure water." I love this verse, and I love that the last sentence is in past tense. Our guilty, sinful consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood. In the past. And now we're clean. It's done. 


Christ's blood is so powerful, that once it has washed over me, nothing else can touch me. Because of His blood, my identity is changed. I am no longer a sinner trying to be a saint, I am now a saint who sins. I know that sounds sort of anti-climactic, but look at it this way: before, we were stained black from the world's grime and dirt. Now, through the cleansing blood of Jesus, we wear white garments: the stains of the world may sometimes still splatter on us, but they will not stick. The Lord has given us holy robes, and they will not be permanently stained. 


So how am I made holy despite my sin and the dirt of the world? Through Jesus' blood. I do still sin, and I do sometimes get dirtied by the world, but my identity has been changed. I am no longer part of the world, I am part of the Kingdom. These present sufferings are nothing compared to the glory and holiness of what is to come!

To the One who took my place...

First, let me just say, the post-writing area of Blogger looks way different from when I wrote my last post, so if something looks weird when you see this, I apologize. ;)


Anyway, God is really awesome. He teaches me so many things I would never ever have thought of on my own. The fact that God would care enough about me to speak to me and teach me like a child of His own is overwhelming. Most of the stuff I post on here is that sort of thing.


A few weeks ago in church, a line in a worship song we sang really caught me. I had sung the song many times before, but God wanted to teach me something again. Here's what I wrote in my journal:


"To the One who took my place..


When He died on the cross, Jesus switched places with me. He took off His holy robe, placed it on me, and took my place on the cross. Jesus was already torn up and beaten up by the world, and splattered by the world's grime and dirt - He did that so I didn't have to. He wants me to take the place He gave me, as a child of God, in his holy, white, pure robes. I have no part in the things the world does - He took the dirt of the world so that I may live to be clean. The robes that He gave me are as white as snow!


Lord, please let your Spirit work in me and help me live in the place you gave me."


Those are His words, not mine. Thank you Lord, for the things you teach me. Let your Spirit work in me and help me live in the place you gave me and the words you speak to me!