Love - How Are We Doing?

Have you noticed a theme recently? The last few posts have been about love. I didn't even notice this at first. I feel like I have been learning a lot of stuff and have been writing about it, and it all comes back to love. That makes sense though. That is basically the theme of the whole bible, and that is what God is, so it makes sense that so much rotates around it.

Okay, on we go to today's post and big question:

How well are we doing at loving God?

I don't mean that in a scale of 1 to ten, am I doing better than you or any competitive sort of way. So written in better words:

How much do you love God?

Is He most important to you? Is He first in your life? Do you love Him more than anyone or anything?

Francis Chan said something like this in the book Crazy Love: We need God's help to love Him more.  (I couldn't find the exact quote, but that is gist of it)

Honestly though, I don't act like I love God very much some days and I don't like it. I'm sure I'm not the only one though, so let's do something about this! Because I know that it's just not me. And yes, it does take time to fall in love with someone, but let's keep our eyes fixed on Him and ask Him to change our desires so that He is our greatest desire. Not with a lazy passivity, but actually make a decision that even when we don't feel like it, even when our attitudes and feelings don't reflect Him, that we consciously chose to still pursue Him and what He wants.

And as that quote illustrates, He can help us with that, but it requires effort on our part too.

Just a friendly post to say....

Hello :)

If you're reading this blog I'd love to get to know you a little. Most of my writing thus far has been to get the words out of my head and maybe, hopefully help someone. I would like it to be more interactive though, to start getting to know people in the blogging world and those that read here.

People are so important, so if you're a person, obviously that means that you are important :)

Why? Simply because God created you, and I know that my God doesn't make useless things.

So, feel free to read, comment, send me a message if you have a question or just need a friend. I'm going to try and reach out to other bloggers, read and learn from them and interact, cause thus far I've mostly been a consumer of other blogs, not interacting at all, but we, as a people, a community, are stronger. There is so much that we can all learn from each other and encouragement is also always great!

I think that is something people in general just need though, people to encourage, push, and love them.

That's what we're all craving isn't it? Love in one form or another. Love is awesome, and should push us to pursue the one that is love!

So let's encourage each other. Let's all push each other to be loving and in love with God.

The memory verse for Junior Youth last week was:

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17 (I had to look up the reference. Whoops. Still got some memory work to do).

I think that is a great description of what I am wanting to get across in this post and create around this blog.

Let me know what you think!

Shendl

Don't Love To Be Loved

I like clothes with words on them. I like the extra expression it gives, but it all depends on what the words are. A few weeks ago I was walking trough the mall with a friend and saw a lady wearing a t-shirt that said:

Love to be loved

I guess there are two ways to take this saying. 

I love being loved, because it does feel good. It is awesome to have those around us that love us and also to have an amazing God that loves us so much.

Or it could mean Love others to get love. That is not a good sentiment and is not biblical at all. If we just look at the example we have been given, even from one of the most shared bible verses, John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Jesus died for us when we were still sinners and not at all loving towards Him. It is an unconditional love in the purest sense, because even if we don't ever choose to love God He's already done so much for us! Even giving you life and free will is an amazing act of love, even if you don't agree. 

So my challenge is to love those that are hard to love. To show love to even those that won't ever give you the love back, because aren't we wanting to become more like Jesus? Aren't we wanting to show love to those around us even though it isn't always pleasant? You won't necessarily ever know what that love shown will mean to someone that hasn't experienced much love. I think that love can soften many world hardened hearts. To someone that has always been roughly dealt with by the world, someone showing them undeserved love won't make sense and will make them question what makes you different. 

And that could be an amazing opportunity to introduce them to our God :) 

We can't outlove God

  

He saw us made, saw us being formed, knows our thoughts and made us so intricately amazing. Just think of of your body and thoughts. Just thinking of how I'm using my fingers, these appendages that were so little when I was born, to type this out by hitting keys and knowing in my head how to combine those actions in order to create something that makes sense and that you will use your amazingly formed eye to read, it's weird.

Psalm 139 talks so beautifully of how we were created, "You knit me together"; how we are known, "You know me", "You know when I sit and when I rise", "You are familiar with all my ways". Why would God even care to know us so well? He could have just created us and stuck us on this earth to go about and watch us in our stupidity. But He loves us too much for that. "You hem me in behind and before."

He loved us since before we were born, but the weird part about this is we aren't even nice. We aren't good, we don't show Him the love that He deserves. "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—  but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." - Romans 5:6-8

While we were still sinners. When we did what God hated without a second thought, when we didn't love Him or know Him. He loved us. I've seen this rephrased as: You loved me at my darkest. Which is amazing cause how many people would love us when we are "at our darkest", when we have nothing to bring and aren't being loving or easy to love. At that time, in that state, Jesus died for us, even though we might never love Him back. 

"He loved us not because we were loveable, but because He is love." C.S. Lewis

We can't earn this love. And we can't do anything to deserve it. When we mess up and come back repentant, He's still there loving us. It doesn't change how He feels. It doesn't change who He is. He will always outlove us, and that is amazing. 

Vulnerability

4/11/16

I have realised something recently. I don't like vulnerability, I find it hard to share my problems with others. Whether it is because they have previously stared blankly at me or muttered some sort of "It'll be fine" in response, or have seemed disinterested in helping me, I don't understand the point of sharing a part of your life with someone when they don't care.
Yet over and over I hear that a team should be unified, should be able to help each other; we should have accountability partners who can help us with forward momentum; we should be transparent with our lives.

It is sometimes easier to put those emotions into a story or dance where they just need to be felt instead of put into words. But I was thinking that there are people in the bible that have experienced the same emotions that we do. David is one of my favourite bible characters lives. He makes mistakes, has hard times to go through, he is depressed at times, yet he is still called a man after God's own heart. A man that wasn't always happy, a man that took another's wife and had him positioned to be killed, yet God still saw his heart and that it was devoted after him.

 I think David's story can show us that we don't need to be perfect. We don't need to appear perfect in front of others. And that is hard. It is so much easier to hide my problems and deal with them myself than be vulnerable, but it is such a sweet place I want to get to. To be assured that whatever happens, whatever mistakes you make, whatever your emotions, that doesn't change your worth in God's eyes, So why does it matter so much what others think? I want to get to that place where my eyes are starry gazed, fixed on Jesus, that it is easy to admit how chipped and messed up I am. Where it doesn't matter how others see me, because I know how he sees me and if I don't have the support of others, that is actually okay.

20/5/17

Six months later and I am thinking these same thoughts. I guess some thought patterns take a while to get through. I still have the same desire though, to be humble enough to be open about my problems and failures. To not care that others see me as imperfect, because that is what I am. 

I am imperfect. 

And so are you, so what is the big deal about sharing that? Why don't we try and skip this awkward phase of not wanting to admit where we have or are going wrong. I do think with some topics you need sensitivity on who to share what with, but I don't want to be ashamed of the fact that I am not perfect anymore, because that is a silly thing to aspire to. 

Adventure Is Out There!

                                   

Let's go on an adventure!

One of my favourite sentences; and I have had many of them. From cliff jumping to travelling, performing to filming and driving fun vehicles, the unexpected ones like getting stuck in the mud, or the unconventional ones like walking through the drive-thru. I love them.

One of the best parts of an adventure is those you get to share it with. It's lovely to look back on those memories and reminisce or laugh with friends.

But I find myself caught in the mundane. Not every day holds an adrenaline rush and not every day looks exciting. Sometimes it's the same routine, the same tasks and even the enjoyable ones lose their fervour. Yet hidden in the ordinary moments of like there are some that spark. There are still amazing exciting things if we were just to look.

 "An adventurous life does not necessarily mean climbing mountains, swimming with sharks or jumping off cliffs. It means risking yourself by leaving a little piece of you behind in all those you meet along the way." - Shawna Grapentin

This is one of my favourite quotes. Maybe we can't spend every moment falling out of airplanes or hiking kilimanjaro, but that doesn't mean our lives are devoid of adventure.
Let's take a look at this word I am fond of.

Adventure

1) a: an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks
b: the encountering of risks 

2) a: an exciting or remarkable experience

An undertaking involving danger and unknown risks. Is that not what it is to love someone, to get to know someone, or even to start a conversation? You never know what is going to happen. You don't know how much you will affect them nor how much their lives will affect you. That friend that now knows you so well that if the friendship were to end it would hurt, was once a stranger, a person you met one day and decided that you want this person to be in your life, to know you.

As C.S Lewis says: "To love is to be vulnerable". We can open ourselves up to people as a friend, a mentor, someone showing kindness and you never know whether your lives might end up irrevocable woven.

It is a risk to love others. It is a risk to be open and it can be a remarkable experience to take the time to talk to someone, a person that you might otherwise never know.

And even apart from the people whose lives touch ours, there is beauty everywhere, in the sunset, the raindrops, the ordinary miracles of flowers blooming, the seasons changing. There is beauty in this mess of a place.

There are many exciting, inspiring adventures all around us that we often fail to see. Little moments of adventure, those exciting and remarkable experiences. Even a circumstance that seems bad at first can be an adventure if you look at it right.

I am wanting to look on the world with new eyes, in a way that sees the possibilities instead of fear, the amazing awe-striking moments instead of the dull monotony of life, because why should it be? And so I embark, on my daily adventure.

#mydailyadventure

A Distracted World

 I am sitting inside an airplane flying home. The past few weeks have been busy with an outreach, conference, and seeing friends. I have a lot to think about from the past weeks, and a lot more to discover from the notes I have taken, but over all of this, I have been struck again with the wanting to know God more deeply and more intimately.The continuing realisation that this discovering never ends astounds me.

I love this feeling of flying, the small vibrations of air, and whilst I'm enjoying my spacious seating (because I have a whole row to myself :O ) I am also privileged to be reading a bible and devotion on my phone. How easy it is for us to learn more about God. We don't have to struggle to get bibles or read only pieces of them over and over again. We don't have to sit in the freezing cold to hungrily watch the Jesus movie to learn more about our saviour. Yet we take this so for granted. We are so blessed by opportunities to attend conferences and events without them having to be secret, to go to church every week - or more - without often being persecuted for it. 

But lying in bed on a Sunday is more important.  

But watching series instead of spending time with God is more important. 

But being on Facebook instead of praying is more important. 

Why don't we take this life more seriously?

Why don't we take other people's eternal lives more seriously? 

We are so distracted by the frivolous that we miss the important. 

We are in a distracted world heading into eternity oblivious, oblivious of the implication of the choices we make now.  Yet we who know Christ know better than to spend our lives staring out the window instead of keeping check on our course and alerting others to the reality that without God we are just headed for destruction. 

This is not a game. This is reality. This is not some fabricated existence inside of the matrix. These are people's lives and people's eternities. Are we paying attention?