Saturday, February 14, 2015

Seek His Love First

We love each other because he loved us first. ~ 1 John 4:19 ~


Valentine's Day makes it very easy for us to focus on a relationship that fell short of our expectations, the desire to be in a relationship, or loneliness.  We let these situations fill our mind and become our focus.

But we have to reminded ourselves that human love will never fulfill that need.  Through the last year, I have realized that God has blessed me by letting go through heart break because it has made me recognize how much I need His perfect and unconditional love.  

People can provide the care, validation, and acceptance that you long for but only the Lord can truly fill you with love that never ceases.

So this Valentine's Day, if you find yourself longing for someone or the emptiness inside, don't focus on the person that caused you pain or on how alone you feel.  Rather, use this Valentine's Day as a day to focus on just how much you truly are loved.    

No matter what the circumstances you face today, the Father's love is sufficient to sustain you!

Make this a day to allow Him to drive out fears and bring you peace!  


Sunday, February 8, 2015

Broken things become blessed things if God does the mending.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. ~ 2 Corinthians 4:7 ~ 

What a year it has been!  I can’t believe 2014 has come and gone.  During my time with the Lord over the past few weeks, I’ve reflected on the past year.  If you were to look at it in the eyes of our society, it should have been one of the worst years for me.  But it turned out to be just the opposite!  I started 2014 off by just barely treading water and ended it totally trusting God and stepping out into the unknown. 

2014 turned out to be a year of healing for me.  The Holy Spirit was continuously reminding me that God was working through me.  It was a great year but a hard year.  I found myself thinking, there is no way God can use someone as broken as me for his glory.  How often do we as humans do that to ourselves?  I know I do it a lot!  But it’s just the opposite, he wants to use people that live their life in total dependence on Him.  You may ask, what does that look like?  It looks like this: be humble, look to God for your strength instead of earthy things or people, and trust that He will achieve what he set out to do. 

Your response to that statement may then go a little like this…but you don’t know what I’ve done, I’m worthless, I’m not smart enough, I don’t have enough money, I’m fat, I’m not pretty enough, I don’t have an education from a well known school, I don’t read the bible enough, I don’t fit into this family… the list could go on and on but these are just a few that have I’ve experienced in my own life.  Satan loves to fill our mind with our faults and failures but this is not God’s nature.  Romans 8:1,
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  
I realized in my own life that I was focusing on the wrong things.  I had to question myself…I am really letting the world define who I am or am I looking to God to define my worth?  I love getting in God’s word as it is so rich and clearly defines our worth.  2 Corinthians 3:5,
It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own.  Our qualifications comes from God.
The Lord can and will work through us if we just let Him.  He longs for each of us to accomplish His purpose for our earthly existence.  All He asks of us is to trade our weaknesses for His strength and to be obedient to His calling.  For my life, being obedient to His calling meant leaving my home, my family and most of my possessions to walk into the unknown.  I won’t lie…I had a lot of “what ifs” go through my mind in the five weeks I had to prepare for this new journey.  Then one night he gave me a clear question, do you TRUST me?  So I placed my faith in Christ and look forward to how His glory can shine through my life.    

What broken parts of your life are keeping you back from experiencing God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and grace?  Broken things can become blessed things when we let God do the mending.