“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.“

                                                                   -John 9:3

Sometimes our problems are not born of our own sins. Sometimes, the trials we face are only supposed to be a set-up for a major come-up. Unfortunately, in times of great sorrow and pain, the devil wreaks the most havoc. He plays on our insecurities and blinds us. Creating a chasm between us and our heavenly father. There are so many of us walking around, carrying weight from our pasts that God never meant for us to carry for so long. Just like the Israelites, we have been stuck in the wilderness for years when God only intended for us to wander for a very short time. When we are weak, the Bible (our lifeline) tells us to lean not on our own understanding. To trust in our savior. To renew our mind. That we will be made strong by God’s power. However, because we live in a fallen world it is so easy for us to get caught up in distractions and the lies of the enemy. The lies that whisper to you when no one else is around. Each person deals with pain in their own way. But the crazy thing is that we are all going through something. Every single person on this earth will experience some sort of despair. We are not in this alone.

 

In Isaiah 53:3 it says this, ” He was despised and rejected- a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised and we did not care. Yet it was our weakness he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down…” From this scripture, I noted a few things.

1) Jesus also had bad days. It says he was “acquainted with deepest grief”. The verse said we turned our backs on him and looked the other way. How often do we still do this to him? And how often do we feel others have turned their backs on us? Leaving us, seemingly, helpless.

2) We often feel as though people do not, or will not care about our grief. So, we hold it in. We go through life with trauma, causing us to be heavy. Not our best selves. We carry shame that God literally sent Jesus to die for! We deny this free gift of grace and salvation when we were not built to for it. If the Lord has given us the spirit of peace, love, and a sound mind… why do we let fear and sorrow mold us? Jesus sees you. Jesus loves you. He died for the very thing that you think you will never be able to shake. If you woke up this morning that means that you are here on purpose, there is no mistake.

3) Jesus took his pain and the worlds pain. He carried it to the cross where he settled everyone’s’ debt for eternity. The cross was his platform for the ultimate act of love and sacrifice. Jesus could have denied the call on his life and left the cross. But he understood his purpose was greater than that.

I want all of us to challenge ourselves to take our hurt, guilt, and shame to Jesus. Leave it at the cross. Ask him to fill your cup, to help you get through, so you can level up and experience the mighty purpose he has for you. Get connected with like-minded people who desire Gods kingdom to come to earth. It is not the will of God to go through this life alone. While he desires the main focus to be on him, he does want us to have destiny relationships with others. This is how we stay on track and these are the people who hold us up in difficult times.

In John 9:39 Jesus says that he has “…come to give sight to the blind and show people who think they can see, that they are truly blind.” Let us all open our eyes to His truth. Yes, pain is apart of this life. However, it does not stop there. It begins there. Miraculous things are birthed out of the worst things you could imagine. Lives are saved by testimonies of survivors. God doesn’t want us to be in despair. He wants us to follow him into the promised land. In the end, it’s our decision. We can hold it all in. We can try to patch our wounds up. But Band-Aids are only temporary fixes. I know life is hard. I know some of you have been through or are still in situations most of us probably wouldn’t make it through in one piece. Even so, I still know that there is someone who takes broken people and uses them for amazing things. If you say yes. Today, allow Jesus to come into your life. Let him turn your sorrow into something new.

Here are some of my favorite scriptures to deal with hard times:

• Isaiah 4:10
• Psalm 27:13-14
• Jeremiah 17:14-18
• John 15:14
• Joshua 1:5-9
• Jeremiah 17:7-10

Peace and Blessings.

The other day while I was praying and reading my devotionals, I asked God a question.

What am I missing? What is it that so many of us missing?

He answered so quickly that if I wasn’t paying close attention I would have missed it. The answer itself is simple. However, the act of it is hard. His answer was Love. I understand people would think this is cliché, but it isn’t. We still get love wrong every day. God took me to 1 Corinthians 13. The author of 1 Corinthians, Paul, opens up the chapter discussing different gifts of the spirit, such as prophecy, understanding languages, and faith that could move mountains. Most of us would be ecstatic to have any of these gifts, right? But then, Paul takes a turn and says if he had all these things but didn’t love others he would be nothing. He proceeds to write one of the best descriptions of love until this very day…

• 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NLT Version)

  • Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

I kept reading this over and over again, with new eyes. I felt extremely convicted because when I took a good look at myself, I knew that I’ve been loving wrong. I am not always patient. I get jealous in my head or have envied what others have. I can be extremely irritable, especially toward those that I love. I often give up and want to throw in the towel before God is finished with my situation.

 I asked myself if God came down from heaven right now, and looked at our lives I wonder what He would see? Would he see love personified, or would he see how selfish we are? Would he see us forgiving our friends and family or would he see backs turned with hate in our hearts?

Matthew 22:37-40 (AMP version) says this…

Jesus replied, ” You shall love The Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself {that is unselfishly seek the best or higher good for others}.’ The whole Law and the writings of the Prophets depend on these two commandments.”

And then 1 John 4:8 (NLT version) says this…

“But if anyone who does not love, does not know God, for God IS love.”

Love is the answer because God IS love. When we reject God or forget to spend time with him, our love for him does not blossom, it doesn’t endure. When we fail to love God we fail to love ourselves. When we fail to love ourselves, we fail to love everyone else. And that is when sin ravages us. That’s when we let pride, jealousy, rudeness, and having our own way ravages our lives. Have you ever caught yourself in a moment or situation, and thought “Why am I doing this?”. You know it isn’t kind or how Jesus would want you to respond. But you do it anyway. Perhaps, its because you are not exercising love. Love is not fluff or pretty words strung together. Love is ACTION.

The ultimate act of love is John 3:16 when God sent Jesus to die for our sins. And in Jesus’s humanity, for a second he asked his father why had he forsaken him because that’s how torturous the cross was. Yet, he still endured for each and every one of us. And every day all he asks of us is to use his strength, not our own, to love one another. Let’s stop using the excuse that loving people unconditionally is hard because God does it every day. He wipes our sins away each morning. But we use our flesh as a crutch to walk around with grudges or as an excuse to behave with bad attitudes and poor spirits. As if not loving ourselves or God enough is an excuse to treat one another so disrespectfully.

My hope is for all of us to embrace love in this new year as an action that we perform on a daily basis. Let’s turn away from the world’s standards of how we should feel and behave and turn back to God’s standard. The only one that matters anyway. It will call for the sacrifice of self. But we should count this as a blessing because as we sacrifice, we become SELF-less and CHRIST like. And isn’t that the ultimate goal? I bet that as we practice loving God, ourselves, and others with our actions, our lives would transform. Different things we struggled with would slowly or quickly fade away because love drives out darkness. There can be no darkness where God resides. A practical way we can begin this journey is by being more aware of how we treat ourselves and others. Are we always looking out for ourselves or do we care about giving to others? Spend time with God, reading and worshiping in truth and in spirit.

I want to finish off by driving my point home once more with this last scripture, 1 Corinthians 13:13…

“Three things will last forever–faith, hope, and love–and the greatest of these is love.”

I pray that everything we do would reflect Gods light and love. And that we learn to care for one another so that our lives would be pleasing unto God.

Peace and Blessings.

(Photo Cred: Lorenzo Washington, #AestheticImaging) 

It’s okay to be broken. It’s okay that you feel uncertain. Where you are now is probably right where you need to be. Lately, I feel like there have been many people who are disappointed in their stage of life. Discouraged, going through the motions, or just not satisfied. While that may not be your testimony specifically, I would like to talk to those who need help seeing the light again.

 

Life, even on some of our best days, makes no sense. Bad things happen to good people. Good things seemingly happen to those who make a patter of evil-doing. I want to say it’s unfair and we start asking piercing questions. Questions that are honestly hard to answer…

 

Why would God allow someone with such a sweet and giving spirit to develop cancer? Why would he allow me to flunk out my major? Why would my brother die when I needed him the most? Why do I feel like everything I attempt fails and crumbles? Why isn’t my business taking off? Why do I feel so empty even though there is so much life and love around me?

 

There are so many other situations that have left us still questioning, still hurting. But, God has sent me to hopefully offer some light and hope. It is true that everything that happens will be worked out for OUR good. That means any and everything that comes your way, God will turn it around for greatness. I feel like trouble enters our life mostly because of our own selfish ways and behavior. We live for our own gratification and it often leads to destruction. How many times have you known not to do something, and you still do it, then later regret it. Sometimes trouble comes into our lives because in James 10:10, it tells us that the devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy. He has no mercy and desires to take us out. To steal our worship and praise.

In both of these situations, God already has the victory. And then there’s the matter of being tested by God himself. But it’s not to harm us. When God tests us it is to perfect us. To bring us to our true selves. I’ve learned that pain has an incredible possibility to birth great things. Ministries. Inventions. Pressure and hard times force you to pick yourself up and figure out your next move. I know for me, hard times produced this blog. It’s through my writing I’m able to do God’s work. And whether or not it touches hundreds or one person, I know God is proud. You can produce greatness where you are now. But you have to change your perspective. Once the dust has settled, and you’ve mourned whatever that needs to be mourned, pick yourself up. Ask God to renew the way you see your self and your situation. See how you can change the world. Don’t you know God takes the craziest, broken, and unsuspecting people to shake this world? Paul was a zealot. Rahab was a prostitute. Jacob was basically a con artist and used his brother. David was a shepherd boy. Yet these are the people we hear about. And guess what, none of them were perfect people. All of them were broken in areas. Some still messed up even after deciding to follow Jesus. And guess what, God STILL loved them. In 2 Corinthians 12, the Lord says “My Grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” He says we should boast about our weaknesses so the Lord can come in and make us strong. Remember this verse when you think you are too weak or not good enough to keep pressing on. God has a plan for you. And all of creation is eagerly waiting in anticipation of the revealing of who you really are. (Romans 8:19)

Peace and Blessings.

 

(Photo Cred goes to my friend, Lorenzo Washington.)

 

As I said before, I will always try my best to be transparent with you guys. And to be honest, sharing my writing with the public is still hard for me. Confidence is something I’ve had to work for. So when God told me to start this blog I was like “Woah Big fella, you tripping tripping”. And he was like “No YOU tripping. Do what I said”. (Do not judge me, this is how we communicate lol). Fast forward, here I am in my second official week of doing this. I sat down with my journal and began to write about forgiveness as *I* had planned. But see God is funny in the sense that he will wreck your plans for his own. Something felt off. The words didn’t flow like they did when I wrote my first post. I didn’t feel God in the words I was writing. I quickly realized it was because this blog (and everything else I do) is for his glory and for what HE wants me to say. He didn’t want me to talk about forgiveness, he wanted me to talk about our heart posture, and who/what is sitting on the throne of our hearts. Or in other words, what are we allowing to control our everyday lives?

 

Each and every day we allow different things to take over our lives. Friendships. Money. Girl/Boyfriends. Success. Fear. Depression. Tragedy. Success. Failure. Worry. You name it. We allow our selves to be consumed. Now, please know that I completely understand life can be cruel, unjust, and unfair. But I need you guys to understand that we were not promised a life without trouble. However, we are given a promise that we will have peace and the victory is already ours through Jesus. In John 16:32-33 he says this,

“…Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have told you all this so you may have peace in me. Here on earth, you will have many trials and sorrow. But take heart because I have overcome the world”.

We have a choice in this life. Free will to do as we please. But there’s a better option than just living for this world. It’s placing Jesus on the throne of our heart. Making him the center of our lives. How often do you feel drained, overwhelmed, and crushed by the weight that you have to carry each day? How many of us say we are going to make time for our selves or better yet, make time for God, but we never do because we “have” to pick up an extra shift, or we “have” to run and do this or that. STOP. Reevaluate your life and see what is taking over. I know for me it was my career. I want desperately to be successful and break barriers in my family. But I found my myself lost, not knowing what I really wanted to do, and even when I did figure it out the next thing was how was I gonna make it happen. I was driving myself crazy. It wasn’t until one day I woke up and had a moment where I thought to myself “I cannot do this anymore”. I was beginning to be depressed and moody. Everyone around began to irritate and they weren’t even doing anything to me. I decided to take my ambitions, and intense desires off the throne of my heart and placed the King back where he belonged.

 

God desperately wants to be the King of our lives. He wants to make our wildest dreams come true. There is something magical that happens when you spend precious time with him. He changes you. In hard times, you still find yourself smiling. When people treat you bad, somehow you find a way to forgive them. Since I’ve given my life over, my steps seem easier… they seem ordered. When my mood is bad, I invite Jesus into my presence in and almost immediately I am better. This is what you have access to when you give him your heart. You have access to his power and might. And the strength to get through each day. I pray that this post helps or encourages at least one of you. Thank you for reading!

Here are some scriptures that I hope will help fix your heart posture.

• Romans 8:39
• Job 22:22
• Matthew 6:21
• 2 Thessalonias 3:5 
• Deuteronomy 30;6
• Luke 6:45

Peace and Blessings.

(Photo Credit: Lorenzo Washington)