Your Grace is Enough?

^"9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." -- 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  Wow.  God tells us right there, "I'm all you need.  Stop trying to do it by yourself."  So why do I still try??  

I guess it's probably human nature to try to fix things for yourself.  It's just something we do.  If something breaks, we fix it.  If there's a problem, we fix it.  We have a terrible habit of relying on ourselves and no one else.  But when we have a problem with our spiritual life, try as hard as we might, we can't fix it.


I try and I try to do things myself.  Try to fix my attitude, be nicer to my sisters (even when they get on my nerves), resist my temptations, blah, blah, blah.  The list goes on and on.  Everything's fine for a while, but when I do it myself, the problems always come back.  We (I) need to realize that we can't do it by ourselves... only God can do it for us.  We need to give our weaknesses to Him, and He will make us better.  After all, His "power is made perfect in weakness."


But the thing is, it's hard to trust in a something you can't see to fix you.  This is the thing I struggle with most, just not being able to see Him.  Not being completely assured that He's there.  Especially in the rough times.  Don't get me wrong... I know He exists and that He's there for me, but sometimes it seems like nothing's happening.  And completely committing yourself to something you can't see is tough!


God asks us to completely surrender ourselves to Him.  But I'm still trying to figure out how to do it.  When will God's grace become enough for me?  Honestly, right now I don't have much figured out... I'm still trying to get a grip on my relationship with Jesus.  And it's really hard to give everything over to Him.  But I love Jesus, and, by giving things over to Him one at a time, He's strengthening my faith.

 ⁵ "Then I let it all out;
      I said, "I'll make a clean breast of my failures to God."

   Suddenly the pressure was gone—
      my guilt dissolved,
      my sin disappeared." -- Psalm 32:5 (Message)

 "My guilt dissolved, my sin disappeared."  Praise the LORD, O my soul!

Fan... Or Follower?

I'm sure that everyone who goes to my church already knows aaaaall about this.  But it's still a great thing to talk about.  The question is: are you a fan or a follower of Jesus?  Fans know everything about the person (or in this case, God) they idolize.  In the case of a pop star, or sports player, or anyone you look up to, you know their likes and dislikes, where they live, what they do, who they're dating at the moment, blah, blah, blah.  You may have never met them before, but you still know tons of stuff about them.  With God, you may know every single book of the Bible and the Fruits of the Spirit in order, every king in Israel's history, and the exact year that Jesus died on the cross, but, really, do you honestly know him?  As my pastor said, we don't need to be Jesus' fans... We need to be Jesus' groupies!

If you love a certain person, you want to talk to them every day, all the time.  It never gets old.  You want to be with that person... you want to experience life with them, have them near you all the time.  You share every detail of your life with that person--nothing's hidden from them.   That's how it should be with God.  Even though He already knows everything you do, speak, and think, He still likes to hear it from you.  He wants you to desire to talk to Him, share the details of your day.  God doesn't desire a distant relationship... He desires an intimate love relationship.  And you don't have to worry about giving Him your heart because He'll never, ever leave you. Even when it seems like He has, He hasn't.

I know it's so hard with all that goes on in your life.  And God's not exactly a person in the flesh that you can sit down and talk to.  You have people pulling you every which way and you never know if you're doing exactly what God wants.  I have to check myself constantly to make sure I'm not making decisions with my emotions instead of what God wants.  But I know that if I stay on the right path and keep going with God, everything in my life will turn out fine.  Yours too!

So here's the question: are you a fan or are you a follower?

The Grass is Always Greener...

FYou know how sometimes, after reading a challenging book, listening to a good sermon, or just seeing someone else do better than you, you get that drive to do something better than what you're already doing?  You think, "Hey!  I'm going to start a small group at my church without thinking about it at all beforehand because I can do better than I'm doing now!  And I'm going to get all my school for the week done in one day because one of my friends did it!  And I'm going to make our praise band as good as Fee in one week, and put on the Hallelujah Carnival, and while I'm at it, why don't I feed all the starving kids in Africa and make world peace!!"  And you're doing good for the first day.  But on the second, you remind yourself to do it again, but after you've been awake for about an hour, you forget all about it and sit and watch TV (or, in my case, waste all your time on Facebook).  Then you get discouraged and start thinking that you're a terrible person because you can't do everything that so and so does.

But why are we always trying to be like someone else?  We try to fix our hair like celebrities, we judge our houses and rooms and yards on what's in Better Homes and Gardens, we think we aren't good enough because someone else is better at math or singing or writing or *insert activity here* than us.

Don't get me wrong... there's nothing wrong with trying to make yourself better.  We should all try to be the best that we can, but not anymore than that.  We shouldn't try to push ourselves to be like someone else, God gave everyone special talents that are unique to us.  The fact of the matter is, we can't be anyone but who we are.  You can try, but you'll have a miserable life living in someone else's shadow.

So, next time you think the grass is greener somewhere else, or you're not good enough, remember that God has made you this way and placed you where you are for a reason.  In the words of Veggie Tales, "Remember, God made you special and he loves you very much!"

Do Hard Things?

Right now, I'm reading the book Do Hard Things.  It's written by two teens with a different, extremely brilliant outlook on life, Alex and Brett Harris.  The description of the book is, "A teenage rebellion against low expectations", and it is that.  But it's also more.  To me, it's saying, "Get out there and show people what you're made of!  You can do so much better than you're doing right now... so do it!"  My favorite quote from their book so far is,

"When expectations are high, we tend to rise to meet them.  When expectations are low, we tend to drop to meet them.  And yet this is the exact opposite of what we're told in 1 Corinthians 14:20: 'Brothers, stop thinking like children.  In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults'.  Our culture says, 'Be mature in evil, but in your thinking and behavior be childish.'"

See?  It's really a great book!  So, with the little voice in my head telling me to do more, I told my mom that me and my sister could run the Hallelujah Carnival at church this year.  In case someone I don't know is reading this (which I highly doubt), the Hallelujah Carnival is a trick-or-treat alternative that my church puts on.  Normally my mom and dad would do it, but we've been so busy that my mom was really stressing out about it.  So I volunteered myself.  It seems easy now... but I got to thinking about it, and, oh man.  I hope I didn't bite off more than I can chew!!  Oh well.  This is the perfect time to to rise to the occasion!  Besides, how hard can it be?
Famous last words...

Forgiveness

The title of this post is forgiveness, as you already saw.  Forgiveness is such a fantastic thing to think of.  When you forgive someone, you're letting go of all the pain they caused you, and saying, "it's ok.  I still love you."  But you still remember what they did to hurt you.
But here's the fantastic thing about it: We still remember it, but God doesn't.  I can't even wrap my mind around that... the total forgiveness. Totally forgetting what happened... just imagining God saying, "it's ok.  I still love you."  And there's no way He can love you any less, no matter what you did.
So here's the thing:  I was just stuck in my faith for a long time.  Like Matthew West's song "Going Through the Motions".  I was just going through the motions of being a Christian.  Reading my Bible, singing in church, going to youth group, and not really changing anything in my heart.  But then I realized that God TOTALLY forgives.  He's totally forgiven all my sin... no matter what it was.  I thought that God couldn't possibly love someone like me... I do too many bad things, and He's too perfect.  But He does!  Isn't that Awesome??
As Relient K's song, "Hope for Every Fallen Man", goes, "Don't give up it's not the end, there's hope for every fallen man to pick themselves up when they think they can't, because with every passing second comes a second chance."  Hope for EVERY fallen man. :)