A Steadfast Heart

I got some not so good news earlier today that has affected my summer plans dramatically. I was pretty upset about it and I hadn’t done my devotional for the day so I reached for my Jesus Calling book and read it. At the bottom of each devotional, it gives a few Bible verses for you to look up. One of today’s verses was Psalm 112:7.

“He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”

The moment I read it, I just looked up and said “God, you sure do have a funny way of reminding just how much you love and care for me and how much I need to constantly rely on You.” I mean there could not have been a more perfect verse for me to read today.

As I reread it a few more times, I realized that although I have a reason to be upset, I should be trusting the Lord to get me through the summer. I have this idea that I have to have all these plans made up and they all have to be perfect, but really the only plan is God’s and obviously He wasn’t too keen on my plans.

It is hard, so very hard, to constantly remember to trust in the Lord with everything in my life. But the more I do it, the easier it will become and soon it will just be a natural thing. I have been worrying about my summer plans for a while now, but as I look back I realized that I only really prayed about them once or twice. Now that is definitely not trusting the Lord. I want my heart to be steadfast and trust the Lord, and now I realize that I am the only one that is holding me back from doing just that.

One of the other verses at the bottom of the page was John 16:33

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome this world.”

God has overcome this world. That is so powerful to think about. We constantly worry about such trivial things, yet even the smallest thing on this Earth, God has overcome, so why do we worry about it? 

I hope you all have a blessed weekend!

God Bless!

Everything is possible for You

On Tuesday at Cru, we talked about God’s wrath. This has always been something that I struggled with because I didn’t really understand why our God is considered wrathful when we see Him as holy and perfect. Lance, one of the staff for cru, did an incredible job of explaining it.

So here is the question: “How can a loving God send someone to Hell?”

Picture this: God is a flower and all the petals represent some of His characteristics. Each petal represents love, grace, Holy, justice, peace, glorious, righteous, mercy, and wrath.

To better answer the question before, we are gonna to reword it to “How can a holy, righteous God allow anyone into Heaven?”

We see God’s wrath in John 3:36 and Romans 12:19

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” – John 3:36

“Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” – Romans 12:19

To sum up these verses pretty well, we refer to John Piper: “The wrath of God is God’s settled anger towards sin expressed in the repayment of suitable vengeance on the guilty sinner.”

In the eyes of a righteous God, there is no innocent sinner. We are all deserving of God’s wrath yet we don’t receive it. Now why is that you may ask? Well our God is a God of justice, holiness, and righteous because he has dealt His punishment (His wrath) through His Son, Jesus Christ when He sent Him to the cross.

Romans 3:23-26 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished- he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

To me, this verse says it all. Right off the bat it says that we are justified freely by his grace. Like how awesome is that?! SO AWESOME.

Okay, so here is another picture of God’s wrath. In the Old Testament, God’s wrath is described as a cup.

“In the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices; he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs.” – Psalm 75:8

And now, if we flip to the New Testament, we see the cup again however in a completely different light.

“'Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” – Mark 14:36

This is the sinner’s prayer. When you say this prayer, God says, “yes” because He told Jesus “no” and sent Him to the cross for our sins. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!

1 John 4:8-10 says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

This right here is what it’s all about. God loves us more than we can EVER imagine and although He is a God of wrath, He is also a God of love, grace, holiness, justice, righteousness, gloriousness, and mercy. Because He sent his Son to die for our sins, we do not experience His wrath, but instead experience all the other characteristics of Him.

So going back to the flower, picture it in your head again. Except this time, replace the flower with a cross. It suddenly makes so much more sense where all of these characteristics are coming from.

I hope that this helps you understand God’s wrath a little bit more and I also hope it helps you realize just how much God loves you and how far He is willing to go because He loves you.

God Bless! 

"Your sins are forgiven"

This weekend I attended a leadership retreat for the campus ministry that I am involved in called Cru. It was an absolutely amazing weekend that has completely changed my view on discipleship and evangelism. I think I have always had this mindset that evangelism is like those crazy guys who stand out by the student center at UGA, screaming and yelling at people. And although they are reading the gospel, I feel like no one is going to be like “ohh, I have heard about this Jesus guy. Let me just go find about more about him from this scary dude yelling at me.” Like, no. No one is going to say that. What I have learned this weekend is that evangelism is nothing like those guys, but it is simply going out of your way to start up a conversation with someone.However, evangelism is not what I am going to talk about in this blog post. The first night we were on the retreat, one of the staff members, Brooke, gave an amazing talk on Luke 7:36-50. I really want to share this with y’all because it has really impacted me and really made me think a lot about the way I act on a daily basis.

“When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.””

- Luke 7:36-50

Okay, so here is a little background on this passage. Many scholars believe that this woman was a prostitute. She is being extremely courageous when she goes to see Jesus. The common courtesy back then was to wash your guests feet, however the Pharisee did not wash Jesus’ feet. So picture Jesus, laying on the ground, with nasty, dirty, cut up feet. The perfume that this woman brought was very beautiful and expensive. To understand this woman’s humility, you see her go to Jesus’ feet first. When she begins to weep, her tears are literally washing his feet clean and then she dries them with her OWN hair. Back then, a woman’s hair was very treasured, so this scene is so powerful because it really shows how much she understands who Jesus is. Now to the Pharisee. Pharisee means “set apart” and they believed that they found forgiveness through their good deeds. The Pharisee didn’t think about Jesus about the Messiah. Okay, I need you to picture this. This guy is literally standing about 30 feet away from Jesus and he completely MISSED him. Can you imagine that? Standing so close to such an amazing savior and completely missing him…?

Okay, now here is where it gets serious. Jesus begins to tell Simon a story about a moneylender who canceled the debts of two men. One men’s debt was greater than the other, so obviously the man with the greater debt is going to love the moneylender more for forgiving him. This perfectly correlates to the woman in the story.

Okay, here is a part that is often missed. “Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon.” He was facing the woman when he was talking to Simon. Think about how powerful this must have been for that woman. Jesus is looking her in the eyes and praising her for what she has done. PRAISING HER. I cannot even imagine how awesome of a feeling that would have been. Jesus is communicating her worth: he opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.

And this is my favorite part, “But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” In a couple of blog posts ago, I talked about grace and my experience with it. When I wrote that, I searched and searched for a passage to explain what I was trying to get out and here is a perfect one. When we see ourselves as better than other people, it becomes harder for us to see the beauty of what Jesus did for us. If we begin to see ourselves as the sinners we are, it all the sudden becomes so much more real and powerful that Jesus DIED on a cross for us and that He loved us so much. It is such a simple thing to do yet it can make all the difference.

The woman’s desire for Jesus was greater than her fear of the guests in the room. Think about this. What if she hadn’t gone? What if she had been too scared to go to Jesus? Her life was completely flipped upside down the moment Jesus said “Your sins are forgiven...your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

And if you really paid attention, you would notice that the woman says nothing the whole entire time she was there. Her actions spoke way louder than any words could have. She gave the most valuable things without having to say anything. Out of all the people in the room, she is the only one that REALLY noticed Jesus.

We need to be the woman, not the Pharisee. We need to be at Jesus’ feet always. We need to need him the way the woman needed him. Because the more we need, the more we rely on him, the more joy and peace we will have in our hearts.

A lot of times I catch myself being like the Pharisee. Thinking “ohh yeah, I can handle this. I don’t need Jesus for this one, I can do it by myself.” Or “I don’t sin that badly. Like really, I don’t really need forgiveness for this because it isn’t that bad.” But I am SO wrong. I need Jesus more than I will ever understand, but sometimes it is hard to completely let go of control and let him take control.

So now as I go out into this week and the rest of the semester, well I guess my life too, I will strive to constantly be like the woman in this story: full of humility, understanding that I need Jesus, and continually bowing at his feet.

I truly hope that you got something out of this passage and that you can take this out with you into this upcoming week. Become the woman, not the Pharisee and you will begin to notice radical change in your life and in your heart.

God Bless and have a wonderful week!

We are wonderfully made

So someone showed me this video the other day and it is absolutely incredible that a boy of such a young age can be so much mature and loving than most of the adult population. He has so much unconditional love for this sweet brother and doesn’t even care who knows. I think it is truly admirable what he is doing to make his brother feel important and accomplished.

There’s a lot to be learned from this nine year old boy, starting with his understanding of how important it is to love everyone no matter their race, religion, disability, or appearance. If we take a look at our world today, everything you do is defined by what you look like, who you associate yourself with, or what you are capable of doing. You are judged based on your outward appearance and it should never be like that. Psalm 139:14 says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. That does not mean that some people are wonderfully made and others aren’t…everyone is wonderfully made. The God of the universe made us so how could we not be good and wonderful? I think a lot of times it is just easier for us to judge someone based on their appearance than go out of our way to get to know who they really are. I know that I do this and I have been trying to be better at it. Especially being in college now, there are some interesting people everywhere on campus and to be honest, I am actually kind of scared to go talk to a lot of them. But I have now realized that I should not be judging these people based on their outward appearances. I should really try and get to know them.

When I graduate UGA, I want to become a special education teacher. This video just makes me even more excited to work with such sweet kids like these two. It makes me heart hurt when I see children get treated poorly just because they may be disabled. I have learned throughout my years working with special needs kids that we have so much to be learned from them about life and living it to the fullest. They have so much love in their hearts and if only we could be like them and this precious nine year old boy, our world would be such a better place.

Matthew 7:12 perfectly sums up what I am trying to get across in this jumbled message, “So in everything, do to other what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

I hope that this video really impacts you the way it has impacted me and that you have a blessed day and week!

God Bless!