A lotta bit of life in a little bit of text.

This blog may be a little unorthodox, but I believe it needs to happen. In Hebrews, Paul says to confess to other believers what your struggles are and what you have been falling short of so that they can keep you accountable in the future. So, that's what I'm going to do. I honestly hope you take something away from this as I go through something that has been on my heart for the past few weeks.

I'm not sure if you have noticed (though you may have, I have no way of knowing), but I haven't written a blog in a long time. One thing I decided when I wanted to make a blog was that everything I wanted to write needed to be biblical and it needed to be something God was telling me at the time. Well, the problem with the past couple of months is that I haven't been hearing what He has been telling me because I haven't been living everyday in Him. Don't worry, I've been working on it. God's been working on my heart to get me to abide in  Him. It's not just an every Sunday at church or Thursday at Challenge kind of thing. It's every day. All day. Without ceasing.

A while back I came across a verse in 1 John 2. It tells us to abide in Him and He will abide in us. That's a pretty big commitment. If you don't know what abide means let me help you out. It means to stay, reside, remain, dwell. I love some of these words because they just feel...heavy. Not in a burdensome kind of way. Just in a "these are not to be taken lightly" kind of way. And they really shouldn't be. God doesn't want our seconds. He wants the first choice, the best choice in our life. No, scratch that. He wants it all. When He gets all of us He can work wonders in our life when we let Him take over it all.

It's amazing what can happen when we really truly live like this. God just comes in and takes away all the parts of our lives that are dragging us down. He turns our hearts to live for His plan and His glory and the awesome thing is that we end up wanting to do that for Him. He gives us joy beyond anything we can imagine because we do live fully and truly in Him. The list just goes on and on.

Like I said, I hope something has helped you or opened your eyes, but I understand if not. Some things we just have to figure out on our own.

Glory in Pain

A few weeks ago at church, my pastor was preaching out of Isaiah 6. In this particular passage, Isaiah was in the presence of God and was absolutely deathly afraid that he was going to be struck down because of his sin. But one of the seraphim took a live coal from the altar and touched his lips and made him clean. It might just be me, but I have a feeling getting touched on lips with something that just came out of the fire would be downright painful.

I think this is something God wants us to get out of this passage that gets overlooked quite a bit. God never told us being cleansed of our sins would be easy. In this instance, even, I think he's telling us that it's going to be difficult and painful and most probably life changing. I know from experience that a lot of times it feels like the pain is pointless and isn't helping you at all. Let me assure you, it really is. God wants to prune us, to cut us off at our sin and make us a new person completely.

Another thing that crossed my mind was that kind of heat would burn enough to leave a scar of some kind. We will never be able to cut out our past and deny it ever happened. It's a part of who we are, where we came from. It's difficult to distinguish dwelling on the past to using it to grow because it really is a fine line. No one should use the past as a reason for not moving forward. Instead it should be a motivation, motivation to move away from the life we once had and to keep moving to the one God has planned for us.

Struggles in this world with temptations and fleshly desires make us stronger in our walk with God. He doesn't expect us to be perfect, just to strive for it. James tells us to be joyful in our trials because it develops strength. Look at it this way. A young tree is weak. It can be bent and broken by the weakest of winds. But as it grows, it gets stronger. And the wind has a harder time pushing it over, taking it to the breaking point. If you take a look at the inner rings of the tree you can tell when it had hard years and it created a unique layer that added to its durability. I believe people are extremely similar. Every tough time and situation gives us a unique depth to us and makes us stronger for the long haul.

I know I hit on a lot of topics, but I really felt these on my heart. I pray that God will bring tough times into your life to test you and draw him closer to you.