Whose the movie really about?

This week started out good. I slept in Monday morning, got all my Christmas shopping done, and had dinner with a good friend. I was feeling pretty good and was looking forward to the rest of the week. Then Monday night as I was working on some of the Christmas gift I had bought, I started feeling weird. I figured I hadn't drank enough water that day (sometimes if I get caught up doing things I'll forget to drink something) so I got myself a class of water. After I got the glass of water I still wasn't feeling too hot. By 9 o'clock I had a bad feeling about this sick feeling that had hit me and my bad feeling was correct. Close to 10 o'clock I met the toilet in the one way we all don't like to meet it. I continued to get sick all the way until 4 in the morning. I haven't thrown up or had a stomach bug since my sophomore year in high school but I'm pretty sure I made up for all that lost time within those 6 hours. I was absolutely miserable. The next day I thought I was feeling better but as the day went on I gained a mild fever and my stomach felt as if someone had hit it at least 10 x's. It's funny how your week can change so quickly. I also realized how much I take for granted my health. When my health is not together, I'm not together. Lesson learned about my character (funny how you never seem to stop learning new things about yourself).

Thankfully, I'm feeling much better. I can keep food and liquids down, I just have to eat bland foods, therefore my diet has consisted of Jello and crackers.

I've been meaning to blog lately about something I've been struggling with. I've been struggling with the concept that ultimately, everything is about God and everything we do needs to glorify him. I haven't doubted this and I believe it is true, but I've struggled with how to live that out. How do I prepare myself mentally for this kind of commitment? How does this work? What does this look like? How do I know I'm living a life that glorifies Him? The one scripture that I've read that really got me thinking and to be honest with you, scares me to death is Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter.  On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’  But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’" Just the thought that in the end the Lord would say, "I never knew you" terrifies me! We can follow what we believe is the right way of doing something or we can use the name of Jesus to help other people, but if we don't do His will, He will say he never knew us. Really, just the thought of this shakes me to my core.

If you read scripture, God's ultimate will is for us to bring him glory. So this leads me back to my question... How do I do that? For starters, I know I have to be willing to let go of a lot of things. I can't physically tell you what those things are, but my spirit knows what they are. If I knew how to word it I would, but I don't, I just kinda know what that means for me. But to help myself gain a better mental picture of the situation I feel like the Lord placed an analogy in my head to help better understand what he means (you might think this is a crazy idea that the Lord would give me this kind of analogy but hey, Jesus spoke in parables the majority of time in scripture, in ways that helped the people at the time understand. Why wouldn't he do that for us now?) I pictured this much like a movie and we've been asked to be apart of this movie. After the movie has been filmed you go and tell EVERYONE about the movie. Of course you mention that you got to be apart of the movie. You're not the main character, you're not even a side character. You're just an extra, that just might show up in the background of a scene. So, as you're telling people about the movie, you're not just talking about your 5 second appearance (though of course your going to mention the experience and the excitement of it) you're talking about the over all impact of the movie and the message the story is telling. Therefore, you encourage people to see the movie, not just because your in it, but because you know that it could change their life forever.

We've been asked to be apart of God's movie. He wants all of us in it. We might be an extra, the sounds person, the costume designer, or any other part that helps make the movie happen but despite your part, you're mostly talking about the purpose of the movie. When we find ourselves focusing more about the purpose of the movie and not on our little part in the movie, that's when we're living to glorify him. If you ever watch the credits in the movie, many people are apart of making the movie happen, but when a movie wins an award only one or two people are recognized instead naming and bringing every single person who was involved to accept the award and you know what..... there has yet to be an out cry or an uproar made my anyone (the extra person, the costume designer, etc) that they were not verbally recognized when the movie they were apart of was given an award. You wanna know why? because they  knew that the movie was not about them. 

I guess it's about time that we wake up and realize that this life is not about us but it's totally worth living for the main purpose of it all.

Passion Killers

I am a passionate person. When I believe in something or I love something, my passion is easily displayed through conversations or actions. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, I'm just sharing what has been told to me by multiple people. It makes me very happy that people are able to feel my passion because when I am passionate, I don't want to keep it to myself. I want everyone in the WORLD to know how I feel. But there's one thing that can happen to passionate people, they can lose their passion by being around, what I call, passion killers. It's not a particular type of person, personality type, or individual. It's more of a group of people. Now it's not a group of people who you are around most of the time, it can be one group plus another group that triggers the passion killing. I hope your following what I'm trying to say here. I'm not judging anyone or any group because no one sets out to kill people's dreams (well unless you have a personality disorder which is only like 5% of the population so no need to worry about running into these types of people on a daily bases). What I'm trying to communicate is that if you are with a group of people who each time you hang out with them, aspiring dreams are never discussed or as a group you never plan to work together to support a members dreams, you are unknowingly becoming a passion killer to someone.


It's funny how this struck me. Like I said before, I'm a very passionate person and I tend to feel passion a lot but lately it's been something I've struggled with. The majority of the problem is spiritual. My passion is the one thing that satan is always trying to trip me up on. But I believe we have a choice and need to be aware of some of the enemies tactics. The other day I was in my non-profit class. Our assignment in the class was to create our own non-profit project and present it to the class. Tuesday I was in class listening to some of my colleagues present their dreams and passions. I cannot tell you how refreshing it was to be amongst people talking about something they are passionate about. It changed the atmosphere in the room. After I left class, I spent half of my trip back home in tears because I was heart broken that I'm rarely in an environment like that. It has become so rare to be in a social setting where you can be vulnerable enough to express your passion and even if your brave enough to do it a lot of the times you get little or no response, therefore your passion that you have just expressed is left to wither instead of grow. This really makes me sad. My theory behind this is that most relationships with people are superficial. Sadly, some of the most superficial relationships are with people you calls friends or even a best friend. The other day I was on pinterest (such a baaad addiction!) and I found a quote that said, "The average person tells 4 lies a day or 1460 a year; a total of 87,600 by the age of 60. And the most common lie is: I'm Fine." And you want to know where my first thought went to after I read this, was church. I can't tell you how many times I walked into the church doors and I was no where close to being OK or fine but when I was asked "How are you?" my response was, "I'm fine". Its so refreshing to finally be at a church where this is no longer a problem.


Oh! If you only knew how much this hurts my heart! I would give anything to smack the enemy in the face for messing up relationships the way he does. I've met multiple people who are so wonderful and so full of life, yet they are crawled up into the lie of "I'm fine", when in reality, I know they are about to explode on the inside. But, the sad reality is that when we are in a social setting our passion, our true feelings, our true selves are murdered and we are all guilty in some form or fashion. And trust me, I am guilty as charged. To be real is so foreign. I feel so blessed because I know people who are passionate and anytime I bring up something I'm passionate about they feed off of it, helping my passion to grow. Then, as they share their passion with me, I feed off their passion, and it also helps my passion to grow.


I don't want to be afraid to be real anymore. God created me in his image, therefore I have some of his qualities and I want to let those qualities shine, whether someone likes them or not. I don't want to feel numb to the passion the Lord has given me, I want to set it on FIRE! And I hope I can do the same for others, in whatever they are passionate about.