simul iustus et peccator

Wooooow..... It has been soooo long since I've written a post.

So much has happened since I last wrote in June. I'm not going to go into detail of how the past months have been, but I will tell you that I'm not going to complain about them. The Lord is always good to me no matter what. Tonight, as I was driving home from class the Lord reminded me of his goodness. Satan has been constantly trying to discourage my heart lately and so tonight I decided to fight it off with some encouraging music. It was so amazing as I was listening to Matt Redman sing "10,000 Reasons". My heart began to over flow with the feeling of God's goodness. I was so overwhelmed with the feeling that I just wanted to jump up and down, dance, and scream. It reminded me of how God is good and how he doesn't know how to be anything but good. He lifted my spirits tonight and I'm so thankful for it!

I feel like the main theme of the past months for me is trusting God. Completely and totally trusting him. Right now I have The Message version of Matthew 19:26 thats says, "No chance at all if you think you can pull it off youself. Every chance in the world if you TRUST God to do it." I read this everyday, yet I still find myself trying to make certain things happen or not trusting God to pull through for me..... yeah, I'm weak. It's amazing though when I finally let go, even though it just last for a moment, God sprinkles a little light of goodness onto me.

I want to end with something I had posted onto an earlier blog. I love this and it was definitely a huge reminder for me, I hope you enjoy it :-)

RELIGION: My self-view swings between two poles. If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel insecure and inadequate. I’m not confident. I feel like a failure

THE GOSPEL: My self-view is not based on a view of my self as a moral achiever. In Christ I am “simul iustus et peccator”—simultaneously sinful and yet accepted in Christ. I am so bad he had to die for me and I am so loved he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deeper and deeper humility and confidence at the same time. Neither swaggering nor sniveling.

LOVE. Part 1

Tonight, I was reading my bible. I try to read before I go to bed on most nights. I usually pick it up and go to where I feel the Lord is leading me to read. Tonight I decided to just open to the place I had the book mark tab in and just read. I opened to Mark 12. As I read, I came to Mark 12: 28-31 which reads, "One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” (NLT)


AfterI read this I thought, "Well if God commands us to love him and others, then I guess it's important to look at his definition of love in order to carry this out." So I turned to the ever popular verse of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 which reads, "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 gave you the whole verse, but I'm going to be honest, I stopped reading in the third word of the first sentence that read "patient". Who knew such a word could carry so much weight.


If tells us that the most important thing for us to do is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, strength, AND to love others as well, then he's asking us to be PATIENT with all our, hearts, souls, minds, strength, AND with others. 


It's so easy brag about the time spent with God, going to church, etc. But what I got from this passage is that what God really wants us to do is to love Him with everything we have and by his definition of love, apart of loving him is being patient with Him with all our hearts, soul, mind, and strength. 


I will confess that I do not show God this kind of patients, yet he still loves me unconditionally. I will be the first to tell you that I will happily share what I have done for the Lord quicker than being patient with Him when things don't go as I planned them. God shows me so much love and so much patience and I hate to say that I do not give it back very freely in return.


The beauty of God's love is that he does not need us to give Him love, He's fine without it, but He does want us to love Him, because he knows it's what will bring us the most joy and fulfillment. 


After moving past the reality of the first word in describing love, I knew I would find that I do not live and love God in the other ways he describes love. But this motivates me to want to be this way, to want to love him with all my heart, soul, mind, strength, and others in the way he tells us to. And the cool thing is that I can! He models this kind of love with me everyday!


I have more that I would like to share about being patient with God and the other descriptions he gives to help us know what he means by love but I am exhausted so part 2 of this blog will come at a later time......

"You are good when there's nothing good in me."

God has been so good to me lately!

This month has been a whirl wind. There have been so many things that have taken place that has really had my emotions all over the board. Despite all the tragedies and illnesses, God has really shown his light of love on me over the past week and I am so grateful for it!

Today I was listening to a song and a line in the song said, "When my faith is getting weak and I feel like giving in, You breathe into me again."Near the beginning of May I started having allergy issues. It was kind of odd for me because I never really have allergy issues. It started out with the typical drainage and stuffy nose. Then I completely lost my voice. I hated this with a passion. I didn't really realize how much I use my voice until it was gone. Along with the loss of voice came a very annoying cough that would flare up at night as I was trying to go to bed. My voice stayed gone for almost 2 weeks. The whole time my voice was gone, I felt fine, just sounded horrible and was exhausted due to the cough that would keep my up at night. Finally my voice started slowly coming back and my nose was clearing up. Then the drainage started back and my throat started swelling. I was so mad! I thought the issues were leaving, but no, it turned into a sinus infection which forced me to go to the doctor (I really hate going to the doctor). I get the anti-biotics and for the first time I had a drain of energy. It took me about 2 days to get all my energy back. The swelling in my throat took about another week to finally disappear but the annoying cough was still hanging out.

All I had left was the cough and by this time I was so over my body acting crazy. I stay pretty healthy and hardly get sick so having these kind of issues for about a month was really weighing on my patience. But I was finally getting better and the cough wasn't keeping me up at night so I was glad to finally be getting back to normal when we received the tragic news that my 11 year old cousin had died. Needless to say, this was a tragedy for everyone in my family and anyone who knew this precious girl. It's been hard for me to process this death. For about 2 weeks I was completely scattered in my thinking. A death of a child is different from the death of an adult and I didn't know how to process the situation. I was 13 when she was born, so I remember holding her as a baby and have watched her grow up. I honestly pray no one ever has to experience something like this. It really is life's greatest tragedy.

So I went from dealing with the frustrations of an illness to dealing with a tragedy. Then, just to add the cherry on top, we had a group project that needed to be done in one of my classes (side note: Graduate school and group projects do NOT go hand in hand very well). Not only did we have to present on a topic, but we had to go, together, to something that was different from our culture and spend at least 3 hours there. Well we had set a day to go, which really was a nightmare to plan since everyone works during the week and I work weekends. But I'm usually off on Sundays so we had set a time for a Sunday. Well, as my luck would go, they just so happen to schedule me for the Sunday we had planned for and EVERY SINGLE ONE of my co-workers who were not scheduled was out of town. This was my breaking point, I just lost it. I hate crying and don't do it often, but this made me cry. I was so frustrated with how everything had been going and I was in need of something to chill me out. I called a friend, cried, and vented my frustrations. That same week I also met with another wonderful Godly friend of mine who really just help lift my spirits. This was my turning point.

Ever since the encouragement of my wonderful friend, God kept sending people who are encouraging and uplifting into my path. For the past 2 weeks I have been around people who have made me laugh, who have spoken positive things over me, and who have encouraged me. God knew that this was exactly what I needed. As the lyrics I posted early stated, I was at a point where I felt I was at the bottom, I felt like darkness was the only thing surrounding me, and then, just as I thought I couldn't make it any further, God just breathed life into me.

I look back and think, how silly for me to doubt that God would come through. But it's really not silly, it's just how we learn and grow in faith. If God gave us everything we needed right when we asked it, we would become immune to his goodness and not grow in faith. For faith is believing without seeing. If we always saw what God was doing, we would have no faith and God wants us to have it. For it says in 1 Corinthians 13:13 that three things will last forever: faith, hope, and love. I believe God mentioned faith because it's a vital character for us to have. And the truth is, we can't build faith if we can always see what God is doing.

I'm happy to report now that my health is back. I am now more appreciate of it than I was before. My family is still in need of your prayers as we go back to our day to day lives. It's been tough and it's going to continue to be tough for those who were around her on a daily bases. But I'm already seeing how God's goodness is shining through such a tough situation. And lastly, we got our group project done and it ended up being a good thing that we didn't go on a Sunday because where we wanted to go would have been closed. So in the end, God was good through it all. I've appreciated all the love and support I've received from so many people! I really am blessed beyond comprehension.

Pulling Heart Strings

God really loves to get my attention and certainly knows how to. It's really not that hard of a task (most of the time). All he has to is have a hurting person pass me by and I'm all ears. 


God been doing this more and more lately. He's been finding ways to pull at my heart strings. The biggest issue has been Satan because as soon as God pulls at my heart string, Satan throws something else at me to distract me. But I've reached the point that I'm tired of the distractions, I'm ready to embrace what God has in store for me to do.


I can't completely blame Satan for my lack of persistence, I have a hand in the issue as well. I can easily become overwhelmed with what I'm called to do and tend to doubt myself and my capabilities. I'm taking this class called Social and Cultural Diversity. It's exactly as it's labeled, it's a class on many social and cultural issues. I'm reading a book on racial identity and one of the issues it has pointed out is the fact that White people have many privileges over people of color. I can't argue with this because I know I've never been discriminated against in my whole life due to my color. How this came about and how it's still fueled is a completely different discussion, but one thing the author said is, "with privilege comes great responsibility". That really pulled a heart string on me. Here I am, an educated woman, with a voice that can be heard, and I tend to spend the majority of my time in the shadows. 


Tonight in class we discussed the issue of Human Trafficking. It really is an issue that has always pulled at my heart string because I have a huge heart for women, especially adolescent girls. This whole issue had more than one heart string pulled. The professor for this course a sex addict counselor. He told us that many of the clients he has worked with over the years has stated that they go for vulnerable women, and they can sense these types of women with no problems. They go for women who clearly do not have a voice. Same goes for the children and women who are abducted into human trafficking. They are children and women who have been scoped out, whose vulnerability was visible..... they want the ones who do not have a voice.


Here I am. 24 year old graduate student. I have been well taken care of my whole life. I've been given the opportunity for education, I've been given a voice. My insecurity and self doubt has been the only thing keeping me silent. I want to over come this. I want to be a voice for those who do not have a voice. God has filled me with so much of his love, all I want to do is pour it out so that others can feel and know that there is so much more to this world than heartless people. It's going to require self sacrifice. It's going to require work. God knows I'm not at this place yet but it's becoming very clear to me that he's been working with me on this.


I really have no clue where God wants me or what direction he wants me to go in helping people. If I had it my way I would want to help anyone and everyone that has ever experienced injustice and/or needs love. But it's time I start stepping out of my comfort zone and doing something. 


Tonight I signed up to attend the Greater Chattanooga Coalition Against Human Trafficking meeting. It's a free event on June 7th from 11:00-1:30. I don't know if this is the direction God wants me to take but I feel like it's a good step on stepping out of my comfort zone. 

I wanna shine and I wanna fly just to tell you now, it'll be alright.

As I sat down to write this blog, millions of things came to mind to write about. Trying to narrow down what was important and what was just random thoughts were hard. Then I kept thinking about this article I read yesterday. It's called Summers Are For Seeking Christ. 


For those who see my Facebook or Instagram you are well aware of my love for summer. My last blog talked about my love for summer as well. So I think I've made it very clear how much I love this time of year. Sorry if you're over my enthusiasm for this season but I might as well warn you that it's not going to end, I'm still going to be declaring my love ALL summer! It just brings out the best in me and I'm not going to hold it in.


Back to the article, there is a quote from John Piper in this article that says, "God made summer as a foretaste of heaven, not a substitute. If the mailman brings you a love letter from your fiancé, don’t fall in love with the mailman. That’s what summer is: God’s messenger with a sun-soaked, tree-green, flower-blooming, lake-glistening letter of love to show us what he is planning for us in the age to come." Oh this just made my heart so happy! I've always loved the summer but I've never thought of it as a taste of what God has in store for us! The article warns against the distractions of this season and how it can cause us to lose focus on the One who truly matters. It's a really good article and I recommend reading it. 


This summer feels different from last summer. Last summer I was working 60 hours a week doing in home counseling. I love helping people but by last summer I was burnt out and vaguely remember truly enjoying anything last summer. Don't get me wrong, I had some great times last summer but my heart, mind, and soul were so tired. If you go back to the blogs I wrote last summer, you'll see how God was attempting to grab my attention and turn my heart into a new direction. 


I read another article yesterday about C.S Lewis's books and how he wrote a story about a boy whose greed and self centeredness turned him into a dragon. Near the end of the story the boy meets Aslan who tells the boy to undress and jump into a spring. The boy knew he meant to take off the dragon skin before jumping in. The boy attempted 3 times to remove his skin but each time he looked at his skin and knew it wasn't good enough. Finally Aslan assisted the boy and this is what the boy said, "'And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feelings the stuff peel off. … Well he pulled the beastly stuff right off — just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt — and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobly looking than the others had been. And there was I, as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been.' Then with velvet paws, Aslan picks him up and placed him in the water, healing him, breathing on him, clothing him and finally sending him back to the other characters in the story."


The article goes onto explain the meaning C.S Lewis was portraying by this story. Much like this story, God has been putting me through this skin peeling process (metaphorically, not physically). He's stripping me of all the things in my life that I've tried picking off myself but it takes Him cleansing me of these things completely for it to really work. 


Last summer I had those unnecessary layers of skin and this summer I have this new healthy fresh skin! I'm just so thankful for all God has and continues to do for me. My love for this summer is directly correlated to the love and mercy God has so graciously poured upon me. I just hope this love and mercy will become contagious. I'm more than happy to dance this dance alone, but it's more fun when others are involved :-)

It's the little moments that count

I love this time of year. May, June, and July are my favorite months of the whole year! I love how the sun feels as it hits my skin the second I walk outside. I'm taking a May class right now that requires me to sit inside from 1:30-3:45. During this class I just sit and dream about being outside hiking, running, swimming... really anything that does not require being indoors. And as much as I usually enjoy my drive to Cleveland it really is just a tease for me now. As I ride with the windows down, I usually have my arm on the window seal where I can feel the wind along with the rays of sunshine. As much as I enjoy getting to experience the sun on my arm, it really makes me crave the sun even more. I really can't describe the feeling I receive when I get to be out in the sun doing something other than work or school. Today as I was driving I had the windows down, my hair blowing into knots (not complaining, it's totally worth it), and the sun delicately teasing me with it's dancing rays when I saw rain clouds up ahead. As I drove closer to the coming rain shower I was reminded of another delicacy that comes this time of year, the smell of fresh rain. I don't know if I've just been so busy over the past couple of years or what but today was the first time in years that I inhaled the aroma of a summer shower. It really was the most wonderful moment. The sun rays were finishing their last movements before the storm interceded as an intermission, only a few specks of water were falling to the ground, and the temperature was perfect. It was in this moment that I realized that this season is the only season that could make me love the rain as much as I love the sun. I just wanted to pull the car over, go to an open field somewhere and stand in the rain. I feel as if this season is a season of refreshing for me. Everything that once was seen as a nuisance or unpleasant will be seen in a different way, things will be given a new light. I feel as if there is going to be a new light in my mind, a new way of seeing life. What was once just seen as an ordinary hot summer day is now going to have a new spark to it. I am beyond ready for this. I'm ready to embrace the little moments such as my drive home today and enjoy my favorite time of year!

"I" know the plans

Many have come to know this verse, "For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11. It's a wonderful verse and it's one that I hold onto deeply everyday. It helps to remind me that God is for me and has great things in store. Last night I woke up at 2:30 am and I couldn't go back to sleep til around 4. While I was laying in bed trying to go back to sleep this verse came into my mind. When it came into my mind i noticed something I haven't noticed before. It's says, "I know the plans" it doesn't say he knows and he will tell us, it just says he knows the plans. Sometimes I find myself getting frustrated because I don't know what lies ahead but this verse is telling me to trust God, because He does know. He knows therefore I don't need to and just trust in what he knows.