Hello everyone! I know it has been a while, and I apologize. I have been saving up a lot for when I would have the time to sit down and type. God has been so busy and I am so thankful to have been so blessed to see Him work right before our eyes!!
Time For God
So I have a question for you all. Have you made time for God today? Have you made time for yourself today? Let me explain why I ask.
I just spent an amazing week in the mountains of North Carolina. The most difficult part of going every year is learning to just breathe. I thought a lot while I was there (hearing our speaker, and hearing other leaders, and hearing our kids) about how no single person I know, including myself, makes time for themselves, or God. We all run this race of life, and some days we blink and it is time to do it all again.
I spent the week reflecting on just that.
Breathe. Make time for God. Make time for yourself.
We are the temple. Think about it. Lately, it seems that everywhere I am directed, it seems the message is that The Holy Spirit lives in us. Do you hear me? We are privileged and blessed and trusted to house The Holy Spirit! A part of God! Part of The Trinity!!! And what do we do to show it? Do we work out enough? Obviously, I have not been after climbing mountains this week – a brisk reminder! Do we eat correctly? Do we make time for God?
Time With God
Time with God is the most important thing we can do for ourselves!!! Yet we continue to put Him on the back burner!!! The most important thing we can do is to feed ourselves spiritually with Jesus!
So how can we change that? What does it look like to make God priority in our daily lives?
I will say that one of the first things is intentional quiet time, just you and God. I have mentioned before to many of you, that my favorite part of summer camp at TVR is to see these kids sitting in their special selected spot on camp, and how they sit there every day with their devotionals, for 30 minutes, just reading their Bibles and doing their devotions. Quietly. Noting but birds tweeting and creeks trickling. God’s Creation surrounding us all to remind us that God is ever-present. It is absolutely amazing to experience this special time daily. Many of these kids will come home and continue to be intentional. Many will come back and get sucked back into the busyness of life. It is a choice. For me and for them. For you as well. Will you spend time one on one with God daily? Will you feed yourself with The Word and with personal time with God?
Crave God
How about the temple? Shall we all crave God more than we do food? I know I should and I know I desire to do so, yet Satan jumps right in and tricks me and lies to me, and leads me right into eating whatever I want. Ohhhh, he is so good at what he does!!! But God is stronger! I encourage you to check out the book “Made To Crave”. We are made to crave. We are to crave God more than anything else. We are to believe that He has given us, right from the earth, everything we need to survive. So, how can you change your eating habits to consume what God has provided, not what man has processed? It is a humbling thing to ponder and act on. Difficult, but humbling.
What if we craved God and turned to Him instead of the worldly things we turn to – social media, TV, food, cigarettes, drinking, medications, and the list goes on. We fill our lives with “things” to fill the void(s) that should be filled by God, yet we fill ourselves up with things that are only temporary fixes to the emptiness. The theme at camp this week was “Something’s Missing”, and that is exactly what I am talking about. When we have that feeling that something is missing, so often, we seek things that just are not good for us! Then, we make these things that temporarily give us comfort our idols. They quickly become more important than God, because the truth is, we should have turned to Him first!! It becomes a vicious cycle and we come to be completely full and satisfied if we would trust the one who made us, God. He will fill our every single void, but we have to be willing to let Him.
We All Have a Purpose
The other thing that I have spent quite a bit of time with lately is talking to young people about what the big picture of their future looks like. I have had lots of conversations about what they desire for their future. Lots of discussions of what their passion is, and ultimately, how can they use it for God. To glorify and honor Him. It took me so long to figure it out, and it is my desire to help young people figure out what it is that God is calling them to spend their days doing to bring Him Glory.
So many people spend their life doing what they feel obligated to do. But is it really what they are passionate about? I wonder. Are people just going through the motions because of what they are “supposed” to do, or because of the degree they worked so hard to get? Is it really what they wanted to do for life? Life is too short to just go through the motions. We all have a purpose. A specific purpose, designed by God. Do you know what yours is? Have you been prayerful about it? I encourage you to pray and talk to God and see how you can use the gifts that you use every day to bring Him glory. Medical? Teaching? Cooking? Engineering? Art? Every single person, being created by God, has been given at least one gift to use for Him.
How are you using yours? Seek Him, know Him, Glorify Him. My Pastor spoke Sunday about taking risks – all for Jesus – have you? How can you? Less of self and more of Jesus. Oh what a wonderful world it would be if we could all get that right – less of self and more of Jesus. All for Jesus. Not for “me,” all for Him.
Bloom Where You’re Planted
On another note, I saw this little flower one day at the Children’s Home in Kinston. It spoke to me so loudly. This little flower, no doubt, had to struggle to make it in its surrounding environment. But it made it. It did not give up and it was beautiful. It found a way to bloom, right where it was planted. It held on and fulfilled its purpose. I hope this will speak to you too. No matter the surrounding, will you persevere? Determined to bring beauty to this world, no matter the surroundings? You see, this little flower was the only one that had made its way through the crack of this pavement. It was so beautiful and full of life. We could all learn so much just from observing God’s amazing creation and recognizing what I call “God winks”. This picture is definitely a symbol of one of those moments.
So there are some of my recent thoughts. I hope I have encouraged you to think about your daily walk and how you can connect even closer to God, no matter what you do with your day to day life currently. Find a way to use this life He gave you to give Him the Glory and the praise He deserves. The blessings will be so great and Heaven is going to be so wonderful. I am so thankful today that there is hope of a wonderful eternity for all of us who believe. Go tell someone about this hope and how they can have it too!
’til next time……………………..
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