Truly Loved + Wholly Surrendered

2018 was quite the year for me, with emotions all over the place as I dealt with the loss of my dear grandmother. It’s been almost a year since she passed, and just a couple weeks ago, I started to feel like myself again; glory to God for not giving up on me! I know He's been working in my heart and my life to heal and comfort. He knew my pain even before it began. But, He has turned my mourning into dancing ( Psalms 30:11 ), and brought healing into my soul, which I've written about, previously .  2018 was also the year that I learned a lot about who God is, and how much He loves and cares. I’ve learned that God is still good, regardless of the circumstances … and I’m learning (still) to see His hand in everything that happens over the course of the year. For example, I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have gotten my job if my family didn’t encourage me to make connections during my internship; I praise Him for giving the job I currently hold (although it’s only been 4 months...

The Lord is so faithful; so so faithful. I know I say simple statements like this frequently, but I just listened to “The Garden” by Kari Jobe and it brought me to tears. God used this song to help me realize that everything that’s happened in my life has led up to this one moment. All the questions I’ve asked over the years, doubts I’ve carried, grief, guilt, feeling like I don’t fit in, questioning how He could love me despite of it all; despite knowing that I would wonder of the sincerity of His grace. “The Garden” is a song that deals mostly with sorrow and grief, but it ends with the knowledge of how good God is in the midst of the horrible circumstances. It reminds the listener that He is a healer; He wants to fix things in your life and make things alright again; however, we, I, as a child of God, need to realize that He is still sovereign. He hasn’t forgotten you, or me; He has intricately planned every single detail of our lives. Nothing surprises Him. The fact that...

Lately, I've been noticing that I have a hard time opening up to people, and honestly, I don't truly know why. But, I would like to change that and make myself more relate-able to y'all. I think it's important to get to know others and where they come from and their stories, but it needs to be two-sided; I am realizing that it's not healthy for myself to just listen without allowing others into my life and letting them get to know who I truly am. Now, that I want to change that, I am going to begin with sharing my story and how I came to know Christ. I feel that my story is very simple: I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home and to loving parents who love the Lord. I've gone to church my entire life and had the knowledge of who God is and how we came to be from a very young age. I participated in a lot of church events and was active in reading and memorizing the Bible. But, I started to notice that some of my friends were different (most likely after th...

I hear (and use) this phrase quite often: “All for His glory,” and I started thinking on what that means, so I began looking in the Word to see what the Bible says about it. This post will be the result of what I’ve found and how I’ve come to understand it better. Feel free to share your thoughts and/or leave a comment on my thoughts about this. To start off, the ‘glory’ of God has several different meanings to it, such as His presence or, as I’ve found, the essence of who He is as God. When we ‘glorify God,’ we are declaring who God is. This is seen in Romans 4:20, where Abraham held on to the promise that God made him and, by faith, believed in Him and His promise. Abraham believed that the promise would come through and glorified God in the midst of a situation that seemed impossible (his wife’s old and age and barrenness).  We glorify God when we believe God in the midst of all the chaos and hold on to His Word despite what our circumstances look like. God is also glorified ...

I was thinking about how important it is to feed your soul and keep seeking His face. I feel that a lot of times people talk about reading the Word as a means of feeding yourself, but what about worship? God created us to be in awe of all His creation and all of who He is as God to us. I believe worship can feed the soul just as much as reading His Word, as both are incredibly important. Worship can be seen in different ways and/or styles, but it's still worship. You're still focusing on how God has brought you this far, or on His goodness, or in surrender to Him. It's all about Him when you worship, just like it's all about learning more about Him when you read His Word. I wanted to give you some verses regarding worship and how that can help your soul to stay connected to your Creator. First, I would like to also mention that worship is something that has existed since creation was created. Psalm 66:4 says, "All the earth shall worship You And sing praises to Y...

Recently, I came across something that really piqued my interest and decided to look into it more. It came from a plan in the Bible app, and it said, "...the church need not test God..." and I thought about it and wondered why we, as a body of believers, should not test God, or if we're even allowed to test the Lord. I found that the Bible is actually very clear regarding this, "You shall not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted Him in Massah" (Deuteronomy 6:16, NKJV). The words "tempt" and "tempted" here can also be read as "test" and "tested," which is interesting because the two words have slightly different meanings, but in the context of this verse, both are correct. So, here, in the general context of the verse, the Israelites just received the ten commandments (Deut. 5), and now they are cautioned against disobedience. There is the mention of Massah, which is when Moses struck the rock for the Israelites to be abl...

Hey y'all, I know I've been slacking on keeping up with this blog, but I'm sorry to say that my grandmother passed away last week, and so I've been dealing with the grief, and at the same time, joy that comes with it. My grandmother was a believer, and so I know I will see her again in Heaven. But, grief is hard, y'all. It comes so fast, and sometimes it comes unexpectedly, however, I also know that my grandma is pain-free in the presence of God. So, as you know, I've been doing a 'mini-series,' if you will, on what happens to us when we accept Christ as our Savior. I've briefly touched on  justification  and  sanctification,  and now I would like to talk about the glorification of our bodies. In a way, this is perfect timing to talk about this, since my grandmother has gone on to glory. The idea that our bodies will be glorified is a strange concept because it's a future reality. It's not something that has happened yet, and it will not ha...