The Ultimate Strong Man

One of my new favorite songs is “Strong Enough” by Matthew West. It was based off of the Bible verse Philippians 4:13, which just so happens to be in my top 3 favorite Bible verses. The song talks about someone going through a tough time and the knowledge that when we feel we have to be strong, really all we need is God’s strength, because He’s strong enough to get us through whatever comes our way.

I’m sure you’ve been through more than enough hard situations. You might be going through one right now. And you probably know the feeling of complete and utter hopelessness; wanting to do something and feeling as if it’s out of your reach. Or maybe you want to give up because you’ve been fighting whatever-it-is for far too long. It’s terrible to feel like you’ve hit rock bottom. But hey, you can only go up from there.

There’s a line in the song that says “Maybe that’s the point, to reach the point of giving up.” I find that not only very poetic, but true. We all have burdens—things from our past, things from the present, and things in the future that worry us to bits. And there comes a time when finally we throw up our hands and say “THAT’S IT! I’m done. I just can’t do it.” Been there. Done that. And the point is to realize that you CAN’T do it. Not on your own. Only God can give us the strength to push on through our trials and tribulations.

Philippians 4:13 says “I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.” It’s actually quoted in the song, followed by the words: “I don’t have to be strong enough.” That knowledge has helped me so much in my life, but in a different way than you might think.

You see, I’m a fighter. When someone hurts someone I love or questions my beliefs in some way, shape, or form, my first instinct is to defend what I hold dear and what I know to be true. And I will fight them for as long as necessary. For the longest time I’ve depended on my own strength to get me through stuff. I went through a rough patch of life where I was lied to and betrayed by someone I thought I knew very well. I tried to deal with the situation on my own, and I ended up hurting us both. That was when I realized that my strength alone can’t fix the problem. It can’t do anything, really. I’m not strong enough. But God is.

Now from the very start of a stormy season I will look to the sky and say “Jesus, here comes the rain. I don’t have an umbrella. Can I borrow yours?” And EVERY SINGLE TIME He pulls through. His umbrella doesn’t weaken out on you or blow up when the winds batter you. He gets wet and takes the brunt of the storm for us for the same reason He took all our sins on Himself and died—because He loves us. I can’t say “thank you” enough times to tell Him how grateful I am for His sacrifice.

Not to say that once you give God your problems everything will be fine and dandy. It won’t. Christians don’t have it better off simply because we have God. We still love in a fallen world and we still are fallen people. We might decide on a whim one day that we don’t want the umbrella anymore and drop it on the ground. But God always has a spare. Or two. Or three. Or however many times you drop the umbrella. For those that don’t like analogies—God is always, unconditionally there for you. No matter how many times you turn away from Him, he standing there with arms wide open waiting to be your Strength again.

May you find his Strength, and may “the peace of God, that surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” 

Happy Sunday!

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Winter...

IT’S SNOWED!!! It hasn’t snowed all winter, and it finally begins. I’m as happy as ever right now.

Insight: I LOVE LOVE LOVE a cold, snowy winter. It never seemed right to me that there are places in this world that never experience the magic of glistening white snowflakes. Like Florida. Don’t get me wrong, I adore palms trees and beaches, but in winter, there needs to be white, powdery stuff on the ground!

Now you might hate snow. And you have good reason too. It’s cold. It’s wet. It gets you cold and wet. And if you don’t have a scarf and bend your head down to look at something, it falls down the back of your coat and melts on your neck. Brrrrrrr! But there are so many good things about it too.

Why do I love snow? It’s kind of a combination of a bunch of things. I love the way it falls in soft flakes, quietly drifting to the ground. I love how when it descends the whole world seems to stop and freeze in that beautiful moment. I love the way it looks on nature; how it covers the world in a gorgeous frost; how quiet and serene everything is. Even the birds stop and listen to the snow fall.

But I think I love it most because of the symbolism I see in it. When I look at snow it reminds me of Jesus. How before I knew him I was dark and cold and dreary, but then I met the Lord and He covered me with his love; He destroyed the old me and in my place he put His pure Spirit. And of course, after winter comes Spring, and the promise of new life and hope. It just makes me so happy knowing that God loves me enough, that no matter how many offenses I make against him, he’ll always wash away my sin and make me white as snow. Pure. Innocent. Beautiful.

I pray that you find the peace that comes with that knowledge. I hope that you can find it through this simple blog post.  Happy (late) Snow Day. :) 

My Philosophy. (or, at least, one of them.)

Happy New Year!

Yesterday, one of our chaplains (pastor for the military, in case you didn’t know) gave a sermon on this past year and the year ahead. She started out by talking about the amazing experiences that we’ve had as a church overall in 2011. She pointed out our prayer requests fulfilled, and praises worth praising God for, and even some sad moments in the past year. She spoke about how a tragedy had recently struck her life, and I could hear in her voice the severe pain that anyone feels when they encounter emotional difficulty. But through that pain, she talked about the good times she had before the tragedy struck. She said something that stuck with me.

“Never regret what you do.”

I’ve seriously thought about this, and I’ve made some adjustments to come up with a very simply stated, yet hard-to-live philosophy.

Never forget. Never regret.

I have made a lot of bad decisions in my short life. Fortunately for me, none of them have affected me to an extreme, but I’ve been heartbroken and I’ve hurt people. I will never forget who I hurt or who hurt me. But I also won’t hold any one of them or myself in contempt for the things we’ve done. People change. That’s a simple fact of life. I know I’ve changed; if it weren’t for Jesus Christ, I would not be the person I am today.

One thing Jesus has taught me is the power to forgive. It took forever to learn, and I’m still working on it, but finally I know how to forgive others and most importantly myself. I always have to remind myself that the bad choices I made are not what make me who I am. Every choice is an action to change. With everything you do, you are altering the way people look at you and the way you look at yourself. I am so grateful for the opportunity to become a better person, but at the same time, I can’t forget about my past, even though I may want to, because that is what made me the person I am today. Your past is a part of what made you the person you are today. You can’t forget that; it would be like forgetting a part of your identity.

That was the never forget. The second part is a little difficult to explain, but I’m going to try. :)

I can see it being so easy to misinterpret “Never regret.” I know a bunch of people would tell me this is ground to “live your life to the fullest”; to, in a sense, do whatever you want and not give a care what anybody thinks. But that is a TOTALLY wrong way to look at this. I don’t want you to make stupid mistakes and end up paying the consequences. What I mean is for you to try and do the right things, and even if you fail and do something wrong, not to regret it, because if you fix it, you will learn not to make that error again.

We all have amazingly awesome, incredibly spectacular memories. I can’t even begin to count all the inside-one-liner jokes my friends and I have. It’s so great to make memories. It’s so great to have fun and be with the people you love. And I won’t ever regret those moments, when we couldn’t breathe we were laughing so hard, or when we stayed up till five in the morning talking and never running out of subjects. Those times sure are memorable. And those people are even more memorable, and I will never regret meeting them or making them my friends, however brief a time they are in my life.

I believe with my full being that we should never regret the decisions we make, not even if they’re wrong. I know at first you might think that’s incorrect, but I can’t help but think that everything happens in our life for a reason. God has a plan, even if we have no idea what it is. And every understood bad decision is a step towards a better life. (I know that sounds like a cheesy self-help book, but it’s about as simple and real as I can get.) The key word in that last sentence is understood. Only when we really understand the hurt we’ve caused or the pain we feel can we learn and move on.

So there you have it; my little philosophy. Live your life so that you will remember all the things that made you who you are and never regret those decisions, even if they hurt, because if you trust in God and truly try to do what is right, then everything you do will be for His glory.

I hope I covered all I wanted to say....if I remember anything else, I'll write it in another post :)

Veggietales got it right when they said: “God made you special, and He loves you very much!”

Have a happy, prosperous, memorable 2012, everyone!