Feed Me

Each morning, I get three devotionals delivered to my email inbox, I read six on my youversion app, and I have three more in my newsfeed on Facebook....I just finished the book "The Prayer of Jabez" and am reading "The Love Dare."

I'm addicted to the Word.

It's a good addiction, but I feel like I can't get enough. When I start feeling idle, I feel like I should read more. Or find a sermon to watch online. I feel like if I'm idle, I'm open to attacks by the devil. My mind wanders, I become self conscious, I start to get anxious and think of things that might be happening... It's scary.

I wish I could shut my brain off and just listen to my heart instead. My heart holds the love and that's all I want.

...and so I pray...

I not only read he word constantly, I pray all the time too. I'm constantly talking to God.

"Lord, calm my brain. Help me not to worry. Give me peace and comfort. Lord, guide me in your plan, use me to reach others. Make my words meaningful. Take away my jealousy and contempt. Fill me with love, Lord...."

I wonder if a time will come when I don't feel the constant need to redirect my attention to God. Will there be a time when I'm not so anxious anymore?

...and so I pray...

"Dear Lord, I know you will bring me to through this in your time. Please give me the patience and strength to persevere and make it there. And in the meantime, keep me shielded from the actions of the devil against me."

Amen.

Love and Be Loved

"See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another." - 1 Thessalonians 5:15

I've been praying on this verse.  At this time in my life, it would (and has been) so easy for me to hate the people talking about me and the one "doing this" to me.  It would be easy for me to yell and scream at them, and just tell them to F off and get out of my life.  It's easy for me to curse them in my head, tighten my lips and knit my eyebrows in anger, and just to become negative and hardened.  But what good is this going to do?  God doesn't want us to hate anyone.

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God." - 1 John 4:7

Not only does God want us to love everyone, in a secular, non-religious sense what good is it going to do me to get angry at these people?  The negativity is going to build up in me and I will spiral even deeper into depression and despair.  All I will feel is the hatred, and I will forget the love that surrounds me.

I never knew so much love surrounded me until now.  Surrounded by a church family, my own family, my husband's family, a large group of friends and prayer warriors online, and a few acquaintances in the area, and yet I still felt completely alone almost all the time.  The fact was that I had no love IN me to feel it FOR me.

I reached out to a group of friends and family who I felt would hold me together during this time a couple weeks ago.  There were a few that I were mistaken in thinking that they would want to stand behind me in this difficult time, but the majority of them check in on me daily, listen to my thoughts and prayers and woes and such, they pray for me and my family, and they tell me constantly that they love me.  I needed that as I haven't felt it in years.  But more over, I needed to feel it from God and within me. I needed to GIVE love too.

Love and positivity are feeding me right now.  When I start thinking anything negative whether it be doubt in my faith and what God is doing or if it's a negative thought about someone else and their actions, I pray (I told you I pray almost every minute of the day).

God, take this negative thought and feeling away from me. Fill me with love.  Help me focus on what is good in everything.  And through me bring good to others.  Amen.

God Speaks

Last night, I lay in bed fraught with anxiety and depression over my current situation.  Seems like nights are the hardest.  Going to bed, I get flooded with emotion and cry and cry.  And sleep evades me which is torturous because I feel that if only sleep would come, I wouldn't feel.  If I could sleep through this distress, I would....but that's not possible.

I digress...

So I lay in bed crying after reading for an hour and a half multiple devotionals and scriptures on topics I chose.  I lay there feeling so empty and lost and hopeless.  I cried and I said aloud, "God, I have been praying to you nonstop for 2.5 weeks now and I feel like I am saying the same thing over and over.  I don't know what to pray for, I don't know what is right.  I just want you to speak to me."  Within minutes, I fell asleep.

This morning, I woke up grateful for a new day.  Grateful that the night, the hardest part, was over.  Grateful that I could fill my time (and thus my mind) with busy work so that I wouldn't have to feel the pain anymore.  After I got my kids around and they were off to school, I sat down with my iPad and started reading the newsfeed.  Probably the third post down was a daily devotional that I had just recently subscribed to.  The first word I saw was "Compassion".  My heart skipped a beat as I remembered that just the night before in my frantic search of devotionals and scriptures to help me sleep, I had looked up the word "Compassion". 

com·pas·sion /kəmˈpaSHən/ (Noun) Sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others

I read the devotional and felt immediately like God was speaking to me.

" 'It doesn’t end at the beginning.' While Saul’s story begins with hatred, vengeance and violence, that is not the end of his story.

Through Christ, Saul becomes Paul and ends up as one of the greatest missionaries this world has ever seen. While his beginning was dark, through Christ, his ending was filled with light.

This is true for our lives too. No matter how we came into this world, or how we have acted in the past, that is not our final chapter.

 Through Christ we can bring life, hope and love into our world so that others can also experience this brighter future."

You see, I feel like I'm an awful person.  I have walked away from God. I have filled myself with anger and resentment.  I have been mean and hurtful towards people I love.  I have not been walking a Christian life.  And I lay in bed last night crying asking God to speak to me and He literally thrusts this in my face(book).

God loves me and forgives me because He has compassion.  And no matter how bad it gets, I need to remember that I can change if I walk with Him.  I've been asking God to forgive me these last couple of weeks. I have been asking him to change me and right when I feel hopeless, right when I ask him to speak to me...He does.

...and so it begins.

I recently had a devastating event in my life that will change the way I live from here on out.  I'm sure I will open up and express at some point, but for now, as I stay anonymous, I'll just share my experiences as I try to bring myself nearer to God in this trying time.

You see, I've been a believer for the last 15+ years after growing up in a home with a devout atheist father.  I never even thought about God growing up.  But in my teens I needed Him, and therefore He sent another teen girl into my life to bring me to him.  And thus my faith was born...

Since then, life has been hard, and I have gotten bored with Christianity so many times that I just haven't been where I should be with God.  I've blamed him for a lot of trials in my life that I felt should not have happened.  Too many for one person.  I grew angry at God...and the world in general.  I've ruined a lot of relationships with this bitter, negative attitude, including my relationship with God.

But...

God loves unconditionally.  And through this awful time, I'm brought back to Him as, like before, I really need Him.  He'll give me strength, He'll bring me through this, and He will make me whole and a better person because of it.  All I can do for Him is to do what He asks and be His servant.  So I pray...

I do not and will not proclaim that I know everything about Christianity or the teachings of the Bible. I'm only documenting for my own needs how I am walking back to God right now and forever.  I am doing this for myself.  Not for anyone else. But if God brings someone here who wants to walk with me, then I am glad to have helped.