Love is a Universal Language

I was kinda the invisible kid in high school. That's how I saw myself, anyway. I was the awkward kid who never really said much unless I was with my friends. I didn't raise my hand in class and I always felt out of place. I decided that college would be different. I needed to be different. Since I moved to Johnson City, I have had to rely on God a lot because there are times that I am by myself. I have had to rely on him for lots of love and to have someone to just talk to when I miss home or need encouragement. I decided to start making a difference by sitting with random people who were alone at lunch. Now, this is all praise and glory to God because I could never do this without Him. It was really hard when I first started because it was uncomfortable and towards the beginning, people wouldn't even say hello when I greeted them. I was afraid of rejection. When I was in high school, I talked to one of my aunts about how I had a hard time making friends and she told me that one moment of courage can change your life, so I challenged myself to do that. I walked past a gentleman sitting alone (he works for the school's food service). I felt the Lord nudge me to sit with him, but I was afraid because I didn't know him and there weren't many people in the room at the time. Nevertheless, I obeyed and sat with him. We got to talking and religion came up and we got to talk about a few things. When the time came for him to leave, he said, "you know, I really didn't wanna come to work today because it is my birthday". So naturally, I told him to have a happy birthday and he smiled, thanked me, and went on his way. This is just one example of the countless random people I have met this week. I promise you that if you follow the Lord's direction, He will bring you to some many opportunities to witness and show the love of Christ. You'd be surprised to see how many people are willing to accept it. I challenge you this week to go out and sit with someone random at school, work, or maybe even a public place. Talk to them, show them the love of Christ, but most of all, let the Lord lead you to witness. Love is a universal language. Let it break your barriers.

Purpose Driven?

I started at a new church today and something that Pastor Jon said really caught my attention. He said, "I do things on purpose. I have prayer time and read the Word on purpose." To you that may sound weird or maybe even plain, but to me, those words shook my very being. It didn't hit me later though. I was sitting in my dorm room on my bed that is about 4 feet off the ground writing in my prayer journal. I used to be kind of strange with purposefully reading my Bible or prayer when I didn't feel like it. I thought God might take it as me bringing lip service to Him. "Well God, I don't feel like talking to you and I don't feel like learning about your interests, but I guess I will". I thought God would be offended if I came with this sort of attitude to Him. I thought it showed a lack of love so I stopped going into His presence and reading His Word because I didn't want to feel like that. Today, Pastor Jon's words tore every bit of that rejection fear away from me. I walked into my room, picked up my Bible, and said, "I want to be deliberate. I want to do this on purpose." For once, I finally understood that when we bring ourselves when we don't feel like it, it doesn't show a lack of love. In fact, it is the ACT of love. Love is about giving up yourself, even when you don't feel like it, for someone else. Love is about giving. When you are worn and weary and you can't go on, but yet you still give of your time, that is love and God honors that. All He wants from us is our love, our commitment. Don't be afraid to be purposeful. Be deliberate.

From Gray to Grace

My youth group went to camp this week and I thought it was a good idea to share with anyone who may read this what the Lord did for me.

Over the past couple of months, I have been struggling with what I believe was the onset of depression. I used to have frequent anxiety attacks and those were beginning to return as well. I didn't quite understand what I was going through so I didn't realize that I needed help, so naturally,  I didn't ask for it. I was having a hard time feeling anything except for sadness. I was broken and I didn't even know it because I couldn't feel. I would sit in my group of friends and stare at the wall and just be completely disengaged from everyone. My close friends would always ask what was wrong and my only reply was that I was tired. Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't lying because I truly was tired, but there was more going on and I didn't know how to explain it. I didn't know what was going on inside my head and my heart. It was like everything was gray, but I didn't really notice it.

While at camp this week, God completely wrecked my life. Again. He continues to amaze me. On Wednesday (July 13, 2016), we had a fire tunnel. In case you don't know what a fire tunnel is, it's where people make a "tunnel" out of two lines of people and you walk between them and they pray over you. IT'S AWESOME. I went through the fire tunnel and the Holy Ghost was all over me. I could feel His power like crazy, but I still wasn't completely free. I was praying with and for people and then someone came over to me and began to pray. I was slain in the Spirit and I had a vision and God spoke to me. It went as follows:

I was asking to be free and to be able to feel again. He said that in order for that to occur, He had to take something from me. I didn't mind. At this point, I was desperate and I knew that He was good, so I didn't fear. I saw a hand reach into the left side of my chest and pull my heart out. It was gray and shriveled and it wasn't beating. It didn't move at all. Then, the heart was transformed into a new, red, beating, vibrant heart. It was very large and bursting with color. Then I asked Him to renew my mind because battling with your mind is a lot of the fight. I felt a tingling sensation on my forehead that felt like a very gentle finger. It moved down the center of my forehead to my nose and down past my lips to my chin. It repeated this several times. After once or twice of this, two more sensations developed on either side of the center and moved in opposite directions. I lingered in His presence and when I arose, I was no longer the same girl battling with depression and anxiety. I was renewed in my mind and my heart was pure. HE MADE ME NEW. I am a new creation IN Christ. I am IN Him and He is IN me.

Love is in the Air.. or Something Like That...

I've been thinking a lot about the love of God and I've noticed something. I've noticed that we don't fight FOR love, but we fight ABOUT love. We fight about homo/heterosexual rights, fornication, and things that relate to these matters but as Christians, we fail to fight for what the Bible declares love as. I'm tired of hearing people claim that we are supposed to love everyone despite their sexual orientation, religion, political views, upbringing, or anything else that people are stereotyped as. Yes, this is true and the Word of God does say that we are to love as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it, but, this statement of "love" is being used against God. HE is LOVE! What He says is love is love. I pray that Christians unite together and fight for what God says is love in His Word, rather than fighting about what everyone else has to say. As a Christian, stand for the Word of God, stand for righteousness! Stand for love as God defines it. I'm charging all Christians to stand for what the Bible declares as truth. If we stand together and fight FOR love, then love will abound. United we stand, but divided we fall! That is what's wrong with the church today. We do not stand for the Word of God and we have sat back and been idle long enough! People of every generation, I charge you to stand for love!

Pedestals and Misadventure

As a PK, people love to think that you're supposed to be perfect. When I was a young kid, I struggled with this a lot! It was super hard for me because I'm one of those people who tries to please everyone. What I found out the hard way is that PKs are kids and people too and trying to live up to other people's expectations will only make you fall further and harder. I tried so so so hard to impress people with my "godliness". I put quotes around this word because I was far from being godly. I was like those pharisees that Jesus talks about in the Bible who would go out in the street and pray super loud just so other people would hear. I wasn't even really living for the Lord. Sometimes I would have my heart in the right place and I would try so hard, but other times, I would lose sight of who I was and I would try to fill the shoes of 1,000,000,000 people who weren't me. BUT THEN, I fell in love with JESUS! I stopped constantly worrying about how others thought I should be or act and starting discovering what God thought about me and who he knew I was. Stop trying to be everything the world says you should be and fall into the arms of Jesus. He says that you're already enough. 

If We Seek HIM We Will Find HIM

"The more I seek you, 

The more I find you. 

The more I find you,

The more I love you." 

I honestly cannot express the feeling that I felt when I discovered how true these words to Kari Jobe's song truly are. When you don't seek God, you aren't going to find Him! If you lose your keys and don't look for them, you're 99% less likely to find them. God is the same!! You've probably heard this in a sermon all your life but it's too true to pass up! #1: God isn't gonna show up if you don't invite Him. #2: If you go to church expecting to be out by a certain time like always and expect the message, worship, and everything to be the same, YOU WON'T SEE A MOVE OF GOD! If you want to see glory, GET ON YOUR FACE! The more you spend time with someone, the more you learn about them and the more you fall in love with that person. "The more I seek you, the more I find you." In other words, the more I spend time with you, the more I get to know you. The more I learn the intimate facts and little gold nuggets about your personality. :) THe more I learn about you, the more I learn about your qualities. Which in turn, "the more I love you!" After that, the cycle starts over because when you love someone, you desire to spend time with them! So you "seek, find, and love" over and over and over again!

Let him have it

What does it mean to turn something over to God? Everyone is always saying that! "It's okay sweetie! Just give it to the Lord!" But honestly, what does that really mean? I have claimed in times past that i gave something to God when I really didn't and I didn't realize that I hadn't. When you don't know what something really means, how are you supposed to act on it? If you dont know what love is how are you supposed to act on it? I promise I'm going somewhere with this.

Giving something to God is coming to a point where you can continously pray for His will to be done instead of your own. If you are praying about something and worrying about something constantly and always asking God to move a certain way, you are limiting what he can do. Okay some cases are a little different. Like I've been praying for salvation for some of my family for so long. I get frustrated sometimes and then I realized i was praying with the wrong attitude.
I was praying like this:
"God, i pray for salvation over Bob (random name here). Lord, he needs you. Send someone to break through his barriers. Take down his walls and let him see you for who you are, God."
While that's all good and fine, i wasn't asking God to do whatever it takes to let the person see and recieve true salvation. I wasn't letting God move. In my attitude, I was telling God what to do. I hope this is making sense to y'all cause it's kinda difficult to explain this revelation from the Lord, but I believe that here in America and even all across the globe, we need to start praying "Your kingdom come, Your will be done!" Not our way, but His!:)
So, let Him have it... But the right way with the right attitude.

Model Mayhem

Picture a stereotypical model in your head. Think of how they do certain things to look just right in front of everyone else but they're probably broken at night. Get a good image of this person in your mind because this is you.

We do this to our spiritual lives. We prep and glam up our spiritual selves to make ourselves appear spiritually solid. We work so hard at focusing our attention on what we look like to others verses what we look like to God. It's like a relationship that's all about the popularity. Like a marriage that's all political. We want others to see how well we are doing in our "relationship" with God. But at this point, can we even call it a relationship? If we are only spending time with Him so that others will see and think that we have it all together, is it really what you're claiming it to be? Don't be a model that starves your spirit. Be a real person who spends time with the Father.

Blessed and Stressed

As a YPK, I always had stress, even as a kid. I've dealt with anxiety since.. well, I can't even tell you when. Life just always got complicated and I thought of myself as a crybaby because I cried so much due to stress. Even though God blesses me daily and feels me with overflowing joy that is beyond comprehension, I still lose sight of Him sometimes and I become focused on things around me. I lose sight of what God has given me and focus on what I think I need. That's actually a tactic that the devil uses. John Bevere, in his book "Good or God" addresses this issue. He states that in the Garden of Eden, the devil got Eve's focus off of the things that the Lord had given her and had her focus on the one thing that looked 'good' that was denied to her: the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That's what happens to us as PKs and even youth pastors. We allow the devil room to get our eyes off of the One who really matters. We are really too blessed to be stressed. God has given us so much. He gave His life so that we can be free.
Philippians 4:6-7 says, " Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."   

Marriage and Whatnot

Something that is crazy weird for me right now as a YPK (youth pastor's kid) is the people I grew up with are all getting married and having children of their own. It's hard to explain how I feel about this because it's honestly one of the strangest feelings that I have ever experienced. I feel like (even though I'm only 18) I should be right along there with them because I grew up with them. It seems that I should be 24 or 26 too, but I'm still in high school and have 5 more years before I'm to the age they are. It's so weird. I wish I could fully explain it but if you're a YPK and roughly my age, you'll understand what I mean. When I was younger I didn't understand the whole age gap thing, I just felt like I was a teenager too. I'm actually starting to notice this same concept with my younger sister as well. She will be turning 3 later this month but she tells me that she's a teenager too! haha like I've clearly expressed.. so weird.
Below is a picture of me when I was younger (probably about 6 or 7).

Intro to Life in Ministry

I cried myself to sleep a lot of nights as a child because I never understood the things going on in my life. While I lived in a good Christian home with both of my parents who did so much for me, I still didn’t see the full picture. I didn’t get to spend a lot of quality time with my parents because they were in the ministry and spent a lot of their time with teenagers and other ministers. I cannot even begin to tell you how many countless hours I spent in meetings and outings. While I may have been there, I wasn’t involved so and based on my age, it was obvious that I couldn’t comprehend the reasoning and importance of youth ministry. I had a lot of resentment for my parents at a point in my life because I thought they cared more about the kids in the youth group than their own children. I felt neglected at times when my mom and dad would leave my brother and I with babysitters while they went on youth trips. There were times when conflicts rose between me and the teenagers who my parents worked so hard to reach. I felt alone. Despite the bad that arose from being a youth pastor's kid, I had tons of good times. I matured more quickly than the other kids and I was more advanced in my learning in school because I was constantly surrounded by people 7+ years older than me.

Always remember as a PK and a pastor or youth pastor that both the parent and the child go through difficulties. Just because you don't see it right now doesn't mean it does not exist.