How much of the time do we spend wrapped up in ourselves with our problems and our desires and our fantasies in our own little world? How much useless energy is spent in useless anxiety over possible futures that almost never come to pass? How many of us cling to old wounds that won’t heal and old grudges we can’t ungrasp? What’s the cure? To serve.

The best cure for your aching heart is to give it away serving others. To go out of your normal routine and intentionally make time to give a sympathetic ear to one who’s in pain. To go serve food to the homeless. To give an encouraging text to a friend who is feeling down and out.

The best cure for discouragement is to get out of your little world and go be Jesus to someone else in someone else’s world. You don’t have time for self-pity when you are lifting someone else up. God takes us down hard roads and rough places so that we can sympathize and bless those who walk similar paths. The fact that you lost a loved one makes you the one person best suited for helping someone else who is coping with loss. Your past of sexual abuse earns you the right to speak into the lives of those coming out of abusive situations. Your own battle with self-esteem issues makes you qualified to talk with that one who suffers with insecurities.

We are to be Jesus’ hands and feet, His heartbeat, and His love made visible to those around us. You may be the only Bible someone will ever read. I may not be able to prove my faith scienfically, but NO ONE can ever argue about what Jesus has done in my life. I am living proof, a testimony to the goodness and saving power of God in Jesus Christ.

As I have mentioned before, even if you are one small candle and don’t feel like your light reaches anybody, remember that all the darkness in the whole world will never be able to overcome the light from one single candle. All the darkness in the world has to flee from the light of Jesus shining through one obedient, faithful soul.

So get out of yourself and serve. It’s the best cure for saving you and me from ourselves.

Amen and amen.

Ususally when you hear the word supreme, you ususally associate it with chocolate. Or maybe that’s just me and my chocolate obsession at work again. But what is supreme joy? Here are some of my ideas about what supreme joy is:

Supreme joy is when you willingly surrender your heart’s desire to Jesus, not in order to gain something better, but simply because He’s worthy of it. To lay down that desire to be liked back by a certain someone or a desire to be recognized is hard sometimes, but it is as hard to do as Jesus is hard to love.

Supreme joy is when you do for others, expecting nothing in return, giving out of the sheer joy of giving. You are most like Jesus when you give sacrificially and unconditionally, because that was His whole purpose: to give everything– His life, His blood, His body– for your restoration and redemption and salvation.

Supreme joy is savoring the small, insignificant moments of life and not rushing past them in your neverending quest for a bigger, better tomorrow. It’s the laughter of friends, the shared joys and sorrows that bind us, and the common bond of Jesus’ love in us overflowing from one to another.

Supreme joy is being at peace at the end of the day, knowing that the Perfect Love of Jesus is casting out your fears and replacing them with hope. It’s being able to rest in Abba’s love and to finally be able to stop striving for other people’s approval, attention, and affection.

Supreme joy is fleeting in this life, because we are fallen and the foe we fight is a mighty foe. Our own sinfulness and the sinfulness of others comes in and wrecks our joy all too often. But supreme joy is also constantly just on the horizon, on the tip of your tongue, in the words of the song you can almost remember the name of.

My prayer is that supreme joy be yours this night. It is God’s delight to give you His joy.

Amen and amen.

I am OK with being a substitute person. I really really am. I will be the best friend I can be regardless, whether I was your first choice or last. It doesn’t matter.

Also, I am believing more and more that given time, Jesus can change and fix and heal ANYTHING. No matter how deep the hurt, how unbearable the pain, how broken and beyond repair. Jesus’ love can take ANYTHING and make it beautiful and good. Even in me.

I found out that my heart is not as whole and together as I thought. There are still wounded places where I have not gone in a long time that need healing. I pray for the healing of others, but don’t always recognize when I need it for me. But Jesus knows. And He started the healing process before I even thought to ask.

There are people I would like to read this, but if they don’t, that is fine. There are wishes I have that I have to take every day to the foot of the cross and surrender and say, Not my will but Yours. Even if Your will means my will be undone.

I am learning surrender and trust. To be still and know that God is God and He is always for me. That He waits for me when I am running after everything else.

I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder what the point of blogging and facebook posting is, but I keep doing it. Just like I keep trusting and believing when it seems pointless.

I have to tell myself again that what I feel and think lies to me all the time, so I can’t trust those. The heart is deceitful above all things and the mind is the first to be deceived. But Jesus is still the Truth, the Way, and the Life. No matter what I’m feeling at the time.

Amen and amen. And thanks for letting me ramble.

I used to think I knew everything. I used to think I had it all figured out. Not anymore.

Now I know there’s so much I’ll never know but I know this: Jesus is faithful.

I make all sorts of promises and manifestos about how I am going to make all sorts of great changes, then fall right back into old fears and lies. I can’t even last one day with my promises. But Jesus is true to His part.

I surrender a desire of mine to God, only to take it back and try to figure out some way to make my way work. I get my hopes all built up on a potential relationship, only to have them come crashing down on me, leaving me with a broken heart and doubts about myself. But Jesus never changes.

I can talk religious and spiritual with the best of them, but my thoughts are a cesspool and my attitudes stink most of the time. I am so very thankful mind-reading is not one of the spiritual gifts, or I would be supremely screwed. Jesus knows, and loves me anyway.

I can look like the most-together spiritually-mature person on the planet, but inside I am fighting back fears and phobias. I wear a mask that looks so real, people think it’s me. But it’s not. Jesus died for the real me.

What do I know for sure? Jesus. He’s faithful, He’s true, He never changes, He loves me no matter what, and He died for me. He’s my constant, my True North.

So what does it matter what anyone else thinks (and why do I obsess over what they think of me so much)? My goal is not to be popular, but faithful. My aim is to please One person, not many.

I will tell myself this story over and over until it really sinks in. I will tell you this story over and over until you can see it the way I’m coming to see it– as good news. The best news you’ll ever hear.

Amen and amen.

It’s not enough to have knowledge. It’s not enough to give mental assent to a belief. The devil knows his scripture, as he showed in the temptation of Jesus. Demons know exactly who Jesus is and what His mission is. But that knowledge will never make it to belief and trust .

The key is not knowledge, but trust. I may have all kinds of knowledge, but it does me no good unless I put that knowledge into action. The purpose of knowing about Jesus is that it will inspire me to know Him more. To love Him more. To surrender my will to His will and be willing to go wherever He wants.

The pharisees had knowledge, too. They of all people should have know who Jesus was when they saw Him. But they didn’t. Because it didn’t fit their agenda. If I have my own agenda and make my own rules, I won’t give up contol. It’s only when I see that my agendas don’t work and my rules fail me every time and my ideas of being in control are an illusion that I will follow Jesus.

Don’t just believe with your head. Believe with your heart. Believe with your hands and feet. Believe not only in words, but actions, too. Let your faith be one part of your live. Let it be your life.

If  I believe Jesus is who He says He is and can do what He says He can do, there’s nothing in my hands worth holding on to, no plan of mine I won’t surrender, no part of me I won’t lay at His feet.

Faith doesn’t mean anything unless it activates you. Faith doesn’t count for much as long as it’s only a facebook status and not somethin that makes you come alive.

My prayer is that Jesus will captivate and transform your heart into one that seeks wholeheartedly after Him.

Amen and amen.

I love the part of Mr. Holland’s Opus where one of his students, now a governor, gives a speech about how Mr. Holland has impacted so many lives. She says that she and so many others are who they are because of his influence. She tells him, “We are your symphony.”

You and I are part of God’s symphony. We are each notes in the opus He has been creating and performing since He first breathed life into man. We are His song of hope to the world that says that this is not as good as it gets. That the best is yet to come. Or that the best has already come and is taking over and His name is Jesus.

We are God’s love letters to the world. People read our lives and see how much Jesus loves them. People hear not only what we say, but how we act, and that speaks volumes of how much God means to us and how much we value Him.

We are God’s works of art. We were each at one point an ugly mess, without form or shape, without purpose or point. But He has taken us and made us beautiful. He has taken you and is forming you into His masterpiece, His trophy of grace that will one day amaze and astound the world.

We are God’s children. He sought us out before we ever thought of seeking Him. He came for us before we knew we needed rescuing. He paid everything to win our hearts. We each were worth enough for Him to go to a  bloody and tortuous death on a cross. You were worth it! I was worth it!

 I don’t know about you, but I want to be the best note in God’s symphony. I want my life to be the best love letter it can be. I want to be God’s masterpiece. I want to be a child who makes his father proud. I hope you do, too. Let our lives from now on be one big THANK YOU to God for all He’s done for us.

Amen and amen.

I really don’t understand people who are so legalistic and dogmatic all the time. Don’t they know that it took the same amount of Jesus’ blood to cover them, too? Aren’t they aware deep down of their own faults and weaknesses? When Jesus wept over Jerusalem, why do they seem to gloat over the fact that some people are going to hell? And why am I like that sometimes?

I need grace daily. I need it hourly. Today I needed it on a minute-by-minute basis. I am trying to give more grace and understanding to people because I know in my heart who I am without the grace of God and it is not pretty or PG-13.

I am still learning to forgive myself. I can’t ever do anything right by my own standards sometimes, but thankfully God doesn’t judge me by my own standards. He sees me through Jesus and He is satisfied with me, because He sees the perfect righteousness and finished work of Jesus.

I figured out that I have to yet again surrender trying to make things work my way and let God have His way in me. I prayed the old Elisabeth Elliot prayer, Thy will be done, even if it means my will be undone.

It still boggles my mind that God chose to use me. That I can be a part of seeing His kingdom break through in my lifetime. That I can be God’s hands and feet and be Jesus to the broken and needy.

I am so beyond thankful for good friends and good conversation. I don’t deserve either, but I have both. I am blessed. So why do I worry and complain? And why am I always putting my hope in something that’s just around the corner instead of resting in and enjoying what I have right now?

Thank You, God, that grace wins everytime, because I need a victory right now. Thank You for the everlasting arms that are over and around and under me as I write this.

Amen and amen.