the Power of Real Love

I have been wrestling lately with the idea of what real love is. Is it the romantic type of love we see in movies? Or is it the love that is unspoken but felt? Is love sentimental? Or is it materialistic? In this day and age it's hard to tell what is real and what is fake. It's sad to realize that, that's how love is sometimes too. Is the love I show everyday real love or fake love? Do I love with everything I have in me, or do I fake it til I make it? But what I have learned is that real love is the type of love that sucks. Real love hurts. Real love is painful. Real love is messy. Real love is confusing. Real love is dirty. Real love is a risk. Real love is not sentimental. Real love has no tolerance level. Real love is shown through joy, kindness, and humility. Real love goes to all measures to be shown. But in all honesty, real love, the love I want to experience is the kind where you would lay down your life. It's the love that Christ had shown us by dying on the cross. He knew the cost of our lives would be worth His and He was still willing to give it all up. That's the kind of real love I want. Yet, it seems like everyone today gets mixed up with what love really is. Love is not a new iPhone. Love is not three words spoken. Love is not a compromise. Love is not conditional. Real love, lasting love, that love; is sacrifice. So how do we reveal the power of true love? Don't have a tolerance level. The more we tolerate and put up with dismissive behaviors, the more we let others suffer from their own actions. I think that if someone is doing something hurtful or rude, they should be called out on in. But not through rudeness or anger, rather through kindness and love. You see, real love knows no peace. This real love, it understands what sin is. It understands where the evilness comes from. Loving in a real way is willingly calling others out. Loving in a real way is not being scared to go down to the dark roots of sin. Loving in a real way is what God calls us to do. Do I agree with some of the choices people make? Not at all. But do I love my friends and my peers enough to show them love while they make mistakes? Absolutely. The fact of the matter is, while I mess up and make mistakes, I still want my friends to love me. But I want them to love me enough to call me out on it too. I think that at the end of the day, no matter if you've made war or not, we need to know that we go before God, not anyone else. And when we go before God, He will know whether or not we loved to our best ability. How I see it is like this; everybody deserves to be loved. The saints. The sinners. The blind. The poor. The rich. The angry. The happy. The sad. The weak or the strong. The believers or the nonbelievers. The partiers. The uninvited. No matter who were are, and what part of life we are in, we need love. Because the label that society has given us is nonsense. The mistakes we make are a learning experience. We need love to feel valued. But our value should come from God and His real and perfect love, not the love that is fake. The power of real love extinguishes hate. The power of real love gives us joy. The power of real love leads us to the Lord. This love that leads us to the Lord shows us that we share and bask in His glory. It shows everyone that the Lord has loved us well so we can love others well. This real love, gives us a share of Jesus and a sin free life after earth.

"...Jesus answered, 'Unless I wash you, you have no share of me." -John 13:8.
So wash with Jesus and experience the true divinity of the love God has granted us.

choosing what is better

I think it is hard to be a teenage girl in the world in this day and age. There is so much to worry about; boys, make up, hair, what to wear, friends... Some days I just wish that I could be a guy for a change. But I've realized that it's not only girls who struggle with conforming to the ways of the world, guys do it too. Last night at church the sermon was over wanting the glory of man over the glory of God. How messed up is that? We reject God's glory, so we can receive the glory of man? That just doesn't make sense. Yet, it is true. We sit here and make all of our choices off of what others will think of us, in fear that we will be rejected. Recently, I've realized that it shouldn't matter how many followers we have on twitter or how many instagram likes we get on a picture, because that is what man adores and loves. What does God love? In Luke chapter 10, verses 38-42 are the story of how Martha and Mary, two sisters, opened up their home to Jesus. " 'Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, 'you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed- or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.' " Luke 10:41-42. I think that in this day and age it shouldn't matter if we have make up on or not. It shouldn't matter if we look cute everyday. It shouldn't matter what car we drive. Because all of that is materialistic, the nicer the items, the more glory we receive from man. But, when we put all of that aside, we receive the glory of God. We need to start waking up every morning ready to choose what is better. We need to go through everyday deciding whether or not we want glory from man or glory from God. I know that it may seem like glory from man is so much better than the glory of God, but at the end of the day, glory from man fades away and does not last. The glory of God? Now that's a whole different story. When I walk hand in hand with the Lord everyday, yes I mess up and I fail, and I am tempted and I want to make stupid choices, but does that mean I should? No. It means that I am human. But every time I turn down a temptation or every time I refrain from cussing or flipping someone off, God rewards me with something so much better. The small reward may not come now, but it will come later, in God's perfect timing.

I think for the longest time I had thought that I was taking the right path, that I was choosing God, and that I was actively pursuing a friendship with Him. Reality slapped me in the face the past couple of days and has shown me that I'm really not the person I would like others to see me. Yes, I made mistakes and I have messed up, but at the end of the day, at the end of my weekend, I had seen God completely change my heart. He had taken everything I thought I wanted and put Himself where all my want was. He had taken all my worries, doubts, and fears out of my life because He had seen that I had wanted to walk hand in hand with Him again. It turns out, that God did exactly that. I woke up this morning ready to face school with a joyful and sill attitude, all with God by my side. And I did it. Sure, I wasn't the best I could be, but God is showing me that He has forgiven me, now all I have to do is forgive myself. From this last weekend, I think I have realized that God did set my heart free. And in that God lifted the burden of my constant sadness and anger, and in turn for sadness and anger, God had replaced it with JOY and LAUGHTER and FORGIVENESS. This past Saturday night, God had really shown me the whole day that He brings joy in pain, laughter in tears, and forgiveness in anger. Saturday night was one of the best nights I've had in such a long time. The Lord is good my friends. He really is. The Lord has shown me what is better, and I have chosen it. And it won't be taken from me.

My Lighthouse

I'm new to this whole blog thing. I don't know if this will ever be read or if many people will see this. But I'm giving it a shot because I feel like The Lord has told me to do so. a

Today, February 8, 2014, I experienced the Lord in a new light. Today He has set me free entirely and I am so thankful and joyful . A big part of my testimony is the drowning of my friend back in 2010. I was new to this concept of a man who had stepped down from His throne in a magnificent kingdom to come and die on a cross for me. After I had lost my friend Drennen in the summer of 201, I had felt completely lost and alone. I myself, felt like I was drowning in the burdens of this world. A year later on June 24, 2011, I broke down at a YoungLife summer camp and I let Jesus into my heart. Little did I know that He was going to change my world from there on out. Life was so different and it seemed a lot easier with Him, because even when friends and I were fighting, I knew that God was there and that He wasn't going to walk out on me. Eighth grade year, second semester, I went on this high for the Lord. All I wanted to do was talk about Him to everyone I knew, even strangers. Well, being on the Jesus High I was on, God finally broke me. He had shaken up my world and changed me. That was hard. But then going into high school, I was excited and scared all at once. I didn't know what life would be like, but I was sure that it would be so much fun, because everyone "loves" high school. Yet, my freshman year of high school absolutely sucked. All my friends from middle and elementary school had left me, or so I thought. I felt so alone and lost. I knew that I had Jesus, but I really didn't think that Jesus was necessarily for me. Around the spring of 2013, God had said to me that change needed to happen. So change happened. For the thousandth time it seemed, God had broken my heart. And the rebuilding of a road to happiness began again. The summer of 2013 started and ended unlike I had planned. I started the summer off hanging out with one of my best friends and all these boys; but I was so broken. I went away to summer camp in Minnesota. There I got baptized. Everything I think I had ever felt hurt or broken about, God had just lifted off of my shoulders. When I was being baptized, God redeemed my heart and had shown me what true JOY was like. God had overwhelmed my soul like He had done numerous times before. I ended my summer with a heart full of joy and forgiveness. Sophomore year started and I came into the school year with a better attitude and I was so ready to rebuild ruined friendships and to make new friends. As the school year progressed, each day drained me a little more. I felt like I was drowning again. I felt like there was no way out of this never ending cycle of being happy and then sinking. Then, on December 13, 2013, the enemy had stolen everything I had ever worked for; my joy, my redemption, my forgiveness. I was in the Arapahoe High School shooting. I was struck with fear and I had never felt so emotionally and physically drained. It's been almost 2 months since the hell storm happened and it's been a work in progress to regain my joy and steal everything back from the enemy. As this week had ended horribly, I woke up this morning with a new attitude, ready to take on the day, knowing that it was going to be a good one. As campaigners ended, and my leader dropped me off at home, I knew that there was something I needed to do to find my way back to God. I knew that God wasn't going to just leave me on the side of the road, hopeless and dried out. So I sat in my room singing and shouting out at God, until I came across the song, "My Lighthouse", by Rend Collective. I broke down in tears. This was my song. This was God speaking to me. Since the drowning of Drennen is a huge part of my testimony, I knew God was trying to say something to me through this song. I played it over and over and over waiting on God. He spoke. He told me that HE IS MY LIGHTHOUSE. That even when I am sinking, and the darkness overwhelms my soul, HE SEES ME. I have seen so many people get set free since this summer and it was something I wanted and needed in my heart. I have searched for it high and low, and all it took was this one song. JESUS HAS SET ME FREE. Jesus is my lighthouse. And He won't let me drown.