It's funny how a single thing can make your day seriously awesome. Today, my cousin quoted one of my status' on Facebook. I was in shock, and incredibly flattered. Now you could say that it was my cousin who made my day. But have you noticed, when you look down deep, God is always at the root of everything? So here's the story:

The thing God's been working with me on is boldness. Stating my opinion without fear of being persecuted/embarassed. It's a lot harder actually doing it then just talking about it. So I thought of this status:

'Those who cannot see God's amazing love really do have their eyes shut tight. Those who can see it but don't accept it I simply can't understand.'

So I post it, then I start flipping out, like, "Oh my gosh, someone's totally going to get offended, should I delete it? Ahhhh!" But I remembered my own words of my 'It's time to come out!' post and thought, "Okay, here's me new motto: As long as it has God's seal of approval, I'm going to post it. His approval is all I need."

I posted 'It's time to come out!' as well, just to top the whole thing off, and tagged a load of people in it.

In the morning, my status had no comments and no likes. I was like, 'Whatever. God liked it." and went on with life. Then this evening, I saw my cousin posted it as her own status!

God is good, all the time. Don't let anybody ever tell you different.

His timing is perfect.

He knows our hearts even better then we do.

In short, he is amazing. :)

Look to the skies...

God's promises should stand out the most in our times of trouble.

Sometimes, that's exactly when we forget them.

After all, it's easy to remember things like that when you're happy and joyful and all promise-y.

But when things start to go bad, we often think about how bad things are going.

And we get all dramatic wondering if it could get any worse.

And if we'll even survive.

Instead, we should be thinking about how AWESOME it will be when God pulls us through.

Because He will.

He makes a way out of no way.

He pulls us out of the pit.

He stands our feet on solid ground.

On Saturday night it was raining. We were driving home from Indianapolis at 8:00-ish. The wind was blowing, the rain was falling, the tempature was warm. "Wow, this is perfect weather for a tornado. You don't know how perfect it is." Sarah said.
"Oh, believe me, I do." I told her. Sarah is the kind that wanted to chase tornadoes. I am the kind that wants to camp out in the basement with a book and a flashlight and a Hershey bar and wait until it goes away. The thought of a tornado was jabbing at me, trying to strike fear in me. But as we were driving along, I sat up straight and said, "Oh my gosh, look, a rainbow!" It was dark and cloudy, yet there, clear as day, it was, a shining reminder of God's promises. He has really great timing, you know? :)

Come out--By using the gifts God gave you:

Here we go...

We think that an ideal life would be one lived in comfort and safety, without fear, and without doing anything that makes us nervous of self-conscious.

However, we have now grown up and departed from Neverland, and have to live in the Real World.

In every one of us God has placed amazing gifts and talents, ways to glorify Him and guide others. Once we discover these gifts, we practice and refine and test them, until we become confident. However, some of us can practice and refine and test for a long time without thinking we are good enough.

We sit and think,

“Well, I can use my gift to glorify God…by myself…no one else has to know about it.”

We think this because at first, showing our gifts to the world can be very humbling, and sometimes we even feel embarrassed, two things we usually want to avoid. But, when we humble ourselves before God for the world to see, it’s twice the glorification to Him. Because it’s easy to be humble before Him when you’re alone. But it takes boldness to have the world see you humbled before Him, and to not care of what anyone but He thinks of you.

Or sometimes we think,

“Well, I don’t have to do this; other people have the same gift, somebody else can do the same thing.”

But what if there wasn’t somebody to take your place? Because that’s the truth. Nobody can do what you do exactly the way you can. Did you catch that? God has an empty spot in the Kingdom that only you can fill. He has a purpose for you that only you can do.

And then there’s that thought of,

“Well, I’ll just wait until someone discovers my gift and asks me to use it. I don’t want to seem show-offy.”

But what it really is, is God’s gift that He gave you. And someone has discovered that gift--You! And someone’s asking for you to use it--God! And since it’s His gift given to you, it’s His desire and His plan to show it off because it glorifies Him!

God gave us boldness. We may be afraid to publicly use our gifts because we may be judged or we might mess up or someone might not like it. And all of those things could, and are almost likely to happen. But what we have to realize is that the world’s opinion doesn’t matter. Your not using your gift for them, you’re not performing, you’re glorifying God for how wonderful He is.

So we have to stand up and use our gifts regardless and in spite of what the world may think or say. We need to stop making excuses! We need to stop being nervous or embarrassed! God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power and love and sound mind! (2 Timothy 1:7)

Our purpose here is to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. And to do that we’re going to have to get out of our comfort zone and be bold and use the gifts God gave us!

Starting…NOW. :)

Random thoughts for the day--Goodbyes

Goodbyes are a funny thing. We always get so worked up about how sad they are, but honestly, we should be thankful we get a goodbye. Because what is so much worse is when you don't get a goodbye, and the next thing you know, they're gone. Gone until further notice. Without a word. That, my friend is something utterly sad. So the next time you say goodbye to someone, just be a little thankful that you got the chance to say it.

"Surprise!!!"

You know it's one of the most incredible things when you finally see a manifest answer to prayer; when you finally experiance something you've been waiting and longing for. But you know what is just as incredible? When out of the blue for no reason whatsoever God just gives you a gift. You didn't ask for it, you may not have even thought of it, and God's just like, "I've got something for ya!" and suddenly there is this amazing thing in front of you.

Those moments just really make my day. It's amazing that God cares for us so much. It's amazing that He delights in us. I can almost imagine Jesus up there, tying up the gift with a big red bow, smiling all excitedly and saying, "She's really going to like this one! I can't wait to see her face when she gets it!"

Another fun thing is seeing when God answers your prayers in a way you don't expect. You kind of imagine how you want the answer to be manifested, but then suddenly when you're not expecting it God pulls out this crazy awesome answer that you couldn't imagine. At those times I just have to sit there and laugh and say, "God, you are awesome!" Because sometimes, that's all there is to say.

It's Time to Come Out!

So many of us are stuck. We hang out where it's comfortable in our own little worlds. We limit what we say because we don't want to offend anybody. But sometimes because we don't want to offend anybody, we miss the opportunity to impact somebody. A simple fact of life is that you can't please everybody. Somebody, at sometime, will get offended. And don't think that this is something new. 1 John 3:13 says,

"Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you."

And 2 Timothy 3:12 has an equally comforting message:

"In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted."

This is seriously a test of our faith. We have to have enough faith to stand up for what we believe in, even though it is likely that someone will be offended, or we will be persecuted.

So since we know this is probably going to happen anyway, why are we so hesitant to proudly proclaim our faith?

We need to spread the message to 'come out!'. Come out of that place you've been stuck in for years. God's doing new things, it's time for change! Shake the dust off your feet and come out! And then, shout that message to the world! Come out and join the human race! And we are in a race. And we're not going too fast just sitting there. Go on, get up, and come out!

I mean, personally, if I'm going to get persecuted, I'm going to be persecuted for doing something, not just sitting there contemplating all the amazing things others have done. We need to be DOERS of the Word and not just HEARERS.

Okay...let me finish with this:

'Come out'. If those two words brought Lazarus back from the dead, then by the power of Jesus they should work for this world. --Hannah

Bring it on

When a morning starts off shaky, turns just plain bad, gets worse, and then it starts to rain outside--it's hard to look for the silver lining. But I'm seriously sick of moaning and groaning about how sad life is--that's just no fun and it solves absolutely nothing. So my opinion? Bring on the rain.

A single step...

You never know where a single step may take you.

Creating this blog was a step. Who knows where it will end up. Maybe I'll end up right where I began, maybe this is the start of an incredible journey. One things for sure. I'm ready to dive in headfirst, wherever it may lead. Hopefully I may touch some hearts along the way. Maybe some of you will jump in to see where this takes me. But God's in the driver's seat. I'm just going to enjoy the ride.