Something about lukewarm Christianity, not being like the world, and seeking first the kingdom

Wow, two posts in one week? What is happening!

Well, let me tell you, friends. The last few weeks I have been diving into Jesus. I have been seeking first the kingdom, I have put His will above my own, I have been listening with my heart to Jesus, and in doing all this, I have been finding Him. The more we connect with our Heavenly Father, the more He can speak to us, and through us.

A few weeks ago, I realized that I had set up idols in my life. This is a really difficult thing to admit as a Christian. Confessing that, once I realized it, was easy. Because I am a Christian, I want Christ to be first. I know that apart from Him, I can do nothing (John 15:5). I was one of "those girls" who held her boyfriend in a place that was higher than Christ. Growing up, I promised myself I would never do this, but because I could see him and because I knew he would have good things to say, I put him first. The second idol I placed in my life, and honestly it was probably even more important than my other idol, was fear. Fear manifested itself as anxiety as well. I let fear and anxiety control me. I worried constantly about what could happen, what someone might say, how this may screw up the plan for me life. One day though, I woke up and I was like, no! I am tired of this. I don't want to be a slave to fear, to my emotions, and I handed it over to Jesus. I believe I mentioned this in another post, but I just wanted to give a little recap for those of you just joining.

The last few months, God has been speaking to me about being a lukewarm Christian. A few months ago, Sid said to me, "I want to be the kind of person who lives their life in a way that screams Jesus." Those words stuck with me because at the time, I was not living my life that way. The more I began to explore this subject, the more frustrated and angry I became with not only myself, but with Christians as a whole. There are so many of us who are living lukewarm lives. We aren't on fire for the Lord, but we certainly aren't heathens, we are merely just going through the motions. We show up to church on Sunday night and we go to our Bible study during the week. Maybe we listen to the Christian radio station during our drive into work. But apart from those times, we aren't actively seeking the Lord in our life. It takes too much work to read the Bible, there isn't enough time, praying is boring...what excuses do we use? Now, I don't believe in a works based faith, but I do believe that you are going to be stuck, stagnant and slipping deeply into complacency unless you are praying, worshiping, and picking up your Bible. You cannot call yourself a Christian and not put in the work to maintain your relationship with Christ.  The Creator of the universe wants to tell us how much He loves us. He wants us to come and sit with Him. He wants to hear about our day. He wants us to thank Him. He desires to be with us. He created us for His glory. But we cannot expect all of the blessings He has for us by merely saying, "oh yea, I am a Christian." It takes work.

I don't think we realize how much the world effects us. I don't think we put in enough care as we should as to what we are allowing to infiltrate our minds. There are songs, tv shows, books, magazines that we read and we may think they are harmless, but everything that you take in makes an impression on your soul. Friends, we have to stop thinking that this stuff is innocent. There are songs that play on the radio that physically make me sick because of the message they are sending. This is what I am talking about, either stuff is for God, or it is against God. There is no in between. That line may fall at a different place for different people. I would encourage you to find where that line is. This is done by listening to the Holy Spirit and when He is poking you, and you know that it isn't right, you need to drop it and walk away. I don't think that enough of us are doing this. We need to remember that we are called to be in the world but not of it (1 John 2:15-17; Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 9:19-23). Living in the world is fine, in fact we are here to be a light to other people, but living LIKE the world isn't okay. God doesn't call us to fit in. He has told us that we are set apart. We can live in this world, and yet be nothing like it, and we need to start grasping how serious of a situation this is.

I want us to be people who are on fire for God. I want to see my generation as a generation who is so in love with Jesus that it oozes out of us every second of every day. The church in Acts is a great example of what we as Christians should be striving for. The Holy Spirit was moving and instead of thinking, "eh, someone else will do it," the Church was responding. We should be a Church like that. People often complain that the world has given a bad name to Christians...why can't we change that. Instead of looking down at the world, with our stern finger of condemnation and furrowed eyebrows of pride, why can't we be loving people so really and authentically that they want in on what we have? That is living a life that is red-hot for the Lord. You can't do that by being like the world, you just can't. Going back to what my boyfriend said, we should be a people who are living our lives in a way that screams Jesus. We should be striving to show people the heart of our Father. And to get to this place, we need to turn off Netflix, we need to put down video games, we need to take a break from ungodly influences and start opening up our Bibles, starting dropping to our knees in prayer, start worshiping the God who created us and truly begin seeking first the kingdom (Matthew 6:33). When we start doing that friends, we are going to see God moving and He is going to start shaking our world in the most wonderful, powerful, and awesome ways.

Drop a comment and let me know your thoughts on this.

Self-caring for Your Temple

I am going to begin this post by telling you all that the message I feel on my heart tonight is very heavy. I am hoping that I find the words to adequately explain the thoughts and the words that are rushing through my head. But, before we begin, the last three weeks have been especially difficult for me. I don't feel the need to share what is going on at this point, but I do believe there will be a time when I talk about this period in my life in such a way that brings so much glory to God our Father. For now, I am keeping this all inside and waiting in anticipation for the Lord to carry out His will. God is good all the time, and even in mess, it is important to remember that God is still working on His masterpieces (Ephesians 2:10).

Now to begin what I really want to say! As I was driving to my grandparent's house this evening, I was thinking about some topics that I could write about. I settled on the importance of self-care (as I was coming to her house to take a bubble bath). Never have I understood self-care, that is until this last year... and NOW I understand how important it is. So, as I sat in my bubble bath, I mulled over thoughts and ideas of how I could write this blog, what I could say that would be especially interesting and captivating. Nothing really came...instead I started to think of something the Lord told me this morning, something that I thought was just for me. I wasn't planning to share my conversation with Him, but something kept telling me that I needed to write this down (Maybe that "something" is the Holy Spirit, eh?)

Let's recap for those of you who don't know everything about me... ;)

In 2015 I moved to Honduras. While it was a WONDERFUL experience, I became extremely sick. Many people do not understand the severity of what I went through in Honduras. At one point, I was laying on my bathroom floor, crying and completely unable to move and all I could do was say, "Jesus, please just bring me home to You. I can't do this anymore. You have given me a wonderful life." It was truly a terrifying experience for me. In under 24 hours, I lost 17 pounds. I couldn't eat anything, I couldn't even drink anything. When I looked in the mirror, I thought to myself, "this is what death looks like." The sickness over took me, and I was unable to take care of myself or even think. I made the decision to go to the emergency room, which was another terrifying experience all together. The week I was sick was honestly the worst time of my life.

When I came home, I was mostly excited to be where there was modern medicine. I was so happy to be home. The excitement of coming home over took the ordeal that I had gone through, and though I would tell people I was sick, I never explained the trauma that I had gone through during that week. I didn't even realize it was trauma until a few months ago. I didn't want people to feel sorry for me. I still don't want people to feel sorry for me. I am only sharing this because it is important to what the Lord said to me today.

Coming home meant going to so many doctors appointments. It meant labs and blood draws. It meant questions after questions and speculations about what was going on. The doctor gave several different possible diagnoses, but never settled on what I had picked up. All he knew was that whatever I had had done quite a bit of damage to my gut (ew!) and that had caused irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

For the last (almost) two years, I have struggled with IBS. The thing about it is that I will be fine for a while, and then all of sudden I am not. It comes in waves, symptoms change, and remedies differ from episode to episode. It has caused anxiety and a variety of other issues that I would never wish on anyone.

Are you depressed yet? Are you sitting there thinking, "why the heck am I reading this?" Please stick  with me, because, it is about to take a turn, and as I said, this is to set up what the Lord shared with me this morning. And friends, I think it is pretty exciting.

This week has been a difficult week with my IBS. I have not felt 100% and I feel very weak and weary. This week I have eliminated most foods and focused on liquids (well, at least I tried too ;)).

On my way to work this morning, I was praying for my day. I started to praise Jesus for healing my knees in Honduras, because honestly, that was just awesome! Then, I started to pray about my IBS, I asked God to take this away from me. Being who I am, I reminded Him of all I was doing to try and combat this issue. And the Lord just said," I am transforming your body into a temple so I can dwell in it." WOAH.

Now people, God was not just talking about my physical health when He said this. I mean I have a lot to work on in that area. But, I have not done the greatest job at taking care of my temple in the past. I have allowed sickness, pain, false gods, sins, lies, and emotions to clutter up my temple.

I prayed about this all day. Being a woman of prayer, I know when the presence of the Lord is moving, and I feel it in my spirit frequently, so I know He didn't mean that He isn't dwelling in me at present. But the more I prayed about what this meant, and the more I meditated on the verse 1 Corinthians 6:19 "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own,"  The more I began to understand why the Lord had said this to me. My physical health is one area that the Lord is transforming, but the even larger area that He is transforming is my spiritual health. 

When I read this verse, I always equate it with eating and exercise, but today it means so much more to me. 

Our bodies are temples. Where did God's spirit dwell in the Old Testament... in the temple, right? God is comparing us to temples, my friends. Temples are holy areas that are in existence for the  purpose of honoring the Lord, and worshiping the Lord, and spending time with the Lord. The temple was where the spirit of God would dwell. Like the presence of God was so strong in one area of the temple that a times people could not enter it because the presence of the Most High God would be enough to kill them. THAT is powerful stuff. Now when Jesus died and the temple veil was torn that changed, I am merely painting a picture with the OT temples. That torn veil opened up the Holy of Holies to all of us. This was a reverent and holy place, and God compares our bodies to temples where the Holy Spirit, whom He gave to us, dwells. I love this idea. We can experience the presence of Jesus in such an awesome way within our own bodies and minds because the Holy Spirit dwells there. 

Now let look at something else. If we are temples, what do we allow into our lives that we would not dream of taking into a church? I thought about that next... There is so much junk and filth and sludge that we allow ourselves to absorb. We tell ourselves that it doesn't effect us. We tell ourselves that it isn't really sin. We tell ourselves that everyone does it anyway, EVEN Christians. But I started to think, what if all of this crap we are carrying and holding onto is what is keeping us from truly dwelling with the Holy Spirit? I would say that it clutters our temple and there is so much in our temple that we push the presence of the Holy Spirit so far out that we can't feel Him anymore. Maybe this doesn't happen intentionally and then one day we take our eyes off the crap and start to look around for the Holy Spirit and we feel like we can't find Him. (This is 100 % our fault as we know that God NEVER leaves us). 

Are you getting what I am saying friends, or am I just some crazy girl who is too relaxed from her bubble bath to be making any sense right now? 

God wants us to treat our bodies as such a place that the Holy Spirit can dwell there all the time. With every breath, every heartbeat, every step, we can, and should, feel Him. THAT is how it should be. How exciting would that be? I'll tell you what, once you get a little taste of His presence, it becomes addicting and you crave it all the time. And when that happens, the things of earth seem so small and insignificant. That is because we have the Creator of the entire universe actually dwelling in us.  

I started with my story of Honduras and now it doesn't seem to tie into my ending here. I think that the point I wanted to make is that we should be working on our temples (duh). We should be striving to become a place where the Holy Spirit dwells. Sometimes it looks like dealing with our physical health and sometimes we need to work on our spiritual health. I just feel so strongly about this. 

So this week, I would encourage you to take time and self-care for your temple. For me, that means laying in a bubble bath listening to quiet worship and just pouring my heart out to Jesus. Maybe for you it means working out or fasting. Maybe there is something else you need to try this week to treat your body as a temple. And maybe, and it means doing some cleaning out of the crap in your temple to make room for the Holy Spirit. Whatever it is, do it this week. You can even use me for accountability. 

I would love to hear your thoughts. Message me, comment on this, or text me because I can not express how much I would love your thoughts and feed back. (Especially yours, Dad). 

Have a good week friends! 

(COMPLETELY off topic, my grandma just saw me typing this and said "you are so good at the type writer," she is awesome).