Surrender- The Cure to a Weary Soul

Have you ever held onto something so tightly that your hand started to cramp? Clung so tightly that your knuckles have turned white in the passion of your grip?

Whether it was in a tug of war event or flying a kite, maybe even in a DIY project as you tried to force something together in frustration, I'm sure that we've all done it. If you've ever been there, you also know the relief that is felt as you relinquish your grip and massage the cramp out. You breathe a sigh of relief as the muscles loosens and the pain fades away.

I think that we do this more often than we think. Not in a physical sense necessarily, but we cling to the good in our lives, terrified to relinquish our grip on the known and face the terror of the unknown. We cling so tightly to the good that God has given us that we don't even realize that our hearts are hurting. We hurt because we've stopped listening to God and we are missing the better that he is offering. I do this. All the time. I look back now and my heart aches at the things that God was trying to bless me with if I'd only relinquished every part of my life to him. I ignored him and held onto to the life that I wanted. I caused myself so much hurt that way. Those things that God was asking me to give up still left my life in one way or another, but it hurt more because they were pried out of my fingers instead of me letting go. Now, I'm not saying that God doesn't give us good things, because He does. I'm also not saying that He takes away all the good things in our lives, because He doesn't. I'm saying that the things I thought were good, were causing me harm and the good God was trying to show me was scary and it meant I had to give him complete control. Instead of trusting, I took a strong hold and white-knuckled the life that I wanted and had planned out in my head.

Proverbs 19:21 "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand." This is the verse that God has used to speak so much truth into my heart and life lately. I have so many plans and ideas for my life, things I want so badly to happen. Things that range from career goals to wanting to get married. (I also have a tendency to want to rush towards these things and I'm learning to be patient, but that's a longer discussion for another time.) God has been teaching me that He has great and unique plans just for me and He wants me to seek Him in all the desires and longings of my heart. He wants me to make sure that my plans are in line with His will and plans for my life and not try and force His will to fit my plans. He knows what's best for me and has proven that time and time again. Yet still, I will start to hold on tightly to my not so perfect plans and cause my soul to grow weary as I tried to do things in my strength and not allow God to sustain me.

I think we could all use a little more of this in our lives. We often find our souls weary and hearts hurting because of things we've held onto so tightly. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD." (Isaiah 55:8) Let go. Let God heal the hurts in your heart and soothe you with His perfect will. 

We are so dearly and deeply loved by someone who gave His life for us. We are died for. It's a radical love that should lead us to a point of complete surrender. We won't ever experience a love like this anywhere else. If Jesus loved us enough to die for us, He's not going to hurt us. He sees the bigger picture and He knows exactly what we need. Release the grip that your heart has on everything. Release and watch the ache fade away and peace that passes all understanding will settle into your soul. You will be more joyful, less stressed and aware of the deep love the Father has for you. 

Falling in love with who I was created to be and not who I have created myself to be.

I'm going on a make-up fast.


okay....so I know that girls do this a lot and so maybe you've heard of it before, but I'd like to explain my reasons why and then ask you, as my friends and family, to hold me accountable.


I've been asking God, lately, to show me ways that I can step out in faith and trust him. He's been showing me that I place a lot more value on hair and make up than I care to admit. I lack self-confidence when I don't wear make-up. It used to be a non-issue for me. I prided myself in my ability to not need to wear make-up to feel like I could conquer the day. Now I wake up, and if I don't do my make-up in at least someway, I will fall apart at the smallest thing and just have a really negative outlook on myself and my day in general.

Last semester, God taught me a lot about what it meant to let Him romance my heart into the greatest love story that I have ever known. It's been a magnificent adventure so far and I'm really excited about the direction that God is taking my life! It's an amazingly humbling experience. This semester God is showing me that in order to be truly romanced and in love with Him, I need to give Him control over my whole life. Even little things like wearing make-up, He needs to have it all so that I can feel beautiful and loved because there is someone great and mighty who loves me to my very core. I am loved by the very creator of my soul. He knows the longings and desires of my heart, even the things I'm too scared to admit to myself. He knows me. He loves me. And it's a crazy radical love. The kind of love that caused Him to send His Son to die, just so he could know me. It's silly, really, that I find my self-worth and value in anything other than Him. It doesn't make sense because nothing in this world, will make me feel as beautiful as he does. No one loves me as much as he does. I am his bride and He is my forever husband. I'm taking this make-up fast so I can fall in love with the person that He sees and loves and not the one that many other people get to see.

I have no idea how long this make-up fast will last. I'm just going to do it until God lets me know when He wants me to do something else. I'm probably not gunna love it at first, and it's going to leave me feeling super vulnerable and insecure. I am trusting that my Savior and lover of my soul will swoop in and save me from the traps of the lies in my head. My knight in shining armor is going to show me who He loves, and let me fall in love with her too.

I am really excited......and a little bit nervous. Pray for me. It'll be much needed and much appreciated.

Step Out....Even When You don't Know Where Your Foot will Land.

I have been trying all day to put into words the thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for like an hour now....I figured that if I could write them down somewhere that they would make more sense in my own head. 

I've had a feeling of restlessness in my soul lately. Everything has been going really great lately, but still my deepest core longs for something more, something greater. I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out why. Until today. 

This morning I woke up with a grumbling heart because, for the first time since I've been at Liberty, I had to go to an alternative convo. My not morning person, personality wanted to stay in bed, but it was required so I rolled out of bed and got ready to go. 

It was basically a smaller scale convo with worship and a message. Nothing out of the ordinary or even really special, but I was riveted to the message. I sat on the end of my seat, legs bouncing in excitement and anticipation, heart pounding as it became clearer and clearer to me why there had been such an unrest in my soul these past few months. Faith. Such a simple, Sunday School concept, but I'm missing it. Not the "Do you believe in Jesus faith?", I'm very sure of that. Nothing in my life is as sure as the fact that I am loved by a radical God, drowning in a scandalous grace, and I am died for. I'm missing the "next step faith". The faith that calls me to step out before I actually knowing where my foot will land. The faith that my God is bigger than my blind spot. The faith that I have been given a calling and I need to do something with it. It hit me today that my soul's unrest is due to a lack of faith. 

I realized in that moment that this was not a new concept that God was trying to teach me, but one He'd literally been placing right in front of me and I was too busy trying to see around His next step to get to my next step that I missed it. His next step is so simple. Faith. I need to pursue what He has given me to do now and trust that in His timing, I'll know where to put my foot next. 

Here I am, Lord. Use me. 

Redeemed. O, How I Love to Proclaim it.

I've been sitting here staring at the blinking cursor on my screen for 20 minutes now trying to figure out where I wanted to start this story.....I guess I'll start with a cliché beginning....because, well, I love cliché. 

If you had told me a year ago that this is where I would be, I would have told you that you that you were crazy.

Not at Liberty University, because I was and still am confident that this is where God wants me. I mean if you had told me that I would be where I am relationship, Spiritually, mentally, maturity-wise I seriously would have doubted your sanity. 

Last year at this time, I was just finishing my first semester here at Liberty. I was a Psychology major. I was in love and I was confident that I had life all figured out. 

Seriously...I can't type that without laughing and I feel like God looked down at me this time last year, shook His head, and said..."My precious bride, you are missing ME. I love you. Passionately. Unconditionally. I want to pursue you, so let me. Give me your life and your plans. I am your eternal husband. Love me first. I have so much more in store for you than you'll ever imagine." 

If only I had listened last year.....

I'm going to be very candid right now. Last year, I was on shaky grounds with God. I believed He existed, I knew that He loved me. I just felt so dry spiritually and I felt like a failure because I was at a school where, at every turn, you encounter Christ. Whether it be through people, a convo speaker, campus church, or someone on leadership, Jesus was everywhere and I couldn't see Him. Rather, I didn't want to. I was in a major losing battle with the Holy Spirit and it left me weary and spiritually thirsty because I was so far from the strength and love of Jesus. I was clinging so tightly to the plan that I had for my life that I failed to see what a disaster I was and how far from the Will of God my "perfect" life plan was. 

I felt like I was drowning spiritually. I wanted to have a fire and desire for Christ, and I just didn't. I would fake it. Ya know, the whole fake it 'til ya make it deal, but still I was empty. I quickly realized that my "faking" it could fool those around me, but I was not fooling myself. or God. I would question why I lacked that passion and fire for God, why I found no joy in my salvation. It was just a "whatever" thing for me and I knew that it was supposed to be more and still I longed to find the deeper joy in all of it. 

It wasn't until the second semester of my freshman year that finally the voice of my forever love captured my heart and He hasn't let go. Clayton King in spiritual emphasis week talked about Joseph and how he worshipped God even in his dungeons and how Joseph had a billion and twelve reasons to not trust God, to forsake God, but he didn't. I can't exactly tell you when or what happened in my heart, all I can say is that I know that week God reached down, broke through the hardness that was surrounding my heart and gave me a joy that I cannot explain. A joy that even now I can feel. 

Still I lacked what it meant to give over my heart to the true lover of my soul and allowing Him to transform me into the woman that He knows I can be. I still was holding tight to the dreams and plans that I had for my own life and it was another losing battle. I still ended up weary and bruised and sad. The joy that I had discovered or rather had been revealed to me had been robbed from me, by myself. I look back now and I wish that I had heard what God was saying to me. He was beckoning me to "come away with Him". He wanted me to himself so that I could learn and understand the captivating love that He has for me. He wanted me to fall in love with Him first and foremost. I heard, but refused to listen. I convinced myself that God didn't understand. I was so mistaken, because I was the one who did't understand. He is my eternal husband, my forever love, greater than anything that I have ever experienced. So he pulled the rug out from under and took away something that I valued more than anything in my life. Something that I had mistakenly placed as an idol in my life. God called me out into another desert point in my life and offered me water. He gave me a way out. He was the way out. He was longing for me to love him. He was longing to show me his love. All I had to do was ask. I was so broken and lost and confused and somehow he broke through my muddle thoughts and whispered "ask" into my broken heart. So I asked. Begged really. that he would show me Him. I asked him to show me Him everywhere. I arrived at school for this semester and I was still asking.  

It was freshman move in day and I was sitting on the steps outside my dorm reading my Bible and praying and asking again that God would show me himself and his love for me. I was praying and then all of the sudden I felt this wind across sweep across me and my hair caressed my face. I realized in that moment that He was everywhere. My one true love was whispering I love you through the wind or painting me a masterpiece in the sky to say the most precious goodnight that I could ever hear or see. Everything around me was a personal love letter from my prince. I just had to open my eyes and see it. As soon as I saw the love that was literally surrounding me, I felt the call to show my love for my Savior. I felt the call to publicly declare my heart's desire to serve Him and to declare my faith publicly to those around me. So I got baptized. At campus church. September 4, 2013. 

It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. For a moment, I felt the full impact of my sin once again. The sin that I had left at the foot of the cross last semester, I felt it. I wanted to physically represent to myself what it meant to be redeemed. As I walked into that water I was the thief that hung next to Jesus, I was the soldiers gambling for his clothes. I was the doubter. I was the hypocrite. The pharisee. The unbeliever. When I went down into the water I was dying to myself. I was giving up everything about myself and laying it down at the foot of the cross. When I was raised from the water I felt all the shame and guilt and regret roll off my back with the water and it stayed down. I was overcome with joy and I was so grateful for the savior who went through the pain of crucifixion because he loved me. I was humbled. I still am. 

It's been an amazing semester here. I'm still being romanced by my savior. My eternal husband. My forever love. It's an amazing thing, really, to be romanced by the one who created my heart and its longing for love. It's perfect and unlike anything I have ever experienced. No earthly romance will compare to the one that I am apart of now. Jesus gave me a phrase. One to kind of claim as my own. It's "Redeemed. Oh, How I love to proclaim it". I know that it's a song too, but just that one phrase captivates me. I am redeemed and He is asking me and calling me to proclaim and I can't help but to do that.  

I am a women's ministry major now. I'm finishing up my first semester of sophomore year. I'm in love with Jesus and so looking forward to what He has for my life. 

I should have listened last year because I am happier now than I ever have been. I am so captivated by Jesus and I'm loving every second of our majestic romance. 

It is well with my soul.

Have you ever heard of the song “It is Well with My Soul?” If you grew up in church, I’m sure that you have. It’s an old hymn. If you haven’t listened to it, go do it now. I’ll wait a minute….go ahead…listen. 

That Hymn has always been one of my favorites, not only because of the words and its message, but because of the story behind it and why it was written. The author of the lyrics, Horatio Spafford, was a successful lawyer in Chicago in the 1860′s and 70′s, but when the Great Chicago Fire swept through the streets it ruined him finically. In 1873, he decided to move his family over to England and get a fresh start. He sent his daughters and wife on a ship ahead of him while he stayed back and worked out a few last minute business details. Spafford was wrapping up business in America when he received a telegram from his wife, Anna, saying “Saved alone…”. Spafford’s 4 daughters had all died when their boat had collided with another. His only family member to survive was his wife. Spafford got on a boat to go be with his grieving wife and as he passed over the place where his daughters had died he penned the words, to the now famous hymn, “It is Well with My Soul”. 

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

The faith that this man had after he had lost everything finically and all of his daughters had died is astounding. The above lyrics that I posted are only 2 short verses of a hymn that has a hauntingly, joyful message. Tomorrow is the first day of classes and I am about to embark on my sophomore year of college. I know that God is going to do great things this year and I am so humbled to be a part of it. However, I also know that Satan is prowling around waiting to attempt to destroy the faith that is so evident in this school. My challenge for all of us is that we have the same faith and strength that Spafford had. That though Satan should buffet and trials may come, let us with faith claim the phrase It is Well with My Soul. Regardless of what happens over the next semester, I know that I sit in the hands of an almighty Jesus who is stronger and greater than anything that can come my way. So as we daily take up our crosses, let us also hold tight to this, that in all things, good and bad, it is well with my soul. We are one body, unified in Christ. We have one purpose and one goal, to bring others to him and show them His love and glory and in all things, It is well with my soul. 

The infectious disease of positivity.

Let’s play a game. I want you to read these next few sentences and make them positive:

• Rain ruins everything.
• My car is broken and I’m stuck inside.
• I have a lot of student loans.

Okay, Now I’m going to give you my answers for the above 3 sentences:

• I’m thankful for the rain ending the drought we were in, even if it did ruin my plans for the day.
• My car is broken, but I’m grateful for the relaxation that being inside offers.
• I do have a lot of student loans, but I’m so blessed to have the opportunity to attend secondary education.

What did you get? It’s difficult isn’t it? At least it was for me…… Now some of these are random sentences and some of them are ones that actually apply to my own life and I’m sure that you could think of a bunch of negative things that are happening in your life right now. It seem that is human nature. We can so easily see the negative in our lives. I think that’s also one of the downfalls of living in America and hearing all about the elusive “American Dream”. This can be especially difficult for Christians. 

“Some people look for a beautiful place…..Others make a place Beautiful.” ~Hazrat Inayat Khan

Saw this quote today and fell in love with it. (p.s. Don’t ask me who the sayer of the quote is, I have no idea. I found the picture on pinterest.) It seems like lately God has been hitting me on all sides with this point. When I’m at school, I find things about it that I don’t like and I want to be home, and then when I’m home, I miss school. It’s a vicious circle of negativity, when in reality, I’m perfectly happy and content at both places, but I just don’t share that part. It doesn’t make sense. You’d think that I’d want to share about the amazing experiences that I’m having, or the awesomeness of being home with family and getting to see Ben, as beyond happy as those things make me, I still long to have those things mushed together so my life could be bowl fulls of happy. The reality of the situation is that when I’m at school, I’m at school and when I’m home, I’m home. These things are never going to be mushed together. More often than not, I forget that I have the joy of Jesus in me. The things of this world are fleeting, but only a moment in time, a vapor in the wind…you get the point. When I became a Christian and developed a personal relationship with the savior of my soul, my abba father, I had a joy that was deep set in my soul. I was on fire for God. I was bowls full of happy, all the time. Then real life set in, I got older…I’m still getting older. With each added candle on the birthday cake came more and more responsibility and stress. I took my life into my own hands, put God in the backseat, and messed the whole thing up. Gave God the driver’s seat again, He’s still workin’ on cleanin’ that whole mess up. This whole process dulled that everlasting Joy that I took for granted. And I’m only 18 for pete’s sake! Today, I was doing the typical lazy day activity for me. I was putzin around on pinterest quotes, read this quote, ”Some people look for a beautiful place…..Others make a place Beautiful.” ~Hazrat Inayat Khan, and stopped short. I realized that ya, this was a great quote and all, but for Christians, it packs a way more powerful punch. I could give you the cliche, be thankful, other poor countries, starving kids, bigger issues, blah, blah, blah. (Now don’t get me wrong, those are things that need to be addressed, totally, but I’m not gunna touch that one right now.) I can guarantee that a majority of the people reading this right now are middle class Americans. We know all about the issues that face our economy, our country, the world. We know all about the conspiracy theories, the current events.  We have access to a lot of information that makes us feel like our life is mundane, routine, ordinary, *gasp* Normal! Oh, how dreadful it is to be us!! (I do this quite often….I’m a melodramatic, jump to the worst conclusions, thinks life stinks when it doesn’t, kind of person) But honesty, why is it such a bad thing to be “normal”? So you go to work, school, whatever you do, you come home and live life, sleep in a house, under a roof, in a bed. You eat food, good food, and especially this weekend, more food than you can fit. So maybe you don’t have a huge house, you have a medium house or a small one. So you don’t have the best job in the world, but it’s a job and in this economy, that’s more than a lot of people can say. Maybe school is boring and the people there aren’t great, but it’s an education and that’s a pretty great thing to get. I’m not being judgmental here at all, I promise you that. I have a lot to work on. I come home from school and get bored with the same daily routine of getting up, cleaning, and then laying around my house. Honest to goodness, I complain about LAYING ON MY COMFY COUCH! So I have a long way to go myself. Chin up my friends! Stop comparing your life with all the people around you and realize that you’re life, no matter what’s going on, is FANTASTIC! You wanna know why, cause the God of the stinking universe decided that he loved you so much that he would send HIS SON to DIE for YOU! Like, how can anyone be sad about that! That’s so EXCITING!!!! That’s like Jump up and down, shout it from the rooftops, face-splitting smile exciting!! This is such a hard  concept for me to grasp, but those few brief moments that I do, I just wanna scream cause my sins are cast as far as the east is from the west and I can’t not be stupendously excited about that fact! 

This is a difficult concept to grasp most of the time though and I think I know why. It’s cause we don’t understand the fact that we are to trust God. Completely. With your entire life. I don’t think we truly grasp how scary that can be. Amazing? Of course. Worth it? You Betcha! The end result? Perfection. Completely and utterly, knee-buckling terrifying? That’s an affirmative, my friend. It’s the scariest and most amazing thing that you’ll ever do with your life. It’s giving him every little detailed part of your daydreams and life. You give him your past, present, and future. It is out of your control. That’s enough to make me cry in terror. I don’t know about you, but I am a planner, not a day-today planner, but a future-planner. More often than not I fall asleep daydreaming about my future and the thought of giving God that perfectly thought up plan of mine and telling him to change it to fit him scares me. I have doubts and fears and I’m just plain scared, but that’s cause I don’t understand it. God already knows what my life is gunna be like. He’s seen the ending! He knows the whole thing. I only know the past 18 years that I have lived and that’s not a lot when you think about it. So it’s silly for me to want to keep a hold of my dreams and tell him that he can’t have them. Yet, it’s still so hard for me to let go. Blame it on what you want, but it boils down to a pride issue. I’m to prideful and I love the perfect picture in my head and I don’t think that God should change it. Although, even if I had control I’d mess it up and it wouldn’t turn out the way I have it in my head anyways. Isn’t that how every project goes though? Anyways, I’m still working on it. It’s gunna be a life-long process, but I’m clinging to the words of Jeremiah 29:11, Where God Promises that He has plans for me and He won’t harm me. Positivity is infectious! So smile, share the positivity in your life, and make the negativity a little more positive! We all have struggles, but how we handle those struggles, defines us. Look for that Silver Lining. It’s always there. 

Gossiping without a sound.

Do you ever just have that moment of pure conviction? Where you just know that God’s kinda knockin’ pretty hard telling you to cut it out. Ya….it’s a bittersweet moment. It’s a sweet moment because I can hear the precious words of my savior and I feel really close to him, but then I listen closer and realize that I’m getting in trouble….

Tonight He was telling me that I need to stop being so complacent. I love Liberty University and I know that this is where God wants me, but I get comfortable. I justify slacking on my prayer life because, well, I do go to convocation three whole times a week and I go to campus church so I don’t really have to. I talk to God enough. In moments of boredom, I opt for watching TV on my computer, when I could be reading and praying. I know that I don’t HAVE to spend all my free time reading my Bible. I know that God doesn’t require that, but I notice that the constant submersion in Christianity sometimes can diminish the desire to sit at his feet and soak up his presence. In high school, I had to be a light. There was a very likely possibility that I was the only Jesus that those kids would see and it was a strong motivator for me to stay committed and immersed in the word. (I’m gunna throw in a sappy comment here and thank Ben Huebner for being my accountability buddy and doing devotions with me through texts at night because sometimes that’s the only time I spend with Jesus that day…..so thanks Benny. I really am so grateful for you.) Now that I’m at LU, there are other people pouring into me and the other students and I love it, but like I said it’s causing some complacency in my life. I also have been struggling a lot with gossip. I think that a lot of Christians will gossip through prayer request. At least I know that I’ve done it quite a few times. You ask for prayer about an issue that could seriously need prayer, but then launch into details that people don’t really need and then 20 min later not only are you gossiping, but you’ve also influenced the other person to gossip. I feel like gossip that sin that not nearly enough people take seriously. Ephesians 4:29 says, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as it is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” This verse hit me right between the eyeballs. Somebody could be acting completely horrid to you. They could be mean, hurtful, and spiteful and you can’t speak bad about them. I’m not saying that you should let the problem go, or that you should ignore it…I’m saying that if you are telling someone for the sake of telling them what is happening that’s gossip and that’s bad. If you need advice, go to a trusted adult. They’ll give you advice and pray for you not gossip with you and then hate the person the way that you hate them. Gossip, for me, becomes specially apparent when I am being complacent. When I’m not constantly looking and praying for God’s light in my life. When I don’t desire and long to see him I have a tendency to put on that ‘Christian kid’ mask and gossip in the name of prayer. It’s bad. Tonight, I was just sitting on pinterest daydreaming about my future wedding (which happens an awful lot haha) and I just heard God. Not in an audible way, but in that still, quiet voice and I was just so convicted. For the first time in a long time, I can honestly say, I missed him. I wanted to talk to him, to cling to every precious word that I felt him speaking to me. I wanted to pour out my heart to him. It was so great. But, like I said before, it was bittersweet because then I actually HEARD what he was saying…..my simple ‘prayer requests’ were actually excuses for gossip and that I was the one standing in the way of me and my savior. These are all things that I knew, but it’s definitely convicting to here it from the Holy Spirit. He’s pretty influential in Christianity, in case you hadn’t noticed….I can’t say that I ran straight to my room grabbed my Bible and got right back into the word, but I can tell you that this is going to change. I feel like God is asking me to go on a secular music fast. I’ve done this before and I do know that my attitude is much happier when I do that, but I feel like this time God wants to use it to pull me closer to him. Music has always been a big part of my life and it has a huge influence over the attitude of my heart. So I feel like I need to take some me and Jesus time, music wise, also I’m going to strive every single day to cling to him and his words and when I’m bored, I want to pour myself into his word. At the beginning of this year I started a Bible study on self control, I started it for different reasons than gossip, but I feel like I need to get back to that too. God hasn’t necessarily changed the entire reason why I started the study, that one will be a lifelong study that will call for a constant prayer and calling on God’s strength, but He has definitely added another reason as to why I should continue and study it deeper. I definitely struggle with it and I feel like God is calling me to not only study it because of that, but also because it is a characteristic of himself that I need to emulate to the world. 

There is one more part of gossip that God convicted me about tonight that I feel like I should share, you can gossip without uttering a sound. If someone comes to you and starts gossiping, by not stopping them, you are participating. Now don’t go and make it sound like you are the superior Christian and that you are more spiritual then them and that they need to repent. Please don’t do that. We all have our faults and in God’s eyes, his children are washed clean by the blood of Jesus. What I am saying is that if someone starts gossiping to you change the subject, compliment the person they are gossiping about or just tell them the conversation is making you uncomfortable. Just don’t do it in pride. Do it in humility. Do everything in humility. We deserve nothing. We are sinners. The amazing thing is we are sinners swimming in the grace and mercy and love of Jesus.We don’t have to dwell on our imperfections, but we do need to turn from them and run the other way into the arms of Jesus. We need to emulate the qualities of Christ, even in the Christian community. 

 Trusting in Jesus as always <3