Christian Christmas Gift Guide for Kids, Tweens, and Teens
A Christian Christmas Gift Guide for Kids, Tweens and TeensThis gift guide is full of gift ideas designed to ENCOURAGE. Here you'll find gift ideas geared towards babies, kids, tweens and even teens (some of these gifts in the second half of the list, of course, could...
When We Fail
After years of priding myself on what I could bring to God, I realized I had nothing to bring of my own. It became very clear that those things that for years very much seemed MINE were absolutely not.
All of those qualities were things that God had placed in me. They were HIS qualities in me.
I had nothing on my own.
But the Lord called me anyway.
“And the Lord turned to him and said, “Go…; Do not I send you?’
And he said to Him, ‘Please, Lord, how can I… I am the least.’
And the Lord said to him, ‘But I will be with you.’”
How To Use Your Talents and Gifts
Be careful not to bury the gifts and talents God has entrusted you with. We must invest and increase. This is such a major factor of living purposefully.
Let’s let this VITAL truth and way of life sink into our hearts, minds and lives.
1. Talents and gifts are given by GRACE. The gifts we have are just that… a GIFT. They are not of us but given to us. They are not only gifts but gifts from God. This truth really brings perspective on how we should treat talents and gifts and use them. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a parable of a man who goes on a journey and gives, entrusts his servants, with his property. The story goes and we see that the three different servants receive different amounts of money and they all do different things with those amounts. Two multiple it and one wastes it. A striking aspect to be noted for this first point of grace is that this master entrusts his land to his servants. There is nothing earned about this. It is GRACE on grace. It’s an accurate representation of God entrusting HIS gifts to us – not our land, not our talents, not our gifts but His. In Romans 12:6, Paul says that our gifts are given according to the “grace given to us.” Then in 1 Peter 4:10 that we ought to use the gifts to serve as “good stewards of God’s varied grace.”
A Thankful Heart
Thanksgiving is such a sweet time for family, friends, food and thankfulness.
Here’s some verses this morning to help encourage your heart in thankfulness.
I encourage you to sit with these verses and really meditate on them.
1 Chronicles 16:34 – “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!”
1 Chronicles 29:13 – “And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name.”
Isaiah 12:4-5 – “And you will say in that day: ‘Give thanks to theLord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be made knownPsalm 34:1 – “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.”
Living Purposefully Playlist
Music is SUCH a powerful tool.
It can uplift or help us really feel our sorrow. It can heal or bring up bitterness. It can empower or weaken.
Ever hear a song and immediately get struck by emotion?
Music is POWERFUL.
The Bible even speaks to the power of music.
So, we’ve compiled a She Lives Purposefully playlist to get you THROUGH. These are songs that me and our team listen to that move us for the better and draw us closer to the Lord. They instill and encourage healthy, intentional, healing, positive, real, purposeful ways of life.
God Uses What Holds Us Back
It’s as though the waves and waters of life were getting higher, without consuming me, and had risen just enough to make it hard to swim.
Just high enough so that I could do not thing but JUST stay above the water. I felt like I was using ALL of my effort to just stay above water rather than swim forward.
One life circumstance after experience after rejection after concern, one thing after another had been pulling me down and the waves were getting higher.
I was sick of that place.
I’d been wanting to desperately move forward in life happily, to grow, and I felt like so many things kept pulling me back.
But somehow, although giving full effort to do what felt like nothing but stay up, looking back, I realized I had been learning how to swim – or live – better.
I’d begun to realize that those things that were pulling me back were the very things God was using to grow me, mold me, teach me, change me, form me, stretch me, use me.
Embracing All God Has For You
God is a promise maker, not a promise breaker.
Promises are so easily broken. Even the most intentional, legally-binding, or emotionally-invested promises get broken.
This is why when I read a promise that God makes to me, I sometimes tend to not accept it fully. I find myself thinking that there has to be ifs, buts and loopholes.
But God is a promise maker, and a promise keeper.
What are some of His promises?