Christian Christmas Gift Guide – To Encourage Her
A Christian Christmas Gift Guide to Encourage HerThis gift guide is full of gift ideas designed to ENCOURAGE. Whether it's for your grandma, mom, sister, aunt, cousin, friend, daughter, niece, coworker, WHOEVER, these gifts for HER are focused on uplifting. I hope you...
What Is Purpose? Part 3
One way is to know that God called us to be obedient — He has specific things He calls us to be obedient to in in the Bible.The Lord has good works for us to step into in our day to day. This is why purpose leads us to a bigger concept of our life calling and plan, but also applies directly to what we do, say and act and step into every single day. It applies to those little details.There is purpose in TODAY. You have things you’re called to TODAY. What a HIGH calling and way to live life!
What Is Purpose? Part 2
What is purpose? What is living purposefully?
One verse I LOVE that speaks to what purpose is Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
What does this mean? 1) You are His workmanship 2) He created you for good works 3) He prepared a life and good works for you to step into before you were even born.
Comparison: Losing Sight
Comparison holds me back from celebrating others because I envy. Comparison holds me back from what God has for me and my purpose on this earth because I spend too much time thinking about others’ successes OR MYSELF and my own inadequacies — making me feel lesser-than and hopeless. Comparison breeds discontentment causing me to be dissatisfied with who I am. “The cost of comparison: pride & insecurity.” Summed up, comparison tears me down and it tears down my relationships with others as I grow in jealousy rather than love. It takes my focus off of God and what He calls me to and who He’s made me to be. She wrote in that same post: “the cure? 1. Recognize your universal calling (to keep your eyes on JESUS) 2. Recognize your unique calling (whatever it is the Lord has created ONLY you to do right where you are).”
How To Help A Friend Who’s Hurting
In 2 Corinthians 1, the Bible gives an incredible explanation on the purpose of pain and suffering.
It’s a section that has HEALED my heart drastically from pain and suffering in my own life.
But recently, I noticed another perspective it leaves about suffering in the middle of the chapter: how to be a good community to someone who is suffering.
In his suffering, Paul tells the recipients of his letters one thing that he wants from them: prayer.
2 Corinthians 1:11 says, “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”
PRAYER.
And he seems to really believe it’ll make an impact when he says blessings will come THROUGH those prayers.
Before I continue, there are other ways to help our friends who are suffering, hurting and going through the thick of it.
In my own suffering seasons, I cherished people who would sit with me as I cried, who cried with me, and who stuck with me through it. I cherished people who simply were THERE for me.
BUT …
Be Free of Your Burdens
I’m sure many of you have felt these weights of life. But what the Lord has been impressing upon my heart is this:
Hold up that white flag. Surrender. Fully.
That’s the thing. We can’t go into this year without fully giving up. Giving up all our fear and all our doubts. He calls us to give it up when we can’t see what’s ahead of us, when we aren’t in control of the situation we want to be or when we’re filled with the crippling fear of “can I actually do this?” Yet, we so foolishly allow our fear to overcome us. Feeling the weight or these fears is perfectly normal, yet it is our response that is pivotal. We go through trials and testing, where we feel overburdened and defeated, to remind us that there is a God who sees us through. And it isn’t whenever He feels like it – HE ALWAYS SEES US THROUGH.
Jesus: God’s Gift
We all love good gifts don’t we? Jesus is the best gift you could get from the One you deserve it least! God so loved the world that He gifted us His only Son so if we believed in Him, we would have eternal life.
Baby Jesus, God’s Gift affected the lives of the people around Him. Different people, roles and reactions. All people we can resonate with and learn something from.
Mary
In Luke 1:26-38, we meet Mary, soon-to-be mother of Jesus. I encourage you to read this section before continuing.
Mary was a young woman. I’m sure she was scared, maybe embarrassed and a bit confused. It seems she wanted to do God’s will, but it’s important to note that she already had plans of her own. She was going to get married to Joseph, be a wife and a mom and have a happy life. Then one day, the angel of the Lord tells Mary that God is pleased with her. (Yay!) He is in fact very pleased with her. (Yay!!) And then he tells her… all her plans and dreams are about to change. (Wait, what???)
Maybe someone is reading that has or had her life figured out, all your ducks in a row. You are trying to follow God, doing everything right, and now God is saying, “Sweet daughter of Mine, things are about to change, but trust Me. Sometimes My thoughts and yours are not the same, but will you trust Me?”