Me and the best friend Cassidy!

Cassidy on the the left, me on the right!

WEEKEND WEEKEND WEEKEND!!

I am going to have stories galore about this weekend! I can’t wait, i am super excited! See you in a few days :)

You are not alone.

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.”- Philippians 4:7-9. I have been going to youth group for almost four years now, and I have seen a lot of people come and go. I have herd lots of stories and learned a lot about teen struggles. Through all the struggles we teens have there is something we all have in common, “You are not alone”! I always used to think I was the only one going through stuff, that no one would understand but there is always more than enough young people going through the exact same thing. Teens keep their problems hidden, especially Christian teens. Trust me it is always better to talk about it. Some of the most common issues, or “skeletons” have you that teens deal with are depression, anxiety, cutting, pornography, insecurities, abuse, addiction, drugs, the list is endless. One of my skeletons was, and kind of still is, is/was depression and insecurities. Being a female is no picnic especially at this age! Being insecure is horrible; it’s like being tied down in chains always looking over your shoulder, caring way to much about what people think about you. Being insecure has held me back from being me for years, but now that I have friends that I can talk to about it, it’s easier to let go and see who I really am. I mean i know so many girls who are dependent on guys to make them happy and it is just so sad. Our identiy comes from christ, not from some guy or girl. I want to view myself like Christ does, and not how the world does. Jesus says in his word” You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!  Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. – Psalms 7-14. So Jesus made me just the way he wanted me, and now I am accepting that and am learning to love myself the way God does. This is the great thing about Jesus, He wants to help us and work with us to solve our problems and realize truth. With everything we go through, we should always remember that we are never alone. These emotions are al lies from the devil. I mean people cutting themselves and depression is not of God! This is all consequences of sin, and living in it. God wants to breath truth on us all so that we can be free from bondage and live freely for him.

Card Board.

“Have you ever wondered why God gives so much? We could exist on far less. He could have left the world flat and grey; we wouldn’t have known the difference. But he didn’t”.  “He splashes orange in the sunrise and cast the sky blue. And if you love to see geese as they gather, chances are you’ll see that too. Did he have to make the squirrels tail furry? Was he obliged to make the birds sing? And the funny way chickens scurry or the majesty of thunder when it rains? Why give flower a fragrance? Why give food a taste? Could it be he loves to see that look upon your face?”- Max Lucado, He Chose the Nails. God made the world so beautiful for us. Besides the squirrels furry tails and majestic thunder, Jesus also gave us sex. Yes sex, the forsaken topic when Jesus is ever brought up, or so you may think. But the truth is God made sex for us to enjoy! The bible talks about sex on many occasions.” Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth.  She is a loving deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts satisfy you always. May you always be captivated by her love.” What? Sex is a good thing? Of course it is. God created sex to be a beautiful and enjoyable expression of love, but only between a man and wife. Genesis 1: 27-28 – “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number;” Again, like I said God made all things but with boundaries. Think about premarital sex like this. Say you take two pieces of card board and super glue them together. This symbolizes having sex. Then you break up with that person, so the two pieces of card board have been ripped apart. The pieces never look the same, they are all ripped up. So you get in another relationship, have sex with the person. Eventually break up and the “card board” has been ripped apart again. Eventually you are in pieces, and broken. Then when you find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you cannot give the person everything that you are because you are in pieces and have already given yourself to so many other guys, or girls. See how the worlds view on sex is so different then what the truth is? So many people who learn the truth, and are dealing with the consequences of premarital sex are like, “well this sucks; now I am ruined”. There is good news! God forgives all sins, and will make you a new person. The bible says, “Brothers, listen! We are here to proclaim that through this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins. Everyone who believes in him is declared right with God.”  What a great testimony to your future husband or wife to be able to say, “I sinned, but I learned the truth and waited 3 years for you”, or 10 years, or however long it may be. That is a great thing you can give to your future spouse. Jesus is not saying that it’s going to be easy, or you are never going to be tempted, But he promises that he will be with you through it. “The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.” -1 Corinthians 10:13. Chances are you’re like, no this is stupid, wrong and I would never believe this. Well that’s the reaction we Christian are told you would have, so good job! Jesus said Christians will be looked at as crazy, and not normal. Again, I do not care what people think about me. Only if you are seeing him through me!

I am treasured.

What this world says about me is garbage. What Jesus says about me is what determines my worth. All I know is I am not home yet, this is not where i belong. Take this world and give me Jesus, this is not where I belong.

False Idols.

Ok, so everyone has heard about the Ten Commandments, a bunch of rules that God set for us because he does not want us to have any fun. ERRR! Wrong answer! When people think about Jesus, church, or the bible, all that comes to mind is the things that they can't do. Well in a sense that is correct, but Jesus is our creator, of course he has boundaries set for us. It's like when you were little and your parents told you not to touch the stove burners, but it’s all you wanted to do! You finally touch it and BURN! Literally a burn. Eventually when we get older we realize that our parents are not mean people, they just want the best for us and they have been through the same situations. We need to trust that they know what they are talking about. Now we know that they were right and only had our best interest in mind. It is the exact same thing with God, accept we don’t grow out of him and move away. He is ours forever! Jesus is our creator and he knows how we are run best. One of the Ten Commandments that I struggle with is "You should have no other Gods before me". Another way God says “other Gods” is "false idols". Here is another verse dealing with false idols," You must worship no other gods, for the LORD, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you.”- Exodus 34:14. A false idol can be anything we put before God. Music, friends, work, family, sports, drugs, guys or girls, video games, sexual immorality, the list is endless. I mostly struggle with friends, family and guys. I will elaborate on guys because this seems to be the most relatable. When I get a crush on a guy I am all in for the guy. Thinking about him every second, making sure my hair looks perfect, having the perfect makeup, clothes, trying to impress him at all times. After all the effort and time invested into this guy, it’s always "you’re not good enough", "you are not my type", "I’m bored looking for something new". It is just a horrible feeling, and I am left empty again. Then start on the next “project” to make me happy but it never works. The cycle is endless and will always leave a person broken. This all goes back to what Jesus says; don’t let anything be your main focus but me because nothing else will truly make you happy. God does not want to take away our fun, but he loves us and wants us to be happy. He made us and he knows how we run best. Who would you trust, the creator of the universe, or yourself? The answer seems easy but it’s not. Pushing past your own wants is hard. But there is hope! God says in Mark 27, “With me all things are possible”.  It is so awesome to know that God always has the answer. He truly is the only God I want in my life. The one and only true God.

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

One of my friends gave me a book for my birthday called "He chose the nails". There is a really cool poem in it; it says things like God loves us so much! I mean besides the amazing fact that he took on the sin of the world, He cares about the details of our life and made everything so beautiful for us! Look at the sky, the moon, the ocean, the trees, flowers; the taste of food, fruit, how beautiful and complex our small eyes are, the sunset, the list is endless. God could have easily made everything grey and dull and we would have never known the difference, but he didn’t! I mean look around! How could anyone think God does not exist? I’m taking an A&P class, and the cheer complexity and order of our bodies is amazing. I refuse to believe that all of this is only by chance, and that I am here for no purpose but to die. God proves himself over and over. This video about astronomy is mind blowing and I think fits in this topic well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtpTk2ENq7o All the facts about how long our DNA can be stretched and how complex our eyes are, are so amazing. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. It is undeniable that there has to be a creator. All science points to God somehow.

Your love song resonates in me.

"Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body."- 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 One of the goals I am making with some of my best friends is to stop listening to secular music for a week and listen to only Christian music and see how it affects us. We were hanging out, listening to music on the radio like we always do and we realized that Niki Minaj, or “Rack City” were probably not the best things to be listing to espicasllly when were are trying to be set apart from the “normal teenager” and worship God with everything EVEN OUR MUSIC! Like Jesus said our bodies are a temple, so we have to watch what we put in it. I know from expiearence that if I start listening to music that I know I shouldn’t, it takes my mind away from the truth and what Gods word tells me. ANYWAYS, today I started my day off by listening to worship music while I was getting ready for school, and I’m telling you it really makes a difference in my attitude towards everything. I did my work, I did not complain, it has just been all around a great day! Thank you Jesus! The song I listened to this morning was called “resonates”. My favorite part of the song is when it says “Your love song resonates in me”. Just like today, meditating on those words helped me so much to direct my thought and decisions towards Him! Yeah, this is definitely not normal, and I am completely ok with that.

You control me like a marionette.

Give my life to God, live only for God and let go of my own wants. Do things how He wants them to be done and let go of my habits. After coming home from an even as spiritual as ATF, and being around people who want the same things as me is amazing. It’s a big help to have other believers on the same page as you and wanting to live out their faith.  Why I find living for Jesus so challenging is because I’m covered in chains or puppet strings like a marionette. All my strings and chains are what are keeping me from experiencing God to the fullest, keeping me from getting closer to him. I am my biggest problem, I always want to do stupid things that I think are good ideas at the time, or will satisfy me but me just keep doing the same things over and over with the same result. Emptiness. For example, Guys. It’s like a drug to get a guy to say I’m pretty or accept me for who I am. You know, like the millions of romance movies out there about the perfect guy who treats you amazing and puts you above everything else. Well me wanting that love from someone led me to change myself thinking that I was not good enough. My clothes, my hair, my makeup the way I dress, where I shop, how I talk, even to compromise what I believe in and become a fake person. It’s like whenever I start feeling sad or depressed I immediately go back to those stupid guys who really could care less! I put all this time and effort into morphing what I wanted people to think about me. Always a fail, every time. Another one of my strings are laziness, and not wanting to do anything. In school partiructaly, I always put off my work and never do it. For whatever the reason may be like I feel like it’s too hard or I simply would rather be doing something else. Something else stupid for that matter, I put things off. The point is I want to Worship Jesus with everything that I do. With school, my friends, the music I listen to, the way I treat people, with the way I dress.  Colossians 3:23 says,” Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.”  Dear God please cut these strings and unbound these chains so I can live completely for you and find freedom from bondage.

What this is all about.

This weekend I went to an even called “Acquire the Fire”. It’s a retreat for youth and young adults. It is basically like church to the 100^th power. It’s extremely fun; there is amazing worship, dramas, concerts, workshops, speakers, comedians and spending time with friends. ATF never fails to be amazing, and life changing. I have been going for the past three years, and the main theme for this year was “Normal is not enough”. Every year I learn so much, and feel so connected with God. It’s a spiritual high every time, and it never fails to suck coming back home to normal life. The high goes away and I start feeling like crap and weighed down again. This year I want to stay connected with God and Start really living for him and give him my life as he gave me his.

You might ask. “What’s wrong with being normal?” Well normal is just blending in and doing what everyone else is doing. Because I clame to be a Christian Jesus says to us that he wants to make us holy through him. Holy means to be set apart and to be separated form the rest. Well normal is not going to be enough for me anymore. I don’t want to be another weak person who does not let their beliefs change them. I want to give God all of me and live only for him. I have been living for myself for way to long now, and I have done nothing but fail over and over trying to fill this void I feel, this emptiness that a need to fill. I’m tired of feeling alone. I want to experience the only thing that will ever fully satisfy me. Jesus Christ.  I’m going to blog about what happens, and my feelings about letting go of myself and journeying through God’s Word. Letting go of the normal and standing out.