THE 1AM BIBLE STUDY

This summer I am trying to work through books in the Bible that I never fully grasped, those that (simply said) are blank, underline-less, circle-less, and more apparently, note-less, in my Bible. The books that ruin me and convict me and speak to me look like I took class notes all in the margins. The book of Daniel though, stood like an empty canvas. Waiting for God to teach me things, tell me things, open my eyes up, and show me more of His heart.

And that He did.

My 1AM bible study realization (which are becoming quite frequent these summer nights) is that sometimes you don't get it right on the first try. Sometimes your humanity sucks you up and your flesh rules you instead of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, unfortunately, you don't listen, sometimes you go back to old, comfortable, familiar ways, sometimes you forget convictions, sometimes you choose the easy route. Sometimes, as humans, we screw up. But it doesn't mean God runs out of giving you chances. This is the thing I never really can grasp in my faith.

I can't grasp it because it isn't like me. It is so counter-cultural, it makes no sense to the world, and sometimes when I dissent it, it makes no sense to me either (ha). When people in my life suck the life out of me, when I feel like I am giving someone a million chances and things never change, my inclination is to just let that relationship go. And selfishly, life is easier without those people.

But grace means holding on.
And God holds on.

Through the first six chapters of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar is the prime example of God's grace and divine mercy. Grace and mercy that don't just end when God 'feels like it.' God holds on to Him, but God doesn't make it an easy road when Nebuchadnezzar chose his flesh instead of choosing God.

Nebuchadnezzar's life makes it almost painfully clear that God gives us chances. But His life also shows that the chances may become more painful, the trials may be harder, the refining to get you to be like gold may be rougher, but He doesn't stop with his mercy and grace just because you go back to old ways. He gives chances. He gives a way back to living in Him, He gives a way back to His throne.

God gives chances.

I love that one of the most powerful and unique things about God is that He doesn't give up. We humans throw in the towel when giving out grace drains us, but then there's God's ways. God finds satisfaction in the fact that in the end, all the glory is His. He gives out grace and in the end, His grace shouts from our lives. All the glory is His in the end, because He gives us something that we can't do ourselves, that we can't give ourselves, that we as humans, simply cannot do like He can.

BELIEVING IN THE UNBELIEVABLE

What if I really, truly, 100% accepted God's grace?

I think that belief is essential for accepting God's grace. If we can't ever trust and believe in the grace of God, how are we to accept it?

And honestly, I think a Christian life of accepting God's grace is extraordinarily different from one that lacks the belief and acceptance of the grace of God. If we believe and accept God's grace, that means we believe and accept the fact that God loves us. We believe that our sins are forgiven, that God has looked past all the wrong we have done and He sees our heart. If we believe God's grace covers us, that means we believe that God loves us without bounds and with a love that is unquestionable and unfathomable.

If we believe in God's grace and if we believe that God loves us (like if we deeply, wholeheartedly believed it) our whole lives would be different. Better. Fuller. Happier.

There would be
freedom
compassion
humility
selflessness
joy
+ peace
abounding in our lives.

Try believing today that God loves you.
Really think about it.
And really give thanks for it, and walk in that truth.

It'll change everything.

A RESOLUTION + SOME SACRIFICES

The fact of the matter is, the world is not ending tomorrow. At least, I don't believe so and I urge my mom to stop watching crazy doomsday shows and entertaining the idea in the slightest. However, all the hype about it got me thinking... what if my life really did end sometime soon? What if today or tomorrow or the next day was my final day on Earth? What would I be known for, what would I have accomplished, what would my life stand for when it all comes down to it?

It made me question whether or not I am making the most of my life. I know that is a huge loaded question, but really. Seriously. Am I living the life I want to be remembered by? If I were to write down the qualities and characteristics that I wanted people to know about me by the time my life ended on this earth, would they actually be said of me today, right in this moment?

Lets be real. It makes me nervous when I try and search my own heart for what screams like a loudspeaker out of my life. What speaks loud, what sins envelop my life, what passions define me, what drives me, what gives me worth and meaning, what fills up my time? Is my life really about the things that I want them to be about? Woah. Talk about a life that needs some times to be changed, nothing is put into perspective until those questions literally circle my mind.

I used to always hear the statement that the things that define you are the things that you spend your time doing, the things you spend your time thinking about, and the things you spend your money on. In that case, my life is not what I want it to be about on all three accounts. Truth be told, I am not living the life I want to be living and the only thing I can point to blame is my flesh and Satan. I listen to my flesh when it tells me that I need a new dress or need more clothes when I already have more then my closet full and more then enough to clothe me to begin with. I listen to my flesh when it tells me to go on social networking websites instead of spend intentional time with God or with other human beings. I listen to the flesh when I think about what food I am craving and want to go buy for dinner, when I run lines through my mind of things I want to say to people instead of just trust God and leave conversations to come in His hands, I listen to my flesh when I think more about myself then I do about other people and about ultimately, glorifying God above everything. I realize, when I think about all I want to change in my life, how much I truly do not have it all together as much as I think I do sometimes.

The typical Christian cop-out is that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It's true. We all sin, and perfection (thankfully) is not required for us to follow Jesus. But the thing is, I want grace and mercy to cover over my life because of God's goodness not because it's a cover up for living according to my flesh. I don't want his grace to be a cop-out. I want his grace and forgiveness to be an added bonus.

I know that it is a little early to make a New Years Resolution, but I am making one. However, I am praying it doesn't stop there. I am making a Life Resolution. (Cliche I know.) I am cleaning out all the junk in my life. Although my room is currently messy (let's be real, I still have to unpack), my heart feels freedom finally. Freedom because I am vowing to no longer just have these ideas of how my life can depict Christ more, but I am living those ideas. I am doing, not just thinking and praying. I think a big mistake that I often make is that we must always pray and seek God in everything. I agree to that entirely, but sometimes we place the acting upon those prayers and desires last. Instead of just doing something... and then seeking God amidst that and through it all. The biggest mistake we can make is to push aside convictions with the justification that 'I'll just pray about it.' Some things have answers, and they are written right in the book God gifted to us. Some things have clearer answers then we would like to think.

So, I am giving up the excess in my life. With the things that I feel in some way, shape or form define me. I think that if I am striving to represent Christ, I can't represent the world. There is no middle ground I can or should fall upon. It is either all about Him or it isn't about Him at all.

I want people to view me as a person that made her life about other people. A girl that cared more about blessing people with anything they needed then she did about blessing herself with temporary, fleeting things. I want people to view me as loving and selfless not as blinded or selfish. I want people to see Christ's joy inside of me and know that it cannot be found in this world. I want people to view me as clothed with grace and humility more then I want them to view me as clothed with cute outfits. I want people to know me through intentional conversations, coffee dates, and long Skype calls, not through social networking, or even through this blog. I want people to be impacted by Christ's working through me. I want people to come to me when they are at their most broken, I want to be the first person people call. I want to be a life changer that in turn changes the world as people know it. I want to actually believe what the Word says is true... Here me out: I know that the Word is true... but I want to live it in such a way that points to the fact that I believe it with all of my being. I want to live with sacrifices that point to Jesus, I want to live a life that isn't easy but it's good and full because of Jesus. I want to live pouring out blessings on others that in turn, points to Jesus, I want to live in a way that doesn't make sense to this world. Yes, I really just want my life to point to Jesus. And if it is not 100% undoubatably doing that to the people around me, and if I can't be content where I am at in my walk with God. Then things have got to change.

Here's to change, here's to convictions, here's to a new life of freedom. Starting now.
Whatever it takes, Lord. Whatever it takes.

"You can suffer the pain of change or suffer remaining the way you are." 
Joyce Meyer

WHAT IF THE BIBLE ISNT ALL ABOUT US

What if the Bible is really just all about Jesus?

I know, I know. The answers "yes, duh the Bible is about Jesus." But how often am I stuck here contemplating how to be maximized and used by God in the highest way, thinking more about ME then about HIM and HIS power. How often are we force fed that the Bible is God's love story to US? Making all this about us is bringing us back to sin in the first place. Making things about us.

But they were never supposed to be about US.
The world revolves around God. His voice. His fingertips.
Not us.

What if the Bible isn't about YOU? What if this Earth is more about God then about the little specks that are human beings? What if Heaven is infinitely more about God's presence then it could ever be about those that are on their knees worshiping Him? (Duh.) Why do we make it about us? Why do I make it about me?

It's about God.
It's all about Him.
Why do we make it about us?
It's not about us at all.
It never has been.

He even died so that we would stop thinking about US and OUR sin.
We can think endlessly more about HIM and HIS grace and forgiveness.

How have we forgotten.

WHY GRACE SUCKS

As I was searching my computer for a note I wrote a while ago, I found some other random notes I saved in the beginning of this year. I opened a few. One of them contained a multitude of Bible verses and only one sentence that wasn't. It read:

THE BEAUTY OF GRACE IS THAT IT MAKES LIFE UNFAIR.

I searched it in Google to see if those were my own words or a quote. Lets just say my jaw would have dropped if those were my own words. Come to find out it was a band's lyrics. Lyrics with such beauty and truth that it blew me away. It hit me because if I have learned anything recently, it is a thing or two about grace.

I think that the world and my life are both constantly under an attempt to be "fair." We like fairness. We like to get what we deserve, in the positive sense. We like happily ever afters. We like to be loved as we love. We like to get the grade we think we deserve, the friendships we think we deserve, the life we think we deserve. As much as people seek to be selfless and not to be conceited, it is funny how much we think we are actually deserving of. We feel we are deserving of a good education, a car, a nice house, satisfying meals, among a never ending list of other things, with the only reasoning being that we earned it or we are just 'good people.'

Point blank: grace sucks. Grace sucks because it screws every single human beings perception up that likes and seeks fairness (so, basically everyone). One thing that grace is definitely not, is fair.

Let's just say within the past couple months I have learned grace to a whole new sense and a whole new capacity. Life has thrown some curve balls, some curve balls of things I never felt I deserved. The beauty of grace though... is that it makes life unfair. Grace would not exist without a willingness to put flesh and human instinct aside. A willingness to accept wrong when you did no wrong. A willingness to put people before yourself that probably, according to popular opinion, don't deserve to be put first. Grace has, and never will, make sense.

Grace sucks because grace is what put Jesus on the cross. If it weren't for the grace of Jesus, He could have used his powers (being God) to change the torment and suffering He endured. However, He took it upon Himself because grace means doing the unthinkable for someone else. He took our sins unfairly, and in that, the cross holds a multitude of beauty.

Even the slightest essence and notion of grace yields beauty endlessly. After all, who doesn't love those stories in the news of people doing something so sacrificially with no reasoning to do so? With people putting people before themselves when it doesn't make sense?

I used to never be able to grasp grace, and I probably never fully will. I remember when I used to read the Bible and it would mention grace and mercy, I couldn't distinguish the two. I couldn't wrap my brain around grace and why it was so valuable. Grace was a pretty word and truth be told I just really liked it as a girl's name. But beyond that, I was stuck. I guess to be honest, I never understood grace until I tried to live it. And now I see grace in the cross to an extreme I never saw before. I see a God who did what didn't make sense because He loved us more then He loved His own life.

Taking up your cross and following Jesus means taking up amble grace, even when you fully acknowledge how much it can (and probably will) wreck you. Grace hurts. Grace sucks. But if anyone knows how to give out grace when it's hard, it's Jesus. And in following Him, the beauty is that He can bless you with the ability to truly desire to give out His grace even when it doesn't make sense. God knows grace and after all, I think the heart of the Gospel is in many ways grace: the 'doing what doesn't make sense' and 'loving when it doesn't make sense' because it points to a world other then this one.

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Jesus knows grace best: Hebrews 4:16, John 1:14, 15-17, 1 Peter 5:10, Romans 3:20-24, Romans 5:1-2, Romans 5:12-21, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 2:4-9 

Grace refuses to put a ceiling or a floor on concern for the neighbor. -Joseph Fletcher

Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace. -Jerry Bridges

Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind. 
-A. W. Tozer