Stone Cold Love

                We all have that one (or more) person that we do not get along with. That person that we don't "like" just always happens to say all the wrong things to us that makes us rage with anger. Or maybe someone doesn't like you because of a certain standard that is not true. But no matter what there can be tension and hatred between anyone. When we are encountered by people like this we normally don't enjoy it or look forward to it in any way. And when we do see these people that we just "adore" it is not a friendly exchange. The burning rage that hatred starts in your heart with effect the way you see a certain person that just pushes your buttons. This makes it extremely hard to humble yourself before that person and even the Lord. Can you imagine what the world would be like if God got even and gave into the hatred that was towards him while he was on earth? Our world would be the total opposite. Our lives would be all about hatred, death, greed, and sin. And we would all follow the example of anger being okay from God. Fortunately God didn't give into hatred and that's why our world is the way that he had planned.  God was in charge of saving us and he did his job. Ezekiel 33:7-9 states "So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel.Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning for me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to tun from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delievered your soul." These verses show the importance of working together. Like I said, we might not like everyone we come in contact with, but we are to love them no matter what. Keep those verses in mind... if we hate someone and know that physical or mental danger is headed there way then we are to warn them despite our feelings. If we don't warn them then we are for one not doing our duties as the children of God. And second of all, we will be held responsible for the outcome of that troubled person. Your probably thinking... well how is the people i hate the most my problem, they treat me horrible? As hard as it is to love those who persecute you... it is what you are called to do. The ones that show us hatred may not know God which therefore closes theirs eyes to the gentle way of life that we can see. Don't become angry or frustrated because others don't understand things because they might not be on the same level as you and that's okay! It we all only loved the people that loved us then we would not have any progress. We would all live the same life with the same people because we are scared to resolve problems with people we don't like. Now I'm not telling you that you need to let people walk all over you but you need to see the good side of every "evil person". When it is hard to love people that show you no love just remind yourself that your doing this for God's glory not your own. The people that are the most lost are those people that hate us and who would be a better teacher besides the followers of Christ! When you come in contact with a personal conflict with others...talk it out and evaluate the situation. Sometimes the conflict is not the problem, the only problem is the way you view the situation. Out of all of this you wont lose you integrity for humbling yourself...you will gain strength. And I'm not talking about having huge arms. Your heart will become stronger and that's far more rewarding that having a muscular appearance that will fade away. This week I present you with the challenge to find that one person (or people) that you never ever see eye to eye to and evaluate the way your relationship is. No matter what the situation is think if the way you view the conflict is actually worse than the actual conflict it self. Remember that you are to love your neighbors and reach to those that need help even when they shoot it down. All that is, is a cry for help. Put your personal feelings aside and help others. It might seem that their sins are bigger than yours but that's just an illusion.





Word of the Day:  “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.
                                                       ~Luke 6:27-28

Falling Into the Darkness

         In the following context you will read a humorous but kinda of embarrassing story. (Yes it is about me and no... you better not laugh) So about a week ago I was pulling an outfit out of my closet to wear the next day. And as soon as I pulled out a pair of jeans and I started to walk away, my whole closet rack collapsed. Well talk about a mess that nobody ever should want to clean up! All I could do is turn around and just hope that a bunch of shoes just fell, but nope of course not. So I just stared at my disaster of a closet, which I tediously keep clean 24/7, and yell to my parents that the loud noise was just my whole closet falling through. My dad comes upstairs to check the disaster and laughs by saying " And you always ask for more clothes." Of course that would make any girl mad, and in my defense some of those clothes are my sisters old ones. But anyways! I was stressing because it was getting late plus it was a school night and I still had several things to do including joyful homework. So I looked at the closet and just took a big old sigh and went in and started to manage the rubble. For that night all of my clothes had to sit in piles on my floor until the rack could be fixed. I could sit there all night to fix it (which is what my cleaning disorder was telling me to do). But the one big thing that came out of it all was that, I never saw it coming just like we never know when we are gonna trip up. That night I just went to bed and turned off the lights to masked the huge mess in my room. And in the dark you cant see the mess, which was nice to pretend that it never happened. But have you ever tried to mask up a huge disaster in your life? I know I have (not my closet ordeal) and it ended up coming to the surface and breaking through and being worse than it was in the beginning. Right now I want you to think about light vs. dark. What can you do in the light that you cant do in the dark? But what can you do in the dark that you cant do in the light? In the light you can see everything. You can drive better, play sports, exercise, have a picnic or party, and anything else you do in your everyday lives that you don't realize we need Gods natural light for. Now if you add the night and its darkness to all of those things, you can still do them but you wont be able to see them as well or take part in it as well as you could if it was during the day. When I was laying in my bed I told myself "Now Kaitlyn, you have to remember that your whole wardrobe is on your floor so you have to be extra cautious when getting up tomorrow or you are going to be tumbling all over your clothes and it probably wont feel to pleasant with metal hangers." I was at risk for hurting myself, on my fashionable clothes, because I would be walking in the dark in the morning. I mean, I could still see my room but the darkness would impair my ability to see as clear as I would with all of the lights on. Sadly we cant make our disasters and stresses go away by turning the lights off on them and going to sleep. Because they will be there just like my clothes were still all over my floor. And they wont go away until you do something about it. I am warning you to not walk in the darkness physically and mentally. Physically because if you fall, well dang you don't know what your falling on! But if you fall mentally in the dark you will never know how far you have truly fallen from God. If you fall in the dark then how will you ever know which way is out? The thing is, you will never know. If I had gotten up and started walking all around my room without turning the lights on, my room would be a lot messier than just having clothes on the ground and I would never know what I hit until I turned on the lights. So think about this for the week, when you chose to walk in the darkness that the devil provides you will not be able to see the stress, evil, sin, or destruction laying around you. It will be at your feet waiting for you to walk right into its trap. And once your trapped you wont know which way is up and which way is down. This week I want to ask you to do a little exercise. Turn of all of the lights in one of the rooms in your house so it is dark, close your eyes, and spin around a couple times and walk around. Count how many things you run into, but please don't hurt yourself. And take that as a reminder of how easy it is to mask our disasters and how easy it is for them to end up hurting us again. The destruction in our lives can be caused by minuet things. Little did i know... my closet rack fell because it was missing a screw and the wood was cracking. If I would of payed close attention I would of prevented that disaster from taking its course. So look closely to your life. Are you walking into the dark where the sins lie lives knifes at your feet?


Word of the Day: "And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed?"

He only sees

      My apologizing for not being quick and trough in my blogs brings me to my lesson for the week. I have not been obedient in the word. Not doing quiet times and talking to God is something that thousands of followers of Christ struggle with everyday. It’s something we can’t control…but yet we can. We can’t control the part where we get caught in that struggle but we can control our actions leading up to that. I have found that once I don’t do a quiet time or my daily prayer, which just starts a downward journey. I don’t have much to say this week about this topic. But I will attach a video so you can see that even though you put God on the back burner He will always be the burning passion in your heart if you embrace it. We often don’t do our duties of Christ because of getting distracted by friends or relationship problems or things that we find better than worshipping God. There is many times where we make mistakes and do things that we don’t think about before we do it. No matter what we do God always shows us forgiveness and He is there for us when we aren’t there for Him. God is the only one that sees and knows your motives. I dont have a challenge for you this week because you are going to make one for yourself, make a challenge that will test you beyond measures through God.

I hope you enjoy this!

Little Wisdom

This past summer I signed up to help with vacation bible school at my church. As one of the “tribe leaders”, I was excited to do God’s work in my own community. It was also fun to spend time with my family and the younger kids as well as being able to partner up with my mom while helping. So since the theme was Babylon all of the leaders had to dress the part and of course I had to wear the long “skirt” with a Babylonian “smock”. Ok so I’ll admit….my costume was pretty dang awesome, but it was also not the first thing I would put into my wardrobe. But none of that matter because I was working with little kids and plus it was all for God, despite my fashionable “Babylonian wear.” My point of this lesson is kids. Little kids to you may come off as annoying or cute or just “not your thing.” Now some of you may have kids or are in the process of having kids or kids are not even in your future and that’s fine because we all have our own paths in life. But we are all called to be brothers and sisters through Christ Jesus even if the little ones get on your last nerve. While being a tribe leader I found out that those little kids can teach us the best things. At very young age, kids aren’t exposed to the things that teens and adults are exposed to. If you ask a 5 year olds opinion on their view of today’s world they aren’t going to tell you that the economy is going down the drain or that global warming is coming to a head or that the world is “going to end” in 2012 or that they are having trouble in work. Those are some outcomes of an average adult today. Most children still see the bright side of the world today, the side that we all once knew when we were little. But think about that…why did that ever go away? For most adults they lost the rainbows and butterflies by simply growing up. When you grow up you go through several test and seasons of life that change your view on the world. It may distort is or I might expand it. But no matter what our view on the world never stays the same from when we were 5. You can also probably remind your biggest idol. I might of being (and still be0 your parents, sibling, other family member, best friend, or a certain adult. We all looked up to those older than us in some way, and children do that till this day. But have you ever considered looking up to them? Their ideas and thinking is fresh…it’s new…and it’s not yet ruined by sin. Kids are still surrounded and being tempted by sin but it might not be as severe as the ones adults face. We always think that children should look up to us and they should because those older than them show them the ways of life. But keep in mind that kids have a way of thinking that takes away the “scary things” of the world that adults constantly worry over. It is a lot easier for kids to get sold into believing in God because adults make excuses not to follow God. Because adult sin is much more developed than the sin of little kids. I saw the devotion of kids to Christ through the VBS at my church, and it was a breath of fresh air to such young kids love God without hesitation. I would look around and some kids would be jumping up and down yelling during worship time because they love Jesus! How many times do you see adults jumping up and down for the glory of God? Yeah that seems a little farfetched to see any adult like that in public. What we can learn from this is that kids can see the glory of God just like adults can but kids don’t let anything in their way in doing so, unlike most adults. Now I’m not saying that 5 year olds are better believers in Christ because no one is a perfect follower. But I challenge you this week to watch the little ones around you and learn from them. Either if there your own children your students your nieces or nephews…look up to them for once because kids have a lot more wisdom than you think they do. We are all children of Christ and we always will be! Word of the Day: 2 Timothy 3:14-15 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ~2 Timothy 3:14-15 Question of the week: Am I letting the young me show through without hesitation for Christ?