Vulnerably Beautiful

There you are at church, and worship begins, but you are not feeling it. No awe of God. No love for him. Nothing. What should you do? Should you go through the motions anyway? Should you leave and come back next Sunday for another try? What should you do? What Jesus Taught Jesus taught that true worship must involve both spirit and truth: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24) So we must worship in truth — which means worshiping the true God as revealed in Jesus Christ as recorded in Scripture. But what does it mean to worship in spirit? Two Clues from John’s Gospel “The Hebrew word for ‘waiting’ does not mean passive waiting; it means eager seeking.” One clue is that John’s gospel uses the word “spirit” to refer to feelings and emotions. You can see that in John 13:21: “After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit.” The other clue is that in John 3:6 the word “spirit” refers to something supernaturally produced in us by ...

Dear Daughter, I see the way you look at yourself in the mirror each morning. I see the scowl on your face when your hair doesn't curl just right, and that redness of your skin you can't hide. My darling, I see the way you frown in disappointment after trying on six different tee shirts-- none quite fitting the way you would like. I know, my love, I know how hard it is when your world seems like it is crashing down while everyone else's is thriving. You will get your turn though soon. Soon you will get your shot; you will get your turn to shine for me. Stop comparing yourself to that girls Instagram photo; what you see is a brief display of a filtered to perfection photo that she chooses to show in her life.. it isn't reality. Send away those feelings of jealousy; you may not know what she is hiding behind that so-called perfect photo.  My precious, I understand what it feels like to be alone, I have been there. I know what it is like to cry out and ask for something...

When you ask someone in Canada what their favorite season is, you will get a different answer depending on who you ask and what their hobbies are. Everyone has a favorite. For some, summer is the favorite, and winter is seen as the least favorite or vise versa. What season one person enjoys can be another ones least favorite. Often, people have a TV season, or sports season that they prefer and ones that they don't care about as much, or just don't prefer. Life and the seasons it brings is the same way, what is hard or unfavorable for one person, might not be for another. In saying that, it makes it hard to understand and empathize with other people and what is hard for them. As Christians, we are called to love everyone, regardless of who they are or what they have done, but sometimes it is hard to love when we don't understand what they are going through and what they are going through may not be hard for you. When we don't understand how another feels, it becomes...

As humans, we like to plan things and know what is happening and when it is happening. When we want to go to the lake, or on vacation, we check the weather to ensure it will be good. Most people check the weather at least once a day, if not more. You check the weather to properly plan and prepare for the upcoming days so that you know what to expect. Humans like to know what to expect, they like to plan and know all of the possible outcomes before going through with something. If we check the weather and it says there is a 70% chance of rain, we probably aren’t going to plan a barbecue. We live our lives and our days around planning most of the parts of the day so that we can have a fair expectation of the day and know what we can all accomplish by the end of the day. When our expectations are not met, we often are upset that things didn’t go as planned and even get frustrated that we have to replay to ensure that everything gets done on time.  The last week of June I made a d...

When some of you read the title, you will instantly have a thought come to your mind of which way you are running. Others of you ill think I am crazy to even ask such a question because there seems to be only one logical way to run. The rest of you will question if you are running the right way and how you know it's the right way. I think we're all a lot like Jonah. God told him which way to run, but God's way scared him. So he decided to run the other way, and that only got him in more trouble and stuck in the belly of a fish. I believe that deep down, Jonah knew which way was the right way to go. I think he knew it was right to listen to God, but it scared him and he wanted the easy way out. He didn't act any differently than the rest of us. If you are given two different choices, it seems logical to take the easy one instead of the hard one. In fact, most people would call you dumb for taking the hard choice. That's where God is different. He gives us the choic...

What is the most expensive thing you own? Your phone? Car? house? Your education (let's be real, university/college is really expensive)? Think even harder about it. The most expensive thing I own is my sin. It is so incredibly expensive and it is not something that I could ever work enough hours to pay for. It is not paid with cash, credit, debit, or cheque. It is paid in mental, emotional, and spiritual pain. God did not create an arbitrary list of "DOs" and "DO NOTs" to see if we could and would follow them. No, He laid out a set of essential guidelines for living. His anger towards lying, stealing, cheating, coveting, murder, jealousy, and pride is because every single one of these things, D E S T R O Y S relationships. Every single thing that the Bible labels as sin are the things that God is trying to protect us from. His desire for us, is love, peace, grace, and harmony with Him, but also with all of creation. Sin is the defiant rejection of this love...

This day, 3 years ago was a very different day. It should have been an ordinary day, a day that had a routine wisdom teeth extraction, videos of the aftermath of laughing gas, lots of liquids, and an ice compress to make chipmunk cheeks not seem nearly so big. That is exactly how the day started, the ending was not quite as planned or normal. I started the day in the hospital and also ended the day there. This day seems to bring conflicting feelings as to whether it is a day of celebration or a day of pain and sorrow. It brings pain and sorrow as it is a day that changed the course of my life completely. It brought and still brings so much pain, struggle and hurt into my life. The accident that occurred 3 years ago has brought problems into my life that without them my life would be drastically different. So many tears have been cried and so many days, weeks have been spent in bed, doing nothing. Being too sick to do anything. Without the events of the day, my life would be in ...

When you hear the quote "when it rains, it pours", it usually comes with a negative connotation. It is commonly said when many things don't go as planned in a short period of time. Time and time again I hear people say it with such negativity regarding a situation, and rarely does saying it ever make the situation better. In the last 2.5 weeks, I have spent a combined 20 hours in a vehicle driving so I have had a lot of time to think about everything and anything. Just before I left for one of the drives, one of my friends had said this in a joking matter about her life, again with the negative connotation. The more I thought about this and the negativity surrounding it, I wondered how it could become a positive thing. I've been thinking about that lot in my spare time and I have come to the conclusion that just because it's pouring, doesn't mean it is always bad. In fact, some of my best memories at camp are from days that it poured all day long. When we ...

Ever feel like the world around you is spinning out of control, one moment you are on top of the world, and the next you are in the deepest, darkest pit? You can go to bed at feel so in control and aware of all the things going on and all the things you need to get done, but then wake up in the morning and feel so overwhelmed and stressed. Today was one of those days, I went to bed last night feeling at peace with everything that the next couple weeks would entail, and woke up this morning feeling so overwhelmed and as though I was drowning in my to-do list. I had this so much anxiety rising inside of me and just couldn't handle it. At that moment, I decided that instead of trying to block the stress and anxiety out and put it somewhere to simmer and then go back to it later was a bad idea. Instead, I pulled out my Bible, and notebook and began to pray and go to God with everything that was a stressor in my life. I prayed and listened. Listened to God and gave Him time to respond...

Ever question if something or someone is worth pursuing? Sometimes we get to the end of the line where we wonder if that friendship is worth the effort or that degree or that relationship. I've been there, wondering where the point was that it was time to give up or give it to God. It is hard to know what to do in those situations. So many people I have talked to and asked about this subject have all come to the same conclusion when it comes to pursuing people and that is this: if the roles were reversed, would you want them to fight for you? Would you want them to fight for the broken friendship or fight to be in that relationship? The more I thought about that, the more I realized that I would. When I think about my relationship with our Heavenly Father, I see all of the times that I have run the opposite direction, or been angry and how He relentlessly pursues me regardless of how far I run. We are given the choice of whether or not we want to follow Christ, but He never stops...

From the point of view of the world, we say blessed are those who have the cutest clothes, the prettiest face, newest phone, nicest car and the most money. We determine how blessed someone is, by the way, they look and things they own. Which is not completely accurate, sometimes the people with the best of everything are the ones who feel the most empty inside. It's amazing what people can hide behind nice things and a pretty smile. This was me yesterday afternoon, fresh snowfall and snow lightly falling means really great lighting for new pictures. So that's what I did. Took my tripod, set my camera up and took some pictures. I would have said in those moments that I felt blessed.  Only a few short hours later, this is me lying in a hospital bed, and would not have said I felt very blessed. When I need to go to the hospital to get pain medication and scans done, it makes me very anxious knowing I have to lay there and wait for it to be done and that I can't move...

It isn't a two-way street all of the time with God. It is in the sense of us needing to strive to be like Him and pray intently, He isn't going to just magically appear and tell us what to do and take all of our worries away if we don't ask Him to. On the other hand, though we can't ask Him to do something, and then when He does say "oh not that way though". All throughout my high school years, I always wanted God to be glorified, I wanted everything I did to be in His image and likeliness. I prayed so many times for God to break me down and mold me into someone He could use, and read countless times the passage in Isaiah that says "Here I am, Send Me" and wanted that wholeheartedly. I wanted so badly to be used by God to further His Kingdom. At that time though, I am not sure if I completely understood what that meant. When I got my concussion in 2015, I had so many people praying for recovery and praying for it to go away, for complete healin...

Having a chronic illness of any sort is one of those things that unless you have one, they are hard to understand. The problem with that is when you tell someone about your chronic illness, the general response is "oh my _____ also has that sometimes, but they're doing good and getting better, so you will too". Don't get me wrong, that can be encouraging at times, but that ___ person probably isn't doing nearly as good as you think they may be. The instinctive reaction when someone asks how you are doing when you have a chronic illness is 'I'm fine' because saying that is easier than explaining all of the pain you are in, in that moment. Having a chronic illness turns you into a pro at hiding your symptoms, pretending everything is good and going to work/school/running errands without blinking an eye, even though you may be experiencing gut-wrenching pain. Very often, you will see a person with a chronic illness smiling and laughing, seeming to enjoy...

"David didn't kill Goliath because he set out to slay giants... He killed Goliath because his dad sent him to take his brothers sandwiches and Goliath got in the way" -- Rich Mullins David was the youngest of his seven brothers and Jesse, his father was very old already by this time. When David was sent with sandwiches for his oldest three brothers, he went willingly and obeyed what his father had told him to do. David arrived to where his brothers and the rest of Saul's army was and started asking about what would happened when the giant was killed and to the person who killed the giant. When his brothers overhead that David was talking they were angry and wondering why he was there and who was looking after the sheep. They called him conceited and wicked at heart, telling him also that he only had bad intentions of coming to watch the battle. David replied asking what he had done to be talked to like that, why he couldn't speak without being harassed. Can yo...