Victorious

So lately I've been angry at the world. There isn't one specific reason, just a bunch of things piling up that are causing me to stress out and want to hike ten miles on top of a mountain and live there. It has just been the little things but regardless of the situations in my life I shouldn't let them get me down or get me in the state I have been. Ten years from now who knows where God will have me. The crazy things that are going on in my life right now wont even be remembered. I hope not anyway. I hope I use my memory to store important things, happy things, people, places, and experiences that I love.

I know that I am not alone in this struggle. It says in the Bible that we have brothers and sisters facing the same situations. Though the “world” may be throwing all it has at us we all have to remember that we are children of God and He does have a plan for our lives. Jeremiah 29:11 says: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” That is an amazing promise. God loves us. He knows the future that He has for us and He wants us to find hope in that. Jesus also says to be of good cheer for He has overcome the world. Jesus faced the same things that you and I face today. No He didn't have a cell phone that died just as He broke down on the side of the interstate sending Him into a fiery rage, but He did face temptation, and He overcame it. We can overcome this world too.

Learning the truth is essential in this battle against Satan and the evil forces at work in this world. Reading Gods Word, meditating on it, asking Him to show us what He wants us to learn, and storing His Word in our hearts, is like sharpening the blade of a sword before battle. The devil will be throwing fiery darts at us trying to get us to fall and trying to get us to drift away from our Lord and Savior but if we are prepared then we can defeat him. God has equipped us with three of the greatest weapons.

1) The Word of God, the Truth, our sword.

2)The Holy Spirit, our comforter, our guide.

3)The Church, our teachers, the ones that lift us up when we think we can't fight anymore.

With these three weapons we will be overwhelmingly victorious over the enemy. Be warned. He is a liar, a manipulator, and very persistent. But the Bible says: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.” (James 4:7-8) If we read everyday, pray everyday, get closer to Him, and just grow more in love with Him, then we will be able to see the devils attacks before we fall into them. We will be able to remember the Truth and not fall for his lies. We will be victorious.

I know that this started out with me telling you that I have been having a hard time lately, and this is true. But I know that it's just the devil trying to get me down so that I can't show Gods love, peace, and joy that comes with being close to Him. Even though things may get rough in our lives, we should still look to God for the answers. We should still show everyone around us the love that He first showed us. Life could always be worse. We could not know Jesus. I am happy to say even through the tough times, I am blessed. <3

Blessed

Today I've realized how truly blessed I am. I have an amazing family who would do anything for me. I have a place to live. A room and bathroom of my own. Food to eat. A car thats paid off A job that works around my crazy schedule which God provided. Being able to go back to school, which He also made possible. A loving, caring and close body of believers that I am proud to call my church family. Amazing leaders of said family. The most awesome youth group in the entire world. The best friends I could ever ask for in a million years. I don't know what I would do without them. I love them more than chocolate and coffee, yeah that much. I know if I ever needed anything or just a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to they would be there, and I would do the same for them. We keep each other up. As friends, and brothers and sisters in Christ we love and encourage each other. I love that. I love the closeness we all have. And I love that we're all connected by Christ. And most importantly I am regaining my closeness with God and the excitement of wanting to build that relationship and make it stronger. I'm not saying all this to boast. I'm only saying this because I truly am thankful for all God has given me, and as a testimony to how happy you can be with Christ. Yeah there are some things in my life that aren't going so great and there are things I stress about from time to time, but ultimately it's in Gods hands, and everything works together for the good for those who believe. You have to build a relationship with Him, you have to love Him, and you have to trust Him. Living life stressed out and unhappy is no way to live. Life is too short for that. Happiness is a choice. If you choose God He will give you happiness. And when bad things happen in your life He will be there to help you through it, He will give you strength. So to sum this all up, I love my life because of the One that gave up His for me. <3

Hike Your Own Hike

So I'm back in the real world. Away from all the nature and beauty that God created, and the freedom that it holds. I'm back to work schedules, alarm clocks, and cell phones. I can't help but wish I was back on top of looking glass mountain. The hike to get to the top was challenging. The temptation to stray off the path and take short cuts was almost unbearable. The urge the give up grew stronger with every step. But what kept me going was the strength that only God could provide, the hope of reaching the top and the promise of a beautiful view. I learned a lot from that hike. More than any hour sermon could have taught me. It was ironic because the lesson I learned was actually taught later, but if God hadn't shown it to me the hard way I would have never understood. Life is hard sometimes, a lot of the time, and you're going to have the desire to stray off of the straight and narrow, but if you stay on that path, the outcome is breathtaking, overwhelming and wonderful, greater than any mountain top view. I hope I can hold onto this lesson for the rest of my life. I hope I can break this cycle of stupidity. I want to love Him more, seek Him more, find the purpose He has for my life, I want to please Him. I learned more than one lesson this weekend at Overflow Camp 2011 but this one was the greatest. God knows how stubborn I am. He knows it takes pain before I realize the stove is hot. He knows us all, intimately, He knows how to teach us, and more importantly, how to bring us back to Him. The end result that we're looking for, the mountain top that we're trying to reach, is heaven, an eternity with our father, our maker, our best friend. But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy Gods blessings here. If we follow Him and His calling for our lives, we can experience a little bit of heaven on earth, and a closer walk with Him. We just have to stay on the path, hike our own hike and be kingdom minded. The world will try to put obstacles in your way so you'll give up or stray but if you'll hold true God will give you the strength to make it to the top.

Treasure hunt?

I look back a lot. I look back at things I've wrote, life experiences, lessons learned, people I've met.... I probably ponder on the past more than I should to be perfectly honest. Some days I'm strong and happy and okay. Okay with being alone, with not having a career and not knowing what the future holds. Other days, days like today, I'm weak and insecure and lonely. I was looking back at one of my older posts today and envied the strong, independent person that wrote it. I tried to reach deep within me to resurrect that person, but sadly was unsuccessful. In the post I was content in life and just wanted to live each day to the fullest, enjoy every moment, and not stress about not having the "perfect" life. To an extent I still have that outlook but today I just didn't feel as confident in it. I'm sure in a few days I'll be out of this funk that I've found myself in, but until then, prayers are appreciated. I guess the only thing I can do for now is look for the good, try to be more confident in who I am, and not worry. I think this quote by an unknown author says a lot. "Don't miss all the beautiful colors of the rainbow looking for that pot of gold."

A few words or less

So there was this boy.... I fell in love....

I couldn't be patient... It ended in heartache...

Who's counting?

July 17, 1989... this was the day I was born. It doesn't feel like I've been on this earth for 22 years. I feel like I've done nothing with my life, with the time God has so graciously given me. I don't know how long I'll have in this small, yet overwhelmingly mass world I live in, but I hope I have long enough to make some sort of difference. Long enough to fulfill at least one of my dreams. Long enough to feel like I've lived.

I live my everyday life going through the motions mostly. Work, sleep, church, friends, being lazy... school will be added to this list in the fall. But what is it all for? I mean don't get me wrong, I'm happy for the most part, but sometimes it just feel like somethings missing. Sometimes I think the missing link is a guy. Someone to hold me and comfort me and tell me everything is going to be okay. But that's not it. Sometimes I think it's because I haven't excelled and completed school like I had hoped to do by now. But that's not it either. Other times I think it's just me being silly, looking for something, anything, to make my life less mundane. But that conclusion is wrong as well. I know one day I will find my perfect (the definition of this word is debatable) man, eventually I will finish school and have a career, and I know for a fact life is more than schedules and routines. But I think the main reason I feel like there has to be more and as if something is missing is because I've drifted away from God. I've tried filling the void with everything except the obvious solution. I want love, peace, happiness and health in my life. Thats what I strive for. The Bible plainly says He will give me those things if I live for Him. Is that the method I tried to follow to obtain that life? No, of course not. I'm Jess and I'm going to do what I want, how I want. (horrible outlook by the way for those of you that didn't already know) God knows who we are, and He knows the plans He has for us, so why I thought it was a good idea to do this crazy thing called life all on my own is beyond me. I've made some bad choices along the way, but like I said in my previous post, you can still find happiness, you just need to look for it in the right place.

So maybe I haven't accomplished anything in the 22 years I've been alive, but I have learned a few lessons that I hope to carry with me for the rest of my life, no matter how long or short that may be.

At Least I'm a Happy Mess : )

Sometimes the choices I make aren't the right ones but at least I make choices. My life is moving in some sort of direction. In making choices sometimes it brings about change but that's what makes life interesting. Without choices life would just be mundane and boring. Some of the choices I've made I admit were rather stupid but good has come from most of them anyway, and the ones that no good came from, well I've just got to try not to repeat those. Mistakes can be rather useful and beneficial if you learn from them, but if nothing is learned, the pain and aggravation is pointless. Sometimes choices are hard. You're afraid you will hurt someone or yourself, but ultimately if you don't make a choice and move on with your life you're hurting everyone involved because that's not really living your life, that's more like coasting along hoping everything will work out on it's own so you don't have to make a choice. Life doesn't usually work that way. Sometimes people get hurt, sometimes you'll get hurt, but that's a part of life that you can't escape. Some choices you'll be happy to make. Like do you want this free car? Well of course sir I will gladly take that off your hands. Or the question you've been waiting to hear since you were 8 asked by the man you don't want to live without. Those are easy choices. Life is made up of many choices like where you want to live, what you want to be, do you want to get married and have kids, do you want to drink, smoke, do drugs, do you want to settle down in one spot or travel the world? There are an unlimited amount of choices we have to make in life. We can't get them all right. At some point we're gonna screw up but in the end it'll be alright. You could make the choice to have unprotected sex and have a baby into a broken family or contract a disease but that doesn't mean your life is over. That baby could be the best thing to ever happen to you, it could put life into perspective and that disease could prevent others from making the same mistake by hearing your story. I'm not saying to have unprotected sex, because that would definitely fall under the bad choice or mistake category. I'm only saying that you can overcome bad choices and still have a happy and fulfilling life. But thats why in any decision you make you have to weigh the options and really think about it. Even the smallest decision deserves a measure of thought. In my case I have some regrets, but I try to look past them to the reasons I made those choices and then try to fix the problem. I'm currently trying to get everything back on track for where I want to go in life and trying to figure out exactly who I am and what I want along the way. I can't wait to start school back in the fall, I'm working a job I don't hate, and I have amazing friends. My life is good. Somedays I do get down because I feel like I'm never going to find that true love, but other days I don't even know if I want to get married. I'm a mess and I know it, but at least I'm a happy mess. : ) So the moral of my mini rant is choices are important, think about them for a short period of time, and then make them. Live your life, don't just exist.