in the love of Christ

Ever since I became a Christian, I have been doing the dance called "live like a Christian" and it isn't the easiest thing I have ever done. There are lots of things that go along with trying to live a righteousn life so that I can bring God glory through my existence. One of the commands of God is to guard my heart and there are quite a few reasons as to why we should do this as well as a few ways to do this. Today, I think I realized/affirmed for myself some of this. Here we go! Philippians 4:4-7"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again : rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. In doing what Philippians 4:4-7 commands, you will be guarding your heart with the peace of God Himself! And what does that

This week I faced something I had been ignoring for a while: I need glasses. I have always had perfect vision! I remember being a kid and testing myself to see how far away I could read stuff and shouting out in the car to hear someone say, “Oh my goodness! You can actually read that far!” Out of pride, I had ignored the problem. I am not saying that I have all of sudden gone nearly blind but I am saying that there is a difference. That is actually how I described it to the optometrist who, after doing all the tests and measurements (puff of air in my eye? No thanks) handed me a piece of paper with some small writing on it. I had told him it was my long-distance more than my close up, so I did not get why I was looking at this little writing which I could read fine! As I was looking at it, he put my makeshift prescription on me. Let’s pause here and mention that I didn’t think it was really that bad. I mean, my eyesight was just uncomfortably different, not blurry or anything. I did no

The truth: I think of blog themes non-stop. Literally every 20 minutes I think of a new thing I want to sit down and spill out over my keyboard to the few eyes that take a peek at this blog. More truth: I am sitting here in my snuggie realizing how often I give up on myself. It seems that, of all of the millions of blog topics I think of, I want to blog about the one that makes the least sense to me and is the most difficult thing for me to try to explain. It could be easy to explain. The enemy attacks me every moment he gets and tries to convince me that I am just not quite good enough and that I never will be. Simply put: he takes advantage of my moments of insecurity. That wasn’t so hard to explain, now was it? That wasn’t so difficult to figure out! Oh wait…there is so much more to it. The moments of insecurity. Yes, the enemy takes advantage of the vulnerability there and it makes it easy to give up on myself. But I cannot blame every down moment in my life and in my relationship