The Secret Place

Sometimes you need to get away from your friends in order to encounter God fully. Intimacy prospers when no one else but you and Him are together; solitude promotes vulnerability in front of the father because you can no longer hide behind the worship music, behind your friends, or behind your pastor.
It seems more simple to seek God when you are at church, the music is loud and you're in an atmosphere of people who are also seeking God at the same time, but what about at home?
What about when you're by yourself in your bedroom and it's just you and Him?
No distractions, no people, no worship band on an elevated stage.
It's hard because, what are you suppose to do, what are you suppose to say? Is there some sort of prayer that you are suppose to pray in order to summon his presence?
You have absolutely no structure on how you're suppose to spend intimate time with God, and in the long run, that's what makes your relationship with him so personal and meaningful. He's not having the same encounter with you with anyone else; your relationship with him is completely unique to you and you alone.
No one can worship God the way that you worship God because no one else on the planet is exactly like you. He didn't make you on accident, he made you because there is no one else on the planet like you, therefore you have a distinct reason to be on the earth. And this is why he wants a personal relationship with you so badly, this is why he craves connection with you where it's just you and him.

This is why you feel lonely all of a sudden, like your friends ditched you, or it seems like all of a sudden people don't care about your existence. When it feels like you have been completely given up on and are not cared about, it's because other relationships can serve as a distraction, and intimacy with God can only prosper when it's just you and Him.

You can only extend your arms in surrender when you have room around you to do so.

Curves Need to Make a Comeback

Ever since people started paying attention to body image and deciding what was the most desirable body type, "skinny" has always prevailed.
Our society has this unwavering obsession over having the perfect body; we condemn celebrities who are "too thick" and post photos of their undesirable body types on magazines for all of the world to see.
Even if we don't care about what a celebrity looks like under their clothes, we are bombarded by the media telling us that this is not what an attractive person should look like.

We condemn curves and demand that our models have the body types of an eight year old boy; no curves, tiny legs with an immense thigh gap, no fat on their belly and the arms of an Ethiopian child.
This isn't a practical physique for a woman and it's criminal that our society has been uplifting this mentality for such a long time.
Women were made to be strong, curvy, and completely different than men; or eight year old boys for that matter.
We were designed to be dainty, yet strong, defined, yet muscular. Our bodies weren't meant to be emaciated and lanky; we were meant to be powerful and healthy.

Ultimately, yes we can all agree that its easier to dress and pants shopping isn't as tragic when you have tiny, curveless legs to deal with, but at what cost are we obtaining this?
How obsessed do we have to get to realize that this infatuation is producing eating disorders and a league of insecure girls?

When I was a freshman in high school I did gymnastics 20+ hours a week, wore a size 0 and didn't really care about my body image. I could eat whatever I wanted because this sport that I was passionate about allowed me to weigh practically nothing. But as soon as I quit, I just happened to break my ankle and was immobile for about three months; you can only imagine how much my body changed in those three months.

I went from a size 0 to a size 8 by my junior year and I learned to hate my body and hate my newfound curves. Going to buy jeans was nothing short of depressing because I actually had thighs and hips now.
And society wasn't kindly easing me into my new body either.

If your body automatically has a quick metabolism, then good for you, but for the rest of us, here's a heads up : people are so consumed by worrying about their own body image that half the time they don't have time to judge your figure, therefore who cares? You pretty much get a free pass to not hate yourself for your unsatisfactory assets.

And heads up round two: girls that do judge you are just doing it out of their own insecurity, so that's even more reason to love yourself for who you are.
Of course I encourage you to strive towards healthiness, but don't think for a second that you have the wrong body if you don't have the physique of a starving model with a concave stomach and defined cheek bones that you can see from outer space.

Your body isn't wrong, society is.

Present-Day Idolatry

Whenever reading stories in the bible of people who turned from God to worship false idols, I always thought of them as ignorant and completely out of their mind.
I would ask myself, how can someone know the goodness and wholesomeness of God and then ignore him to worship a completely false god?

But then it hit me, we still do that today.

About a month ago I started reading this book called "gods at war" by Kyle Idleman. I haven't gotten too far into it but thus far, he's made some shockingly valid points.

Whenever we choose to devote ourselves to something instead of God, that is idolatry.
When you choose a relationship with someone over your relationship with God and you fuel your fellowship with them more than you fuel your fellowship with God, you are idolizing that person.

Before we delve any deeper, let's define what "idolatry" is.

Idolatry (noun) - excessive or blind adoration, reverence, devotion, etc; Obsession, madness, mania.

When someone idolizes something, they are chasing that thing with "excessive or blind adoration". The definition speaks for itself; an idol is something that we obsess over, think about constantly, and allow to dictate our decisions. There's a reason that idolatry is so clandestine, it's fun, exciting, and it disguises itself as a goal that we have set out to accomplish.


In gods at war (Student edition, page 23) Kyle Idleman makes a point that seems really obvious, but is very potent once you grasp it:

"Anything at all can become an idol once it becomes a substitute for God in our lives"


Substitute (n.) - a person or thing acting or serving in place of another

A real life example in my life is this:

{ About six months ago I worked at a bakery. It was fun at first, but working every Sunday for 12 hours can really affect a person. My relationship with God was fine at first, but the more and more that I missed church, my connection with him (and my church family) began to exhaust itself and become inexistent.
I didn't really care, to be honest, because I was receiving joy in money and relationships with my coworkers. But as I worked more and more all I was really doing was building idols in my life.

I would work Friday, Saturday and Sunday and would average about 36-40 hours in those three days. Not only was I incredibly tired, but my school work was suffering, my relationship with my family was suffering and whatever I got out of my job was never enough.
I had become obsessed with work, despite the fact that I didn't have a passion for making a massive amount of cookies, packaging baked goods, and cleaning really heavy machines.

If you like Lord of the Rings, this will resonate with you very nicely; my job had become precious to me, I didn't want to give it up, nor did I see any reason to. It was my ring, it was my idol, every decision I made was for the betterment and progress of keeping my job; but unbeknownst to me, it was suffocating me and taking my life force. }

When we chase after the perfect job, the perfect body, the perfect relationship or the perfect wardrobe, we are in fact, letting that thing have mastery over our lives. They have become the master that we answer to, the lord that we worship and give most of our focus to.

1 Corinthians 6:12 (NIV) "'Everything is permissible for me' - but not everything is beneficial. 'Everything is permissible for me' - but I will not be mastered by anything."

Our free will allows us to do whatever we wish with our lives, we think "I can quit chasing this thing whenever I want" but we can't prove it because it's something that we don't think is a problem in our life. So we go through our entire life worshiping hobbies, and people, and food and countless other things. We never take a second to stop giving attention to those things because they appear just as necessities or as small practices that relieve tension in our lives.

What things in your life do you give your prime devotion to?
If you have read all the way down to this point, you are obviously pretty invested in what I have to say, so pull out some paper, grab a pen that you like, and jot down the first five things that you can think of that you give your full attention to; things that you spend your resources on (ie. food, friends, family, hobbies).
Reflect on these things, do you allow these things to take precedence before God?
Do you sacrifice reading your bible, spending time praying to God and talking to God to do those things?
I'm not going to tell you what to do, I just want to help you realize this, as you soon as you bow to these things before you bow to God in your life, your relationship with Him will suffer.

Quenching Conflict

Proverbs 26:20: Without wood, a fire goes out; without gossip quarrel dies down

If you want to quench a fight with someone, don't tell other people about it.

Gossip is what prolongs the life of conflict; gossip is what allows strife to grow a root system.

If you want a quarrel to be extinguished, then only let it have one root, YOU.

This way you have complete control of when that weed gets pulled out of your life.

What God Has Done in My Life

When I entered high school, my parents enrolled me in a private school.
Being raised in public school, and having a secure social group in that realm, you could say I was nothing short of devastated.
But, as it turns out, like every time, God had a project that he was forming in my life. It wasn't until recently that he revealed all that he had done in my life and it BLEW MY MIND, so here is my story:

I spent my first two years of high school at private school; I was being challenged, I was growing in my faith, building friendships with other Christians, and slowly becoming two faced.
What more could I ask for, right?

When Sophomore year ended, the school had to close and as you can imagine, I was wrecked. I had gotten so accustomed to this simple, warm, complacent-Christian lifestyle of mine where I wouldn't have to do much in my faith because everyone at my school already knew about God. It was simple and I loved it, which was why it was so alarming when I discovered that I would be going back to public school.

During the summer before my Junior Year I spent roughly seven weeks volunteering at a kids camp. To give you some background information : I hated kids. Like, a lot. When I arrived at this camp somehow during all the paperwork it had managed to slip past me that I would be spending my entire Summer working with kids and working with people who loved kids more than anything. You can imagine how uncomfortable I felt and fortunately through a lot of tears and guidance, God transformed my heart towards kids that summer. He showed me his heart for them, and exposed me to how selfish I was being. It was a slap in the face, but honestly, sometimes a slap in the face is the one thing that can effectively motivate change in my life.

After this radical summer, I was officially plunged into the complexity of changing schools again (actually, it wasn't that hard and if you're considering doing part-time college during high school, DO IT). I joined the Running Start program (taking community college classes and getting high school and college credit simultaneously) because I was a brat and wanted to avoid spending as much time as possible in public school. I was prideful and had a superiority complex to put it mildly; my mom knows all too well how delightful I was.

In my first quarter at college God placed two of my closest friends from middle school in my English class. I had no clue that being reunited with these friends would completely remodel my walk with Christ.

 One of them invited me to go to her church on a Wednesday and to be polite I decided to give it a go. I went once and knew that I needed to stay. After a while, I persuaded my parents to let me leave the church I had been born into and pursue God on my own at this other church. When I say "persuaded" I mean, I begged and they finally said, "yes". They knew exactly what I was doing, my parents are very intelligent.

One month after I started attending Faith Center I heard about a missions trip that they let youth kids go on and I felt gravitated to come to the meeting and hear about it. I had never been on a missions trip (or out of the country for that matter) and my parents were shocked when I asked to go to Asia with people whom they had hardly met. It was really neat coming home and telling them that I had a desire to go to the Philippines for two weeks with people I had only known for two months. They were nothing short of baffled that I even had the audacity to ask, but they prayed about it and actually said yes.

Seven months, one passport, and hundreds of blessings that turned into $2,000 later, I was on a thirty hour trip to Asia.
This missions trip rocked my world to say the least. I saw God move in ways that I had only ever read about.

I have been going to Faith Center Church for one year and eight months and God has revolutionized in my life what it means to have a relationship with him.

If all of these things in my life that felt really painful and wrong at the time had not have happened, then I would have never been introduced to Faith Center, or gone to the Philippines, or be writing this blog.

God has truly shown me in my life what Proverbs 3:5-6 means : Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

Making decisions based on my own understanding would have given me a first class ticket to nowhere.

Thank you abundantly to everyone who has contributed to getting me to where I am, and thanks to all the people who are supporting me and helping me get to where I will go.

Dating is Tricky

Honestly, I have never had a boyfriend, but this is the accumulation of what I have learned so far in the realm of dating and relationships via books, pastors and other resources.

People hardly do anything rational when they're are nuts about someone (this one is kind of obvious).

You need to be careful, if you feel like you need a boyfriend or girlfriend as soon as possible then stop looking, you're not ready; the only thing you are ready to do is settle.

This is why dating in high school is so tricky and elusive.

Elusive (adj) - eluding clear perception or complete mental grasp

You see the person every day and get to talk constantly and that is an incorrect introduction to how the relationship will be when you're out of high school.
Unless you're both going to move into your mother's basement (which first of all, if he suggests this, RUN, NOW; what more will he have to work for? It will be too easy and he'll treat you like trash) and hang out constantly, you will never have the high school version of a relationship outside of high school.
Relationships formed in high school scenarios in which you see each other constantly are designed to expire. Frankly, it develops an intense dependence on seeing that person every single day for multiple hours; and real life, healthy relationships allow both members to be able to function on days where they can't see their significant other.
Your happiness can't be contingent on whether or not you spent loads of time with your boyfriend or girlfriend every day.

When you are joined relationally to someone, they are suppose to love you and invest in you and add to your value.
At church last night my youth pastor gave an amazing example : If some punk kid shows up to his door and asks if he can take his daughter on a date, he's not going to just hand over his daughter whose value surpasses one million dollars and let this boy spend her and then return her at the end of the night.
Even if this boy promises to move "slowly" and respect her boundaries and such, he is still going to be spending her value, he's just going to take his time doing it.

To rephrase this: Your father figure isn't going to hand some boy a million dollar briefcase and tell him to spend it wisely and cherish it.
Ladies, whomever this young man is, he is suppose to add value to you, not spend you over a period of time regardless of how "frugal" he claims he will be.

You are not a sum of money to be spent and ransacked, you are a person and you are meant to be invested in and receive guidance and leadership from who you date.
This goes both ways, guys, don't just look for a girl who has a nice face; the face will ditch the party much sooner than her character will. You need to look for intelligence, patience, wisdom, and kindness in a girl, even if she isn't the most beautiful creature you have ever seen. If character had a face, fall in love with how extravagantly gorgeous her character is.

Another quote from my youth pastor (Seth Trenda) - "Date someone when they can respect value"

If a fella asks you to be his girlfriend tell him this, "If you truly think I'm the right one, do me a kindness and spend the next week praying about it and ask me again"
If he refuses to do this, then he is far too much in a hurry to get into a relationship and obviously hasn't spent time thinking or praying about it in the first place. This is an obvious indicator that he doesn't value you and your rules as much as he made you think he does.

Do yourself a favor and don't make it easy, guys appreciate what they work for much more than what they receive without cost anyway.

Love Like a Storm

There's a reason we equate God's love to a storm.

His love is referred to as a "tempest" because it's unrelenting, inexorable, and overwhelming.

Unrelenting (adj) - not diminishing in intensity, speed, or effort
Inexorable (adj) - not capable of being persuaded by entreaty

Entreaty (n) - an earnest request or plea

Overwhelming (adj) - covered or buried beneath a mass of something, as floodwaters or an avalanche; to submerge, engulf.

These definitions speak for themselves.
His love is not diminishing in intensity, speed or effort.
It's not capable of being persuaded by an earnest plea or request. You can't persuade God to love you less if you begged him with an earnest plea to leave you alone.

The reason the word "overwhelming" sounds almost too much to describe his love is because in reality it is not good enough. He doesn't just want us to wade around in his love, or get ankle deep, he wants us to be engulfed in it and buried in it.
It's called a "storm of grace" because it feels chaotic and uncontrollable yet it's all for your benefit.
His love is exasperating and unrelenting and overwhelming because it's one of the few things he can't control.
It's boundless and unconditional. We can't do anything to make him love us less and that's why it appears so violent; because it's a love we have never encountered before.

Unconditional (adj) - Imposing, depending on or containing a condition or conditions; not implying a condition or prerequisite.

Prerequisite (n) - required as a prior condition to something

There is nothing we have to do to receive the full-fledged, unrelenting love of the creator. Every single person in existence has access to the same exact engulfing love. The rich don't receive a better version of his love, the prostitute doesn't receive a cheap interpretation or diluted version of his love, the rapist doesn't get a love that is offered out of pity, and that's exactly how it's suppose to be.
Our skewed scale of how we give love doesn't persuade God to refrain from giving out the same amount of peace, joy, comfort and relief from worldly heartache.

We have never felt a love like this because there is no other love that can immerse us so heavily and densely yet be so sweet and precious and light and enveloping at the same time. His love is perfect and kind and polite because he created it and mastered it. 

If God can love me despite the fact that I didn't use an oxford comma this entire post, he can love you with such fury that you won't ever want to go back to being without his presence.
God is after your heart. He is like the father in "Taken", he will demolish and eradicate anything that is in the way of getting himself to you, you just have to accept it.

Seek the Giver

Don't just seek what God can give you, seek God, seek the giver.

Matthew 6:33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. (NIV)

"Seek" doesn't mean pray three times, claim scripture once, and then quit.

You have to be tenacious.

Seek (v) : to go in search for; to pursue
Pursue (v) : to follow for some purpose, as to capture.

We aren't called to seek what he can give us, we are called to seek him and his glory.

Without persistence we cannot grow. It's like lifting a one pound weight for a month and being confused as to why your biceps are not growing.

The only way that you can grow is by lifting something heavier, by challenging yourself to do things you can't do without faith in God.

And that's why you must seek the giver.
The giver is the ultimate source of power, love, comfort, and rest. His gifts are just a bonus.

Reset Your "People" Filter

When you are around people, mentally hit a reset button on how and who you perceive them as.
People are constantly changing and learning.
Even if they are living in the past, you should be there to pull them into the brighter and boundless future that the present has to offer.
We have a new day every 24 hours because we need a marker that comes often. We need a fresh indicator that presents us with a choice to either pick up the same old bat and swing at the ball that was thrown years ago, or pick up the glove and catch opportunities that are being thrown to us (whether by God or other people) and play the game with others who are learning from each other and are having fun playing towards a unified goal of progression in life.
I say all of this ultimately to remind myself that if I don't live in the past and therefore don't criticize my present self for past mistakes or actions, I must treat others with the same respect that I extend to myself.
Thus, I can't treat others as if they are the same person they were a month ago, or a year ago, or even yesterday for that matter.
People may repeat trivial mistakes, but they are a different person each time they make it.
Treat people like the success they will achieve and the wonderful person they will become and you will help them become that person.

Removing Dross

Proverbs 25:4 Remove the dross from the silver, and out comes material for the silversmith.

Before God can use us, he has to take time and remove things so that we can be effectively used.

If we have pride and think that we are better than others, how is God going to be able to use us to love others?
He can't, we would be showing them a cheap and artificial love that accomplishes nothing.

He must first humble us, which won't feel great at the time, and then he can work through us.

Dross (n) : waste products or impurities formed on the surface of molten material during smelting; worthless material, rubbish

We are constantly changing as people, therefore we are always forming some form of dross on the surface of our being, its inevitable.
If you sin, you have dross.
We all sin, therefore we all have dross.

And the wonderful thing is, we have a God who is exceedingly patient, loving, and encouraging.
Not only is he excited to remove the impurities in our lives, he is equally as excited to do it again. 
He loves us so much that even though we constantly fail him, he stands there waiting for us to walk back over and say, "God, can you help me clean up again?" And he'll do it 10/10 times.

Becoming a Rare Find

Proverbs 24: 3-4 By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; 4 through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.

The house is symbolic of the life of an individual. By wisdom, our life is built on a reliable structure and through understanding it is made firm and secure. And then through wisdom we trust in God and obey him and we are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.

Rare (adj) : unusual, special
Unusual (adj) : not usual, common or ordinary
Ordinary (adj) : commonly encountered; usual; regular; normal

If you feel ordinary, get wisdom, with wisdom comes rare and beautiful treasures within your heart. God will make you unique and rare, the self consciousness you have will wane as a product of this.

Because when we find complete value, hope, and security in Christ we don't care about what people think or say about us.      

Love and Faithfulness

The verse that I'm memorizing recently is Proverbs 3:3 which says, "Let love and faithfulness never leave you, bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart."

My NIV study bible provided a cross reference to this verse and explained in Proverbs 3:22, "they will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck"

<< love and faithfulness are not a burden, when I first read this, I imagined binding something heavy around your neck to signify love and faithfulness, but God wants us to wear it as an adornment. Love and faithfulness are things that only make the wearer more beautiful and attractive to be around >>

Love (n) : an intense affectionate concern for another person

Faithfulness (adj) : true to one's word, vows, promises

We are called to love everyone, regardless of what they can offer in return. We are called to have an intense affectionate concern toward every single person that we encounter.

In Matthew 22: 37-40 Jesus says, "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 and the second is like it: 'love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Are your actions edifying God through your love and faithfulness?

God is Not Keeping Score

God doesn't have a small pocketbook that he pulls out and writes in every time you sin. 

He isn't keeping record of how much of a screw up you think you are.

If God was keeping score, we would have absolutely zero chance of ever being even with God.

Just like your sins don't matter to Him, your bad qualities aren't on a list either.

God doesn't have an ever growing list of things that you aren't good at, who you treat poorly or the grubby thoughts that you think.

Of course he is aware of your bad character traits, constant sin struggles, and flaws, but the only thing he is interested in is taking those traits away and replacing them with his presence and his qualities.

God wants so desperately for you to be the best version of yourself. And the only way for that to happen is to surrender your will constantly and detach from Earthly desires that cripple progression towards God's vision for your life.

<< Surrender (v) - to give up possession of; yield to another compulsion // to give up or abandon >>

<< Compulsion (n) - A compelling or being compelled by a force>>

<< Yield (v) - to surrender


We are not called to surrender to God when it's convenient for us 

Do you think it was convenient for Mary to be pregnant out of wedlock in her culture?

Accomplishment is a Sum.

The quickest way to lose ambition is to allow yourself to commit to accomplishing your goals tomorrow.

If you want to actually get something done, you need to do it now.

Let's say you want to be a child psychologist, of course you can't just wake up one day and decide to start pursuing a career in this subject, but you can do small things in the now to get yourself one step closer.

Write down all the steps it will take to accomplish what you wish to accomplish and meditate on them daily and your brain will automatically focus on doing things that will benefit the walk toward that goal.

This whole idea revolves around the "it takes thousands of steps to get to the top of the mountain" idea.

If you don't take all those seemingly small and minuscule steps, you will never get where you want to be.

You see, it's not necessarily the steps singularly that get you to the top of the mountain, it's all of the steps combined that actually get you somewhere.

Anything worth accomplishing will require a multitude of intentional strides.

Nothing that gives you great pleasure to accomplish can be done with one ginormous step.


Here's a link to a tool to get your dreams on paper :

http://recoveringlazyholic.com/lists/dreams_list.gif

God Doesn't Hate You

This might be a shocking and perplexing concept, but, God doesn't hate you.

He didn't let your parents get a divorce to torture you or to make you feel anguish because he likes to watch you squirm.

He didn't allow that tumor to grow in your body to display how powerful and full of wrath he is.
He didn't plant the feeling that you were made in the wrong body and gender to see how amusing it would be.
He simply allows these things to be done to us by the god of the earth (Satan; 2 Corinthians 4:4) and gives us the opportunity to run to him for solstice and healing.

He lets us go through struggle and deprivation to show us how much we need him and how the only thing we can control about situations is how we respond to them and how we can reach out to him for comfort and reliance.

We must be broken before God can use us to our maximum potential.

God isn't a child with a magnifying glass aiming a sun beam at Earth, watching us burn.

He is just, his love is limitless and his movements in our life are always for our betterment.
It takes pain to know peace, and discomfort to know blessing.

How can one minister to another with full understanding if they have not gone through similar trials them-self?
We go through struggles so God can pull us out of them and then use us to pull others out of them and into freedom.

Ask God

God wants to give us what we ask for.

Even sometimes when we ask for things that don't correspond with his will and we are adamant enough, he will grant us those things. Of course he knows that some things will end badly, and of course he knows that we will learn from it, and it kills him.

He doesn't just want us to claim a portion of what he has for us, He wants us to receive all of it!
This includes, but is certainly not limited to, healing, good finances, a healthy family, good relationships, and a sound mind.

We are the children of God and we are allowed to run after the Father and ask him for our needs.
Because we have been crucified with Christ (Romans 6) and have been set free from sin, we are allowed to run into the throne room and jump into God's lap and ask him for healing and counsel and love and comfort and an array of other amazing things.

Luke 11 : 9- 10 "So I say to you : Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks will receive; he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." - Jesus 

Jesus uses the word "everyone" because that is legitimately what he means. God doesn't want a small, selective group of his kids to go to live at home with him, He wants all of his kids!

God doesn't choose favorites. 

He literally has the most kids to choose from, he can see their hearts and intentions and knows everything about them. It would be so simple to choose an elite group of people that he really adores, but he chooses not to because it doesn't matter to him. He genuinely does not have a scale to measure how much he loves us individually.
He could never love us less, and He could never loves us more, and that really says something.
He doesn't care about the bad things we've done that has labeled us as unworthy by human standards.

He wants to have a relationship with the drug addict.

He loves the heart of the prostitute and wants her to see him as her father.

He adores the homosexual that has no idea why he was made this way.

He delights in the murderer because he sees past the aggression and rage.

He cherishes the man that has cheated on his wife with countless women.

God doesn't care about what we have done that makes us hate ourselves.
All he cares about is a relationship with us and a bond that allows us to repair our lives and cleanse the hurt that the devil has inflicted us with.

We just need to believe in what Jesus has blessed us with and relax in the overwhelming grace of the Father.
It's not going to be painless because he loves us enough to accept us for who we are, but he also loves us enough to not let us stay that way, and that takes sacrifice.
Ultimately, every improvement that God imposes on our lives moves us closer to a life that is more enjoyable, more comforted, and more adventurous.

And that's exciting.

The World Hates the Disciples

As Christ followers, we are called to be disciples of Christ. 

<< Disciple (n) - a pupil or follower of a teacher >>

We are called to study, observe, and apply Jesus' ways into our lives.

This is not the path to Earthly acceptance. 

By following the call, we are freely abandoning the yearn to belong on Earth : to have a feeling of true connection to the planet. We accept the fact that Earth is temporary and eternity it the opposite. 

John 15:18-19 "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged in this world, it would love you as its own" - Jesus 

<< Belong (v) - to have a proper or suitable place >>

Get this : We are not called to have a proper or suitable place on Earth 

Fitting in seems so desirable, but it's not our purpose. 

<< Purpose (n) - the object for which something exists or is done.