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.