Because you ARE beautiful.

God put you on my heart today … so strong… that he woke me from my sleep.

I feel it would be wrong not to write to you. 

I want to let you know first off, that I am not writing out of judgment. I am writing out of love. 
Love because you are my sisters in Christ. You are my friends, the ones I am running the race with. 
And I would not be justified in any form of judgment since I was in the same place myself, a few years ago.

You are beautiful. You are a treasure. You are good. You are lovely, none can compare. 
You have the heart of a warrior, the mind of a dreamer, and the spirit of a child. 
You are our Savior’s beloved. He calls you His beloved. You are HIS. 
He sees you differently than you see yourself.
He does not see your failures or your flaws. He knows your weaknesses, but he does not use them against you or allow them to keep Him from loving you. 
His love isn’t filtered by what you do and don’t do. It is unconditional. It is unchanging. It is never ending.
And even when you are done loving Him, He is not done loving you. 

Ladies, there is nothing we can do to remove ourselves from His love.
But there are things we can do to remove ourselves from His best. 

Nothing hurts me more than to watch people walk away from His best.
For some reason, we choose momentary satisfaction even if that means eternal disappointment.

I know you are dealing with pain. I know you have been hurt by false teachers. I know the words people have always spoken over you, echo inside of your mind. I know you are afraid of becoming what they always said you would become. I know you are afraid of disappointing. I know you are afraid of not being good enough. I know you are disappointed in yourself.

I also know all of these fears and disappointments make it easier and easier for you to give up and lose sight of what you know is true. 

But I encourage you to take every one of these fears and thoughts and disappointments captive. 

I encourage you to give them to God and let them go.

Do NOT allow them to shape your decisions and choices any longer. Do not let them have the victory.
The Lord is you shepherd. 

He wants to bear the burdens that are trying to cripple you.
These same burdens have been following you ever since you can remember. They are heavy and they are trying to slow you down. WHY? Because the enemy knows what you are capable of, he knows the good you are supposed to do. And He will do whatever he can to distract you and slow you down. He wants to keep you from reaching the high places. He wants to take every alter you have ever built, everything you have learned along the way and shove it in your face. He wants to make you forget.

He puts every possible thing in your way to distract you.
And as much as it pains me to say this…right now… you are enabling him. 
You aren’t fighting like you used to. Something has caused you to lay down your armor. 
You are on the front lines of battle where you are most susceptible to injury… but you don’t have your shield or your weapon.  

You need to guard yourself. You need to protect the beauty and the purity of your heart and of your future.

You do not know what a day can bring. You do not know where you will be tomorrow.

If you are awakening intimacy with someone who is not yours, knowing that you cannot fulfill this intimacy, I urge you to stop. 

Because the choices you make now affect your tomorrow. 

You could be hurting someone you love, or are going to love, very deeply with the decisions you make today. 

If you truly love each other… you will guard each other. You will protect each other’s purity. 
The best way you can show your love for one another right now, is not to be physical. The best way you can show your love is to be strong for one another. 

In a world where innocence is a massive struggle to hang on to, please CLING to yours. Do not let it slip away so easy. You have a God-given right to remain pure. It is YOURS. Even if it has been taken before, God is the re-builder and replenisher. Do not allow yourself to be convinced that you are beyond repair. 

If you have lost your innocence, lift your hands to God, repent, rebuke the enemy, and demand that purity back. Claim it. God makes things new. Thats what He does. And in Christ, YOU ARE A NEW CREATION. 

Please do not awake love until it can be fulfilled. 

Quit flirting with danger.

It is fun I know. But there is only pleasure in sin for a season. And after the season of pleasure… comes the season of regret. 

You are way too beautiful of a treasure to get trampled under foot. 
So I ask you to PLEASE rethink some of the things you have allowed in your life. 
Know your worth. Know your beauty. It is something to be kept safe and pure. 
It is a gift you get to give away all at once. Not piece by piece. 

I love you so much. 
I will be the accountability you need... if you'll let me. 
 

I am praying for you. 

-Brittany 

A prayer from a selfish sinner

Father I am sorry.

I have been selfish.

I have made this life about me and not about you.

And I have blamed you for the things I have allowed to go wrong in my life.

I pretended that you didn’t care because it gave me someone else to point the finger at besides myself.

I know you are good, yet I convinced myself that goodness could be withheld.

I looked at my life and saw all of the things I didn’t like…all of the things that sin has provoked in my life and I blamed it all on you.

I allowed myself to believe you caused me pain. I allowed myself to believe that your gifts are not good and perfect.

I know this is wrong.

I know every good and perfect gift is from you.

I also know that even when I suffer… that is a gift.

Because sorrow and suffering reap joy and peace.

I may sow tears now but because of this I will reap joyful shouting.

I know that trial and tribulation produce in me wisdom and understanding that will not and cannot be gained anywhere else.

I know that it is not your will for us to be in pain, but you will allow it because you know it helps us to grow.

You love me and you allow me to call you Abba.

Because of your goodness and love I don’t have to face an eternity of sorrow.

And though sorrow may last for the night joy WILL come in the morning.

You have given me a gift that cannot be tainted. You have given me the promise of your love forever.

Help me to focus on what is important.

To remember that those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.

Trust is a beautiful thing. I don’t want to doubt you again.

I trust in your unfailing love.  

 

Adored by God

A friend of mine was talking about a guy she was slightly interested in. She was explaining their relationship and how this guy went from pursuing her to asking her for advice about another girl.  As I listened to her talk I could hear the frustration in her voice. This was not at all the type of guy that she wanted to be with. His morals didn't match hers, his choices were obviously immature and there was no consistency in his affection. But regardless, he gave her attention and made her feel desirable, so her interest remained. 

As we talked, I could see how much it bothered her that he brought another girl into the picture. This guy, who wasn't even close to the type of guy she dreams about, was hurting her and she was enabling him to. 

I couldn't understand it. This girl was beautiful, talented, smart, funny. A hopeless romantic who's heart has been kept safe and protected. She had spent 19 years growing into the type of woman the bible urges men to find. She was carrying around the most amazing gift that was intended to be given fully to the one who God had reserved for her, but she was beginning to break off pieces and hand them to all of the impostors along the way. 

I thought to myself, "This is crazy! Doesn't she know that God has something so much better He wants to give her." 

And God whispered in my ear "No she does not."

This girl didn't see herself as special to God. She believed in His goodness, and she believed in His blessings, she just didn't believe that His goodness and blessings were for her.

Her perception of her heavenly father had been distorted by her earthly one. 

Her earthly father was good, but he gave all of his love and affection to her two older sisters; and when it came to her, there was never anything left to give. 

She had been found wanting her entire life. 

Her expectations were never met. So she decided not to expect anymore. 

And finally, this carried over to her relationship with God.

I once heard a pastor say,

 "How we view God has everything to do with how we respond to him." 

So many of us have a distorted view of who God really is. 

Many times our view of him is affected by prominent relationships in our lives. And more time than not, that view is a negative one. 

But the inconsistent nature of humans should never be thrust upon the unchanging nature of God. 

How we look in the eyes of other humans is nothing like how we look in the eyes of Christ. 

He is a God of love who came to give us abundant life.  He does not desire to withhold good things from us. On the contrary, He desires to bless us. 

The Lord is our shepherd We SHALL NOT WANT.

The Lord is our shepherd, He does not leave us wanting.
The Lord is our God and our care taker. He watches over us and supplies all of our needs.
The Lord is our father and the lover of our soul. He delights in helping us. He longs to bless us.

We have no ranking in the eyes of the Lord our God. He does not see us as the youngest. He does not see us as a number on a list. He simply sees us as His child.

There is no line we have to wait in. Our God is not confound by titles, numbers, or time. He is a good God that blesses us far beyond what we deserve.

And the sooner we can change our perception of Him, the sooner we can experience the amazingly abundant life He came to offer. 

I want you all to know that God adores you. He sees you differently than anyone else sees you. He sees you differently than you see yourself. 

Believe in His promises. Believe that His blessings are for you. 

It will change the way you think. It will change the way you dream. 

Pursuing Holiness

Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy;

without holiness no one will see the Lord. 

Hebrews 12:14

Wow. Has anyone ever really contemplated the second half of that verse. 

Without holiness NO ONE will see the Lord.  

We are given a huge responsibility here. Holiness is not just about winning favor with the Lord. 

Holiness is about helping others to see Him. 

We look around at our nation and the surrounding godless countries. We wonder why everything looks like it is on a one way train to hell. It is in our movies. It is in our music. It is in our relationships, it is in our government. It is in everything.

Everywhere we look people are lost.  And we can't figure out where to place this blame?

We even go so far as to blame God. 

Well I have a very sad truth. A truth that brings tears to my eyes and a sickness to my stomach.

A truth that sends chills down my spine as I sit here and write this to you. A truth that convicts me to my core. 

We are the culprit. We are the ones to blame. And we can continue to point our finger at God. We can even continue to point our finger at the devil. But until we realize that we are responsible, we will live in a desperately lost godless world. 

I am not saying the enemy plays no part in this. He is definitely a confuser, a deceiver, and a tempter. And he deserves a good amount of the blame. 

But one of the easiest ways for us to forfeit all responsibility is to blame everything on the enemy. And if we forfeit all responsibility then we live as if their are no consequences. 

We have been made holy by Christ Jesus. And we are, therefore, called to be holy on a daily basis. Holiness should be something we desire. 

"If there is not, then, at least a yearning in our hearts to live a holy life pleasing to God, we need to seriously question whether our faith in Christ is genuine.... True salvation brings with is a desire to be made holy. When God saves us through Christ, He not only saves us from the penalty of sin, but also from its dominion."

Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness

Holiness is not a condition of salvation because we are not saved by works. But it should be a byproduct. As children on the King, we should be grieving over the sin in our lives, not trying to justify it. 

My problem is justifying the little things. The movies, the innuendoes, the jokes, the language, the humor. There are so many little things we allow into our life that are in all actuality disgusting.  

We fill our heads with mindless garbage and then we wonder why we don't have the influence we would like to have. We want revival for our generation. We want change. But we are no different then the people we are trying to save. And we wonder why God wont use us. 

"Holiness is necessary for effective service to God....' If a man cleanses himself from ignoble purposes, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.' (2 Timothy 2:21). Holiness and usefulness are linked together. We cannot bring our service to God in an unclean vessel."  

Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness

This doesn't mean that we have to be perfect for God to use us. We all know that is impossible. We are flawed human beings.  And on our own we are desperately wicked. But "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2. Cor 5:21). Our righteousness is not our own. To live a holy life we have to surrender ourselves daily to God's righteousness. We have to understand that strength begins with Him. The moment we think righteousness is our own, is the moment we become overwhelmed by the calling on our life. Living with that mentality will cause us to stumble in our salvation. It will cause us to despise ourselves instead of the wickedness that lives within us. It will cause us to give up.

We need not live with that kind of burden. 

"You, if you diligently pursue holiness, must often flee to the Rock of your salvation. You flee there, not to be saved again, but to confirm in your heart that you are saved through His righteousness alone. You begin to identify with Paul when he said; 'Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners- of whom I am the worst' (1 Timothy 1:15). It is at this point that Christ's holy life lived on your behalf becomes so important to you." 

Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness 

We need to recognize the sin in our life, realize our need for His righteousness and begin to live lives that are holy and pleasing to the Father. 

We need to stop settling for moral mediocrity and call sin what it is. Our hearts are wicked and they will justify, rationalize and excuse our actions. We need to ask our Father to search our hearts and  make us aware of our iniquity so that we can turn from it. 

We need to realize that Satan is the accuser and he will spend forever trying to discourage us in our sin. He will make us believe the battle isn't worth the fight. 

But let us remember why this battle rages. There are hearts and souls on the line. There are people who need to see the image of Christ in us. And they will not see it, if we do not strive for it. Holiness is not a request. Holiness is a demand.

 "Be Holy because I am holy." 

(1 Peter 1:16) 

 

Fix Your Eyes

One of the hardest facts I have learned to face is that people will always disappoint you. 

As harsh as that sounds it is true.

I cannot name one person who has ever proved this wrong. 

Its not that people are hopeless, its that people are fallen. 

They can't help but be human. 

Whether or not they are moral, you cannot count on them to be flawless.

One of the most dangerous things we can do as Christians, is fix our eyes on other believers. 

I have met a countless amount of people who have walked away from God or left the church because of the hypocrisy they saw in the Christians around them. 

I admit, it is a difficult thing to expect greatness out of someone and watch them fall on their face before your very eyes. 

But when this causes your own faith to be shaken,  you must ask yourself what you were putting your faith in in the first place. 

Too many times we put our trust in people rather than the God they serve. 

We admire their choices and place them on pedestals they were never meant to be placed on.

We watch intently as they go though life making note of every characteristic and choice that we want to emulate.

And when they fall, as humans do, we stumble along with them leaving our faith at the mercy of their humanity. 

I cannot think of a more dangerous place to put our faith. 

There is one being in this universe that will never disappoint us; one who will be faithful to us in every aspect of the word. One who will love us selflessly and unconditionally forever. One being who will not and cannot fail. And that is God. 

We must take our eyes off of whatever we have put in His place.

Whether it is a role model, a pastor, a teacher, a leader, a parent, a friend, a relationship, or whether it is ourselves, we need to turn our eyes back to heaven and fix them on the one person who is incapable of failure. 

Our faith will be the strongest when we put it in a powerful God. 

 

Stepping Out

What are you afraid of?

Think about the one thing in the world that is keeping you from living the life you have always wanted to live.

Is it fear of rejection, disappointment, embarrassment, or failure? Is it fear of losing something or someone? Is it fear of not being accepted?

What fear is hindering you? 

Too many times we miss out on life because of fear.

We confine ourselves to what we are comfortable with, even if that means mediocrity. 

We give up on adventure, accept loneliness, wave goodbye to dreams, forfeit our influence and lay low because of fear.

We build up wall after wall after wall until we are enclosed so tightly that we have only left room for ourselves.

We close our eyes and shut out everything that intimidates us, then open them and wonder why our world is so small.

It’s because we’ve allowed it.

Fear is apart of our sin nature. And just like any other sin, it is something we have to fight against.

We spend way too much of our time letting fear control us when we should really be focusing on learning to control it.

We sit in the boat watching everyone else step over the side. And just when we muster up enough courage to throw our leg over, fear tells us that we aren’t ready. 

God wants to use us now, but fear tells us we have to wait.

It is crippling.  It keeps us from moving forward in life. It makes us believe we aren’t capable.  It steals our courage, our joy, and our peace. It causes us to live in complacency and slowly convinces us we are ok with it.

 Living in fear means we are living with the mentality that everything is in our hands.

There is nothing biblical about that.  The Bible says in Timothy that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind,

 Where does this power come from? Where does this love come from? Where does our help come from? It does not come from within. It is not something we can achieve on our own.

Our power, our love, our help comes from the Lord, a God who loves us perfectly.

And perfect love cast out all fear. If we know we are loved perfectly by our creator, then our fears have no choice but to leave.

 God does not send us into any situation by ourselves. There is nothing he expects us to do all on our own. He is always with us.

In any and every moment, God is there.

We need to be living with that mentality.

 God wants to use us. Not as a pawn but as a vessel. A pawn is a dense object that cannot be filled, but a vessel is hollow. God wants to first pour himself into us, and then send us out for His purposes.

There are so many things He has planned for us. But we must first learn to get out of our boats.

 Sometimes getting out of the boat isn’t exciting. It’s not always going to be a “walking on water” experience. Sometimes getting out of the boat just means talking to someone you are intimidated by or being vulnerable and opening up to a family member or friend. Sometimes it means caring more than we want to or loving freely without fear of losing.

 Sometimes getting out of the boat just means having the courage to leave your house, stepping out of your comfort zone, or letting go of your daily routines and activities.

Whether or not it is exciting, no matter what getting out of the boat entails, it is something we are called to do.

And until we do, we won’t be able to fully experience God’s blessings.

God is waiting on us to throw our fear aside, swallow our pride,  fix our eyes on Him, and step out.

 

“Hell begins the day God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, would have done, but did not do.” 

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Just ask Jonah

"Teach me Your way, O Lord; 

I will walk in Your truth."

Psalm 86:11

My husband Caleb and I spent the last week in Minnesota with our family from his side. They have a tradition, one they have kept since Caleb's dad was a little boy. Everyone, including aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, in laws, etc, meets at a place called Cragun's. 

Cragun's is a resort right by Gull lake. Each family gets there own cabin and spends a week together, boating, tubing, skiing, fishing, EATING, playing games, watching movies and just having fun together. 

Well this year was a little different. This year Minnesota had record low temperatures. Which means, we didn't get in the water much. 

We had a huge thunderstorm where it rained 6 inches and every other day was way too cold to even think about skiing or tubing. 

Everyone was saddened by this. And even though I thoroughly enjoyed the rainstorm and the weather, I could understand why everyone was disappointed. 

Its because an expectation wasn't met. 

Everyone packed their shorts and tank tops and swim suits and coolers, and tubes, and skis, and hauled their boats all the way to the lake expecting to use them. 

But that didn't happen.

Everyday we woke up and looked out the window expecting to see that the weather had changed. 

But that isn't what God had in mind for that week. 

For some reason God wanted us indoors. Maybe He wanted us to slow down, maybe He wanted us all to bond as a family. Maybe He was saving us from an injury that could have happened out on the lake. I don't know. He didn't personally reveal His reasoning to me, but I know He had one. 

And I am convinced that if we had packed up early and ventured off to another lake who's forecast promised sunshine, we would have arrived to find it was gloomy there as well. 

Why? Because God doesn't confine Himself to meet our expectations. 

Our God is a good God. He is a God of love and He loves to see us smile. But that doesn't mean He is going to change His mind on something just because we don't understand it. 

Far too often we try to convince ourselves that what WE want is what God wants for us. 

Not only do we try to convince ourselves, we try to convince God as well. 

If we want something bad enough, whether it is a certain career, a relationship, a sunny day, etc, we will stop at nothing to justify it in our minds and before God.  

And if we don't get it right away, we act as if God is not listening. 

We question Him on His integrity without even thinking about the fact that maybe, just maybe, we are asking for something that isn't good for us and our God has a better plan. 

I myself am SO guilty of this. I am always questioning my standing with God. I think that if He doesn't respond right away with a YES, then He probably doesn't hear me. But that couldn't be more false. 

God hears every prayer offered up by His children. He doesn't always answer with a yes, but He always answers for our good.

Our efforts shouldn't be put into selling God on our brilliant ideas.

Our efforts should be put into understanding God's brilliant ideas for us. 

The longer we keep running in the wrong direction towards our plans, the longer it will take for us to fulfill the purposes God created us to fulfill. 

Just ask Jonah. He had a whole night in a whale's belly to think about his decision of heading to Tarshish instead of Nineveh. 

God will do what it takes to get us back on the right track, but we can skip the whole getting swallowed by a fish thing if we just choose to look at what God wants before looking at what we want. 

"The Holy Spirit speaks to neutral hearts. By that I don't mean passive or indifferent hearts.... I mean being consumed with discovering what pleases the Holy Spirit rather than working to convince Him of the wisdom and brilliance of our plans. I am afraid many of us pray with the goal of talking God into things rather than trying to discover His will.

As a result, we never hear Him."

Charles F. Stanley