The Battle that is Prayer.

Prayer. Let's face it, no one is good at it. Mike Glenn once said, "No one is born with the gift of prayer." We couldn't pray at all if Jesus didn't help us. Why is this? Well, God starts the conversation between us and Him. When I sit down to pray I sometimes think "what will I say?" Do you ever do this? Paul tells us that the Spirit that searches the deep things of God searches your heart as well. The Spirit knows when we BS Him, example: "Dear God, thank you for this day…Amen." For some of us, the hardest thing about prayer is not falling asleep in the middle of it, I am definitely guilty of this. 

"Help me," is such a basic prayer we can pray to God, after all prayer starts with humility. Watch Jesus show up in your life when you pray this.  By humbling ourselves before Him, we are able to soak in just how powerful He is. After all, we wouldn't bring our innermost thoughts to Him unless we trusted Him unlike any other. In Luke chapter 11 we can see the Disciples indirectly asking God to basically help them. They ask Him to teach them how to pray. He teaches them Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer. And when they heard Him pray, they had never heard such a confident prayer in their lives. Our prayers will be strengthened by presenting Him with honest and humble prayers, leaving our insecurities at the door. Jesus teaches us to keep praying no matter what and to never loose heart. When does He ever look at us and say "woah, that's a lot of prayers?" Fun fact: He doesn't. By trusting Him with our prayers we show Him that we trust Him with us more than we trust us with us. 

It is important to know that some of the most meaningful prayer times can be those when we don't say anything at all. Start spending time in prayer. It could be just hanging out with Jesus, recognizing and enjoying His presence. By doing this, over time you'll start to admire Him and see the difference between our own lives and His. Jesus is after us, because He loves us and He loves our relationship. He gives us the confidence to deal with reality and He has already forgiven us for what we have done. So why BS Him? He will make amazing things out of our brokenness. He wants conversation with us. Through our time spent with Him, whether it be intensely praying or just chillin with Him, He can reveal to us who He is. If we practice showing up to talk to Jesus, He will too. Make it a habit, repeatedly present your requests before God. Only He can do the things we bring to Him through prayer. How cool is that? God is the only one who can help us with the thoughts in our heads and the needs in our hearts. Our God is strong enough, near enough, and good enough to respond to people like you and me. He is more. Our God is a BIG God. So, with that being said we should be praying Big prayers. He can handle anything you throw at Him. What are you praying for that is Big?

What if God gave us everything we wanted, but it caused us to compromise our most important relationships, morals, or ethics? It is important to recognize that God will stop at nothing to give His children what we need, but not what we want. He delays what we are praying for so that we will be more prepared when He provides it to us. He delays because He's trying to do something in our lives that we might not otherwise see. And He delays because He wants us to evaluate what we are asking of Him.We can simply ask Him "what are You teaching me?" while we wait. This allows us to line up who God is calling us to be and who we want to be, so that they can become the same. Job 14:15 says, "You will call and I will answer you." Let your requests be known to Him, but be patient in His timing for it is perfectly planned for our good. 

Give who you are to Jesus,
Courtney

We Are Young.

Ecclesiastes 12:1-5. What a beautiful passage in God's book. 

Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
“I find no pleasure in them”—
before the sun and the light
and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;
when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim;
when the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding fades;
when people rise up at the sound of birds,
but all their songs grow faint;
when people are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags itself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then people go to their eternal home
and mourners go about the streets.

This shows us that we get distracted. How easy is it to get lost in the culture that we live in today? So easy. Extremely easy. Before depression comes, remember your Creator. 

Right now, we're "young adults." We have the awesome responsibility of being adults, but we still consider ourselves young. This will be the only time in our lives that we will be young, and adults. Jesus loves using young adults. His ministry began as a young adult. We have "ministry freedom." We have influences like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc. and we can use them to make God famous. Use also your youth to follow Jesus. The time is now to follow Him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl4q_mjggQw...This video, Following Jesus-Social Network Style, kind of has nothing and everything to do with these ideas I'm grasping for. But I thought it was pretty sick and has an underlying message of how we can honor Him through all our actions, including social media. 

Right now are you following Jesus? I ask myself this all the time, am I truly following Him? Not because of the commitment I made when I was 10 to get baptized on Easter Sunday, but RIGHT NOW am I following Him? Mike Glenn, the senior Pastor at Brentwood Baptist Church who I've talked about before, says "EVERYONE has a spiritual gift God desires to be used in the life of His Church and the work of His Kingdom." 

Our generation is called to do something great. We're so absorbed with our lives that we don't get it. We are called to leave it all behind and follow Him. And I know how hard that can be. Hard. But know that He asks this of us because He knows we're crazy enough to do it. We don't ask enough from people. we don't ask as much as Jesus asks. We're often afraid to be called on by God. We tell ourselves, knowingly or not, "please don't ask anything huge of me. Let me live a normal life…." We don't get it. We are scared and we are cowards. We need to believe in Him. Whole heartedly. Tell strangers about Him. The time is now to call others to follow Jesus. Multiply yourselves into the lives of others. We underestimate what we can do in a long period of time. Start walking NOW. There is no greater thing to give your life to. God asks us to give our lives up. Mike goes on to say, "Christ followers are citizens of the Kingdom of God. We're given work visas for our ministries and mission here." Invest in His Kingdom now so that you may invest in it forever.

The most powerful man in history of the world is with you, 

Courtney

Commitment.

Could you imagine if you couldn't trust God? Well you can. So you should also be trustworthy.

Matthew 5:33 says, "Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made."

Jesus is telling us to keep our word, because it's consistent with His character. 

Matthew 5:37 says, "All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one."

Have character and be strong. All you have to do is say yes. 

We are made in the image of God. He is faithful and never changing. When we look at ourselves we fall into one of two categories. We are either dependable people, or we aren't. One is a Blessing and the other is a Burden. We share the Gospel through our words, which is why it is so important to keep your word so that people will believe what you say is true. We must be intentional about practicing authenticity with God, with ourselves and with others.

Authenticity with God is so valuable in developing our relationship with Him. We read in the Word about those who easily give their life experiences honestly to God. They trust that He will be completely understanding of anything they bring to Him. When we give God the cookie cutter version of our lives and tell Him what we think He wants us to say to Him, our connection with Him is spiritually limp. We can grow spiritually alongside Him by allowing Him to hear the truth in our hearts. He is welcoming of all our thoughts and concerns that we want to talk to Him about, not what we bring to Him that we think is culturally appropriate. God doesn't just want to hear the watered down version of things that we have to say. He wants to hear the ugly things too. Don't just talk to Him with words we think He will be well receiving of. He is receiving and gracious of anything that we bring to Him. 

Today we have a fear of obligation, let's face it. The less we commit, the more flakey we become. My generation is so used to the term "the one," as far as a life partner goes. We are already breaking commitments with future partners when in the back of our heads, we think eventually we'll find "the one." We just need to find a Godly person and spend the rest of our lives with them. Someone we can cherish, that loves Jesus. I know it sounds simple, but in reality it should be. With patience and trust, it will be. We put too much pressure on ourselves and our future husband/wife and expect them to be the perfect one we've been waiting all our lives for. Now this is a new concept I've been slowly processing, and I kind of like it. Why should we have these huge expectations of our future spouse when we ourselves are in no way perfect? When we find that Godly person who loves Jesus, that we want to pursue and cherish, we need to make a commitment to them and forget about "the one." What if this person is "the one" and you're not fully committing yourself to them because you still believe "the one" for you is out there? 

Life gets sloppy when we can't commit. We find ourselves not keeping commitments. We say we're going to do something and we don't do it, and that makes us liars. This is inconsistent with the spirit of God. Look at yourself. What is your reputation? Dependable, or flakey? Learn how to say no (I know for some of us this is hard, but look back at Matthew 5:37 for reassurance). Re-prioritize your life. When you have made a commitment to someone, you have given them a gift of time and a gift of your presence. If we must get out of that promise, we need to learn how to ask for that commitment back from that person. 

I've come to the recent realization that it is important for us to develop relationships with other people who have room to share the good and the bad. Commit to these relationships. Value these relationships, because they don't come by often. Similar to your openness with Christ through the good and the bad, having others that you can share your inner most thoughts and ideas with is crucial. These relationships allow us to commit to each other and provide a give and take scenario that is constant in the busy lives we live. They also aid us in verbalizing the good and the bad to God, because it isn't always going to be easy, at least for me I know that is true. 

I never regret following God. It's God's commitment to us that He has saved us. Don't be a fake Christian. Be the real deal, a follower of Jesus Christ. 

How Do You Know Someone Is "The One"? || Jefferson Bethke:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BERIOlDTk2M

Blessings come through commitments, 

Courtney