Beauty in your life- change your thoughts for a positive outlook
I have lost my vehicle in the parking lot. It seems like all vehicles are similar and blend in with the color scheme these days. On those days when we could lose our heads if they are not screwed on, I have forgotten where my vehicle is and either have to hit the panic button or walk the parking lot trying to find it.
My husband jokes that he is going to put a surfboard on top so I can find my vehicle when I’m scatterbrained.
The app I send most my time on is this one and listen to biblical teachers. Posting something everyday at the depth I write takes time, but it also allows me study the Bible more in depth.
We often sing about the faithfulness of God, celebrating it as a comforting blanket in our times of need. We rejoice that God never leaves us or forsakes us, never breaks His promises and never gives up on us. But we rarely stop to consider what the loyalty costed Jesus.
God’s faithfulness is not cheap. It is a costly, heavy, bleeding devotion.
When humanity walked away from God in the Garden of Eden, God’s justice demanded a penalty for sin, but His faithfulness demanded a rescue. To stay true to both His holy character and His rebellious people, God committed to a covenant that would ultimately cost Him everything.
The ultimate proof of His faithfulness is not found in our circumstantial comforts, but on the hill of Calvary. It cost the Father the tearing of His heart as He watched His Son suffer. It cost Jesus His blood, His breath, and a period of agonizing separation for the Father as He carried our shame.
God didn’t just nod politely at our brokenness from a safe distance. He paid the ultimate price to keep His promise to us. When we feel forgotten or wonder if God will hold true to His word in our lives, we must look at the cross. It is the receipt of His faithfulness that has been stamped in the scars of Jesus. He has already pain too high of a price to ever let us go.
This reminds me to stop measuring God’s goodness on how smooth my day goes. All I have to do is to look at the cross because it’s my permanent anchor of security.
Every day I ask myself if my daily walk with God is costing me everything. It has indeed cost me some friendships along the way, but that’s a small price to pay for His faithfulness. I know I need to stay faithful in times when it may be convenient not to be.
“He who didn’t spare His own Son but delivered Him up for is all, how would He not also with Him freely give us all things -Romans 8:32
While I have not read any book that have inspired me to travel, I’m sure there are a few out there. I have always had a longing to find out my ancestors.
I know my roots of my father which is Hungarian. I was always curious about my mother’s heritage. Even though my maternal grandparents lived in the same town as me, I never knew them, or seen them. And when I asked about them, the subject would be dropped like a hot potato.
My mother had Native American roots, but she told me it was a different tribe than what it was. It wasn’t until later I began searching and only found I was more confused than I was when I started.
It wasn’t until recently I found out my Native American heritage -Choctaw Things are starting to come together and I am no longer confused.
But in the end it really doesn’t change who I am, or the things I have experienced. I am still God’s daughter.
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” -John 14:27
We often view healing as a destination -a place we reach only after the pain stops, the relationship mends, or the diagnosis changes. We tell ourselves, “Once this is fixed, I will finally have peace.” That God’s economy of healing works in reverse. And the kingdom of heaven, peace is not the reward at the end of the marathon, it is fuel that allows us to run. Peace is not the result of healing, it is a very environment in which healing takes place.
When Jesus spoke the words of John 14, His disciples were on the brink of massive trauma. Jesus was about to be arrested and crucified. Their world was about to shatter. Yet Jesus did not promise them an immediate escape from the storm. Instead, he gave them a gift to sustain them through it: His peace.
The world offers a fragile piece that depend and entirely on comfortable circumstances. If things are good, we feel peaceful. But Jesus offers a supernatural peace -a shalom peace that represents wholeness, safety, and soundness. It is a peace that holds us together when everything around us is falling apart.
When our body, mind, or spirit needs healing, anxiety tells us to fixate on the wound. It demands that we fight, worry, and scramble for control. But the Holy Spirit invites us to Bree. When we quiet our hearts and accept Jesus’s peace, we stop picking at the wounds of our past and obsessing over the uncertainty of the future. Peace lowers our defenses. It silences the internal noise so we can hear the whisper of the Great Physician (Jesus). Healing begins the moment we stopped, fighting the storm and start trusting the One who sleeps through it.
I don’t even look back to history for a trend, because there is a crazy one going on right now. One that social media has popularized. It is the “cow septum look. People wear chunky circular horseshoes, clickers and cow horn shapes to intentionally resemble cattle.
The comparison to a farm tool as a bull ring installed through the nostril septum, to control unpredictable animals with minimal force.
I think it’s almost Ironic that most of them don’t see anything wrong with communism. Something that will control people and take away freedoms.
As human beings we need to learn to quiet the noise and hear God’s voice. Ecclesiastics 9:17 tells us,
“The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools.”
We as a world we are in constant competition for our attention. Every moment offers another notification, another trending topic, another voice trying to shape our thoughts and pull away our focus. But it’s not only the natural world that is fighting for our time and energy scripture teachers that there is a supernatural war happening around us, a battle for our affection, our allegiance, and our discernment.
That’s why our spiritual clarity build harder to find when the world gets noisier. Silence from God is often not absence. It is a signal that something else has grown too loud.
There is a strategy in the noise.
C.S. Lewis, in his book The Screwtape Letters, imagined the voice of the enemy describing hell as occupied by noise, with a mission to make the whole universe a noise in the end.
His words capture a biblical truth. The enemy (Satan) is determined to distract us. He wants to drown out wisdom with volume. He knows that a noisy soul becomes a confused soul, and confusion, weekends our ability to hear God clearly.
The only way to combat this noise is to let the Word of God tune our ears and heart to the truth.
Psalm 119:105 reminds us that God‘s word is a “lamp to our feet and a light to our path.” Without it, the noise becomes overwhelming, with it our steps grow steady again.
In 1 Kings 19, the prophet Elijah was discouraged and desperate to hear from God. So God instructed him to stand on a mountain and wait. What came next with loud, dramatic, and powerful.
A great wind toward the mountains apart, but the Lord was not in the wind. An earthquake shook the ground, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. A fire blaze before Elijah, but the Lord was not in the fire.
Then came something entirely different -a gentle whisper. A quiet voice carried on stillness.
God chose to speak in a whisper to remind Elijah and us that His voice can be missed when we are only looking for Him in the loud and dramatic.
We very seldom tune everything else out and listen for that gentle whisper.
I seem to always hear God when I’m in nature, and everything else is silent.
The world is filled with resources meant to teach and encourage us. Whether at the sermon, a devotional, study books, podcasts, or conversations, or even this blog. I see this resources as gifts. But none of them can take the place of the Bible.
God’s Word is not commentary.
It’s not a suggestion. It’s not background noise. It is the verse source of truth.
We must be careful not to replace the living Word of God with reflections about it. Proverbs 4:24 reminds us, ‘Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” There is no person who is perfect, any resource we learn from can make mistakes. Everything we believe as truth needs to be align with God’s Word. I work diligently to share with you the true Word of God, but I a human and can make mistakes.
Through every resource we use to teach us we need to pursue and prioritize getting into God’s Word above anything else.
Hebrews 4:12 tells us that, “The Word of God is alive and active.” It cuts through confusion, exposes lies, strengthens faith, and creates clarity, where the world creates noise.
I miss when there were cassettes or compact discs in every vehicle. The fact that I could buy music and It was something physical I could hold and it was I could get the music I loved. I read somewhere that it was done to save auto makers money and integrate streaming services.
When things are so bad and we feel overwhelmed, it’s time to cry out to God for wisdom and mercy like David did. It’s our only hope.
Many people make excuses, and some of them are justified, like a sudden illness. But I think people use excuses as a defense mechanism to protect their ego, avoid negative consequences, or even shift blame. It helps people feel right and shields them from feelings of shame.
I would rather someone tell me they don’t want to do something than making us excuses.
There is actually a psychologist behind excuse giving. These are:
Ego protection: Excuses safeguard a person’s self-image by making failure feel like the fault of circumstance rather than a flaw.
Displacement of responsibility: Many people externalized blame onto time constraints, other people, or unexpected events to avoid criticism.
Avoidance of change: It often signals a fear of the unknown or a lack of motivation to put in the required effort.
When someone asks us, “Do you want…” most excuses over explain why they don’t want to. Just saying “I can’t or “I don’t want to” is sufficient. I would rather get a simple reason than them telling me making excuses, or saying yes and then not doing it at all.
Where we invest our focus dictates our returns. Our energy is an finite, non refundable resource and treating it with the same rigor as a financial budget is the ultimate life hack of well-being and productivity.
When we begin treating our daily capacity as a nonrefundable asset we begin to:
Pay attention: every time we give something focus, we are buying an experience. We need to spend it on things that will pay us back.
Protect our balance: Just like a bank account we have to guard it against unwarranted drains. Not everyone or every situation is worthy of our time.
Budget intentionally: We need to allocate our physical, mental, and emotional stamina toward what fosters growth, clarity, and purpose.
If we want to maximize our energy currency, we have to pay attention to what drains our energy. And direct our energy towards projects and goals we want to invest in.
A believe both external action and internal character shapes who we are. Experiences shape our perspective and skill set, it fundamentally who we are. Our core values, empathy, and our moral compass determines how we navigate those experiences.
I believe character can endure profound hardships and be saved by our resilience. The two are deeply intertwined: experiences test and refine who we are, but our internal identity dictates meanings we extract from those experiences.
From Pity to Praise