Children standing up for Jesus

Yesterday was one of the best days I have ever had teaching a Sunday school class to children.

All the kids were sitting down to color a picture and a little girl decided to tell everyone that, “Jesus isn’t really real.”  The room went dead silent. I looked up along with the other teacher in the room and I asked her what she had said, thinking I probably just misunderstood her. So she repeated it again but with much more sincerity. “Jesus isn’t real! My mommy and daddy told me he’s not real.”

I have never been so proud or impressed by a bunch of little boys and girls standing up for their faith to someone who opposed Jesus. The first little boy looked right at her and said, “Jesus is too real, I know he is I talk to him all the time.”(so proud of this little boy because he is usually one of the shyest kids in the room) Then another little boy in our class who has gone through so much the last 6 months said, “Jesus is real he made me better.” At that point the rest of the class jumped in to help defend their, “Jesus.” So cool to hear a bunch of 4&5 year olds share their faith and why they believe Jesus is the real thing!

She didn’t say anything back once they all started talking to her about how real Jesus was. I hope she really took to heart some of the things those kids said to her.  Though I never want to stand against a parent and how they choose to raise their children, I do hope that she went home wondering if her mommy and daddy just might be wrong this time.

Very happy to know that what we’ve been working hard at teaching these young minds really is sinking in and they do know the difference between what is real and what is fake.  “But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Luke 18: 16-17

Christian doesn't equal Free & Easy Life

One of my friends got me to really thinking today about certain aspects about my relationship in Christ. She brought up an interesting point that she needed prayer to help her deal and understand with knowing that God never promised our walk through life after surrendering our lives to him would be easy. So, I went home and had some time to think. I really wanted to help but didn’t have an answer. I didn’t have my Bible next to me but I prayed and while I was praying selfishly about some other things, pretty much feeling sorry for myself, God seemed to really lay on my heart, “be thankful I do not do to you what I did to my servant Job.” OUCH!!!

Many Christians today think when they ask Christ into their lives it’s the end all to their problems and frustrations. We don’t have a full comprehension of what our life really will be like. We think it’s going to be pretty skies with rainbows and butterflies and all sorts of nice things.  Not saying there won’t be sunshine sometimes but that is not what Christ says our lives will be like. In fact just because we are ‘devout Christians,’ doesn’t mean any sort of promises of a perfect filled life.  In fact Jesus pointed out otherwise in Luke 9:23 ”whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Meaning we have a cross to carry and our life is not going to always be full of happy times.

Though Job was around way before Jesus was ever born he was alive and considered to be a blameless and upright man, a man who feared God. A synonym for the word blameless could also be guiltless, or innocent. So Job was considered to be an innocent man who obviously was living in all the ways honoring to God.

Now what is my point, the rest of Job’s story is the point. It is written in the first chapter of Job a conversation between God and satan and God literally gave Satan permission to destroy everything in his life only he was not allowed to kill Job. God allowed this in order to test the strength of his fear for God. Satan started by destroying all his crops and animals that he had and even took all of his children from him. But Job was faithful when those things were taken from him and worshiped God anyways.

Then Satan, being unpleased about this went back to God to push further and received permission from God to harm Job’s physical being where the man broke out into sores all over his body.  And my favorite part is he says,  “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job2:10b) Even though this man went through a literal hell on earth and he did not know God’s reasoning, he still continued to praise God.

So yes, the answer is yes, we may go through a lot of rough things in this life.  Being a Christian doesn’t save you from pain on this earth, but it does give you someone to constantly go through life with that you can hang on to.

 I just pray that God never gives permission to Satan to destroy my life in the way he allowed him to destroy Jobs in order to prove that I will still be faithful to him no matter what. But for now it's just a great reminder to be Joyful in all things no matter what my circumstances. 

A Real passion

Passion is a word I so often here now that I am involved in different types of ministries and things within the Christian church. I hear people so often say, I have a passion for Kid Zone, or a passion for Christ. I have always mentally on my own defined passion as a burning, yearning, experience I feel in the pit of my stomach concerning something (and no not the heartburn/gas kind) It’s the word that means that whatever I am doing usually I have some goal in mind as to how it is going to fulfill my passion or passions for things in this life.

So I looked up the word ‘passion’ in the dictionary on line to see how they would define the word: 

1.       Any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.

2.       Strong amorous feeling or desire; love; ardor

3.       There were other ones to but not pertaining to the type of passion I am referring too.

So then of course I had no idea what ardor really meant so I had to look that up too. A great warmth of feeling; fervor; passion. Or Intense devotion, eagerness, or enthusiasm.

This to me was the perfect definition of how I feel about something I say I am passionate about. People know your passion by how you react and put your whole heart, mind and soul into something.  Most people have a passion for their spouse and their kids to see them happy and healthy and invest a lot of their time into them because they are so passionate about them.

In the Christian church I hear so many people say, “I have a huge passion for Christ.”  So, that means you would bend over backwards for him, devote your undivided attention to him daily, be eager each morning to sit and chat it up with him and just be so full of passion for him that the people you work with and interact with on a daily basis know you are passionate about your relationship with Christ and 100 % dedicated to Him. There would be no question left in anyone’s mind that you are a true follower of Christ and whole heartedly His.

I see so many people when they go off to school they choose a profession they are passionate in.  You hear teachers all the time say how passionate they are about their students. You also know they are because all they do is talk, talk, talk about their students and their job almost to the point that if you do not have the same passion all you want to do is tell them to stop talking.  My friend who is going to school to be a teacher, it’s her love, her passion to teach. She loves kids so much and you can tell. She loves spending time with them, playing with them, teaching them, holding them and doing everything with them.  She has a true passion for children and teaching and education. I just love her passion for what she does.  She is genuinely passionate about everything she is trying to achieve. 

With Christians we are suppose to portray that type of passion for Christ. Do not tell me you are passionate about being a Christian and being a follower of Christ if the person you interact with many times in your life who doesn’t attend church with you would not be able to tell if you were a Christian or not.  If you are not portraying your passion about Christ and his love for you the way you would talk about your passion for your job, or your husband or kids then stop talking the talk until you can talk the talk and walk the walk. When you have the true passion with Christ you will no longer have to talk it because people will just now it.  My friend who is going to school to be a teacher has never told me the words, “I am passionate about teaching children.” I just know she is because of what she does, her actions show it.  If you are truly passionate about Christ, you won’t have to announce it with your declaration of saying, “I am passionate about Christ.” You’re talking about him none stop and doing things he wants you to do and the actions which you show every day all the time will be proof of how much passion you really do have for God. I pray that this year my life will become ever present and people will always be aware of my love for Christ.  I want to have the passion for Christ that overflows to the point of being like that teacher who doesn’t stop talking about her classroom who sometimes can get annoying, but in a good way. When we have a passion for Christ we will then have a true passion for other people and the goals in everything will change.  Our goals with life will become more concerned with helping peoples souls and leading them to find the same happiness in which you have found and teaching them that they can have the exact same passion in Christ as you do even if they are passionate about other things in this world. 

Ok so maybe I am on a soap box here and I’ll get off of it. But I am just frustrated a lot lately hearing the words about being so passionate from Christians but I would never know it unless they told me and even with people telling me it’s hard to believe them when they don’t take their passions for Christ outside of the church walls and parking lot. When you actually have a burning desire and eager or excitedness about Christ you spend time with God digging in His word each day and trying to get to know him better and then moving mountains to make sure you can get that time in each day then you can say you are passionate, but then you won’t have to say anything because people will just know it.

Passion is about having an over abundant amount of love and joy in something. Having a strong relationship with Christ brings about both love and joy.  Christians need to have more of a passion for their personal relationship with Christ than they do for their religion in Christ.

The new years resolution

So every year I find something about myself which I would find challenging to change.  Ok so really it’s not all that challenging, like quit smoking, losing weight and things that are normal new year’s resolutions which usually get forgotten about as fast as they are said. So this year I wanted to challenge myself a little more. My first thought was of course loosing weight, but that is not really something I want to call my new years resolution because I have been doing that since before the new year ever started.  I wanted to dig deeper this year, find something with a real meaning that didn’t imply a vein desire for myself.  So in order to find my new resolution for 2012 I sat and thought for a while reflecting on 2011. I have never really sat and pondered on my past years, I just see them go by and see a new year come and go and don’t really reflect on what I have done or haven’t done.

My reflection of 2011 was actually very happy and built a little confidence in myself. I realized so much had happened in 2011. I started it off by finding out I was pregnant with Elijah and then from there started getting involved in our church. Since then I have been blessed with so many new friends that I could have never imagined finding and been blessed by growing in my spiritual walk with Christ. I’ve been excited this past year to become a part of many other peoples lives and find ways that God has blessed me through these individuals and hopefully ways that I have been able to be a blessing to them as well.  It’s been exciting this year to see my son Alex learn new things about the Bible and become openly excited about going to church and learning Bible verses and stories that will hopefully impact him the rest of his life.  It has been more than amazing to watch my husband grow spiritually as well. He is such an inspiration and a huge help on the days when I need spiritual inspiration to keep the faith and keep holding strong. It’s been so much fun this past year to sit back and watch him grow in so many ways and become the man he is and watching him change into a godly man.  He’s become my new inspiration. Of course to top it all off we gained a new cute addition to our little family, Elijah.

 I can’t say 2011 was a perfect year. There were ups and downs but as I sat and pondered about my past year I realized when I started I was clouding much of this happiness of 2011 with thoughts about things I wish I had done better, things I wish I had done at all and things that downright made me depressed that I hadn’t done correctly.  Not that I was thinking only on the negative things but I did let them cloud in on the good things which happened this past year. Then I realized what I was doing and forced myself to stop. Then I realized what my new resolution should be. Instead of focusing on bad things and letting them cloud and ruin the good things, I need to always focus on the good. I want to strive to see the good in everything not just in some things or on days when things are all going my way but I need to focus on being joyful in all things and loving people no matter what they may say or do to me. My goal in my life is to live up to God’s expectations for each day of my life that everything I say and do brings honor and glory to Him and that when I do enter heavens gates I will hear 'well done good and faithful servant.'   I figured if I was going to make a new years resolution this year that I needed to pick something that would help bring me closer to my life goal.  Philippians 4:8 says "... whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things"

I want to live up to this verse,( and so many others) but this is the one I am really striving for this year. Instead of focusing on things that I don’t like that I potentially could let wreck my day (and other peoples day) I need to think on positive things. I know if I change my way of thinking it will impact my way of acting and reacting when things aren’t going exactly how I think they should or when I look back and feel like I should have said or done something different. If I think on things that are true, noble, right, pure, and lovely then I will be focusing on good things that will form positive impacts on not only my life, but also on my husband’s life, my children’s life and the lives of all those I come in contact with. With my goal in mind to serve Christ with my fullest potential I know the first change needs to be my attitude and in order to change that I need to change the way I think.