To the Single Girl

To the single girl,

You have your dreams. You have your desires.
You pray for God to bring “the one.”
You keep waiting for the day you’ll meet “that one.”
Yet years pass by and still you here are – more single then ever.

“Maybe there’s something wrong with me.”
“Maybe I’m too picky.”
“Maybe I’ll never fall in love and maybe I’ll never get married.”

Thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts. Ah but this is where you get hung up about something that was never supposed to consume your entire life. This is the point where a desire can become a bondage.

Marriage isn’t the end all and be all.
It isn’t the only thing that will make you happy and complete.
The problem is that too many girls get caught up in that fairytale.
Fairytales cause you to become dissatisfied in something that was never even intended to satisfy you.

Hate to break it to you, but there is more to life than flowers and fairytales.
There is more to life than nice feelings and “relationship goals.”
There is more to life than just your future boyfriend or future husband.

See, what you need to realize is this:
You don’t need a man to make you feel worthy, loved, and beautiful.
You don’t need a man to give you attention and you don’t need a man to determine your value.
God has already done that.
So you don’t need to date around.
And really, you don’t need to get married.

What you do need to do is work on being satisfied with where you are in life right now. How? Well for starters, you need to realize that a man will never be able to complete you. And until you realize that, you will never be satisfied.

The truth is that God and God alone can complete you.
Too many girls have not found their completeness in Christ.
And that is why they are constantly seeking for attention and endlessly jumping from guy to guy. But they are only chasing the wind and finding heartbreak.
The reality is that no man will ever truly satisfy you.
Yes, it is natural to desire a relationship. It is natural to desire marriage.
It is God’s design. And it is good.
But until you find your completeness in Christ, you will not be able to thrive in any relationship, much less marriage.

So maybe what you see as singleness is actually growth.
Maybe what you see as singleness is actually preparation.
Maybe what you see as singleness is actually God’s way of saying, “I’m saving you from heartbreak.”

Before you can enter into marriage with a man and “become one” with him, you need to know what it means to become one with God.
You need to know what it means to be secure with God alone,
complete with God alone,
and loved by Christ alone.

There is a lot to learn. But this is what the waiting season is for.
There is much to be learned in the waiting.
There is much to be learned in singleness.
So embrace your singleness and learn from the waiting.
And instead of letting yourself become consumed in dreams of “the future one,” take this time in your life to work on your own life, your own ministry, and you own walk with God.

When the time is right, God will allow the right man to step into your life and help you build what you have already started; and you, him.
You don’t even need to look.
Just wait.
It’s better to wait for a man than settle for a boy.

And if you don’t get married, guess what? It’s not the end of the world.
You can live just as satisfied and feel just as loved, worthy, and complete knowing that God still has a plan and a purpose for your life. It might look like a different plan than your friends’ lives, but His purpose remains the same. Just learn to be satisfied in Christ and you’ll be satisfied in any season you are in – regardless of your relationship status.

To the single girl…

It’s not even about the waiting. It’s about being satisfied.
In your satisfaction, God will give you the patience to wait.
So be satisfied. Right here, right now –
In Christ, and Christ alone.
He is enough. Always has been, always will be.

“For He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things.”
Psalm 107:9

 

 

Feelings are not Everything

 

Feelings are real. But they are not everything. They can be good and they can be bad. They can be right or they can be wrong. They can help or they can hinder. They can direct or they can lead astray.
That’s the point. Feelings are unpredictable and unsteady. But all too often, we allow our feelings to dictate our mood, choices, and actions. We let feelings lead our life.

 

FEELINGS ARE A GIFT.

I believe that the ability to feel is a gift from God. With feelings, we can experience love and we can experience happiness. We can experience wonder and we can experience the presence of God.

Feelings are a gift from God, but so is free will. We have the free will to choose what we want to do with our feelings. So we have to be careful. We are inclined towards feelings, but we are also inclined towards sin. It’s human nature. The enemy knows that, and he often uses it to control and manipulate us.

 

FEELINGS ARE POWERFUL.

I’m not undermining feelings or the power of feelings. I recognize that they are a real thing and that not all feelings are bad. All I’m saying is that feelings are not everything because feelings are not always right.

If we went to work only when we felt like going into work, we would probably never go to work.
If we forgave only when we felt like forgiving, we would never forgive.
If we resisted temptation only when we felt strong enough to resist, we would never resist.
Everything we do is a choice.

Sometimes our choices are overtaken by the power of feelings. Feelings are so powerful because they tend to throw rationality and convictions out the window. One small feeling can manifest into a whirl pool of other things and it drags everything down with it. Once everything is in the mix, feelings are powerful enough to manifest sin. People do certain things to gain certain feelings – or they avoid certain things to avoid certain feelings. Sin.
Feelings are powerful. We have to recognize that.
Feelings can control us. We have to be careful of that.
Feelings can lead to sin. We have to stop that.

 

FEELINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS BAD.

I get it. Some people have a lot of feelings and some people don’t. I personally tend to be a person who has more feelings. So I get it. Don’t take me wrong, I get it. I understand that some people “feel” more than others, and that is not necessarily a disadvantage. In a lot of ways, feelings are a good thing. They give us sympathy and compassion. They allow us to feel God and to know God. They help us to love God and to love people.

We just need wisdom to determine right feelings from wrong feelings.
We have to be careful of which feelings we are letting in, which feelings we are giving in to, and which feelings we are following.

 

BUT FEELINGS ARE NOT EVERYTHING.

Feelings come and feelings go, and sometimes there’s nothing we can do about it. Though we can not always control our feelings, we can control how we respond to those feelings.
There is a time to follow what we feel, but there is also a time to stand up despite what we feel. Do not always let feelings dictate you. Do not let feelings manipulate you. Feelings are feelings. That’s all they are. They are not the be all and end all. You have a choice as to what you do with your feelings. Your choices determine your character. They determine your pathway. They determine your life. They can lead you to God or away from God.

Those who let their feelings dictate and control their life are like a leaf. They go wherever the wind blows. If the wind blows them up, they go up. If the wind blows them down, they go down. Where’s the stability? Where’s the character? We need to be people who are rooted. We need to be like a tree – rooted to the ground no matter where the wind blows.

I get it – It’s easier to follow feelings than to follow God. But feelings are not everything. God is everything. Feelings are not stable. God is stable.
Follow God, not your feelings. Put your trust in God, not your feelings. Put Him before your feelings. Put His Word and your convictions before your feelings. It’s a choice. But it’s a choice that determines everything.
How will you respond when feelings overtake you?
Make a choice. Give God control.  Do not let your feelings manipulate you.
Feelings are not everything. But He IS everything.

 

 

Trust without Understanding.

There are some seasons in my life that I wish could stay the same forever – seasons of happiness, seasons of friendships, seasons of ministry. Then there are some seasons that I can’t wait for to be over – seasons of hurt, seasons of tiredness, seasons of confusion. If I had it my way, I’d be rewinding and fast forwarding my watch whenever I felt like it. But that’s not how clocks work. YOU follow time. Time doesn’t follow you. But how I wish it did.

There was a season in my life in 2016 that I felt didn’t have any purpose or direction. Time was moving so slowly and I was aimlessly going through routine after routine. I was bored. I wanted to fast forward time and get to the “exciting” part of my life. I wanted to skip to the part where I was doing the job that I dreamed of, with the person that I dreamed of, doing things that I dreamed of. But I was still stuck in the same season. I thought it would never change.

But suddenly, as the new year approached, there was an area in my life that I felt was moving too quickly. It was a season in my life that I wanted to last forever. But as I saw it slowly slipping away from me, I began to realize that it was not going to last forever as I had so hoped. I wanted to rewind time and go back to how everything used to be. I tried holding on to it as tightly as I could. I wanted to salvage what I could. But that only worsened things. Finally, I had to come to terms with the fact that that season was over. And by trying to hang on to it, I was only hurting myself. I had to let it go.

In both of those seasons, God told me to trust.

But sometimes, I don’t know how to trust when I don’t understand God’s timing. Why would He stick us in dry, repetitive seasons? Why would He place us in weary, difficult seasons? And why would He take seemingly good seasons away from us? I don’t understand.

But I suppose that’s what trust is. Real trust is trusting even though we don’t understand. Real trust is letting go of the reins even when you can’t see what’s ahead of you. Real trust is trusting in God.

The season that I had to let go – I had trusted in it and I had put hope in it. But it was false trust and false hope. I put my trust in the wrong thing. And God took it away from me so that I could realize what real trust and real hope looks like. It looks like Him. So even though I had to let go of something that meant so much to me, I gained much more. I gained real trust and real hope.

Learn to trust even when you don’t understand. I trust God not because I understand His timing, but because I know that He is good and faithful. Because He is good, I know that what God takes away from the past, He will replace with so much more. And because He is faithful, I know that what God promises for the future, He will fulfill beyond expectations. I just need to be patient and TRUST. No fast forwarding and no rewinding. WE follow God’s time. God’s time doesn’t follow us. So even though sometimes we beg God to prolong a season or shorten a season, nothing we do can change the time. Instead, we need to allow the time to change us. There is purpose to every season. Each season is meant to change us and to grow us. God places us in specific seasons for specific reasons. We just need to TRUST.

I recently got a new watch and on the back of the watch, I engraved the words “TRUST.” Every time I wear that watch, I am reminded to trust in His timing. It may be hard to trust in His timing when we have our own timing, but how freeing is it to know that our watches don’t move because we manually move the hands every second of every minute? Rather, it moves because of a greater, more trustworthy power. I don’t have to understand that power to know that it is making my clock tick. All I know is that my watch is ticking and I trust that power because I hear the evidence – I hear the ticking. See. I don’t have to understand God to trust Him. I trust Him because I see the evidence of His goodness and faithfulness in my life. I hear the evidence. I hear the ticking. That’s the time of His watch. I trust that.

Dreams, Visions, and Promised Things

 

We all have desires, passions, and visions – dreams that God has placed within us.
But sometimes, when these dreams seem to be put on hold, we begin to doubt – and we begin to forget. We forget who God is and we forget what He is capable of. We forget what He has promised us and we forget what He has already done for us. We begin to lose hope.

Well maybe our dormant dreams are not actually dormant.
Maybe they are just helping us establish deeper roots.
Maybe they are meant to develop our trust in Him.
Maybe dormant dreams are meant to awaken our heart’s dormancy to what has been forgotten…

Here are some more thoughts:

//

We all have visions, dreams, and goals.
Things we want to achieve, accomplish, and unfold.
Things God has called us to – the deep, the out-there, the unknown.
Our calling, our vocation, our roles –
It becomes a part of our person, our character, our soul.

We want to fulfill, to explore, and compose.
We want to see, to hear, and to know.
Yet sometimes life seems to go so slow.
Things get postponed and dreams become cold.
Things we love become colorless tones.

What happened to the first love, the big dreams, the open roads?
Has God forgotten the calling, the promises, the old?
Will these dreams ever become unfroze, these stories ever become told?
What’s the point of all this prose when sometimes words feel like cold coals?
Do they not become repetitive, mundane, verbose?

That’s why we sometimes feel the need to take control.
But what happened to faith? What happened to hope?
We don’t even have trust, for to trust would mean to give up control.
Yet what’s so bad about giving control to the One who knows the unknown?
We just can’t – it’s our selfish need, our insecure role.

Sure, nothing more enthuses,
Than dreams of which we wish to pursue.
But patience is such a virtue,
That we do just what we want to do.

We run with our emotions, our desires, our feelings,
As a result of our fear, the insecurities we are bleeding.
We want what we want and we want to be controlling.
We are such impatient selves, selfishly indulging.

We want to succeed and achieve – see our dreams become reality.
And control gives us that safety, certainty, and security.
So we rush into dreams prematurely.
But like cagelings hitting the ceiling,
We pursue aimlessly and chase empty feelings.

But when did dreams become about us, ourselves, and me?
For without God, who really are we?
Is it not He that has placed these dreams in our sea?
Then why do we ignore Him when we dream?
Why don’t we lean on Him in the unseen?

Dreams, visions, and promised things.
We can’t seem to surrender our everything.
We can’t give back to the Giver what He has been giving –
Dreams, visions, and promised things –
We can’t seem to surrender His due renderings.

Why?
Because we fear, we lose hope, and we try to take control.
But we forget.
We forget that our God is faithful.
He breathed our very existence – how could we be so ungrateful?
Is He not good?
Is He not able?
Is He not indelible?
Is He not faithful?

Yes.
Yes, He is.

Like the sun that forever burns
Are the promises of His word.
Void to Him they will never return,
For His faithfulness extends through the universe.

This love –
It is not something we deserve,
Not even something we earn.
We are not of worth.
We are but blurs in the photograph of amateurs.

But this God, this God that we serve.
He IS good, glorious, and of worth.
His love is undeserved.
His goodness is unreserved.
His promises can not be reversed.
They are faithful, true, and preserved.

His promise is a ring.
Faithful and devoted – like Him.
It brings hope for the future,
And new things that lie therein.
Just see it rising up in the spring.

So trust Him with your dreams,
No matter how long the journey may seem.
Because have you not seen?
He is proven a King –
Fulfiller of prophecy, visions, and ancient regimes.
Give Him your all and He’ll give you a ring.
Yes, faithful is He – King of all Kings.

From Drifting to Drowning.

 

I recently found myself at a place in my life where I didn’t quite know where I stood with God anymore. I hadn’t turned my back on Him and I truly did love Him, but when it came down to it, I could feel a distance in the relationship and I knew it was my fault. For whatever reason, I had let myself distance and I had finally come to the realization that I was further than I thought. When I had let this happen, I could not quite say. But it had gotten to the point where I had to sit down and honestly ask myself, “Where am I with God right now?”
After some days of thought and reflection, I felt God speaking to me about where I truly was with Him. During this time, the word “drifting” and a picture of a little wooden raft kept coming to me. In the time of few days, God began to slowly reveal to me what those two things meant in my life at that moment. As it came, I wrote. I scribbled some words down in my journal; now let me tell you a story.

_________________________________________________________________

She was on this feeble sail boat somewhere in the ocean. With the shore on one side and the rest of the ocean on the other. While the ocean was pulling her, the shoreline was calling her. She wanted to reach the shore and get as close as she could. She wanted to see the beauty of the shore up close, maybe even touch the warmth of the shore sand. If it took a lifetime, then so be it… But now that she had been on this boat for quite some time, she grew tired. So she soon abandoned her paddle and gave up rowing to shore. She become comfortable and latent – she let herself drift. The drifting was subtle, but that’s why it was dangerous. Asleep and unaware, she soon found herself lost, wondering what she’d let happen and wondering where she now was. From drifting to drowning, she saw it coming, but had yet let it happen.
Now here are her thoughts…

“I’m on this little sail boat, and I’m drifting from shore.
I sway in… I sway out, I’ve lost in the out pour.
So I begin to drift, straying farther than I should –
Straying out of the safe zone, allured and immured.

 This sailing thing I’ve done for my whole life.
I’ve done it, I know it. Now there’s no surprise.
Routine after routine, same thing after same thing.
I’m tired. I’m bored. It’s all wearing thin.

So I’m drifting away, yet I don’t even realize it.
I’ve gone and I’ve strayed, but its hard to admit it.
Pulled farther from shore, pulled far by the waves –
I’m beginning to sink. I’m beginning to cave.

Bit by bit, piece by piece,
Parts of this boat – it floats away.
It’s happening in front of my eyes,
But I think its okay. 

Drifting away and falling again –
Still unaware of the danger I’m in.
Before you know it, I’m miles from the shore –
Farther than I’ve ever been – Farther than before.

Now far from the shore,
And faced by the winds,
I’ve drifted away,
I’ve swayed and I’ve stayed.

Screaming for help,
but so far from the shore.
Swimming effortlessly –
Is it worth it anymore?

From drifting to drowning –
How blindly we progress.
We see ourselves dying,
Yet refuse to accept.
We sway in our lies,
Now we lay in regret.

We make it appear as if we’re paddling to shore.
But when each wave comes, we’re pushed farther from shore.
We ride the waves – We go through the motions.
But we have lost ourselves in all the commotion.

The boat is our soul.
The shore is God’s presence.
The ocean is the world –
and the waves are its motions.

Our boats are falling apart,
But we can’t even see it.
Our souls are drifting,
But we’re too busy sleeping…

From drifting to drowning.
Still we don’t realize our fate.
The routines and motions have blinded us –
Made us oblivious to our soul’s true state.

_________________________________________________________________

It came to me that God was speaking to me, like a warning, through this picture about how I can consciously and unconsciously let my spiritual life drift away. It’s like God was saying to me, “That’s you on the boat. You’re drifting from shore. You’re drifting from me. You’re just going through the motions and letting the waves carry you out into sea. Stop drifting; and return to shore.”

It’s hard to maintain this whole “relationship with Jesus thing” that we so often talk about. It’s hard to paddle to shore. But its so easy to let ourselves drift. It’s subtle, comfortable, and also dangerous. And if we’re not careful – if we let ourselves become comfortable in drifting – we will soon find ourselves further from God than we had even thought. Distance from God means vulnerability to the temptations of the world. That’s deadly. When we let our boats fall apart and drift away from shore, we are allowing ourselves to become vulnerable to the ocean. And if we let ourselves drift, before we know it we will have gone from drifting to drowning.

But I know. It’s so easy to drift. Drifting is very subtle, slow, and gradual. It feels comfortable and even natural. In the same way, it has become so easy to just “do church.” It seems effortless now. But effortlessness is dangerousness. See sometimes its even more dangerous when we’re actively involved in church because then it becomes harder to detect when we’re drifting. On the outside, it may seem like we are crazy, loving Jesus freaks. But on the inside, we’re mortally dried up. We go through the motions of the waves and get so caught up with it that we forget where we’re even going. We do everything we’re supposed to do and say everything we’re supposed to say. We lift our hands in worship and post a nice Bible verse on Facebook. But there’s nothing deeper than that. Yet we think there is… We have not only fooled others into thinking that we have it all together, but we have fooled ourselves too. Hah. Now that’s a good liar… But here’s the thing. We can lie to others and we can lie to ourselves. But we can’t lie to God.

It takes courage to admit it when you’re drifting, but only then can you begin to find your way back to shore. It took courage for me to admit it. It takes courage for me to admit it here now. But we can’t allow ourselves to drift away from God until its too late. We can’t let ourselves go from drifting to drowning; because drowning will lead to dying. It takes continual checking of our hearts, continual pursuit of God’s presence, and continual conversing with Holy Spirit to curb from drifting. We need to go deeper and develop intimacy with Him in the stillness of the water. Just like any relationship, our relationship with Christ takes work and perseverance. In order to reach the shore, we have to work towards it. So paddle. Don’t just go through the motions of the waves. Don’t drift and don’t sway. The shore is beckoning. Turn your boat around and paddle.

❤
Evangelynn

 

 

 

Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment

We’ve all had those sleepless nights – those restless days – and countless times of hurt and disappointment.
We’ve all had those times of frustration and irritation – those times when we want to give up, run away, and just cry.
We’ve all had those times when we either want to avoid everyone or lash out at everyone – those times when we’ve been so hurt by people that we want to shut ourselves out from the world.

But when was the last time we had that time when we showed mercy? When was the last time we sat down and, instead of ponder on what people should or should not have done to us, think about what we should or should not have done to God?

God has wrecked me these past couple days over one song and two verses.
The verses are:

James 2: 13b – Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Micah 7:18 – Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but DELIGHT TO SHOW MERCY.

And the song is called “Mercy” by Amanda Cook.

The lyrics say: “You delight in showing mercy. And mercy triumphs over judgment.”

It was on my heart, but I didn’t know what it meant to me.
God spoke. I’m convicted.
So here’s the blurb:

How many times have we failed and disappointed God? How many times have we made promises to God that we never kept? How many times have we fallen into sin and hurt God? And how many times has God shown us mercy?
I think I can answer for all of us and say: countless times.
Now. How many times have people failed and disappointed us? How many times have people made promises to us that they never kept? How many times have people messed up and hurt us?
Answer: Countless times, right? But here’s where is goes down.
How many times have we shown them mercy?
Let’s just say, not very many times.

So hold up. People hurt us and we don’t think they deserve our mercy but instead, we show judgment. Yet when we hurt God, we still expect God to show us mercy and not to show judgment? How is that supposed to work?

We are all pretty sinful. And by that I mean really sinful. We have all messed up and made mistakes. All we’ve ever deserved is judgment upon judgment. But, instead, God has shown us grace upon grace. He has shown us mercy upon mercy upon…well… MERCY. But we always seem to do the exact opposite when the fingers are pointed at us. We always seem to show more judgment than grace – more anger than mercy. And then we turn the tables back around and beg God for mercy on our own lives.

God delights in showing us mercy because mercy triumphs over judgment. He delights in forgiveness, mercy, and love. However, because of that, he expects us to give the same to others. He expects us to show forgiveness, mercy, and love to others because He has shown us just that. Who are we to hold back mercy from people if God never holds back mercy from us?

Yes, hurt and disappointment are real. Anger and resentment are pretty real too. And because of that, we will never be able to delight in showing mercy on our own. In midst of tears and hurt, it most often seems completely impossible. But with God, we will be able to. Because of God, we have to. Through the mercy and forgiveness He has shown us despite our reckless ways, we will find the strength and encouragement we need to show mercy and forgiveness to others despite the situations.

We love because He first loved us.
And we need to show mercy because He first showed mercy to us.
Show mercy because of the mercy shown.

To close, as I was writing this very post, I took a break to check Instagram and when I opened it up, I saw this verse posted “1s” ago: “The Lord is MERCIFUL and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in MERCY.” –  Psalms 103: 8

The Lord abounds in gracious mercy. He delights to show us mercy because mercy triumphs OVER judgment. So may we be abounding in grace and mercy. May we find delight in showing mercy. All so because GOD abounds in grace and mercy and finds delight in showing US mercy. So fight your battles with grace and love. And conquer you wars with mercy, not judgment. Because mercy triumphs over judgment.

To Love like a Child

                                       

This summer, I was blessed with the opportunity to go on a mission trip to Jamaica as well as visit an orphanage in Malaysia and it was there that I learned what it means to love like a child. You see, when little kids whom you barely know run up to you, hug you, kiss you, and tell you they love you, you know that that comes from a rare place of pure love. And the funny thing about children is they love without conditions. It doesn’t matter who you are, how long you’ve known them, or if you will even love them back. They just love. They don’t care about what you’ve done or what you could do. They simply aren’t afraid to love. Unfortunately, as people grow older, hurt and experience changes that once unconditional love into conditional love.

At 19 years old, I haven’t gone through “a lot of hurt” per se, but I have gone through enough to learn how to build up walls. Growing up, I found myself facing disappointment after disappointment, and before I knew it, I had evolved from a fearless, loving person into a fearful, protective person. I built up walls around myself to protect myself from “loving too much” because I figured that if I love less, it will hurt less when they reject me. I became comfortable inside those walls because inside those walls there was no danger or hurt…or so I thought. But a wall is a wall. Walls block out the bad, but they also block out the good; they block out the hurt, but they also block out the love. But I was not willing to take the risk, so over the years, I would let people into my life, but only to a certain degree. Once I felt myself getting too close to the walls, I would step back. This, I thought, was protection.

“Don’t love too much. Don’t show your emotions and don’t let them see your feelings. Don’t grow so attached to people, because if you let them too far into your life, all they’re going to do is give you false hope. After all, everyone eventually lets you down anyways. You don’t need the hurt of being rejected again, so back up and close up.” These are things that I would tell myself, and to be perfectly honest, I often find myself still telling myself these lies. And then I ask myself why I tell myself these things. Does it really protect me? Perhaps, perhaps not. But why risk it, right? Wrong.

Love is a risk. But it’s only a risk because we have put conditions on our love. We have put selfish, conditional terms on love and made love into a math equation that says if we put X amount of love into a relationship, we must get X amount of love in return. We calculate, weigh, and analyze the inputs and results of love until we abort the entire equation all together. But here’s the news… LOVE IS NOT A MATH EQUATION. Nothing says that if we put X amount of love into a relationship, we will get X amount back. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. It’s a 50-50 chance – that’s an EQUAL chance on both sides – so why do we let the 50 % chance of failure, and not the 50 % chance of success, dictate us? Maybe because love is a risk we are not willing to take. But can you imagine if love was a risk that Jesus was not willing to take? If love was a risk that Jesus was not willing to take, humanity as we know it would never have been the same. Jesus loved without conditions and without fear even though He had all the reasons to. He went through more hurt, humiliation, and disappointment than any of us will ever go through, but He still chose to take the risk and love. And because He made that decision, the world received a second chance. He gave up His life in love in order to give us a chance to love, yet we take it for granted and instead… choose safety over love? Don’t play it safe. Jesus never did. God loves without conditions or terms. And thankfully He does because the bottom line is that we will NEVER love God enough to be worthy of His love. We have all hurt God, abused His love, and given Him all the reasons to give up on us, yet He still loves us, and very much for that matter. That’s UNconditional love.

1 John 4:18 says,
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

I can not give you a step by step explanation on how to love without fear or how to tear down the walls because quite frankly, I am still struggling to figure it out. All I know is that we are made perfect in love so there should be no fear in love. We were made TO love BY Love OUT of love. And it is WHEN you love, AS you love, that you drive out the fear. Pause. I don’t think you get it. It’s AS you love, not BEFORE you love, that the fear is driven out. So don’t wait till fear leaves before you love. Because if you do, it’ll never happen. Love first; and THEN the fear will leave. That’s how to love like a child. That’s how to love like Jesus. And at the end of the day, yes you will continue to face hurt and disappointment, but that is NOT a result of love. It is a result of the er and sin of human beings. There is a difference between loving people and putting your hope in people. Putting your hope in people will disappoint you, but loving people will not. The only one whom you CAN put your hope in and who will NEVER fail you is Jesus and that’s all you’ll ever need. So do not fear love, but use love to fight fear, and return to loving like a child.

The Struggle against the Struggle

I’m not afraid to admit that I struggle with sin. As a matter of fact, my flesh and spirit are in constant struggle with each other every day. And sometimes that struggle feels like a cold war inside of me. Sin looks and feels ever so pleasurable, yet it never really satisfies. In fact, not only does it fail to satisfy, it also leaves long term consequences that often haunt us for the rest of our life. It’s like a drug that we crave and desire for. It feels good when we take it and it tortures us when we can’t have it. Yet, the aftermath and consequences of it are devastating, and more than often, even fatal. Essentially, what I’m trying to say is that the struggle between sin and Spirit is real. Oh is it ever so real. However, a struggle always has two sides to it and this struggle doesn’t and shouldn’t end with sin. The struggle of sin can be turned into the “struggle” for holiness. We have hope – hope that we DO have a way out – hope that we don’t have to fall into sin – hope FOR purity and holiness. The chains of sin have been broken by the cross and the war has already been won. So because the war has already been won, we MUST fight for what has already been fought for us. We must fight until the struggle ends in holiness. And it MUST in holiness. It MUST end in sanctification and transformation.
Desire for purity and strive for holiness. Seek the Lord and seek to be like Him. 1 Peter 1: 16 says: “Be holy for I am holy”. God wouldn’t and doesn’t instruct us to do something that we cannot do. So strive. Strive for holiness. Ever so strive.

I wrote this poem as an acknowledgement of the struggle of sin – the struggle of hating sin, yet loving it at the same time. It’s about the war that we are constantly battling in our inner selves and between the two halves of our body – flesh and spirit. It’s about the struggle of struggling with sin and about the fight that we have to fight every day. But ultimately, it’s about striving to win the war for the cause of purity, holiness, and cleanliness. It’s about being holy for God is holy.

 

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The Struggle against the Struggle

 

Inside of me, my own sin is raging.

It is suffocating and self- mutilating.

Yet at the same time it feels terribly exhilarating.

I begin craving but nauseating,

For as I am craving I am also intoxicating.

Why do I continue violating?

Have the warnings not been resonating with my inner investigating?

 

I am elevating my own corruption,

And paving my own way to destruction.

I am manipulating with my dysfunction,

And negotiating with seduction.

It has become like a prescription of ammunition.

And this prescription has become my addiction.

And this very addiction has become my greatest affliction.

 

All this immorality, profanity, and depravity.

It feels like gravity driving me to my insanity;

Like abnormality playing with my normality;

Like irrationality mixed with rationality.

My mentality is fighting with reality.

My humanity is warring with my morality.

Now my capacity is reaching its mortality.

 

The struggle within the struggle.

The struggle within our sin.

The struggle to hate our sin

And the struggle of loving our sin.

Our sin is mesmerizing; in fact it is almost hypnotizing.

Why with all the advertising, it even begins to look appetizing…

But ingest a dose of it and it is forever paralyzing.

 

It’s only a matter of time before this infatuation brings us to our suffocation;

Before our fascination turns on us in assassination.

And if we don’t forfeit our reputation,

We will never achieve restoration, but be forever in separation.

The qualification for sanctification is to be in desperation for purification.

And to be in desperation for purification requires the application of our humiliation.

And this activation will bring our transformation, which will give us the ultimate salvation.

 

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A struggle isn’t a struggle if one side of the struggle completely outweighs the other. So struggle to make holiness outweigh sin. Struggle to make sin no longer a struggle.
And strive, ever so strive. Strive for holiness, desire for purity, and advocate for sanctification. Be holy for God is holy.

 

Evangelynn

 

 

 

All We Need is Need

What if God doesn’t really care about all the good deeds we do and about all the Sundays that we never missed at church? What if God wants more from us than just nice behavior and kind acts? What if what our world really needs is not a better economy system, less taxes, world peace, or a solution for global warming, but something better than that? Perhaps what our world really needs is a need for God. Maybe, just maybe, all God needs from us is need…

The human race has taught themselves everything they need to survive and more. We are trained to care for and depend on ourselves for survival from the moment we are born. From learning to hold the milk bottle for ourselves to learning to tie our own shoelaces to cooking our own breakfast to getting our first job – all these are steps to dependency and usually by the time we are in our late teens, we are fully capable of living on our own. Now I believe that God created us to and expects us to be able to care for ourselves, but many times, we take that a step further and, consciously or unconsciously, act as if we can survive without God in our everyday lives. For example, how many times have we gone a day without talking to or even thinking about God, and not even think twice about it? How many times have we gotten so busy with life and our problems that we didn’t even remember to include God in the whole situation? How many times have we gone ahead and made decisions in our life without even bringing it before God? The answer is: many times – too many times. Sure we survived. I mean we’re still in-tact, walking, and breathing. But are we really living? For what is living when Christ isn’t in it? So why scrape by with mere survival when you can live – truly live?

There are also many of us who get so involved in church, ministries, bible studies, and “good deeds” that we forget the reason for it all. We wrap our lives around doing “good things for God” instead wrapping it around God Himself. We think that by just doing all these good things, that God is fully pleased with us, but we forget that without Christ in the center, we are really just doing everything in vain. Ever thought that maybe what God wants from us first is our hearts, and not just our hands? Maybe what God wants from us is not just good deeds, but a real need – a realization of our need for need for Him.

When will we uncover the covers and realize our need for need for the One who is calling for our need?  Forget mere survival. Forget fancy ministries and sheer works. All we really need is need for the One who is calling for our need. All God wants from us is to admit our need for Him, because we DO need Him. And until we admit it, He will have no influence or authority in our lives. He wants to transform us and nurture us, but how can He when we don’t let Him? We will be like a baby bird who leaves the nest, thinking that he has learned everything he needs to learn to survive in the outside world. Yet the baby bird, who can barely fly, has no idea how to look for food and is unaware of the dangers that lie before him. He is still in need of his mother, but doesn’t want to admit it. Together, ignorance and pride bring the baby bird to its death. We will never and can never lose our need for God. Instead, often times we just numb it; and the root of our numbed need is pride. Pride creeps in and changes our mentality from “I am weak and need a Savior” to “I am independent and can survive on my own”. Our life then shifts from depending on God to depending on ourselves. We then become so focused on ourselves – making good grades to get a good job to make lots of money to buy a nice house to provide for our family to retire in paradise – that we lose focus of God. We need to get to the root of our numbed need and come before God in humility, confessing that we are in need of a Savior, admitting that we are not enough for ourselves, admitting that we cannot do it on our own, and admitting that our own works and efforts are not enough to get us through life. It’s time we declare our dependency and demolish our independency. Not until we demolish our independency and declare our dependency on God will we be able to fully live a life of complete surrender that is pleasing to God. We need to fall out of independency and fall IN dependency. We need to become so dependent on God that a day without Him is like a day without air. For when a life is dependent on God, that life will become unshakable because God is unshakable. So when the world comes tumbling down, the life that was grounded in the Unshakable will not be shaken.

So perhaps all God is asking from us is for our need. Maybe God is asking for our need before He’s asking for our deeds. Maybe all we really need is not more money, a better career, better grades, or even the latest phone model; but maybe what we really need is just a realization of our need for a Savior – need for His love – and need for His grace. Maybe, just maybe, all we need is need for the One who is calling for our need. And I believe that once we realize our need for need and our need for dependency, everything else will follow. It starts somewhere. It starts with our signature on the ‘Declaration of Dependency’. It starts with need. Need will open up our eyes to our incapability and our insignificance in comparison to God’s capability and grandness. It will draw us to fall into the arms of the Savior and depend on Him for every breath we take. It will cause us to fall so in love with Him and it will cause us to live a life that is fully surrendered to His will. It will then cause us to do things that we never thought we would do, which will then lead us to become strong leaders and world changers. So really, perhaps all we really need is need.

So go ahead. Declare dependency. Admit your need for need. For our need IS God. Forget mere survival and good deeds. All we need is need. We just need to admit it. And once we get past ourselves and come to the realization of our utter incompetency, we will truly understand that God truly is all we’ll ever need, and if He’s all we’ll ever have, we’ll have all we’ll ever need.

Wait, I say, Wait

I have discovered that waiting on the Lord is one of the most challenging aspects in a Christian’s walk with God. Our generation and society is too accustomed to receiving things instantly. We have created things like fast food, microwaves, instant coffee, and email so that we don’t have to wait. We can’t even stand it when our internet browser takes a few extra seconds to load. Our world has trained us to become so impatient and that is why we find it so hard to wait for things. Instant is all we know and instant is all we wait for. To be patient and to wait seems almost impossible for us, and it poses a challenge in our life, especially for us Christians because God is constantly asking us to be patient and to wait on Him. God’s timing is not our timing and our impatience causes us to become frustrated with God and His timing. And this often leads to disobedience as we try to go ahead of God, making wrong and hasty decisions just to satisfy our flesh. This week in particular, I was faced with the challenge of waiting while asking the Lord to speak to me about certain situations that I have been bringing before Him. I have been feeling frustrated with God and with myself because I know that God tells me to wait for Him to speak, and so I do, yet I feel like I have been waiting for so long and still He doesn’t speak. But this morning, God led me to read Psalm 27:14 which says, “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.” In this verse, the psalmist said to WAIT on the Lord. In fact, it is so imperative that he said it twice in one verse. Wait, I say, WAIT. And as you wait, God will strengthen you and give you courage.

The next verse that God led me to this morning was Psalm 62:5 which says, “My soul, wait ONLY upon God; for my EXPECTATION is from Him.” In this verse, David told his soul to wait because all his hopes and expectations can only and will only come from God. What’s the point in impatiently trying to run ahead of God when all hope comes from Him alone? If we try to run ahead of God, we will be left with nothing but emptiness and hopelessness.

As my week has progressed, I feel like God has been answering those heavy questions that I have been bringing to Him. They may not all be answered as of yet and though I know that a lot of my questions will not be answered any time soon, I have hope that God will give me the strength and patience to wait for His voice and His guidance.

So whether you are coming to God about school decisions, career decisions, relationship decisions, family decisions, or personal heart decisions, please remember to WAIT. Let me tell you first hand, that it is worth it to wait. Bring every decision you need to make before God, no matter how small and insignificant you may feel the issue is, and WAIT for God to answer. No matter how hard it may get and no matter how impatient you may feel, wait for God’s voice before you act. It is so rewarding to live a life guided by Christ. A life guided by your own feelings and actions may satisfy you for a moment, but ultimately it will lead you to emptiness. So why not leave your future into the hands of the One who knows the beginning and the end? Why not leave your decisions to the One who created all and knows all?

The lyrics to one of my favorite songs say:
“Take a break from all the plans you have made and sit at home alone and wait for God to whisper. Beg Him please to open up His mouth and speak and pray for real upon your knees until they blister.” – Clear the Stage by Jimmy Needham

I remember in the past, when faced with a particularly difficult decision, asking God to speak to me. I remember crying and begging for Him to stop the silence and just open His mouth and speak. It was incredibly difficult to wait for God to speak, but it was at the point where I almost gave up asking, that God finally spoke. And let me tell you, all the tears and persistence was worth it just to hear one word from God. These lyrics have encouraged me to persist. Don’t just simply ask God once, but continually beg and persist in prayer until He speaks. Only by persistently pursuing after God’s voice will you hear and find the answers that you are searching for. No matter how silent you may feel God is being towards you, PERSIST.
Matthew 7:7 says “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” This verse is telling us that if we persist, we will find. Persist and wait. Be of good courage and wait. Wait, I say, wait.