What is Love?

The kind of Christian Love I mean is God, no more no less.  Love means to will the ultimate good of the other.  We will it, we don't impose it.  We will their good, not simply what they want.  I may want to sit at home eating icecream all day but it isn't love to enable that.  Eating icecream isn't evil in its self but enabling disordered eating is not for my good.

Love isn't week.  Love is strong and endures.  Because we can't use force, you can not force Love, we must have the patience of St Monica.  Love is so strong hate breaks itself upon it.  Love makes us strong.

Focusing my life on Love

I believe I have been given a mission, but it is really the same mission of all Christians, to carry God's love out into the world.  To share that love with those who are near to me and those who are not.  I am called to start always from love in all I do.  There is a great well of Love that I draw from, that well is God.  It is deep and it is sweet.  That is the God I want to show the world.

This Love makes me strong.  I can resist all and endure all because of the Love of God.  He sends His Love to me The Holy Spirit who strengthens and guides me.  I don't know what God will ask me to do for Him and I know I may never see the results myself, I simply trust in Him.

When we fail to start from Love as Christians we fail to bring them God.  How can we expect them to act as if they have God already when we don't share Him with them?  Love them into goodness and trust God to change their hearts.

What does God want of me?

How do we know what God wants of us?  What does he want us to do?  How do we discover what it is He is calling us to do?  These are some really hard questions that I struggle with on a daily basis.  Am I doing God's will?

I know that none of us is called to simply sit by inactive or safe within our comfort zone.  God moves us and we so we will be called to move.  But motion for the sake of doing something isn't right either.  Discovering God's will in our life takes trust first of all.  If we don't trust in God we won't be open to what He wants of us.  Second we need to be people of prayer and meditation.  Ask God to do His will in our lives and to show us what He wills for us to do and the grace we need to do it.  Then we have to keep our eyes and ears open for the call.  He will send messages to us through others, through what we read, what we see, and it will convict us in our hearts.

The next step also involves trust.  he will ask us to do things we don't think we can do.  We might be afraid but we aren't doing this alone.  He is with us and working through us, so we dont need to be afraid.

Life in the Spirit

Since coming to believe in God my life has been transformed by His love.  I know that I am a loving and beloved child of God.  No one can change that.  I am worth loving.  I don't need a bigger house , more money, or a new car to be worth His love.

Struggling with Lent

This year I am struggling with Lent or at least with what I have chosen to do for Lent.  Maybe that's good, it shows I chose something I need to work on, my relationship with food.  This has been a long ongoing affair.  Sometimes I abandon my self to food, letting myself melt into its arms.  Other times I break up with my chosen addiction and shun it almost completely.  What I think I am learning is that food and I have to just be friends.  Friends that can enjoy each others company at times but we have to see other people.

What does that even look like?  I have no idea at this point but with Gods help I can make it.

Sexual assault is a ProLife issue

Being ProLife to me means respect for life at all times.  It means respect for people and their persons.  I can not destroy the body of a person in my womb because I have to respect that persons right to their own body.  The right I have to control my body is superseded by that persons rights, I won't die if I have to give them room for a while.

In the same way though I have the right to my own body, meaning I have the right, within reason, to control who touches and who does not touch my body.  Sexual assault and rape violate my person and therefore in my mind are not ProLife.

I know this is contrary to what most people who believe abortion is a right.  They think we don't believe in a persons right to their body but that is so wrong.  That right is so inviolate that it means I can't kill someone else out of convenience.  It also means that I don't have to allow someone else to control my body by sexual assult

Only God knows

I have a very bad habit of assuming that no one will like me.  So I don't let people in, especially those whom I like.  I hide myself from them and turn myself inside out to become some sham version of the person I think they want me to be.  So, they don't ever get to know the real me and relationship stays shallow because I won't let them in.  The funny thing is that when they get tired of trying to get to know me and leave, I assume it's because they caught a narrow glimpse of me and rejected me.

But, God knows me, and He loves me.  Horribly imperfect as I am, He loves me.  To Him i am not too wrong for words.  To Him I am beautiful and unique.  He made me and He has a plan for my life. That plan includes all the mistakes I've made, he can use those mistakes.  I am not too broken, He is the Potter, I am His clay.  I am His work, the one who made the stars, made me, and you for that matter.  How can I look at the beauty of His creation and not know that I too am beautiful and special?  If He made the mountains, the sky, flowers, and zebras, He made me.  Even more amazing He made me in His likeness, and He is all beauty.

If I truly believe this I have to carry this out into the world with me.  If God can love me then other people can love me if I let them.  I have to give them a chance to see me.  I begin to think that if I let them see me, then I will see them too, and seeHim in them.