When Hope is Alive

“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” -1 Cor.15:58

When hope is alive, we try.

This past week I had what I was hoping to be my final doctor’s appointment for my knee post-op. I was hoping the doctor would clear me to at least get back to running and being able to do more physical activities. I was hoping he would say I could try playing volleyball again with a knee brace and even try tennis. I was actually expecting this.

But that isn’t quite how the appointment went. Instead, I was told I’d have to schedule another appointment in 5 months to check back in to see if I could get cleared. What bothered me the most is that I was told I probably shouldn’t take up running as a hobby anymore. I used to love going on runs in the summer, out in the country where no one is around. This was my peace and my own space to clear my head. So needless to say, being told I can’t run anymore was quite the disappointment. Running was something I have been waiting for and hoping for for so long. I’ve been rehabbing, training, and building my muscle back all for the purpose of running again and being able to do a lot of things I haven’t been cleared to do yet. Now that hope is gone.

But when I had that hope, it was easier to try. It gave me a reason to work hard, to endure through the pain, and to keep training because I had a purpose to do so. I was expecting something better.

As I reflect on this situation, I can’t help but compare this to other areas of my life. Specifically, my walk with Christ. Because I have hope in Christ and His redeeming work, I know I have a purpose…So what do I do? I try. I work to find and fulfill that purpose in His kingdom. If I didn’t have that hope, I would feel as if my purpose is gone. My desire to make something more of my life and my everyday actions would fade away. I wouldn’t have anything to truly look forward to at the end of my life.

It is amazing how powerful a hope in Christ is. Hope gives us a reason to try. Hope gives us a reason to not be afraid of the future. It gives us a reason to not be afraid of death. But even more so, it gives us a reason to live.

Wherever this blog finds you tonight, I pray that you cling to the hope found in Jesus Christ.

I pray you never forget that Jesus is one day coming back.

I pray that you never forget the sufferings you go through in this life aren’t purposeless.

I pray you remember your future is in the hands of an all-knowing God.

I pray you know and believe you have a reason to live.

I pray that you keep your hope alive, and you continue to try to live for our wonderful God as you share your hope with those who have none.

Incomprehensible Grace

Grace.
Incomprehensible grace.

Life without grace would be lifeless.
Life without grace would be hopeless.

It has allowed me to live, to be, and to become.

It lets me breath, breath in, and breath out.

It picked me up out of ashes, and changed me into something more.

Someone who is worthy, who is valued, and is loved.

Someone who makes mistakes, but can get back up.

Not just a second chance, but a third, a fourth, and so on.

Because no matter how hard I try, I just always get it wrong.

Grace, incomprehensible grace. 

It welcomes me in and gives me a place to belong. 
Grace calls my name, grace sings a hopeful song. 

It sees beyond chances, it sees a heart that matters.

Grace gives me a purpose, and keeps forgiving as I try to fulfill it.

Grace gives freely, gives often, and gives always. 

It heals me, it catches me, it changes me. 

Grace, incomprehensible grace.

It replaces my brokenness with a story of meaning.
It takes my broken pieces and fits them into God's puzzle.

When I fail, grace gives me a future. 

When I fall, grace picks me up. 

When I stand at the edge, thinking about giving up, grace captures those thoughts and gives me hope.

Grace doesn’t care about what I do, but rather who I am.

It doesn’t count my mistakes, or even the good things I count on my hands.

Grace, incomprehensible grace. 

It finds me, it keeps me, it holds me, it entangles me.

It sees me, it frees me, it guarantees my eternity.

Yet, I sit here undeserving, often ungrateful, and still complaining. 

I sit here wanting more, always wanting something.

But ever so gently and swiftly, grace still finds me. 

Grace. 

I can’t imagine my life without grace.

Realstagram

Sometimes when I’m very passionate about something, I go on rants and could talk and talk about it forever. So hopefully, this does not turn into just a rant…Instead, I hope it speaks some truth about a trap that our culture has fallen into.

Social media is awesome. But it also sucks.

It has created a culture where people are constantly morphing this 'perfect' image. We only post certain pictures, stories, quotes, adventures, videos, etc. We only share the things that fit the descriptions of ourselves that we want everyone else to see and believe. We use filters. We use subtweets. We use photo shop. We count 'likes' and compare followers. We pretend to take candid photos that aren't really candid at all. We share what we want to share. Oftentimes we post with our only goal in mind being to get the most likes. I say we, because I know that I do it right alongside a huge percent of people using these social media websites.

In general, social media is either fake, or is only part of the picture. Even if we're posting true things, our profiles never fully capture everything about who we are. Usually, our profiles portray everything that we wish we could be, everything that we think we're supposed to be, or everything that we want others to think about us.

Click on the explore tab on Instagram and I can guarantee you will immediately see a girl in a bikini somewhere on a beach living the dream, with way more followers and likes than you will ever have. Scroll through your feed and all you see is everyone's summer vacations, pictures with their boyfriends/girlfriends, fun adventures, perfectly captioned photos, etc. Then, you go on twitter and everyone is talking about relationship goals, the ideal love, and then subtweeting when their mad, upset, or too afraid to say something to someone for reals. Head on over to Snapchat and see some people's stories where they make sure they documented every single party they went to that week just to make sure everyone knows how much ‘fun’ their lives are.

Hopefully, you see the point.

Now I'll be the first to tell you that I stress out over what I should caption my photo because I want people to like it. I compare my profile to other people's profiles. I get jealous and wish I could be at a beach somewhere instead of sitting on by bedroom floor with tears in my eyes because of an online summer class that drives me insane. I know for a fact that I'm on social media wayyy too much.

But I also know I'm not the only one because this is the culture and mindset that social media has created.

Now don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great things about social media. The issue is that over time, society has grown so attached to scrolling through every newsfeed that our entire way of thinking has shifted. Social media is powerful. It can be powerful in good ways. But without us even realizing most of the time, it can also be powerfully dangerous.

Sometimes I catch myself trapped in this social media mindset. I want only my 'good sides' on my profile because I can't let people know that I actually don't have it all together. So then I scroll through and see all these other people whose lives are actually together. Or, so it seems.

It gets even worse. We've put up a front for so long that when we step back and attempt to spend time with Christ, that front never goes away. We try to hide the bad stuff. We make sure to highlight the parts of our lives that seem worthy of being seen by Christ. We don't open up and surrender, because that is just way too vulnerable and way too real. Do we really even know what's real nowadays?

We can't find God because we're trying to dig our way through the mess of ourselves that we've learned to hide away instead of deal with and be real about.

This can transfer over to all our other relationships as well. Maybe it's been this way for a long time and social media has just revealed it. But the truth is most of the time when someone asks how you're doing, a simple "I'm good" is far from it. Even when friends or family reach out to help, it becomes normal to highlight all the highs and avoid talking about the lows. We don't want to be real and reveal that there's so much more to us than our profiles show.

Hiding from people halts relationships and erodes them slowly until there's nothing left. Hiding from God can have the same devastating effect.

Maybe we think that by avoiding God when we're trapped in our doubts, sin, or shame, He sees us as "good."

But really our hiding is completely pointless and tragic. God sees through every façade. No matter how hard we try to conceal everything we’re ashamed of, God sees right through us.

The only thing your façade does is traps your heart in a cage along with all those other burdens you now have to carry alone.

It’s time to let it go.

Because God doesn't just see everything that we posted on all our social media accounts, He sees everything that we didn't post. He sees our deepest hurts. He knows ours fears. He sees our sin. He knows all our thoughts. He sees our shame. He knows every doubt. He sees it all so there's no purpose in hiding it away. Hiding brings separation between you and Christ. It builds a confusing path and begins to blur the way when you're trying to grow closer to Him. It doesn't create a fulfilling relationship. Instead, it leaves you lonely, empty, and even more lost than you were before.

God sees you in a different way that sometimes is hard to wrap your head around. You're not "good" when you hide everything behind you. You're not even "good" when everything is out in the open. God sees you as LOVED. Your past, your present, your future... in every moment God sees you as His child whom He loves in an unconditional way that you can't even begin to fathom. In fact, part of the reason He wants you and me to be real with Him about all our struggles and hardships is because He wants to help. He wants to take away our hurt. He wants to heal our broken hearts. He wants to diminish our fears. He wants to rid us of our guilt and shame from our sins that keep adding up. He wants to unlock the cage and free us from the mess that we created for ourselves.

So just be real. Be real with your friends. Be real with your family. Be real with God. Be real even when you’re afraid what everyone else might think. Be real even when it allows people to see that you actually don’t have it all together. Be real even when you’re afraid that the mess in your life is too much for Christ to carry…because it never is. The power of unconditional love is more powerful than any mess we try to hide.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me,and lead me in the way everlasting!” –Psalm 139:23-24

Thy Will Be Done

Thy Will Be Done... 4 little words that could change your life. Not when you say them. Not when you write them down. But when you pray them and you mean it.

When I hear these words, I think about more than just professing that God is in control over my life. Rather, I think about the call to surrender my life to God and let Him lead, even if He leads me to places I’m unsure about. Thy will be done is a statement about my trust in God and my faith in His genuine goodness. These 4 words mean that my faith outweighs my fear of not knowing where He will bring me.

But man, these words are scary. Honestly, I will say I am always so tentative about praying these words. Because if I truly mean, “Thy will be done,” then the rest of my life is totally in God’s hands. This means that when tragedy strikes, I have to believe that somehow that tragedy is a part of God’s plans. That in itself is scary.

Even so, God can only use me to the extent to which I surrender to Him. If I only surrender half-heartedly, I’m missing the point of what faith is about. If I only surrender half-heartedly, my relationship with Christ will reach a standstill and will remain on the teeter-totter scale of being lukewarm. If I want so desperately to be a light in God’s Kingdom, I have to be willing to pray, “Thy will be done,” being unaware of what God’s will may be.

I have learned this the hard way over the last couple of years. Ever since I first started playing volleyball, I loved the game more than anything. I will readily admit it took priority over many things in my life, even my relationship with Christ. Yet, I found ways to use the sport to bring glory to God and use it to share my faith with others. I knew from a young age that I wanted to play the sport as long as I could, and take my abilities as far as they would take me. But that was my own plan. Even as I prayed, “God, use me for your plan… Your will be done,” I never meant for Him to take the sport away from me…I always meant for Him to allow me to play the sport as part of that plan.

But it is beyond clear to me now that playing volleyball was not what God set out for my life. After my freshmen year in college, I was not in a good place. It was almost like I had this voice in the back of my head that told me to quit volleyball. I thought so many times about quitting and even transferring, but my passion for the game never let me quit. Ultimately, I decided that I couldn’t picture finishing college without playing volleyball, so I kept on playing. Not long after, I hurt my knee the first week of practice my sophomore year, and ever since then I have been on the sidelines, watching volleyball…but never playing. This was never a part of my plan when I prayed, “Thy will be done.”

Looking back now, sometimes it makes sense why God allowed this to happen, but many times it doesn’t. I’ve learned so much and have had many opportunities that I don’t think I would have had if I continued to play volleyball, but there’s always that human side of me that tells me my life would have been better if I could have played volleyball for just a few more years. Now, as I’m working on graduating early and won’t be able to be a part of my volleyball team in Arizona at all, I’m still struggling to see why God couldn’t let me be one of the athletes still on the court. I’m struggling because I’ve been on some kind of sport’s team for as long as I can remember, and now I’m not. There is even a part of me that thinks, “Ok God, you took volleyball away from me, then I won’t be a part of it all… I won’t watch, I won’t support, I won’t coach…I don’t even want to play for fun because you took my passion away.” But God didn’t take my passion away. He didn’t even take the sport away. His plan just has my passion for volleyball shaped in a different way.

 “Thy will be done,” turned out to be very, very different from “My will be done.”

I oftentimes wonder why it matters so much that I surrender to God’s will. God is God, and I’m only human, right? So, won’t God’s will happen anyways, regardless of whatever I think, say, or do?

The way God works is a mystery. Yes, His plan will prevail and my human heart can’t stop the hand of God. However, surrendering my heart still matters. It matters because if I don’t surrender to God’s plan, I’m missing out on opportunities to bring people to Him. It matters because if I don’t surrender, my relationship with Christ has no backbone. It matters because my heart is His, and if I don’t have faith in His will, then I don’t truly believe that God is who He says He is.

“It is a mystery because of the mysterious way in which God works, using sin to accomplish His good will, suffering to produce glory, death to bring about life. It is a mystery which fallen man cannot fathom apart from the illumination of the Holy Spirit.” –Bob Deffinbaugh

I love this statement by Deffinbaugh, in a Bible study he wrote about God’s plan. We are incapable of understanding the mysterious ways in which God works. But this doesn’t mean that His plans aren’t good. How could we ever understand terrorist attacks? How can we understand cancer breaking in and stealing joy among families? How can we understand poverty and children going to sleep at night without having eaten anything that day?

We can’t understand it…and sometimes I think the more I try to understand it, the more confused I become. But “Thy will be done” brings me to a place where my lack of understanding is defeated by my faith in God’s goodness. Even when I don’t understand these things, I know that God is good, and somehow a greater purpose for good is being accomplished in the midst of them.

“So then, this is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” –Matthew 6:9-10