Forged By Faith

Psalm 94:14 NIV Hang onto your hats my friends, this one's been on my mind for a while. We've been talking about the assurances that we have in our faith, but we've been approaching them from the common misunderstandings that humanity often has about them. From whether or not our prayers are heard to this idea of faith being easy to the promise that one day all the trials and challenges we experience will finally make sense, we have so many assured promises in our faith. But still, the world tries with everything it has to tear them down and cause us to question those assurances that we have in Scripture, in our faith, and in our Father. The promise that I want to talk about today is the promise that God will never leave us nor forsake us. God has never left us. He will never leave us. He will never stop caring about His people. He will never run out of love for those who live according to His will. But how many times have people asked the question, "Where is God?...

1 Samuel 16:7b NIV Been thinking a little bit about how God's ways are so much higher than ours. We should all be thankful that He doesn't conduct Himself like we do down here. None of the foolish hatred. No petty differences. No selfish ambitions. No unrighteous anger. When we look around and see the brokenness of this world it makes it even more clear why we should jump at the chance to live for such a faithful and loving Father! The past few days have brought us news of more violence and hate-fueled actions. Once again we're seeing how dangerous and just plain disgusting hatred and intolerance can be. More lives lost. More people hurt. All of it completely unnecessary. As we talked about a couple of days ago, every choice has a consequence. And a world that rejects Christ and scoffs at His ways will face the most dire of those consequences. I've asked this question in posts in the past, but can you imagine what our world would look like if we all tried to see others ...

Jeremiah 2:11 NIV I was given one of those rare opportunities to learn a very valuable lesson yesterday. Last week I decided that I was spending way too much time staring at screens so I made an effort to start fixing that. Yesterday I checked my screen time report on my phone and it was absolutely shocking! I spent a little over 11 hours less on my phone compared to the week before. 11 HOURS!!! And that doesn't take into account how much time I gained not looking at my computer, which is undoubtedly far more. I honestly couldn't believe that when I saw it. How could I have been spending that much time on some device probably just looking at silly stuff? But it made me realize just how much we trade away without even knowing it. Everything in life is a choice, and every choice has a consequence. By choosing to stare at a screen scrolling through social media or playing some silly game, I was trading away countless hours of my life. And having decided to do better I can honestly...

1 John 2:15 NIV I've recently felt the need to make some changes in my life. It hit me a while back that I was maybe a little too caught up in worldly things. Becoming entangled in this place happens quicker than we realize! Before you know it you're completely sucked in and so turned around that you don't know how to break free. And that is definitely not what I'm looking for in my life. We often think of addiction as something that could never happen to us because of how it's normally seen. But it really does apply to more than drugs or alcohol. I've personally discovered that I had become addicted to technology. Always checking my phone for messages or updates. Scrolling through social media to stay up-to-date on news that I honestly didn't care about. Playing games that do nothing but waste time and strain my eyes. So I am fully committed to cutting the cord as much as possible. Four days in and I honestly can't believe just how connected I was. It...

Matthew 15:8 NIV This is one of those verses that just sounds scary. It's one of those statements that I don't ever want to hear Him say to me. Kind of like, "I never knew you." Can't really think of anything more terrifying than hearing our God say something like that. It seriously lights this fire to do the very best I can do to be the best person I can possibly be! It really goes along with my post yesterday about focusing on the rules but forgetting the relationship part. Our hearts need to be glued to God. They need to be completely set on following His plans, living His will, studying His word, and cutting loose anything that keeps us from doing so. There are so many things that distract us in life. But when you think about the horror of being told to leave because He didn't know us, it really helps put into focus what truly matters! Our minds and mouths are powerful things. They can spin things in just the right way to convince ourselves and others that...

Proverbs 29:1 NIV Surely you've heard the phrase 'check yourself before you wreck yourself'. Well today I wrecked myself. My upper back has been giving me fits all week, and I thought that I had managed to get it back in, but I found out this afternoon that I was wrong. About 30 minutes into my shoulder workout I discovered I had made things much, much worse. But alas, there's always a lesson to share! Stubbornness is one of those things that I think we all deal with in different ways. One of mine is when it comes to working out apparently. I love it, feel miserable when I miss a workout, and obviously rush things when I should maybe take a day off. So today I learned that my own stubbornness to try to workout anyway led me straight to a bigger predicament than before. How often does that happen to us? We get something in our heads, and no matter what, we're going to do it. We can get so hard-headed that we will run ourselves headlong into a brick wall if we've ...

Job 8:12-13 NIV Yesterday we talked about the gap that sin creates between us and God. Sin leads us away from Him by offering all kinds of great sounding promises. But it always leads to the same barren wasteland of misery, regret, and disappointment. The longer we live there, in that place separated from our Father, the more hope we're going to start losing. As long as we buy those lies that sin tells us, we think we've got it all. We tell ourselves that it's as good as it gets. After all, sin convinces us that we're free to do anything our minds can think of. But no matter what, there's no outrunning the truth. There's no hiding from the fact that sin is slowly destroying us and killing any hope of a better life. And once that hope starts fading, we can easily stop trying and start dying. As this verse points out, those who forget God and give up on trying to grow closer to Him fade away. They lose that uplifting feeling of hope. They lose the willingness to t...

Lamentations 3:39 NIV We've got this really big problem in our world today. I was finishing up the book of Lamentations the other night and this one really stuck out to me. Nobody understands this idea of consequences anymore. Everyone just wants to do whatever they want to do without anyone saying anything to them. Got news for anyone that thinks that way, that's not at all how God works! You see, sin has a price. Evil has a price. Our choices have a price. They're called consequences. We don't have the right to do or say anything we want to just because we want to. And we definitely don't have the right to do or say anything we want to and never face the penalty that comes with it. We will never be able to get out of the fact that our choices truly have consequences, and that we are the only ones that are responsible for them. These days everyone wants to gripe and complain when they face the price of their poor choices. They hate the fact that they have to face p...