On Purity

First off, happy Friday!! I figured what better way to kick off Friday than with a super light post on purity. {read: sarcasm}

If you've been around for a while, you may know that this topic is a special one for me. It's the only topic that I've written about for 31 straight days, so there's that. It's one that I love for so many reasons, but for starters, because I can't possibly talk about purity without talking about redemption. 

The fact that I even get to have a voice about this is straight up God's grace at its finest. As a girl who lost her virginity in high school, I never, ever, thought I would get a second chance at innocence. I never imagined that purity is a gift that is given from God, not a title removable by a sexual act. 

I can vividly remember the moment God opened my heart to the idea of sexual purity. I can remember driving home to San Diego, hearing a familiar voice on the radio share a sermon about dating, and boom. It didn't matter that I had already "lost my shot" by the world's standard, I knew that I wanted to save myself for marriage. 

I've learned so much since that moment. God has been faithfully teaching me about purity, and I'm gonna keep it real here, some of it was through my own trial and error. 

Through that trial and error, I saw my own weakness. I saw that if I wanted a God-glorifying relationship, I couldn't do it alone. I needed a man equally committed to protecting the purity within our relationship, and praise Lord Jesus Himself, He gave me just that. 

I want to share the things that I'm learning here. I want to share to tell a story of God's redemption, to testify of the fact that He truly does make all things new. He forgives, and He restores, and He gives new life. 

I want to share to testify of His faithfulness, to reveal that He truly is strong in our weakness. Purity can never come from self-effort, it is always a result of the Spirit. And I, for one, want to see more of the Spirit in my life. I want to see and experience sexual purity that comes from a heart changed by God. That type of purity exists in singleness, and it exists in dating, and it exists in marriage. It's not meant for one season of life, it's meant for all of life. Period. 

I wrote about it in singleness, and now, I have the privilege of writing about it in dating. I have the privilege of sharing my struggles, and my lessons, and my victories. 

I share for one reason: to give Him glory. I share because it is only because of Him that I have this story to tell. And I share because He has given me a man who truly loves my passion to share it all to praise His name. I love him for that. 

Purity has nothing to do with physical actions, and everything to do with the heart. It's not something we do, or we find, or we achieve. It's something we experience through the power of the Holy Spirit within us. It's something we find through surrendering our whole heart to our mighty God. 

Purity is two fold, the desire and the power to do what pleases God. If we have the desire, and not the power, then we constantly find ourselves falling into sin. We want to live a life of purity, but without the power to do so, we're stuck in our fleshly habits. 

If we have the power without the desire, it does no good. What good is having the physical fitness required to run a marathon if I don't have the desire to run a marathon? 

It takes both; we must find both the desire and the power to do what pleases God. And those, my friends, are gifts from Jesus. Those we find when we accept the gift of relationship with God that was given to us when a Man hung on a cross for us. It wasn't earned, or deserved. It was given, and when we receive it, we feel the life-changing surge of the Holy Spirit, which gives us the desire and the power to do things we never imagined possible. 

When Life Happens

I've been neglecting this space lately. Honestly, I feel like I've been neglecting it for the majority of 2014. I kicked off the year going to Africa, came back, and something shifted. At first, I thought it was just the Africa thing. I thought I was avoiding coming to jot down my thoughts, because I couldn't figure out what my thoughts were. I couldn't possibly get out the words to capture what happened in my heart over there, so I kind of just didn't. 

I tried writing about other things, and yet I still found myself not writing. I still found myself consistently choosing other things over blogging, whether it was time with friends, or time alone with God, or time with sleep. 

2014 marked a shift. A shift that left me with more living, and less writing. And at a certain point, I became okay with that. I knew writing was a big passion of mine, but I knew following Jesus where ever He took me was an even bigger one. I knew that if He was calling me to invest in my real world community instead of my online one, I had to be okay with that. 

I think it helped that part of me knew I wasn't done with writing. 

Part of me knew that He wasn't done with my writing. 

It was just a shift, and I gave into it, trusting Him fully. 

While there are many things that I miss about regular blogging, one of the biggest is the documenting. I love looking back over the years, and walking through the memories. Some things that deserved to be documented, and plenty that probably didn't, but I love that it all was. 

Some things just hands down deserve to be documented, and this weekend, one of those things happened.  

I don't even care that I look ghostly in these pictures, they bless me more than I could even express. This weekend, I had a brand spankin' new view at church. I stood behind the pulpit for the first time, instead of sitting in front of it. I had a mic strapped on for the first time, spoke for multiple services for the first time, and busted out all my best hand gestures (those are a fairly regular occurance). 

This weekend, I got to preach the gospel. I got to share the story of how Jesus has transformed my life, and was privileged and blessed to encourage others in their journey with Him. 

There are no words for what happened in my heart on that stage. All I know is it's what this heart was made to feel. 

I've been speaking at a Wednesday night gathering I'm a part of, and the passion I feel for teaching about the Lord is unreal. There is so much to the story of how that even started, how I even got to be in this body of believers, and on that pulpit in the first place. Maybe one day, I'll share the whole story here. It's a likely possibility. 

But for now, here's what I have to say. Our God makes dreams come true. Our God creates each person so uniquely, and places specific desires in their heart. He delights in fulfilling those God-given desires.

Growing up, I had a passion for speaking. In my high school youth group, I asked if I could speak one Sunday and share my testimony. It never happened, and I was disappointed at the time. I can look back now and realize that it was most likely because my testimony hadn't even begun yet. 

Somewhere along the line, the teenage insecurity kicked in and pushed out that passion for speaking. You put me in front of a classroom in high school or college, and my knees would start shaking like no other. Being in the limelight had no appeal when the voice quivers came in full force. 

With Jesus in the picture, that passion slowly started coming back. I'm not sure when it even did, but somehow, I was speaking and teaching and loving every minute of it. Somehow, the desire to share my testimony publicly resurfaced, and lo' and behold, our pastor asked me to do just that. 

Sunday was a day I will forever remember. It's a day that I hold onto as the beginning of something big, dreaming with expectant faith that my God has a plan here. 

Because my God makes dreams come true. 

Dream big, my friends. 

The Start of 24

Did you know that God has a story for you? One that's for you, and you alone. It's individually and uniquely crafted for you to shine the glory of our God into a world that desperately needs it.

 It's pretty amazing, when you think about it. We're all born into this world with this desire somewhere deep down inside that wants to live a life with legacy, with meaning, with purpose. And somewhere along the line, maybe you lost faith in that. Maybe this world convinced you that legacy, meaning, and purpose aren't for everyone. Maybe you're feeling average, normal, unimportant. 

If there's one thing I hope people find from this blog, it's faith. Faith in a God who writes big stories for little people. It doesn't matter how many people your story affects, what matters is how it affects. You are meant to be a light in this world. You are meant to carry the best news that can ever be heard, that there is a God who loves us so much that He sent His Son to pay for our sin, that we may be reconciled to Him. 

And that reconciliation? That friendship that is born between you and the God of the universe?

That changes ev. ery. thing. 

***

My life is forever changed because of Jesus Christ. I love telling my story, because it's a story I could have never written for myself. One with His fingerprints all over it, and I praise Him for that. Oh, do I praise Him for that. 

There are two key dates in my testimony, two dates that I now look back on as days when "everything changed." I didn't know it at the time; you rarely do, right? But now I know. I know that on those two days, Jesus reached down and with infinite mercy & grace, decided to change my life for His glory. 

I said I couldn't have written this story for myself, right? Case and point: those two dates are the only two dates in the calendar year that symbolize a new start for me. The first occurred on January 1st, 2012, the day I fully surrendered my life to Christ. And the second occurred on my 24th birthday, June 29th, 2013, the day I decided to give up alcohol. 

I just love that God took the two days of the year that I celebrate a new start, and gave new meaning to them. I will never be able to celebrate a New Year's Day without celebrating the day I recklessly abandoned my life for Jesus. And starting this year, I will never be able to celebrate my birthday without celebrating sobriety. 

I had no idea that was going to be one of my last drinks. And looking back on both January 1st, 2012, and June 29th, 2013, I had no idea I would ever look back on those days as good days. They both started hungover, they both started with lots of tears, and heart ache, and shame. They felt like ugly days, to be honest. 

But this is what I love about our God; He takes our ugly and turns it into beauty. For His glory. And, because He loves us that much. 

Before I get into gushing about the amazing, wonderful, blessing of a year that 24 was, I wanted to start at the beginning. I wanted to share that it didn't seem off to a good start when I woke up on my birthday to a thick blanket of guilt, shame, and regret. 

Why do I want to start there? Because I know someone, somewhere might be there right now. Someone might be stuck in the cycle that I was stuck in. Maybe yours has nothing to do with alcohol, or maybe it has everything to do with alcohol. 

Regardless, I want you to know there's hope. I want you to know that there is nothing, I repeat, nothing too ugly for Him to use. When He looks at you, He sees nothing ugly about you. He sees a life that He crafted for His glory, and He's just waiting, ready to write the story of a lifetime for you.

Sometimes, the biggest break throughs happen from the biggest break downs. On June 29th, 2013, I had a break down. I saw my sin so clearly, and it scared me. It scared me enough to run, as fast as I could, straight into Jesus' arms. It scared me enough to admit that I was meant for abstinence from alcohol, and that as scared as I was of sobriety, I was more afraid of what alcohol could do to my life. To my relationships. To my future. 

June 29th, 2013 may have started with a hangover, but it was the last one I'll ever have. It opened the door to a type of freedom I didn't even know existed. 

He took my ugly, and made it shine for His glory, the way that only He can.

When Mercy Found Me

Yesterday, my friend Leah shared about how mercy found her on a bathroom floor. 

As I read her beautiful, vulnerable, honest words, my head was nodding and my heart was swelling. I praised the God who crashed through her walls on that bathroom floor, because He's the same God who crashed through mine in a city college gymnasium. 

I've told this story before on the blog, multiple times in fact. But it's my absolute favorite story to tell, and so in case you haven't heard it, or in case you want to re-hear it, today I share the story of when mercy found me. 

I woke up on January 1st, 2012 around 6AM on the couch of a house I had only been to to celebrate NYE the night before. There was enough champagne left in my system to hold off the inevitable hangover, but it wasn't enough to erase the memory of how I had spent the first few hours of the new year. The time spent crying in a bathroom due to finding out a freshly-ex-boyfriend was in a new relationship. Again. 

It wasn't the first time this had happened. As a matter of fact, it was almost humerous how regular of an occurrence this was. It seemed as though every relationship in the past 3 years had ended this way, replaced in a matter of days. It was enough to kill a girl's hope, for sure. Not only kill her hope, but kill any shred of self-worth that was left from the prior heart break. 

If you pull out your iPhone, open up that calendar ap, and scroll back a few years, you'll notice that January 1st, 2012 fell on a Sunday. And thank the good Lord that it did. 

I had made arrangements to go to church with a friend that Sunday, my first time in longer than I could count. I was checking out a church that I had never been to before, but had heard incredible things. As soon as I woke up on that couch, my heart was aching to get in that building. It was probably aching for other reasons as well, but something inside of me knew that I needed to hear the word of God. 

The 4 hours between 6AM and 10AM felt like forever. It was just enough time for the hangover and shame to sink in, both were wrapped around me like a thick blanket when I walked into that gymnasium-turned-church. 

The worship music started, and as I looked to my left and right, I saw people reaching out to the Lord. It gave me permission to do what felt so counter-intuitively natural to me, and my arms shot up towards the ceiling. I felt His presence for what very well may have been the first time in my entire life, and I reached for it with every fiber of my being. 

The words "I'm desperate for You" repeated over and over and over again in my mind. I have never felt more broken in my life, but I have also never felt more hopeful. The gravity of the fact that I had been living my life in entirely the wrong way sat heavy on my shoulders, but with it, came the life-giving freedom of realizing there was a different way. This wasn't the first time I surrendered my life to Jesus, but it was the first time that 

I fully let go. 

Tears were streaming down my face, my head was throbbing from hangover world, my wonderful friend was praying words over me that I'll never remember, mercy & grace hit me like a ton of bricks, and to this day, my life has never been the same. 

Mercy found me in a hungover, heart-broken state in a college gymnasium. 

Where did mercy find you?