Fearless is next on the Agenda of Life

I have begun a bible study called Fearless by Max Lucado. These are just some thoughts on the questions so far that are asked for chapter one. I think this is going to be the bible study of all bible studies for me. I think becoming fearless is what I want to be. Read on and let your thoughts take you to what fears are in your life and how you too can start conquering them.

What a Life without fear looks like to me. Without fear, I see and feel a confidence in myself. I can do and be all things that God wants me to be. I can go to the bus stop and not worry that I don’t seem to be meshing with any of the moms there. I can go to work and not wonder how come I don’t have that friendship connection that everyone else seems to have with someone else. I can come home after a long day at work and not be afraid of just being myself, even if it is cranky and tired. I can be the wife I want to be without all the worries that I am never doing anything right. I can be the mother to my children that isn’t afraid to let them grow up and isn’t afraid that one day there mother won’t be here anymore and what will that be like for them. Letting go of all that fear and probably more that is un-named would be complete freedom and peace. Instead of fear, there would be love and peace and trust. What am I more prone to… dread of failure, rejection or calamity? All of the above, I say. I fear failing as a wife and mother on a daily basis. I fear the rejection of other women because I can’t seem to find the connection. I fear driving off a bridge into oblivion and leaving my children behind too soon. I fear what the world is doing around me and how I can keep myself and my family out of it. I am prone to all three. Fear is eating at me and I am done with it.
Getting on board with Christ into a ship that will be caught in a storm. Hmmm. Sounds scary but in order to gain the freedom and peace of life without fear I will have to get into the boat and be willing to get wet. I will have the one and only Lord of Heaven beside me who will protect me and keep me from falling overboard and drowning in life’s storms. There is no such thing as life without storms but we are impatient people by nature, I believe, so we hope for something better and expect it now and many of us will want to believe that just by believing in Christ that suddenly those storms will never come again. We have to be patient and trust in the Lord to get us through these storms. He is growing us through these storms into something a little more worthy and pure, a little more holy and just. Like a flower caught out in a storm, it thrashes about in the wind, maybe even looses a petal or two or three but it is rooted well in Christ so it comes out of the storm and grows into more than it ever was before.
Fear corrodes our confidence not only in ourselves but in God. How could He let this or that happen? If He loved us, He would have stopped it from happening, etc, etc. You hear those questions all the time from people especially after something bad happens. But God loves us more than we can even comprehend and his goodness is far more than we could even fathom and because of this without a full trust and faith in God the fears that we will experience in our fallen world will eat away at that trust and faith and corrode our confidence in who and what the one and only God is.
The opposite of fear is courage and confidence. So, if we are letting fear creep in, we are chiseling away at our faith in God and without that faith we are feeling unloved, worthless and dejected. It’s hard to be loving and generous to others when we are so consumed by our own fears of being loved and worthy. We have to believe that the love of God is enough. If we let go of those fears and believe how much we are loved by God than we will be more able to love and give in return.
I have fear of my own self. That is my biggest fear. As I read about the story of You are Special being read to children in China and how they all cried because they live in a culture where they are from the get-go rejected because of who they are and how they were made. I cried right along with them. My biggest fear is rejection, not fitting in, that who I am isn’t good enough. I have and always will be full of ideas to do something awesome but it’s the fear of who I am that is keeping me from taking these ideas and running with them.
Don’t be afraid. He says it again and again in the bible. Jesus is trying to make a point here. We will be constantly bombarded with fears in this world that belongs to the devil because he will take any seed of fear and make it grow if he can because he knows it keeps us from growing more in Christ and therefore becoming better soldiers in the war for human souls. Jesus wants us to realize that fear will take us away from him. It’s like a brick wall is being built up between me and Jesus every time a fear of something clouds my focus on Him and who he is. The wall is getting bigger and fears are taking over. I am taking down those bricks one by one if necessary so I can clearly focus on my King and be the soldier and person he knows I can be.
Conquering fear… It takes faith and courage… Believing that you are loved beyond measure, that your value is priceless and that you are capable of all things thru Christ. I have to stop using the excuses that the devil has used to build up my wall between me and Christ. No more excuses. No more of “my personality is just so rare, it is harder to find connections”. No more I can’t think of things to say so I am not very good at this relationship stuff. No more I am getting old and my hormones are controlling me and how I react to the world and the people I love. No More! Satan be away from me!!

Jesus Loves the Little Children

We have been having a serious of sermons at church recently on Jesus and Children. He wants us to have faith like a child. There have been three points that have come up within these sermons that are the most important to remember and grow with. First, we have to trust like a child trusts. A child will just trust. They are dependent on their parents and so to we need to be dependent on God and trust fully in Him. The second point is that we need to live in the present like a child does. Children don't fret about the past or worry about the future. Those things tend to come with more age and responsiblity but we have to learn to not be always focused on the past or the future but looking at what is happening and what we have today. The third point is how well a child receives love. They don't over anaylzye it, evaluate it or question it. They just except the love given to them. Adults have a harder time with this as we have put up barriers because of past experiences, our personality, etc. We have to continually be praying to our Father and opening our hearts to receive his love. Don't let the things of this world lead you away from the One who loves you without failing and will love you always no matter what. I really loved the visual that the paster gave in the sermon yesterday with this statement, "All is well when we're holding the Master's hand". We are God's children and we need to be like children and reaching for his hand to hold as we walk along through our journey in life.

I had a dream...

no really, literally! I had this dream where I was a photographer and we were celebrating the start of my new business. Well, when I woke up from this I was like why not? I have been looking into a few different things that I have always wanted or considered doing for a career. Where I am now is not a career of choice but more by the grace of God I have a job kind of thing. Anyways, I started researching being a family therapist. I talked to a couple of school sales rep's and learned how much it would take and how much it would cost. Yeah, not going to happen! Strike One. Then, I thought maybe I should look into Medical Transcription as it is something that could be done at home but upon researching that I realized you have to be a super good listener and typer and I really can't say those are my best quaulities so Strike Two but then I had this dream about being a photographer. I started researching it and realized this is something I could do without the need for formal education or a lot of money. So my first goal is to really learn everything I can about the very good digital camera that I have and practice, practice, practice. I got a book at the library that I have been reading to start learning all the lingo and everything else. I found a great site on-line that helps teach you and you can get into contest and such, good community of other photographers so I think I am off to a good start. I can go at the pace that is best so it doesn't screw with the rest of my life. It may take a couple of years to get to a place where I can say yes I am a professional photographer but that is the goal! I am so excited about it as it can add another dimension to my scrapbooking business as well. So, that is what has been consuming my time a lot lately. I am also working on stuff for my networking group that I have been President for the last year. We do not have a President Elect nor anyone willing or able to take on being President for next year so the board all voted I do it again. In the end I do think it will be better for the group to keep the consistency because I did make a lot of changes this year that were for the best but we have struggled to get more women coming and joining. I think the economy and the other FREE networking opporutunities just were hurting us so I made some changes and things are looking UP! It will be another great thing to put on my resume'. We are poor as heck right now because the child care for Faith is sucking me dry! We won't be eating any steak for the next month but somehow I just know we will survive. Maybe it's because at every other time the past where finance were super awful God stepped in and that little extra help was there to get us through it EVERY SINGLE TIME. God is so faithful so I am going to just have faith back in him that he will take care of it all. I am still considering a mission in finding out what love language each of my family members are and how to make a family album sharing this with everyone. I imagine it will come to me some morning as I wake up. That's my best brain time of day! I also thought I should write a children's book about a premature baby since I have never seen anything like it in the library. Something with animals as the characters and along the same story of how Faith came to be born and named. So, off I go to spend some time with Faith and get some errands done before my people come over for Project Playground. Yes, I will have crafting time with friends this afternoon. That makes me smile! :)