A side of questions

It seems that I am easily distracted. My daddy might say its because I am blonde, the Engineer might suggest its because I am ‘over doer’, others might think its because I am left-handed and use the ‘other’ side of my brain to do my thinking, or speaking of my brain it could be that little issue of my thalamus not functioning properly! Whatever it is it appears that some of my posts during this relationship series I have left out the bolded questions for you to journal and pray about. So I come today with:


A side of questions:
　
1- Do you need God?

2- Are you living in His grace?

3- How is your relationship with your Creator today?

4- Are you in a passionate pursuit of His heart?

5- What is one thing that has been revealed to you by your Creator about your relationship with Him during this series so far?

6-Do you agree with the statement 'Relationships are not meant to be created by us.'

7- What relationship right now in your life needs some grace, love and attention?


We will now be transitioning into our relationships with others. Please keep in mind the needed foundation. Our relationship with our Heavenly Father must be right for us to live right in relationship with others. We will be shining the light of Gods word on our relationships with our parents next. For some those relationships are healthy, for some those relationships are strained,and for others those relationships are non-existent. Wherever you find yourself in relation to your parents, please know that only God can bring beauty to it! Please join me in seeking out Gods truth, grace and love for our relationships with our parents.

　
So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19

And then it happens

Friends I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for journeying through life with me on purpose! You all have made this series on relationships so educational, meaningful and personal to me!

And I just have to let you know that I am NOT any more qualified to be hosting this series on relationships than anyone, my only credential that is worth noting is my personal relationship with my Jesus!

I grew up in a home where my mom thought it was important to send her girls to Sunday School, so she did! Thank you momma!

I grew up feeling like I needed to earn the acceptance, love, and approval of my parents and the people around me. I lived my life to keep others happy. I lived for words of affirmation, and applause. My grades, my clothing, my friends, and my successes defined me. I wore a mask of pride, one that looked happy, perfect and completely in control at all times. This mask was one that bore the name "good girl" loud and proud. A mask that began to seep into my heart to tell me I was fail proof. I lived my life according to my plan. I felt a constant pressure to keep achieving, to keep trying harder, and to do more, I felt like maybe someday I would arrive and people would see that I was worth loving.

I graduated high school, went to college, got married, I thought I was doing everything right. For many years I lived life to try and get approval from other people and from God. If I could just make everyone happy, if I could just please God. All this work to try and earn love, and acceptance left me tired and miserable. I felt like I would never arrive, like I was never good enough. I lived for perfection. It was all about was on the outside, it was all for show.

Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ. Galatians 1:10

I didn’t want to let anyone down by letting them know I didn’t have it all together. If I failed and couldn’t keep my pride mask on; how would that look? I was living my life to please the people around me. I felt completely lonely and empty.

Then one day I started to listen to that voice inside me, "Why are you trying so hard?" I heard God telling me that He created me because He loves me and He wants to have a relationship with me. I heard Him saying that the relationship with Him had nothing to do with me earning it or achieving or even deserving it. He was offering me a true genuine relationship that would allow me to live life freely in His grace. It was time to be the one my Heavenly Father created me to be; it was time to live my life on purpose!

Knowing who I am, why I was created and living in that every moment!

My life verse, 2 Corinthians 5:15, And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. Because Christ died for me and I have accepted Him as my personal savior I am dead to my old life. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! Galatians 2:20-21 I am a new person…the person my Creator wants me to be. I am to live my life for Him. I don’t need to earn His love, or the love and acceptance of others. I need to accept the grace from my Heavenly Father, and that’s that! I find freedom in this verse. The freedom to live my life on purpose, the only purpose I was created for, to have a relationship with my amazing Father; A relationship that He orchestrated and made possible, not because of who I am but because of who He is. He created me for Him.


It is nothing I did, or can ever do to make this relationship happen. Relationships are not meant to be created by us. God wants us to live life with Him. In the everyday!

God is not asking us to get bogged down with getting it all right and knowing all the details,saying all the right things,attending the 'right' church, reading the right translation of the Bible.

He is asking us to live life with Him.

Be in relationship with Him.

When we are living in relationship with our Creator then it will all happen

We will be living in His freedom and grace

We will know Him

We will talk with Him


Dear Heavenly Father thank You for creating this relationship. There is such beauty in Your design God. Beauty and grace. Oh and a love that is freeing, pure, and honest. May our relationship with You God affect all areas of our lives! May we live in the freedom of this grace and loved filled relationship so that it flows over into the other relationships of our lives. Thank You that You have created and designed for it to happen! We love You Lord-Amen

Can I get a do over?

Have you ever had one of those days?

Well I am having me one folks!

We have had a sick little guy this weekend who is battling a crazy fever. We break it and he seems to perk up and then it comes right back. So sleep has been a little slim these past few nights. Anyway I wake up this morning and head out to sit in my big comfy chair in the family room to read my Bible. I read, pray and journal. Then I write a blog to post for today. I had it titled, written and ready to go. It was on the thumb drive on my laptop and I was going to transfer it to the office computer and share it with you all here in blog land. It vanished from the thumb drive! Not too thrilled with that but what does a girl do...yep...she pouts. Sorry if you were hoping for a much prettier answer. I pouted threw the phone call with my mom..."sorry mom, please forgive me for being a spoiled little girl and thinking of myself!"

So on the morning goes...little guy wakes this morning and seems to be feeling better. So I dive into the massive amounts of laundry that are mounded in our room, the hallway, and in front of the washer and dryer. Monday is such a fun day to do laundry....am I convincing you...or just trying to convince myself? So what does a girl do with this much laundry...she pouts and starts loading it into the washer feeling oh so sorry for herself.


We take a little break to head down to the printers to print out some Speaker packets to send out for Living My Life on Purpose and I arrive at the printers and the work "has shifted in the document" says the nice gentlemen helping me. Which he says needs to be fixed and then saved into a pdf format...okay! So I head to the car with two little guys in tow and sit in the front seat and let the tears roll down my face. Still pouting and feeling sorry for myself!

I get us home and am still pouting and acting like a spoiled little girl! When I walk into the living room and there is my little guy curled up in a bean bag and he says "I am not feeling good again!" I feel his head, take his temp, cook us some quick lunch and out the door to the doctor.

We are home now, boys are napping.... and mommy is on her way!

But I had to share whats in my heart. The verse I used this morning, the one in the blog, yep the blog I had all typed up and ready to go and lost...well the beauty is that I didn't lose the verse, the one that is staying with me today:

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? Psalm 42:1-2

I am a girl in need of a God! A living God who is all about relationship. A God who knows how to love one me, and talk with me!


Thank You Lord for creating me with the need for You! Help me to truly know in my heart today that the only thing that will fill that spot, is You! Come in and fill that spot to overflowing, push out the spoiled little girl that is hanging out in there. Fill me so I can be the wife, mommy, daughter, and friend You need me to be! I love You Lord-Amen



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We will make that transition from our relationship with God to our relationships with others this week! Hang on with me friends!

Friday Challenge

Hello! We haven't had a Friday Challenge for awhile and I am needing one today!

I strongly believe in supporting other people by listening to them, encouraging them, and loving on them. But because I am human I can get in the rut of thinking 'what about me?' and dwell for a minute too long on thinking about me and whats going on in my life and get off balance.

Friday Challenge: Write a handwritten note, care or letter to someone encouraging them and loving on them, and mail it to them. Yes put the stamp up in the right hand corner and send it off to them!

We all have someone in our lives that needs this note today!

Have a great weekend!

Come back and join us next week as we transition from our relationship with God into our relationships with others!

Not my words

Dear Friends thank you so much for joining me in this series on relationships.

I come this morning to share a little bit of my heart. Why? Because in all honesty it will reveal my God and the work He is doing.

You see I don't have this series all set in an outline on my computer...notes and ideas...yes...but nothing that is automatically loaded up onto blogger. I know that might scare some of you and have you asking 'then what in the world is this girl doing?' The short answer...trying to be obedient to God and listen and allow Him to direct this series! I am praying this morning for God to open our hearts and to speak to each one of us personally. Speak to us in a way that only He can. I know He will do it! I am also praying that we are listening. Listening to Him.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Jeremiah 1:5

Friends please go back and read the verse again. What word(s) catch your eye?

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

before you were born I set you apart;

I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Jeremiah 1:5 (emphasis mine)

In the past few days we have been looking at the importance of a relationship with God and getting to know Him. We looked at the importance of knowing God and not just knowing about Him.

Will you join me in letting this verse soak into your heart?

"We are so used to considering everything through the prism of our current feelings and our most recent acquisitions that it is a radical change to consider the vast before. But if we would live well, it is necessary. Otherwise we live feebly and gropingly, blind to the glory that we are known, chosen and given away by God." (Eugene Peterson, Run with the Horses)

We were a part of the before...Gods before!

He knew us!

He set us apart!

He appointed us!

These are all things He did before He created us!

God knew you before He created you. He thought about you, He loved you, He planned for you!

He knows you.

He thinks about you.

He loves you.

He has plans and purpose for you. To use you to bring glory and honor to Him!

Dear Father these precious words are Yours. I pray that only You can speak them into the hearts of Your people. May we truly know today that You know us. Amen

Knowing You

May you know today that He is all you need!

Its not what you know

It’s not what we know! Nope its not!

Rather it is who we know that makes all the difference!

Please hear my heart today. I am not asking if we know about God. We have established some of those foundations in the past few days. We know He is the Creator. We also know that He created us to be in relationship with Him. Now I know this is truth that you need to know. But friends it goes so much deeper than knowing about God.

**Do you want to know God?

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. Hebrews 11:6

It’s not just believing that God exists. Many may know a lot about God, but may not know God. There is more than just studying religion, or the Bible.

The difference is not in what we know. The difference is in the relationship! A relationship that is so amazing, so dynamic it will transform your life. Now that’s something to be excited about!

I have been very blessed in my life to see, hear and experience people who are in a genuine intimate relationship with God. They are people who walk with God and talk with Him in their everyday moments. They have come to know God by simply spending time with Him.

But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you look for him with all your heart and all your soul. Deuteronomy 4:29

We too can ‘get to know’ God by spending time with Him.

God wants to be known. He has revealed Himself to us two ways to us, through His word and through His creation.

"Ask and it will be give to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Matthew 7:7-8

True genuine relationships thrive when time is spent working on them and being in them.

**How do you spend time with God?

Talk with God. An important key to thriving relationships is communication. Talk to God, tell Him what is in your heart. Share with Him what you are thankful for. Talk to Him about your fears, worries. Oh and as I have to remind myself oh so often…spend time listening!

But Nichole I don’t know how to talk to God? What should I say? What if I don’t say the right things?

Friends please remember that a relationship with God is not about getting it right or ever achieving.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you Jeremiah 29:12-14 (emphasis mine)

Our relationship with God is about committing to Him with all our heart. He will do the rest.

One way to hear God is by reading His word. Many times He speaks right to my heart so personally and so perfectly through the Bible. Now that is what I call an ‘active living word’!!
By reading His word you will learn about who God is. How much He loves His people. How He wants us to live. Friends don’t read the word without help. God tells us we need Him to help us read His word. I remember when I committed to reading the entire Bible and feeling frustrated many times. "What am I reading?" "Who are all these people with all these names I can’t pronounce?" I kept reading. I kept at it and one day I heard God whispering to my heart, ‘Just ask me for help and I will help you". So now when I read His precious word to me, I invite Him to come in and sit with me and help me understand His words to me. Sometimes I have to read it a couple of times. Many times I journal about what I just read. I write down questions that come to mind when I am reading a certain section. Remember He will reveal Himself to you through His word!

**How often am I spending time in relationship with God?

**How often according to Luke 11:3 do we need to be in contact with God?

Knowing God is having an intimate relationship with Him

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. John 17:3

Thus says the Lord: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me," Jeremiah 9:23-24 (ESV) (emphasis mine)


I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, Ephesians 1:17-18

**We will never know who we are until we gaze upon the face of God!