The Perfect Christian

Perfect ends up being the enemy of good.

This is so true. For me ever since I’ve gotten saved, I’ve been striving to be that perfect Christian girl. My intentions are good. I mean we all should try to be the best Christian we can be. The longer I have been a Christian the more I have learned. And I’ve found that there are a lot of things “good Christians” do. Give to the needed, love everyone, go to church, pause every day, don’t talk back to your parents, don’t judge anybody, and trust God even when you don’t believe in yourself. This is just some, but this list was my model of what I believed a perfect Christian should be doing. So that’s what I strived to do – follow everything on this list, and be PERFECT.

Ha. Yeah as you can tell, if you know me, I haven’t even came close to living up to this list perfectly. Sure sometimes I’ve done well and kept to this list, but when I didn’t, I thought I was a bad person, a bad Christian, I thought that God didn’t love me as much when I didn’t keep them. So this ideal we all have of the perfect Christian started getting to me.

I don’t know if any of you have felt that way to – having to be your best for God. I mean we all should try to be our best. But what I found is that I was almost limiting my view of God. See I had set this perfect model in my head so high, that when I found myself not keeping these standards I’d get discouraged.

“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23

We all sin. Yes, everyone will sin even when we mean to do well. My ideal, this list, see that’s what perfect Christians do, and I’m not perfect to say the least, only one man to live was perfect and that’s Jesus Christ. See this perfect man, lived a perfect life, so that imperfect people can go to a perfect place. Yeah, imperfect people, me. Jesus doesn’t expect us to live up to this ideal we have! We don’t have to! He wants us to do our best but don’t get the idea in your head that you have to be perfect because hun that’s impossible.

Perfect ends up being the enemy of good.

So in a sense our image of being a perfect Christian does end up being the enemy of good. I started getting so discouraged that I wasn’t living up to what God wants of me that I stopped trying, stopped praying, stopped pausing. See I felt as though I wasn’t living up to His expectations so why even try anymore? So wanting to do well, to be better, actually caused me to do worse! As Christians we need to stop striving toward perfection and start going day by day and seeing God for Himself. We need to stop focusing on what we are doing wrong and start focusing on Him. Because He already forgave everything you’re going to do wrong!

Don’t get caught up in perfect, get caught up in Him and He’ll make you perfect.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 6:33

Comfort Zones

Saturday will be the first time I get to share my testimony to others, well in person anyways. I know I’ve shared parts of my story through my blog. I’m double nervous about this “sermon” (if you can call it that) because for one my old youth pastor is going to be there, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know I went through half this stuff, and secondly it’s going to be the first time I speak without having a manuscript with everything I have planned to say (I do have an outline though).

I mean it should be easy, just talking about me, yet I find myself in this craze that I need to have everything planned out. I know my story. So why should write every word out? I shouldn’t. My feelings I feel are coming from my own desires of being comfortable.

We all have those comfort limits. For me it’s know exactly what I’m going to say before I get up there so I don’t mess up… so I don’t mess up. This got me thinking, why does it matter if I mess up? I mean God won’t look down on me for messing up, and neither will my audience. I think it’s because I’m making it matter if I mess up. I want to do my best for God, but through speaking to Him he is telling me I don’t have to be perfect because He loves me the same anyway.

Is there something in your life that makes you really uncomfortable so you don’t do it? If there is I pray that you take the courage to step out and try it. It’s hard for us to grow in Jesus when we don’t even try to step out of our zone. How do you expect to grow if you are constantly in the same position and not being pushed?

Now there are limits to this, I’m not saying go 30 days without eating cause that’s out of your comfort zone, but I am saying, if you feel God leading you to maybe talk to someone about Him, or go and make friends with the new person at school, do it. When we trust God with things that make us uncomfortable He’ll reward us. And believe me it makes you feel so much better once you do step out.

What I found is that making the decision to do hard things for God is actually harder than actually doing the thing itself! Accepting my pastors offer to do my first sermon was so much harder than actually doing it. See before I accepted, even after, I had all these reasons why I should do it, I’m too young, I can’t talk in front of people. But then I realized, yeah I can’t speak in front of people but God can. And once you realize that I promise you that you can do anything!

“I can do all things THROUGH Christ who gives me strength” Philippians 4:13

“So do not fear for I am with you. Do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you and uphold you in my righteous right hand” Isaiah 41:10

My Easter Sermon

This was my sermon that I did on Easter Sunday! Ahhhh, what an awesome experience that was. I am so humbled that God would want me, a 15 year old girl who has only known Him for a year and is terrified of speaking in front of people, to give the message on Easter! There was over 80 people at the sunrise service, which was the largest my church has had in a long time, how awesome! I love my God and love preaching about Him. If you didn't already know this was my third sermon I've done at churches. It's so much fun. And this weekend I am speaking again at 30 hour famine! If you could pray that God speaks through me and opens the hearts of those I'm speaking to! Thanks(:

Weekend 180

Wow. Did my soul just take a bath or what? This weekend totally made me closer to God. Just everything about it was awesome. So I guess this blog I’m going to write about stuff that happened and just stuff I learned, yeah. It may be long so let’s get started(:

I had no plans of coming to this event. I didn’t want to be with people I didn’t know, I wanted to be in my bed at my friends house, not in some strangers house with people I didn’t know. This was my thinking. But then good ole Kirstin sent a tweet about what she was thinking about doing this weekend and some incredible person named Ashley saw it. She found out I wasn’t going and started trying to convince me to go. Ashley is a really just awesome for real. She’s one of my role models. Her heart is solely on God, she doesn’t let guys or anything stop her from Him. Maybe some time we will get to know each other better, but I’m just grateful I get to see her at church, and see the crazy things God’s doing through her. So it meant a lot that she took the time to talk to me. Anyways, I really didn’t want to go but I started praying, asking God what He wanted, and slowly He started reveling His wants to me. He was showing me that the only real reasons I didn’t want to go where selfish, and that I needed to go. Ashley wasn’t the only messenger he sent me though, see he sent two others, my friend Vickey and Lindsay. They were trying to get me to go to, and surely everything just started following into place. It was awesome.

Some of my favorite parts about this weekend where Keith’s message, the bible study time where we went off in solitude and just spent alone time with God with no distractions, DJ promote/dance party, the worship after that, talking with my leader Holly, and mostly just learning about God even more. So basically the whole weekend.

I loved Keith’s testimony. He had everything our world offered yet he wasn’t fulfilled, he still was empty inside, he still was looking for things to fill it. I really loved when he started naming some of the things we use to fill that hole inside of us. Eating disorders, sex, relationships, cutting, etc. When he said cutting my mind took me back to before I was saved, when I was using that to make me feel something. This took me back before I knew God, and suicide was an option, because I felt unloved, broken from my past, worthless. Keith continued his message. He told us the story of the little girl with the fake pearl necklace. It made me think about that day when I was saved. God was constantly telling me through people at my church that he was there to make me new if I gave Him myself. Yet I always said no. But then one day at Revolve I gave Him my pearl necklace, and WOW has he made me feel even better than a really pearl necklace. He changed me. Everything about me. I did nothing it was him. My past no longer bonded me. I felt so loved. He took this worthless girl and gave it worth. I loved Keith’s message because it really is for everyone saved or not, it helped me go back and see all God has took me out of. It helped me see how great our God is all over again.

One of our bible studies we learned how to pray like Jesus wanted us to. We got to go off and be alone in solitude and just pray and talk to God. This alone time with no distractions just made me feel peace. It totally set up my day, it was refreshing. I do this every night before I sleep but sometimes I cut it off short cause I’m tired. How selfish is that? I really need more time to get to know God, alone time. They suggested that just taking time off your phone or something. So what I’m going to start doing is instead of using my phone in the mornings before school and during school, not to use it. I really feel like my phone is a HUMOOOOGOOO distraction from me and God. Believe me this weekend I didn’t have it and I felt so good because of that.

Then there was the awesome dance party with DJ promote. I always love LifePoint’s dances cause it so much fun, and all my friends go crazy haha and its hilarious seeing the leaders go wild on the dance floor *cough* Jason, Ashley, Michelle, Holly, Erica. Its also awesome to because it shows that grinding, and getting up on people isn’t the only way you can have fun at a dance. So after DJ promote I was like SO PUMPED ON JESUS, like talk about spiritual high. By the time worship came on I was just all Jesus’ey, that was one of the best worships I have had in a while, it was sooo… just AHHH. Breather you know(:

I hate saying this but I didn’t even spend the night the second night, I was sick so I wanted to go home. Holly is so awesome like for real, she’s the nicest person. So while we were waiting for my mom she and I got some time to just sit and talk together. We just talked about Jesus, life, college, geometry (you know(: ). It was fun to just connect with her and get to know her better. I hope we can get to do that again.

Lastly, this weekend I got to learn more about Jesus. It taught me that even though I read my bible if I don’t spend the time getting to know the God that actually wrote it, then it’s pointless. I need to start spending more time with Him alone with NO DISTRACTIONS, no noise, no phone, no nothing, just me and Him. Also I learned that when I pray it shouldn’t just be me talking to Him, I need to take the time and just listen. That’s huge cause most of the times once I say what I want I say Amen, then it’s done, but we really need to just listen. We also did this bible quiz to see if we really know the bible and I found that I really need to start getting to know my bible more, start memorizing the verses, and diligently reading it verse for verse.

So that was my weekend. Thanks Ashley, Holly, Michelle, and Jason for making this weekend so amazing.