Encouragement grounded in Scripture
Rooted in truth. Anchored in Christ.
New reflections weekly.
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On a Journey to Real Love
When we finally begin to see God the way He truly sees us-with nothing but love; we begin to focus on old dreams and visions we let die with the opinions of the world around us. I documented the year long journey God took me to seek and find His true love for me (here and here). A love I thought I knew, but didn’t really.
I learned this: For so long I played small. I had allowed the voices of the world to dim my light, my gifts, and my purpose. I lowered my “posture,” stayed in corners because I believed I was too much of “something” to be used, when all along He had placed all the things I needed to do the things He desired in me. I just needed to look for them without the voices adding a bunch of noise.
And from that learning of His love over again, I became bolder to do new things. I stopped thinking about the opinions of others, and walked with Him in mind. I started looking at myself as God looked at me, not as the people around me did.
And I am all the better for it. Healthier. Stronger. More free.
And you can be, too.
Here is one of those things I will not shy away from doing. Crouch in a corner until someone else tells me it’s time or it’s OK. Or that I am even worthy.
Reading the Bible each morning is an important portion of my day. I can tell when I haven’t. When I have neglected this in my morning. And there are so many who don’t understand the Bible, or continue to come up with reasons to not open it up to enjoy all the beautiful things it has to say.
It is a love letter from God. One you may never get from a living being in your life, but one you need to feel the love you so crave here on earth.
I want to help you. I want to help you make it a daily practice, even if it is just one verse. And I want you to discover the true love that only comes from ONE. It doesn’t come from the voices or opinions of others. It isn’t found during a certain month, and it doesn’t inhabit a single day in February.
It is freely given by the One who created you, and who desires that you know His love and feel loved.
February begins a monthly journey through the Bible with me, with a focus on what God says about love. The kind of love the world often gets wrong. Each day you will find both a blog post on what God is speaking to me through each verse, and a word on His love.
Was your desire to start reading the Bible daily this year, and you still haven’t? Well, this is your chance. Download the scripture calendar below, and start now! It’s never too late to learn about, feel, and accept real love!
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Can You Handle the Truth?
Test me Lord, and try me; examine my heart and mind. For your faithful love guides me, and I live by your truth. Psalm 26:2-3
Here is a question: Do we truly want God to examine our hearts? Our minds? To place before us all the practices, actions, and thoughts demonstrating that we are often moved by our desires and carnal nature?
Wanting this, and asking God to do this for us, is in fact what being a “person after God’s heart” looks like. It is asking Him to examine what is within us, and to allow Him to cleanse anything that doesn’t resemble Him from the inside out. We desire for Him to change our mindset, our actions, and our desires.
This seems so appealing, right? Then why don’t more people want this transformation? If the Word says-“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32), then why don’t more seek His truth? Want this freedom?
Why can’t you understand what I am saying? It’s because you can’t even hear me! For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:43-44, NLT
Seems harsh and blunt, but I didn’t say it-Jesus did. He was keeping it pretty real here. The truth doesn’t sound pleasant when we want to continue in ways that reflect dishonesty. When we want to continue to chase after the things the devil tells us makes us worthy, successful, loved, and admired. When he feeds us with the notion that the world can provide all we need. Doing the right thing doesn’t seem so appealing, when the wrong thing feels just fine. And well, who is getting hurt, right?
The truth sounds ridiculous because the lie is more appealing. The truth sounds boring because the lie is more fun. The truth offers blessings that cannot be measured, and that you have to wait for; while the lie offers instant gratification, and goods we can enjoy to our hearts content right now.
Even if our hearts are still empty. Unloving. Deceitful. And still feeling worthless, despite the false bill of goods Satan has promised. The lie sounds much more like truth when you are still in the dark.
Asking God to examine the junk that is in our hearts and minds; those things that don’t reflect His truth and goodness will hurt, and we will go through some struggles during the transforming. Who wants to struggle?
But-He assures us that the other side is beautiful: And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1 Peter 5:10
And it’s all worth it, if you can handle His truth.
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Celebrate the Old You
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 2 Corinthians 5:17
I sat at my desk looking outside at the snow, just beginning to melt off the railings. The ice that we had not yet shoveled off the steps for the mail carrier’s trek up them. At the flag that waved in the breeze. The flag with its holes, rips, and tears that I had not noticed before. Worn out by wind, weather, and all the beatings it had taken flying outside my front porch. Torn and tattered from the storms of its past.
Yet when many of us look at the flag, we celebrate its rips, and its tears. The twists. The turns. The places it has gone. The storms that have ripped it to shreds. We glorify it.
But people? We pick those rips and tears apart. We use them to somehow discount how far they have come from the storms and trials that created those scars. We may even see a new creation, and continue to look underneath for the proof that a tear still exists.
Here’s the deal:
Those rips. Those tears. The past that left scars and marks of shame and regret, people from our past may still live there. And they may still see them somewhere in the back of their mind. But, when we accept Christ, he makes us new. That old person, the person others still want to see, it doesn’t exist anymore. That past doesn’t define us. Those scars may still be there, but they only exist as part of testimony that shows beauty lives there among brokenness. It is only a part of our story, but not the chapter we live in any longer.
And I’ll testify of the battles you’ve won/How you were my portion when there wasn’t enough/I’ll sing a song of the seas that we crossed/The waters you parted/The waves that I walked. -Maverick City Music
Those battles and trials. Those scars tell a story of a redeeming God. A God who cleans up messes and makes things new. Who wins those battles. Who fills all those tears and holes. Who sees only beauty when everyone can only see ashes.
So light a match. Burn those memories from the past. Get up and dance if you want, while you stomp out all those voices that remind you of your stinky, torn, and rotten past. Because that old you…it tells a story, yes it does. But the new you tells one of an amazing God! That’s something to celebrate!
I do not own rights to music, video, or lyrics.
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They Don’t Know You; God Does
I woke up distracted this morning.
I make a vow during my time with God to not use my phone, but I found this morning I spent a large amount of time on it. Good things had happened in the last couple days. A new energy was all around. A new “stepping into.” Prayers that had been prayed it had been revealed, had also been prayed in the “meanwhile” elsewhere.
So…my distraction was most certainly a rouse from Satan. An attack. A countermeasure for me to not move into what was coming. What lies ahead. What good was before me.
In the distraction came doubt.
If you think after you accept Christ, that Satan leaves you alone-think again. If you think because you are a pastor, you are immune to an attack from the evil one-think again. In actuality, you are more susceptible. You are the one he really wants. You are the one he loves to get to. Because if he can get to you, well then he can get to more of God’s people.
He uses distraction to get to me often. And it occurs frequently on my phone. With social media. Not all social media. One in particular. That ole place where you find the people you are supposed to know. And you connect to them. In the hopes to what? I’ve only just begun to really figure it out.
I don’t know at what point I started feeling lonely. Unsupported. Inadequate. Shamed. It may have been a post about alcohol. And the things I knew had been said about alcohol in the past. It may have been the people I “knew” here who I didn’t really know anymore. Who I didn’t really feel much support from. Who didn’t really hype me up in the way strangers often did.
Who knew my past, and the past of others I know, and for whatever reason remained stuck there. In the past.
But, the people we knew in our past don’t often celebrate the fact that you have cast-off your old life and chosen a new one. Why?
They want to remember the person they knew. The person that was chained to poor patterns and toxic behaviors. The person who allowed them to be, too. They are so tied to the old you, and their own patterns, they can’t accept that a new person can be made from that old mess. They remember your Saul.
Those other people? The people who didn’t know that old you. They see something of inspiration, and they want more. They support you. As you are now. You don’t remind them of a past they can’t seem to get themselves out of. To them, you are Paul.
I was asked this question recently: “Why do you want to become an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene?”
I realize I can go online and be ordained for 50 bucks. I can do that all while continuing to live in the sin and shame I had been living in before. But God didn’t want that for me.
If someone had told me in my teens I would one day be a pastor, I would have laughed at them. I didn’t go to church. I can count on one hand the times I did. I didn’t particularly like God. I made many a wrong turn, and yes-just like most in my hometown some of those wrong turns led to shameful decisions.
But God.
He made me new. Those decisions don’t shape me anymore. I am still January at the core. I am just not led by my desires. My impulses. But by my Father. His desires. His will. My only gain is to inspire someone to see that if God can do that for me, He can do that for anyone. Anyone who doesn’t want to be defined by their past. Anyone who doesn’t care who knows what about them, but wants to be known by a God who knows everything about them and approves and loves them anyway.
Don’t get distracted by those who knew you, and only talk about your past. Get distracted by the God who knows all about you, and wants you to know Him, too.
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In the Meanwhile
The Lord replied,
“Look around at the nations;
look and be amazed!
For I am doing something in your own day,
something you wouldn’t believe
even if someone told you about it.” Habakkuk 1:5, NLTFor those of you who have been around a while, you know how much I love post-it notes. They have housed prayers in Bibles. They live on my mirrors at home. My computer. My walls. They have even adorned my steering wheel as a reminder to place Satan underground on a daily basis where he belongs. So it should be no secret that a post-it is responsible for this post.
I am not even sure why I wrote it. I am pretty certain it’s from some book I read. It’s placed above my computer screen, the place where I fashioned a work space during the days of quarantine and telehealth. The days I didn’t much enjoy. A reminder that God was working on something in those moments, while I was grumbling in this same space where I am currently typing. This same space where I know He continues to work. The words written on that note? “God is working the meanwhile.”
Meanwhile back on the ranch…
I know we have seen that phrase. If we have ever read a book, seen a movie, or lived…we have seen or heard it. But what does it mean?
The word “meanwhile” by definition means “occurring at the same time.” So while I may be sitting here typing on this computer, meanwhile someone else back at the ranch may be doing something far more inspiring, or simply taking a nap. Whatever the case may be-God is working. Which means that our lives are also connected through Him. We just don’t know how. We have no idea who the people are God wants us to help, or just how those “meanwhiles” will come together for His purpose. All this happens at the same time without us ever knowing, until He is ready to reveal it to us.
While you are at home praying for that one thing you keep asking God. God is working at the same time. Meanwhile, someone else is praying, too.
Don’t give up. Don’t quit hoping. Keep on praying.
God is working in the meanwhile.
I do not own the rights to video, lyrics, or music.
About Me
I am January! Wife, mother, meemaw, pastor, and mental health provider who makes it through the day with my coffee, my journal, and my God. A simple human, navigating life through the messy and sometimes chaotic. All focused on Him.
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