I'm Just a Love Addict...

Hey, can't kick the habit
Yeah, I've got to have it
Yeah, I'm what they call a love addict, love addict
Hey, can't live without it
Yeah, gonna shout about it
Hey, I'm a symptomatic love addict, love addict

Do these lyrics sound like the theme song of your life or others that you know?
Humans are constantly searching for love and affection. As babies, we want the love of our parents. As children, we want the love of our friends and family. As teens, we want the love of a specific guy or girl and the love of our friends. As adults, we want the love of our significant other, our friends, and our family. The older we get, it seems the more love we want and need in our lives from others.

Why are we always looking for love from someone somewhere?
Maybe it's because God created us to be loved. He created us as creatures that have a need for love.

The problem comes when we look for love in the wrong places. Instead of real love, we get a handful of selfishness and sin. When we look to other humans for our constant source of love, we will always be disappointed. This isn't saying that humans can't or shouldn't love. Humans can and should love. But this love is only an earthly love....it can only satisfy for so long before we're wanting more. We become love addicts, searching high and low for someone to simply show us the love we're looking for even though we'll never find it on this earth.

Real love is that of Jesus Christ.
Real love sacrificed His life for our mistakes and sins.
Real love stays with us even through our betrayal of Him.
Real love took special time and care to bring us into this world.
Real love has prepared a special place for us to spend eternity with Him in.
Real love will comfort us at all times and never let us go.
Real love looks for us instead of waiting for us to look for Him.

We need to become addicted to God's love, the only love that can satisfy. Only then will the earthly loves become fulfilling. Only then can we find the love we spend our lives searching for.

January 1, I Gotta Lotta Things on My Mind...

2010 is here! Time for resolutions, changes, and a new self, right?

Eventually I stopped making resolutions because I could never follow through with them. I vowed to lose weight, obey my parents better, be nicer to others, read my entire Bible, etc. I was never able to follow through with any of them throughout the entire year.

This year though, I decided I would set a goal. But one that wouldn't be so dependent on myself.
So for 2010, what am I doing?

I'm going to let God love me.

I know, I know. Doesn't God already love me? Isn't this what you've been doing? Well, technically yes. But here's the thing: I know that God has so much more planned for me than what I could even imagine. So this year, I'm going to let him show me what he has planned. I'm not going to worry about what job I'll eventually have or who I'll marry or what I look like. I'm going to let God show me his love. I'm going to take his love and run with it.

See, I know that if I am experiencing God's love, it is so much easier for me to show my love and his love to others.

So my plan for 2010 is to simply let God do his job. I'm going to do what I was created for: be loved by my Savior and glorify him through my own love.

Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed...

In the Bible, Jesus tells his disciples that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. This is a story we've all heard before, so we probably don't think much of it. Today, I gained a little bit of insight into this verse.

Have you ever seen a mustard seed? It's small. Very, very small.
As I was holding one in the palm of my hand today, I thought, "Wow, we must have a really small amount of faith if all we need to move mountains is enough to be the size of a mustard seed."

It's almost unbelievable to me that even the disciples did not have enough faith to equal the size of a mustard seed. This says a lot for human nature.

We have trouble putting our trust in the unknown, the unseen. We want control of our own lives, unwilling to relinquish the power to anyone else, even God!

A mustard seed is small so it must not take as much as we think to have that amount of faith. We need to start giving God full control of our lives and trusting him with everything. Easier said than done, right?

The next time you hear this verse about the mustard seed or have trouble giving God control in a situation, think about how tiny a mustard seed is and how truly simple it must be to have that amount of faith. With faith the size of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. Don't make it harder than it really is. If Christians around the world had faith this size, who knows what we could do? We'd be unstoppable for Christ.

Sing It Out...

It's one of those days. The world is crumbling around you. You become confused, frustrated, angry, bitter. You doubt. You doubt God, your family, your friends, yourself.

What's left for you? The future is fuzzy and only getting fuzzier. You aren't sure what's going on around you or inside of you.

Despair. Pain. Confusion. Emptiness. Frustration. Exhaustion. Stress.

You find yourself caught up in the whirlwind of life--not sure where you are and not sure where you're going.

So what do you do when you feel like you have nothing left to give? When you feel like a ghost, wandering the world?
You feel like you're slowly slipping off the cliff, grasping at anything, desperately trying to hold on.

You've lost your song. The melody has stopped. Everyone around you seems to be able to find it, but no lyrics, no tune comes forth in your own soul. You want to hold on to hope, yet you can only get a glimpse of it. You want to be embraced in love, yet it's just out of reach.

You're lost, alone, empty, broken. You know that there is a bigger purpose, but you have a hard time finding the hope to press on. What now?

Use every last breath in you to reach out. Be desperate for Him. Hold onto Him. Let Him be your solution. Let Him be your melody, your remedy. Sing with what's left of you.



Sing It Out (Switchfoot)

I'm on the run
I'm on the ropes this time
Where is my song?
I've lost the song of my soul tonight

Sing it out
Sing it out
Take what is left of me
And make it a melody

Sing it out
Sing out loud
I can't find the words to sing
You'd be my remedy

My song
My song
I'll sing with what's left of me

Where is the sun?
Feel like a ghost this time
Where have you gone?
I need your breath in my lungs tonight

Sing it out

I'm holding on
I'm holding on to you
My world is wrong
My world is a lie that's come true

And I fall in love
With the ones that run me through
When all along all I need is you

Sing it out

Signature of Divine...

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27

We are created in the image of God, a signature of the divine. This gives us a kind of dignity, a superiority to everything else in this world. We are essentially mirrors of God. We represent Him, even to the point where we are put in charge over all creation.
Everything on this earth is God's artwork, but we are His signature. We are the finishing touch to the painting of all creation.

Here's the thing:
1) We don't realize where this puts us in relationship to God. Not only do we fail to mirror Him and reflect His image, we fail to see His face within others. Why spend our time and money on "beautiful" manmade things when the people around us are worth so much more. We fail to love each other and value each other as images of God, signatures of divine.

2) We also fail to recognize our Maker. Without the artist, there is no painting, no signature. We don't realize that we aren't the artists. We think we deserve the credit for the beauty around us, but really we are only a representation of the real artist. We are the artist's signature, nothing more.

So not only do we not see the beauty in ourselves and those around us, we also try to take the credit for something we haven't created. What does God think of His images?

We certainly aren't reflecting His beauty through our own lives. Humans, Christians, need to start being the mirrors of God. We need to live up to our status as an image of God.

Love others. Respect yourself. Take care of the creation we've been given. Love your Creator -- reflect His image like you were created to do. Stop taking credit as the artist of the painting and start being the signature of the divine.

When Life Gets Crazy...

When life gets crazy...

sit in the sunshine
walk barefoot in the grass
watch the stars
sing a song
write a song
eat warm chocolate chip cookies
wrap up in a blanket and read a good book
wear warm slippers
cuddle with your dog or cat
watch an old movie
take a nap
color a picture
play your favorite game
take a hot bath
laugh long and hard with friends
take a scenic walk
take a scenic drive
spend the day in your favorite spot
write down your thoughts

but most of all....

pray
spend time with your Creator
read His word
find out just how much He loves you.

The Great Adventure...

In Humanities we recently read and talked about The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis. At first this book might seem like a fantastical children's story that is simply part of a series. When you really start to look into it, though, it becomes so much more than that.

One of our themes in Humanities this semester is "the good life" and what it really is. One of the questions my professor asked us is what is the "good life" according to this book. When my partner and I really started to think about it we realized that the entire book is about adventure, and according to this story, adventure is part of the good life.

Adventure has to involve danger, risk, and lots of adrenaline. It's something that is out-of-the-ordinary when compared to your typical day. In an adventure, something of value has to be at stake. It's "something worth telling a story about later" and "involves character change" as a final result. There is always a goal to be reached, but there are also always obstacles to get around to achieve the goal. Sometimes the obstacles are giants or mountains. Sometimes they are your own character flaws. Adventures involve not only physical peril but also moral peril.

The adventure cannot be a selfish endeavor either. It has to make us a better person, not a better braggart. Often times the adventures we face are not chosen, but other times they are. I did not choose to face the adventure of Type I Diabetes everyday of my life, but I did choose to face the adventure of college.

In order to live a "good life" we must have adventures. They give meaning to our lives. We become living, breathing, awakened beings and are no longer droids going from event to event without any reason or purpose.

As Christians, our lives should be adventures anyways. If our life and our relationship with God doesn't cause us to have adventures that put our faith, morals, or even lives at stake, we are lukewarm Christians. We must be so on fire for God that we want to find adventures to grow more in our relationship with Him. If we don't risk losing our faith, then we'll never see its importance and meaning in our lives. When we're close to losing something and finally gain a hold back on it, we want to hold onto it even tighter, even more.

Want to live a "good life" with meaning and purpose and a reason for being? Make your life an adventure ... someday it'll be a story worth telling.