Baggage.

Sometimes life seems impossible.The pain becomes too much. Nothing is going your way, your plans are ruined. You feel down, you feel like there is nothing that can be done to change the situation. You feel so pressured by your thoughts that you just want to collapse into a heap, or crawl under the blankets and cry yourself to sleep.

 Yup it hurts.... This world is imperfect, it is full of disappointment, abandonment, fighting, anger, HATE... Sin. There are always going to be times where we are let down, but we can't forget that we also let people down, and most of all we let God down. It pains him to see us sin, because sin separates us from Him. He wants an intimate relationship with us... in fact He died for us, to make that relationship possible.... we go on Sinning.... and He goes on loving us. That's just it... He loves us, and is eternally devoted to us. We might be in pain, but God is willing to take on that pain, even though we can never repay Him for what He has done for us.
I struggle with letting Him take my burdens, but He wants to do just that.
God is so good!

Life lessons.... What has God taught me from pain or sorrow or Depression.

My first response to this question is "wow. where do I start?". There are so many examples of pain, sorrow and depression in my life... and I think I am right in saying, it is the same for every person on earth. It is just that we have different experiences and different ways of handling experiences. I think God teaches me something in every painful situation that I have... so I'm just going to sum it up....

God has taught me:
To be patient
To be more sympathetic to others needs
That there is more to life than me
That there are always bigger problems
That he is in control
That I am fragile and I need Him to survive
That I am nothing without Him
That he suffers when I suffer
That there is no pain that I can't bare because of Him
That pain will not be a problem for me in eternity, because of the pain he went through on the cross.

and there is probably a lot more that he has taught me through pain and sorrow and depression!

There is always hope peeps.

Keep Calm and Sparkle!

OK so I was just browsing on Facebook, and one of my liked pages posted this picture on my feed. I got super duper excited because it reminded me of the "She is..."theme this year. >>>

I have been excited all year about the theme because it is exciting to learn about being lights for Jesus, shining his love all around. It is inspiring!
 I don't know about you, but I don't "Sparkle" enough. I don't shine. I hide. Even though Jesus has done things for me that I don't deserve, I am embarrassed to say his name to my colleges at work.
 If a friend were to rescue me from flood waters, I would forever be calling them my hero. I would want the world to know that this amazing person rescued me from death..... yet Jesus rescued me from death when he died that brutal death on the cross and I rarely say a thing about it.
I think that is the story for most of us. Even though God would use us more if we told people about our him, we still shy away. We should be shouting Jesus name from the rooftops, but we are afraid of being judged. That just goes to show how imperfect we are.
I think we need to pray more... pray that we won't be afraid, that we won't be ashamed, that we won't be embarrassed.... we need to let God take over our lives, and he needs to be in the center. We are not usable, If we don't allow him to use us.


Just sayin...

http://sheis.net.au/