LOVE

So I’ve been writing a friend lately because she has been struggling and feeling a bit overwhelmed by life and as I was writing my email to her I thought that what I was writing might be something other people need to hear, so here it is.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Romans 8:31
“God’s love was revealed among us in this way; God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”  1 John 4:9,10
I read these verses and I think about my relationship with God and it always brings me to my experience as a mother. We don’t love our children because they love us, we love our children because they are our children.  God wanted a closer relationship with mankind (us, his children) and the only way he could do that was to send one final sacrificial lamb.  God doesn’t need us to be perfect, in the same way we don’t need and would never expect our kids to be perfect.  He just wants us to come to him and let him love us.  God doesn’t hold us to blame, he knows we aren’t perfect and he offered us a way, through Jesus, to come to him in spite of our imperfections.  Hold on to that when you are being hard on yourself and remember that God is for you.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  John 3:17.
I’m sending you another song too.  Music just lifts up my heart and helps me tap into my emotions.
God Bless,
Meredith

Welcome to my blog.

I think I have to open with…  I started this blog because God told me to.

If, after reading that, you think I’m a crazy person, this probably isn’t the blog for you.  But if you’re still reading and thinking “okay, let’s see where this goes” then know that this is a not a place where I am going to push an agenda.  I really feel that the purpose or intention of this blog is for me to share my thoughts about, and experiences with God.  My prayer is that something I write speaks to someone’s heart, and always, that my message comes from, and is directed by God.

The first thing I want to share is a link to the song Fear is a Liar by Zach Williams

At some point this year I came across a christian music station on my car radio and something made me stop and listen.  It wasn’t very long before this song came on and I was in tears.  I can’t begin to tell you how raw and real the lyrics to this song are and how relevant it is to so much of our daily life.

How many of us engage in negative self-talk on a daily basis?  I’m not pretty enough, smart enough… and for me… a good enough writer?  Anytime I feel afraid, or start to doubt myself, I put this song on as a reminder that those feelings don’t come from God.

“…we have known and believe the love that God has for us.  God IS LOVE, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.”   1 John 4:16

If you are a parent then you understand this more than you realize.  Think about how much you love your children. How you would do anything for them and there is nothing they can do that would make you love them less.  Your child is always the prettiest, smartest, best child in the world.  When you understand that, you understand the love that God has for all of us.  God – the Father.  And I don’t want to sound like a TV evangelist, but I absolutely experience that love, the love God has for me, in a very real and tangible way, every single day.  So often we are given religion in a message of fear – repent or spend eternity in hell.  But, I don’t think coming to God, because you are afraid of the alternative, is any way to have the kind of parent-child relationship God really wants us to have with him.  God wants to pick us up when we skin our knee.  He wants to celebrate with us when something good happens and he wants us to turn to him when we are scared.

It has been made so obvious to me, over the course of this past year, that like any other relationship I have in my life, the more I invest in my relationship with God the closer I feel to him, and the more he becomes a very real and active part of my life.  And yes, I said active.  In that God actively participates, in undeniable ways, in my life.

I’m going to leave it with that today.  Thank you for reading.

God bless you.

Meredith