100 Posts

Yesterday marked my 100th blog post. When I sit here and think about it, that really amazes me. Not because I was persistent in my approach but because of how great our God is. I am so thankful for the Holy Spirit giving me something to share nearly everyday. I haven't posted 100 times because of my strength but because of the strength that God has given me every single day. I absolutely love posting and giving you encouragement everyday. It has become something that I look forward to doing every day. When I post I feel like I am doing what God wants me to be doing and there is no greater feeling than that.  I think there are have been 4 or 5 days where I have not posted. Those days were so busy that I just didn't have the time. It was hard to accept the fact that I couldn't post those days. I hope that apart from the daily encouragement, that the discipline I have learned is something that has motivated you. I promise you that discipline will lead to so much growth. No matter what aspect of you life; faith, school, sports. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. I will say it over and over again. If you can become disciplined your life will change. I can promise you that.

I also want to thank everyone who has read any of my posts. It means a ton to me that so many people read them on a daily basis. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don't care how many people read my posts, as long as at least one person is encouraged or motivated then that will do it for me. I also want to thank anyone who has reached out to me and encouraged me about my blog. It is always so cool to hear from you guys.

I can't wait to keep sharing the love of Jesus with you every day and encouraging you in whatever way that I can.

So Will I

Good evening, I really enjoy posting song lyrics sometimes because it's nice to switch it up and super cool to read some times. I don't know about you but when I look up lyrics to a song it brings a whole knew meaning. Of course when you hear a song you remember some of the words, but when you dig deep and see all the lyrics it changes your heart. I am going to share the song lyrics to a song called "So Will I," by Hillsong.

God of creation
There at the start
Before the beginning of time
With no point of reference
You spoke to the dark
And fleshed out the wonder of light

And as You speak
A hundred billion galaxies are born
In the vapor of Your breath the planets form
If the stars were made to worship so will I
I can see Your heart in everything You’ve made
Every burning star
A signal fire of grace
If creation sings Your praises so will I

God of Your promise
You don’t speak in vain
No syllable empty or void
For once You have spoken
All nature and science
Follow the sound of Your voice

And as You speak
A hundred billion creatures catch Your breath
Evolving in pursuit of what You said
If it all reveals Your nature so will I
I can see Your heart in everything You say
Every painted sky
A canvas of Your grace
If creation still obeys You so will I
So will I
So will I

If the stars were made to worship so will I
If the mountains bow in reverence so will I
If the oceans roar Your greatness so will I
For if everything exists to lift You high so will I
If the wind goes where You send it so will I
If the rocks cry out in silence so will I
If the sum of all our praises still falls shy
Then we’ll sing again a hundred billion times

God of salvation
You chased down my heart
Through all of my failure and pride
On a hill You created
The light of the world
Abandoned in darkness to die

And as You speak
A hundred billion failures disappear
Where You lost Your life so I could find it here
If You left the grave behind You so will I
I can see Your heart in everything You’ve done
Every part designed in a work of art called love
If You gladly chose surrender so will I
I can see Your heart
Eight billion different ways
Every precious one

A child You died to save
If You gave Your life to love them so will I

Like You would again a hundred billion times
But what measure could amount to Your desire
You’re the One who never leaves the one behind

The power in accountability

This morning I reached out to one of my lifelong friends, Grant Zawadzki. Grant and I met when we were freshmen in high school when we started playing AAU together for All-Ohio Black. Grant is one of the realest dudes I know and he has always been there for me. I know that he is a true and real man of God, and will always be one of my best friends. 

The power in Accountability

The thing that carried me through this first semester of school was my accountability partners. They were there for me when I needed them the most.  Life is busy, sin is heavy and everything seems to happen so quickly. Having people to lean on in the midst of your life journey is extremely important for Christians. This is why God created us as relational beings. He never intended for us to do life alone; so we should stop trying to do so.  I believe this is why everyone needs accountability partners in their lives.

One of the best pieces of advice I got about accountability partners was this:

You should have 2 or 3 different accountability partners. First, you need to find someone that you are around quite often and that you completely trust. You will have to be vulnerable and transparent with each other; so finding someone trustworthy of keeping things confidential is essential. Second, you should find an accountability partner that has little-to-no connections to the people around you. This will help you feel more comfortable opening up about the more personal and secretive things that you have going on in your life.

You only get out of accountability what you put into it. If you are unwilling to be transparent with your accountability partner, then you will only be hurting yourself. James 5:16 says, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has a great power as it is working”.  As a follower of Christ, one thing we must continue to fight Satan on is the temptation to keep our sins a hidden secret. See, Satan has us right where he wants us when we are ashamed and embarrassed of our sins (ex. Adam and Eve hiding from God). For me, this was something that I struggled with this past semester and before I knew it sin had tied me down and labeled me a failure. It wasn’t until I went to my accountability partner and opened up with him about the things I was struggling with that I began to experience the love of Jesus again. I quickly realized that we as humans are not strong enough to fight sin and temptations on our own. We need other believers alongside of us going to battle through prayer and accountability. When we open up about our sins with each other and ask for their help we begin to break the chains of sin.

The Dash

There is a poem written by Linda Ellis called "The Dash." In that poem she talks about the significance of the line separating the year of a person's birth and the year of a person's death. It's a simple little dash. Nothing fancy. Nothing big. This tiny mark of punctuation represents what we stand for, what or whom we impact, and ultimately what legacy we leave behind. 

I just finished "Shaken," by Tim Tebow and this post comes from a section in the past chapter. If you are looking for an encouraging uplifting book to read, I would highly recommend reading this book.

Think about your life. What mark are you leaving behind? How do you want your life to matter? I love what the authors of A Leader's Legacy wrote: "By asking ourselves how we want to be remembered, we plant the seeds for living our lives as if we matter." 

Think about the legacy you are building right now. Are you cultivating a life of generosity? Kindness? Compassion? Are you investing in others? Are your thoughts, your ideas, or your words implanted in the minds of others? Have you shared your failings with someone so he or she can learn from your mistakes? Have you motivated others with your story? Inspired someone through your song? Loved others? 

If you look back on your life, do you wish you has worked more? Eaten more dessert? Taken more classes? Bought that car? Or do you wish you had spent time with the ones you love, showing others they matter?

Not many of us want to think about our morality. We prefer to distract ourselves instead. We watch mindless TV shows, overstuff our calendars, indulge in our hobbies, and entertain ourselves into oblivion to take our minds off the fact that we won't be on this earth forever. We like to live like we're invincible. But ignoring the reality that our days are numbered may leave the most important questions in life unconsidered and unanswered. 

When you think about our dash, we can live with more passion. We can identify our priorities. We can be intentional in how we live. We can make a difference and do things that matter. We can make choices that might be hard but definitely worth it. We can take a stand for something, knowing its impact can be far-reaching and can leave a mark beyond our lives. 

I challenge you to think about your dash.

~ you are loved ~

Verse of the day

The past few days the posts I have shared have been quite lengthy. Tonight I want to give you something that is a little shorter. As I was wondering about what post about I came across the verse of the day and that is what I want to share tonight. Just the verse. I encourage you read through it a couple of times and pray about how God is using it to impact your daily life.

Romans 11:33 (MSG): Have you ever come on anything quite like this extravagant generosity of God, this deep, deep wisdom? It's way over our heads. We'll never figure it out. Is there anyone around who can explain God? Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do? Anyone who has done him such a huge favor that God has to ask his advice? Everything comes from him; Everything happens through him; Everything ends up in him. Always glory! Always praise! Yes. Yes. Yes. 

There you have it! How awesome is that verse from the message? 

If you struggle with getting into the Word on a daily basis I encourage you to check out the verse of the day that the Bible app provides you with. 

~ you are loved ~ 

One More Night With The Frogs

Today our team was blessed with the opportunity to attend Vous Church in Miami. Last year we went and it was an amazing experience. This year was even more of an amazing experience. Vous is probably one of the coolest churches I have ever been to. Each time we have been there it has been like a party. Which I love because that is how church should be! Rich Wilkerson Jr. is a famous pastor and he brings it every sermon. A cool thing about Vous church is that there are 6 services every single Sunday and their motto is 'The best is yet to come.' 

What I will be sharing in this post this afternoon is from the message that Wilkerson gave. He titled the message "One more night with the frogs." The scripture that the message was based off of came from Exodus 8:1-10. 

Exodus 8:1-10: Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh and say to him, 'This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs on your whole country. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading trough. The frogs will come up on you and your people and all your officials.'" Then the Lord said to Moses, "Tell Aaron, 'Stretch out your hand with your staff over the streams and cancelsand ones, and make the frogs come up on the land of Egypt.'" So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt. Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, "Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord." Moses said to Pharaoh, "I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those who remain in the Nile." "Tomorrow," Pharaoh said. 

I am not sure how familiar you are with the plagues but it took 10 plagues to change Pharaoh's heart. The plague of the frogs is the second plague. It's really quite something to think about. Frogs? Why frogs? Can you picture God getting all the angels together and trying to figure out what type of plague He was going to send? Of all things, he chose frogs. I think it's kind of funny. There were frogs everywhere! 

Three of the most important verses from that scripture come from 8-10 which says: Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, "Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord." Moses said to Pharaoh, "I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those who remain in the Nile." "Tomorrow," Pharaoh said. 

Tomorrow. That was Pharaoh's answer. Why not right now? Why couldn't he pray for the frogs to go away right at the moment? The point. We put too many things off for tomorrow that should be done today. When are you going to start reading your Bible...tomorrow. When are you going to start praying for other people...tomorrow. When are you going to get rid of the things in your life that shouldn't be there? What kind of frogs are in your life? Maybe it's laziness. Get rid of the frogs! Don't wait until tomorrow to do it. Do it today. 

Pastor Wilkerson walked us through three points.

1.) Ignorance is not bliss

We pretend that the frogs are not there in our lives. We know that there are things that we are doing that aren't right and we just push it to the side like "yeah, it's cool." Well it's not. We try to ignore them like they're not a big deal. You know what? You can't change what you fail to name. Name what you struggle with, there is a good possibility that there are a lot of other people who struggle with the same thing. Proverbs 28:13 says: "Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy." It's simple, confess and you will find mercy.

2.) Breathing polluted air is common

Once we start to get used to the frogs in our lives we adapt. Think about this, if you are from the city, and decide to drive out through the country, there is a good chance that you are going to take in that great smell of the country air and everything that comes along with it. If you live in the country you don't notice it. That happens because you have adapted to the way things smell. Just like when we have the frogs in our lives. When we keep them in, we began to adapt and then it becomes harder to change. Romans 12:1-2 (MSG) says: So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. It sucks to say this, but we have adapted to the unhealthy environments in our lives. I think a big question you need to ask yourself is, what are you up to in your lie? What is lying going to do about the frogs in your life and what are you trying to cover up? Because your lie isn't going to conquer anything. It will just cause you to adapt more and more. If you don't address it you can't contest it. 

3.) Tomorrow is so much easier than today.

That is the biggest excuse ever. Think about it. How many things did you put off today that you are just going to do tomorrow. What type of sins are you keeping in today that you think will be easier to confess if you wait until tomorrow. It's Sunday too, the sabbath. A day of rest right? I view it as a day of doing work for the Lord. Don't wait until tomorrow to get your week started. Get it started today. Also, tomorrow isn't promised. The Word states over and over again that tomorrow not promised and we need to focus on today. God's favorite word is today and the enemies is tomorrow. The frogs today are only going to get worse tomorrow. 

I encourage you all, don't spend another night with the frogs. Get rid of them! It will change your life. Jesus came more for just getting us to heaven he came to give us fresh air. I believe the next step you can take to experience the fresh air is getting rid of the frogs TODAY.  

- if you are ever down in Miami and are looking for a church to go to, you really need to check out Vous Church, it is an incredible experience. 

~ you are loved ~ 

Love the reign

You might look at the title of the post and wonder what it means. Love the reign. In the context of scripture this post is about rain. The way I interpreted it was that we need to really
love and embrace the love and the reign God has over us. I hope this post helps
you understand what we have to do to experice God’s reign (rain) over our life.

13 So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. 14 then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. 15 I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

16 Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them.17 Then the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the Lordis giving you. 18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

Taking a look at the scripture. The very first verse talks about what we need to do. We need to love the Lord your God and serve him with all your heart and soul. When we do that, God sends down the rain and blesses our lives. 

In the second half of that scripture it talks about how we need to watch who we hang around, if we hang around the wrong people the scripture says that the Lord’s anger will burn against you. When the Lord’s anger burns against you, you can’t get that rain we talked about above. It’s totally shut off. It’s sad. That really motivates me to watch who I hang around with. 

The good thing is, God still loves us all just as much. I really encourage you to love the Lord and to serve him with all your heart. I hope and pray that you can experience God’s love and power raining down on your lives. 

~ you are loved ~