Posts in Better Living
Home is inside [the Soul].

First impressions are lasting. I can't speak for you, but it is very apparent to me in the initial moments of meeting someone whether I want to get to know them or not. Here's whats dangerous, you can't build a lifetime of fortitude with a mere attraction to someone's looks. After the looks fade (honestly before) you're going to need someone to talk to, life is going to hit, and you're going to need someone to lean on. When we tie ourselves to someone who can't do anything for us, but make feel good in a few moments of passion behind a close door, we lock ourselves out to a life understood. 

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Pursue Your idèe Fixe

It carousels in your mind. You dream about it. You get excited thinking about it. Your heart throbs when in runs across your mind. It seems far fetched, but it could be your thing. Only if you sprint in the direction of the thing your mind is fixated on. Most of us have a thing or two that we can't get our minds off of. We all seem to have that one thing that captivates our energy and it doesn't seem to matter how things seem to look, there remains this modicum of hope in the back of your mind. Short of insanity, that's your existence and maybe even God trying to point you in the direction of your destiny. 

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Genie Prayers

God isn’t your genie in a bottle. Let me say it again for the people in the back, GOD IS NOT YOUR GENIE IN A BOTTLE. His wish is not your command. God is the CEO of the universe, and he just so happens to desire relationship with you.  That relationship isn't a "command it, be so" relationship. When we think of God as our Genie in the bottle we belittle him to a servant. Christ did model servitude, but that was so that we would reciprocate the example. The deity of God is mighty and majestic, and was not designed to be your personal butler. 

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Entitlement: the pipeline out of faith.

I  imagined small houses but I could have never imagined how tiny their homes were. To imagine that 6 children 2 parents and a grandmother lived in that teeny tiny 3 bedroom home is a nightmare. Yet they overcame. These aren’t foreign stories, but yet they were grateful. Not only were they grateful, they faithful to God. The incredible thing happened. As they all grew up in poverty, they grew out of poverty. All of them can fit they childhood homes in their new homes a few times over. 

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I am Not ASHAMED of the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Let me make this clear, I may never ascend the heights of this world's elites, or I may top them. I may earn a simple living, or I may belong to the 1%. I may never marry, or I may spend the next seventy years with the love of my life. I may never have any children to call my own or I may have house full. Only God knows. What I do know is that I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I will defend it, I will preach it, I will live it. Everything else is just a bonus to already superb life. I am in love with a man who has given me the perfect love story, its the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

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Mountain Moving

He moves mountains, and he causes walls to fall. Through his infinite wisdom and power, he performs miracles for sport. He dances about the heavens, and speaks things into existence and the entire universe bends to his beck and call. So how dare we think that what ever seems to be colossal in our lives is too much for the great creator to do? God seemingly created humanity because he was bored. This complexity that is the universe seems to have been born out of God's desire to just do something to keep him occupied.

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Thank God it happened

I’ve spent months sulking over what it feels, I’ve lost. “Why would God afford me such joy and peace, to allow it to be snatched from me?!” I would ask. Tonight it became very clear, that I had been focused on what I had lost, that I forgot what I had. I forgot that the last year had been one of the best of my life. I forgot that it was year of firsts, and that the prayer I prayed for 9 years had been answered. Sure I never saw it playing out like this, but it happened. I lived pure bliss. 

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N 2 M C - Texting Ettiquette

Relationships are one the trickiest things to master because we have so many unspoken rule that each generations governs itself buy. Now that texting is the new normal, we have rules on what you can say and when you can say it. For one double texting is usually bad. Until of course the relationship is advanced and then all of the relationship phopas typically run right out the closer you get. You always seem to be able to tell the people you feel comfortable with by your text thread. 

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Satisfied

Satisfaction. Gift or curse? You tell me. Satisfaction is something we are trained to seek. If I go out to eat and I am not in the least bit satisfied with my meal, we are trained not to pay a dime until we have been satisfied. Yet satisfaction in the wrong things is the very thing that will keep you bound in somethings you never knew was binding. Satisfaction will hold you prisoner and have you convinced you're in heaven. Satisfaction in the wrong things at the wrong time can very well keep you from the destiny and the future that God so graciously aligned for you. On the flip side satisfaction in God will promise the delivery of the things that you have desired for the duration of your life.

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Target[ED]

Here recently I was conferred ordination. It was a very humbling experience, and I over the moon excited about continuing ministry. Something came to my attention in the last few weeks, that I heard but never paid attention to. During my catechism, it was heavily emphasized the gravity of being an ordained minister and that people will look to you differently. My whole life people have been saying that, and so it was no new reality to me, but what I didn't realize that there was now a new target on my back. People were watching me before, but now one fall, one slip, is an excuse for someone to fall out of church, into bad habits, or away from the faith all together. 

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Cupcakes

I think it is very interesting how our relationship with God, as we do this thing we call life, shapes how we perceive various things. For close to 8 years I have been an intensive student of love. I have read tons of books on boundaries, marriage and dating. I have read hundreds (probably more like thousands) of articles on relationships, and how people perceive one another. I have become so good, that often I can tell you why a relationship happens the way it does. I have read books that express the importance of the each phase of the relationship, I have explored the 4 types of love that we find in the greek. Something that didn't come from extensive research, or picking and prodding the minds of the greats, was this idea. This idea came from my communion with God one day.

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Love is a choice

Not a secondhand emotion, nor is it simply defined by chemical reaction. No desire can come from the oxytoxicin your body releases for being around someone who is a check mark on your list, but to love is a concious decision. No we don't choose with whom our bodies find themselves drawn too like the ocean is drawn to the moon at high tide. We make a choice to allow ourselves to be loved. To pocket the deafening screams of shame, and place vulnerability on display, in hopes that someone too, might love you. Love though is not driven by the reciprocations of a beauty wrapped in gorgeous skin, no love gives in spite of. Love pours itself out not that it might be caught but that it may be received. 

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