TAKE A MOMENT TODAY

Take a moment today to put down your phone and appreciate the beautiful things going on around you. Sometimes social media can be used as a way to escape, but sometimes what you're escaping to may not be beneficial. Perfectly posed pictures, a snap of what appears to be a perfect family, relationship, or life. Let's not forget about the comments which oftentimes lead to arguments, posturing, and puffed up opinions. All of this can be very draining, not to mention these things having an affect on our mental, emotional, and spiritual state.

So take a moment today and remove yourself from the overload of information that you may be consuming. Take a moment to decompress and just breathe. Instead of scrolling through your phone on your lunch break, be still and spend time with God, or not be still and enjoy a nice walk.

There are so many other things that you can do today to appreciate the beautiful things going on around you. Take a moment and do them.

Surrendering to God's "No"

This week's post is a short, but tough lesson. It's understanding that God does not always answer our prayers or requests with a "yes." That can be a painful, hard pill to swallow, but it's true. Sometimes we have postured ourselves to receive a favorable response from God (at least favorable according to our expectation), but "no" to what we are seeking from God can be favorable.

God may tell us no for several reasons: it's not in His time, it's not in His will, we are not ready, He has something better, or He has a greater lesson for us to learn.

If you are currently experiencing a "no" from God, I encourage you not to fight it, but surrender to it. God knows best. Not only that, but you will relieve yourself from any stress, struggle, or worry that you may be experiencing because you're fighting against the "no." Also, surrendering helps to remove any hindrances that may be preventing you from hearing God. When we want things to go our way and it doesn't, we may get frantic and fearful. Surrendering helps to give us a sound mind and peace so that if God wants to speak to us about our "no" we can receive it.

God is good. He knows what's best for us and what's best for us may come in the form of the answer "No." If you are experiencing God's "No" right now, don't fight it, surrender to it. 

(Helpful Scriptures: 2 Tim. 1:7, Philippians 4:6-7, Jeremiah 29:11)

FAITH OVER FEAR: A LESSON IN NEW ORLEANS

Hello and Happy Wednesday. My apologies for missing a post last week. It was very busy as I was preparing to go to New Orleans for my family reunion. The upside is that while I was away, the experience in New Orleans inspired the message for this post and I'm going to share it with you today.

For those of you who don't know, this past weekend New Orleans and surrounding areas were hit with very tumultuous weather and a Cat-1 hurricane (Barry) touched down on Saturday. With the news of the storm coming it caused some concern for family members who were attending the reunion, including my family. My cousins, who hosted the reunion, were keeping us informed about the status of the storm. We were also looking at the local news in our respective cities to be informed as well and the reports did not look good. It got to a point where some of us were considering not taking the trip because of the weather. My cousins were still keeping us updated on the status of the weather, letting us know that the area that they were in, the storm was predicted to not affect them as much (only rain and wind). So it was up to us, as a family, to make a decision on whether we were going or not.

We went.

Long story short, we (my family and other family members who were attending the reunion) all made it safely to Louisiana. Over the weekend, for safety precautions, a 9pm curfew was set for New Orleans which meant everyone had to be off of the road by that time. This also meant that we had to stay in the hotel for the weekend, rearranging the planned events that we'd made. Not only did we have an awesome time as a family, and I believe this experience brought us closer, but the major point to our weekend is that we chose faith over fear. Of course if it was not safe for us to go to New Orleans, we wouldn't have gone, but we decided that we weren't going to let what we were seeing or hearing to discourage us from going. We prayed about it and ended up attending one of the best reunions that our family has ever had. I dub it as, "The reunion that weathered the storm."

Are you experiencing something that, by the looks of things, it looks tumultuous? Are you getting reports of a bad "storm" and it's causing you to fear? Are others telling you why you should or should not do something based on their own fear? Well, I encourage you to go to the One who will see you through any storm, the One who controls the storm, the One whose storm prediction is accurate, and the One who can speak to the storm and say, "Peace, be still." Seek Him, get the answer from Him, and move forward with what you know your Lord and Savior has told you.

Lastly, although we did get heavy wind and rain on some days, it wasn't nearly as bad as it was in other areas. I'm so glad we chose faith over fear.

Helpful Scripture (Mark 4:39)

 A few photos from the weekend...

ONE THING AT A TIME

Just a simple word of encouragement today. Are you trying to take care of many things at once? Are you trying to be everything to everybody? Are you trying to accomplish a task in a time frame that may not be realistic? Are you overwhelmed? Well, maybe it's time to reevaluate the things going on in your life. Maybe it's time to stop and take a breather. Take some time to determine what's important and what can be handled later. Start saying "no" to things that you shouldn't be committing yourself to. Give yourself a break. Slow down and take one thing at a time. 

Have a wonderful Wednesday.