A Walk With God....

As I walk through this Nature Park I haven't walked through in 6 months I am recognizing how important it is to be in silence to hear God's voice in clarity. I also recognize that walking and typing isn't the best idea but hey I am different. **shrugs**

God has been calling me to place of silence. To really sit in silence, drive in silence, and even sleep in silence for that matter. I have this habit of sleeping with the TV on because it is more comforting to sleep that way. However, God is taking a hold of my fears in this season of my life. He has called me to be bold in my walk with Him and to use my voice to speak His truths. The word of God is His truth!

It is so easy to conform to the ways of the world and compromise God's word in order to make sin acceptable. Well, like my pastor said, "The laws and the court system may change but the Bible does not". It is hard to live a righteous life but thank God it is the righteousness of Jesus that saves us and not our own. Even while being a Christian woman, wife, mother, and working in ministry I was not always righteous. Whether it was in my thoughts, my emotions, my words, or even my actions. When I look back at the person I used to be it brings tears to my eyes. Thank God for healing and changing me! I am still a work in progress but for the fact that others see growth that I had not even recognized proves that God has done a work in me. He keeps birthing gifts out of me and His favor over my life is amazing.

It takes truly walking with God to experience all God has to offer. To know God's love on this level forces you to show and give love on an earthly level. Even when people hurt you, judge you, condemn you, gossip about you....whatever it is you are able to show them love in the midst of their wrong doing. God wants us to act in love no matter what because He extends that same grace and mercy towards us.

God is never blind to our good doing and as hard as it is I encourage you to do what is right no matter the cost! God will bless you for you obedience in His timing....
I Love you all. Smooches.....Blog with you later. ;-)

My Pure Heart Towards Marriage

The number one thing marriage did for me was forced me to GROW UP! When you become one with another person the whole dynamics of your relationship changes. It can be very challenging for a while especially while merging as one you are afraid of losing your identity. In actuality you are not losing your identity you are adding to it. Your spouse should be strong where you are weak and vice versa. It balances out and it compliments one another.

Nonetheless, often times when we get married we have no idea what in the world we are doing! I know I had no clue. I had a preconceived conception but I did not know how to apply the tools it takes to build a strong healthy marriage. Mainly because I didn't study God's word on marriage to know! It was something I had to learn through trial and error and through great pain and disappointments. If I look at the wife I was then and the wife I am now I can honestly say I did not represent a wife the way God said to represent a wife. Many times I acted out of emotions. Very unstable emotions. When you do that you are not being logical. You just respond based on your feelings without thinking about what you are saying or even doing.  God challenges us to be slow to speak and swift to listen.(James 1:19 You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.) I wasn't a good listener because I was always speaking. After becoming healed from some things I realized that stemmed from me trying to be heard because something that happened in childhood took away my voice. Well, sorry but in marriage that is not the time to stand up for your right to be "right." That is so out of order and quite ungodly character for a wife or even a husband for that matter.

There was not divine order. 1. God 2. Spouse. 3. Children 4. Work/Ministry. When you become married your husband or wife comes before everything that follows after God. God is ALWAYS first but your spouse is ALWAYS second and there is no exception to this. As women we tend to put our children above our husband because we are wired to be nurturers and that is out of order. For men they tend to place their jobs as most important because they are naturally wired to be providers. 1 Corinthians 11:3 "But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." Without this order there will be no order in your marriage only chaos.  There is a divine order that must be followed in order to have  lasting healthy marriage. There is no way of bypassing this!

It took a lot of intense therapy and spiritual healing to recover from my past of sexual abuse, rejection, and abandonment issues. I had placed so many of my fears onto my husband that I am pretty sure often times he felt like my enemy. I believe I most likely treated him as such too. He became an outsider within our own marriage. That is a toxic environment to be in. Not to say that he did not have his own history but that is irrelevant because I am accountable to God for how I treat him no matter what he does. The bible states that wives are to respect their husband. (Ephesians 5:33 “Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband”) Not just when you feel like it or only when you feel that person is on their best behavior according to your standards. No, that is your way but not God's way on how to be in a marriage.

One of the main issues with marriage is that we think it is about us when it is really about God. Marriage is the most sacred covenant to God outside of our covenant with Him. However, too many of us see marriage as a title, a piece of paper, or some sort of business contract we can get out of when we don't want to be bothered anymore. Malachi 2;16 "For I hate divorce!" says the LORD, the God of Israel. "To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty," says the LORD of Heaven's Armies. "So guard your heart; do not be unfaithful to your wife." It does not get any clearer than that. God expects us to reverence marriage as He does and to do everything it takes to honor it. Many times that requires a lot of time praying and seeking God because marriage is work. It is a full time job that you have to show up for daily. I am no expert on this marriage thing but God's word does not lie and He is the expert on this subject since He created this holy union.

I wish when I became married that I had seen marriage through God's eyes. I wish I would have loved my husband through God's heart. If I knew then what I knew now I would have treasured the privilege that was given to me to be a wife. Yes, it is a PRIVILEGE to be married. That is just how special this covenant is to God. We cannot take that for granted or we will take our spouses for granted. Our vows are not just to them but they are to God. When we break covenant with our spouse we break it with God too. Did you know that how you treat your spouse is a representation of how you treat God? Ephesians 5:25 "For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her." It really changes your perspective when you make that God connection.

God has given me a great passion for marriage. As a matter of fact a ministry came out of all the hell that transpired by not doing marriage God's way and going by my own rules. I am in love with marriage. I am in love with praying for those who are married and guiding them off the damaging path that I was on. It was pretty ugly. Praise God for changing me mentally, healing me emotionally, and fulfilling me spiritually. He has poured much wisdom and knowledge into me that now I can help others have a healthy marriage.And for the ones who are struggling or going through a separation or possible divorce I can say let's pray and see what God says! God can turn an impossible situation into something miraculous. Until God says otherwise you have to fight for your marriage through prayer and obedience. God's will gets done but remember we all have free will. God will never make another person come back. They have to feel it in their own heart to do so. And if they do not come back to the marriage then it doesn't mean it was not God's will it means the other person chose not to abide by it. God will always give you directions. He is not a God of confusion! 1 Corinthians 14:33 "For God is not a God of disorder but of peace, as in all the meetings of God's holy people."

Some people fail to realize that they could be the problem in their marriage because they are too busy focusing on their spouses shortcoming and what they are doing wrong or God change them! No! Ask God to change YOU! Too often we don't act in love consistently. Imagine if every time we did not do what God wanted us to do that He just stopped loving us. What if God gave us nasty attitudes, silent treatment, and harsh words? How would that make us feel? It would make me feel brokenhearted if God did that to me! Thank God for grace. We must extend this same grace to our spouses. We are not perfect so why do we expect our spouses to be? I am pretty sure they have plenty to say about our ways.

It's time to stop trying to control a marriage that only God should have control over! Let's break this cycle of divorce by being the wives and husbands God has called us to be. Matthew 19:6 "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

LOVE ON PURPOSE DAILY NOT JUST WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE IT! Marriage is like going to your job. If you don't show up then you don't get paid and worse you lose your benefits the more you don't show up. Marriage is so beautiful and should be treated and respected as such. It is time to think of ourselves less and our spouses more! Let's get it together people and be the blessing in your marriage not the curse!

Blog with you later....SMOOCHES!!! ; )

New vs. Growth

Laying awake before the sun even begins to rise my mind reflects back to who I was and who I have become. I have walked through many stages of my life. Some amazing ones, some painful ones, and some very carelessly irresponsible ones. I find that many people see me as this "new" or "changed" person when in reality I am simply who I always was just with a voice that is able to be heard now. For many years I battled between my flesh and my spirit. However, God tells us to die to our flesh daily. I wasn't trying to die to my flesh because I was coexisting with it and my spirit. Which in turn was killing me on so many different levels.

I have no idea the reason for the tears that are beginning to flow from my eyes but I will just write from my heart and let God be blessed through whatever my heart has to say. As I look back from my childhood until now I see clearly the different stages and traumatic events that altered the person I was intended to be. Nevertheless, at the same time I know that because of those very same things that left me stuck in a painful place caused me to become stronger. Life has taught me many horrible things but I can say in this present time of my growth I have learned to expand on the beauty life has given me in spite of painful experiences. I can accept what I did not have control over and I can forgive myself of the things I did have full control over. I used to see my life as a twisted  beautiful nightmare. Nothing was able to overthrow the bad things because it was just too much of it. With clearer eyes I can see that everything that occurred prepared me for my destiny.

I have learned to trust people in ways I thought I never could. I have learned that even when someone does or says something hurtful to me I can forgive them quickly, pray for them, and still show love towards them as if the act had not occurred. It is one thing to say you love it is another thing to love something or someone that is portraying unlovable behavior. But that is how God loves us. I cannot count the times I broke God's heart yet He still shows me love. He is still blessing me. He still chooses to pour favor into my life. I have rejected God. I have been disobedient to things He asked of me. I've blamed God for things I couldn't understand when it clearly says in His word to lean not to your own understanding because my ways are not your ways! I've been a brat towards God.. I've used God like a magic genie who was supposed to grant me wishes and then I just put Him back on the shelf until the next time. I have even stored hate towards God because I wondered where was He when so many traumatic things were done to me? What kind of God lets this happen? I know now that God gives us all free will and because of that free will He does not control the evil acts people "choose" to commit. I have failed God on every level I could fail Him on but God has never failed me. NOT ONCE!

I am not who I was yesterday, and today I won't be the same person tomorrow because I am constantly growing. Every day I intentionally seek growth. I have become a very intentional woman. Even when I fell in love with my husband almost 3 years ago I loved him on purpose. He was the first person I ever "chose" to love. I didn't simply fall in love with him. I didn't think of it as a big deal but when I told my prayer partner about this a couple of weeks ago she said that was a powerful thing. When I thought about it, she was right. Everything we do is a choice. And choosing to love is a great choice because that is exactly what God wants us to do. I just had a light bulb moment while writing. I am reading this book called The Relationship Principles of Jesus and it talks about this and I have finally made the mind to heart connection with it at full circle. WOW!

As I was saying, I am intentional with everything I do now. I intentionally speaks words of encouragement into people. I intentionally smile and speak to strangers on the street. I intentionally keep a wallet full of singles to give to the same homeless guys every time I leave certain shopping plazas near my home. I intentionally validate the worth in women I encounter. It is sadly troubling that many women or girls do not value themselves. They criticize so many things and I am like but God says you are fearfully and wonderfully made, how can you think otherwise? Well, at one point I thought otherwise honestly.

Hmmm, God just revealed something as I was typing. I love the way God talks to me at such random times that are not so random. I just saw images of myself having conversations with my husband. We were dating at the time. Over and over again I spoke a lot of negative things to tell him that bottom line I was too damaged for him. That at some point he would see past the love and see who I really was and then he would walk away from it all because it would be too much. He hated when I used to do that. He hated when I doubted him. I see now that I was not doubting him in actuality I was doubting my own worth. Whoa...I literally felt that I was not good enough to be loved by him because of my damaged past and the side effects from that past. This is a very heart breaking revelation.....I am a bit lost for words now. I rejected love because I was afraid of love is what I thought but no I rejected love because I didn't think I was lovable. I did not even see that back then like I see it clear as day now. I always believed I was a good person that was not the case. I know I have great qualities and horrible ones too but I see the dysfunction that was hiding in my subconscious.

I can see that by my own hidden feelings inside that I without a doubt I caused great pain within my relationship. I have to thank God right now for showing me this now. He must have felt I was ready to handle this truth. This is not the avenue I intended to go in this blog. It is the complete opposite actually. I am going to mediate on this truth and pray on this matter deeply. Thank you God for showing and teaching me love these past few months.

God has given me this huge platform and I am taking advantage of it all. I will touch on this in my next blog. Right now I need  to soak in what has been shown to me because it hit my heart like a ton of bricks and I need to sit down with God to sort this out....Blog with you later!!! **Smooches**