by Sam | Mar 28, 2017 | Reflection
Part one of a three-part series. Read part two & part three. Although I grew up going to church my whole life, it wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I surrendered my life to Christ. It was really a turnaround year where everything I heard about God became reality. It was no longer just information or religion; it was real. I encountered His presence. I experienced His love. I could no longer stay the same. My friends started to experience the same thing, and I went all-in. After deciding to follow Christ, my life changed. It was shortly after being saved, where I sensed His call upon my life. I remember how I couldn’t wait for school to end. Not so that I could hang out with my friends, but so I could go home and read my Bible for hours. Whenever I had free time, I also went to my local church. I would just sit with my pastor and try to get as much wisdom as possible. I would also go to pray and clean and vacuum the youth sanctuary not because someone told me I should, but I just wanted to be in the house of God. All I wanted to do was honor and serve God. I, of course had my doubts and struggles, especially with calling early on, but every time I prayed, the theme was the same. It was about being used mightily by God. I didn’t know what I was praying, but as a seventeen year old kid, I would pray that God would use me. Whether at church or at home, that was my...
by Sam | Mar 21, 2017 | Guest Blogger, Inspiration, Reflection
Photo by Jesse Rinka Photography I entered a period shortly after having kids where I felt like I was wandering in the desert. I had my first daughter at 24 – much earlier than my husband and I had planned for. I quit teaching to stay at home with my two little ones. I battled discouragement and despair while doing ministry in the small church God had called my husband and me to serve. And I had very little community to process, grow, and do life with. I prayed that God would move with the same power I saw Him display all throughout the Bible. And in the secret place, I found hope in His promises over my life. But many times as I waited for fulfillment, it seemed as though He was working wonders everywhere except in my own life, church, and relationships. I stumbled over the temptation to envy others’ blessings, and fell deep into the rabbit hole of questioning His goodness and my identity in Him. It was after years of wrestling through cycles of promise and disappointment that He turned my attention to the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. The Israelites directly witnessed miracle after miracle, provision after provision, yet “…they forgot the many times God showed them His love…” (Psalm 106:7). Their journey should have only taken 11 days, but by the time they reached the Promised Land, they lacked the faith to claim it, and instead an entire generation wandered in the wilderness I realized I was looking into a mirror. I was just as forgetful and “stiff-necked” as the Israelites, forgetting His great...
by Sam | Mar 14, 2017 | Guest Blogger, Inspiration, Reflection
When I first became a Christian the Word of God became the Living Word (Heb 4:12-13). There is no other way to explain it than God’s Word became words of life. Every time I opened the Bible, the words would jump off the pages and stirred a fire in my heart (Jer 20: 9, Lk 24:32). I had never experienced anything like that before. In fact, I had to stop reading the Bible a few hours before I slept because it would keep me up all night. My heart would be so convicted and filled with wonder that it would keep me up for hours. The stories of the Bible would replay over and over in my mind, and my heart would burn with so much passion that I had to pray, “God, please help me sleep! I need to sleep to go to school, so please shut my mind off!” So after a few months, I learned that I had to read the Bible earlier in the day so I could get some sleep at night. Sometimes during school, I couldn’t wait until class would end so that I could run home to open the Bible and meet with God. That was it. I realize now what made reading God’s Word so intimate, powerful and life changing was that I read God’s Word to meet with Him. Not to know more about Him or to gain more knowledge to teach others, but literally to meet with Him. What made reading God’s Word so intimate was that I read to meet with Him Click To Tweet I wasn’t reading...
