The heart, soul & mind...

Comfort in Christ, not in ourselves.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

John 16:24-25

As someone who pursue and follows Christ, I sometimes find comfort in different things. Comfort in our financial security, our relationships, things, and even ourselves and our own power.  Because of that we experience God with such a great limit. We close ourselves to a point where its hard to believe God can reveal Himself in such a limitless and glorious way. When I accepted Christ, it was because I came to a realization that there is a God who is all powerful, all knowing and all loving! When I decided to follow Christ, it’s because He gave me the heart to love Him with my ENTIRE being and to love the people in the world and NOT the world. 

To follow Christ is not to be legalistic, but to just love Him and follow Him in this road to salvation. The thing about us humans is that we are not Christ. We are bound to mess up, we are bound to make mistakes, and we are bound to sin. But that’s the beauty of grace because God loves us despite all the stupid crap we do. Grace is an unconditional favor, meaning that God favors us despite the good or bad we do. Beautiful and amazing right?

God called us to be Christ like. Christ like in a way where we love people of this world who will annoy the living crap out of us, who we would normally despise, who we look down upon, and who are just broken. You read the gospel and what did Christ do? He hung out with the people who were despised, looked down upon, who were broken and desperate and people who HATED Him and conspired to kill Him. This is heavy stuff because this means God is calling us in such an uncomfortable position. And that’s why this verse is so powerful because God is telling us to DENY ourselves so that WE MAY FIND ULTIMATE COMFORT WITHIN HIM! We are people who are made to worship God and we yearn to do so. We worship Him by following our God who we love so much over ourselves. Once we deny ourselves and find discomfort in our own ambition and desires, God’s desires and ambition becomes apart of us. As we find ALL of our comfort in Him, we will experience His Holy Spirit in ways where it will blow our freaking minds! We will see the Holy Spirit work in ways where peoples worlds will be changed and that this love movement will not be stopped! And we will find comfort in loving those type of people who we would not normally associate ourselves with. 

Find comfort and rest in Him because His burden is light as it says in Matthew 11:28-30. Believe in the power and the name of Jesus. Witness the power of the Holy Spirit and let Him work in your life so that you may save the world just as He did. God wants to use us in such amazing and mighty ways and He’s just waiting for us to pursue Him. ALL of Him, in all of His glory, all of his power, all of His sovereignty, all of His love and ect. We will never fully comprehend the true entity of the Holy One, and that’s why we should have an open mind and heart and continue to witness all of Him daily. 

thisisannatastic:

With all the graduation craziness that happened this week, pretty much spent the last 8 days with @jasonfaro, my amazing, wonderful, Godly, Jesus-loving, handsome, talented, goofy, and loving boyfriend. 

<3

I am seriously falling in love with this beautiful lady of God. (:

<3

When a Christian man and woman systematically deny their own physical desires as an expression of mutual faith and submission to Jesus Christ, they are laying a solid spiritual foundation for their marriage. They’re learning to fight sin as a team. They’re learning to care for each other, prayer for each other, and challenge each other.  In the most practical of ways, they are submitting to Jesus Christ as the Lord of their relationship.

-Joshua Harris