This week I begin my last full semester at UNCG. It’s a pretty exciting feeling, but at the same time, plenty of unknowns that go along with that. The things that are unknown in our lives can cause us to fear a great deal of things. Will I be able to support myself? Is this the right move? What happens if I got it wrong? These questions make us afraid, they scare us because the unknown is a scary thing. You see, life is full of these scary unknown situations. We have questions about each of our futures and the purpose we have in life, while at the same time, events come up in our lives over and over that cause us to question our God. We see people close to us pass away, we see the pains of addiction, we feel the sting of the hand that was laid on us, and we remember the words of death spoken over us. You see while those things may not have happened to you, but we are all affected in some way by those in our lives. We feel the pain and question why these happen to us; we begin to lose hope. But there is hope. There is always hope. I look back at my own life and I have watched friends lose their battle with depression, and I will never get a chance to see them again. When my friend passed away two years ago, I had no idea why or how God could let that happen to my friend who helped me gain confidence in myself and helped me be who I was in Christ. I began to lose hope, but God gave me new hope. You see in that moment I made a choice. I chose to follow and trust, even when I had every right in my mind to be angry, I chose to be sacred over scared.
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Seeking His Presence
It’s now been a full week into the New Year. How have you done with your resolutions so far? Yeah me either. It’s funny how quick we can lose doing a resolution, so I’m trying to set goals for myself. While these seem similar, my goal is going to be things I aspire towards, where a resolution is a hard start and if you fail, it feels like you have made a huge mistake. I choose to set goals that I want to do daily in order to strive for more out of my life. Last week I talked about the characteristic I choose to take on for this coming year; how I want to be like an avenger. Goals are a bit different. Some goals I’ve set for myself this year are things I want to do that will help me be better at my daily walk. I want to write each day so that I can get better and grow as a writer. I want to read at least fifty pages a day, which is a lot, but I want to continue to read more and learn more through reading. I want to meet more people and learn their stories. I want to spend money wisely and avoid things in life that bring me down. The biggest goal I set for myself this year is this, I want to seek the presence of God each day and step into what he has set out for me.
The New Year
Well, another year has passed, and what a year it has been. This past year started out fairly rocky, with my own dealings with doubt and anger, but ended with healing and hope. I love being able to reflect over the past year (see previous post) as well as being able to prepare for the year that is here. I started this blog a little over two years ago because I felt like I had a story to share, a message to speak life into others who needed it like I did. I honestly had no idea the challenges I would be faced with over the course of those two years. I walked the road of death, with two of my small group brothers in high school take their lives and walked through the death of both of my grandmothers. That was tough. I never thought something like that could happen, but in that, God moved. God always moves. In death I saw life happen in the way families came together and those who were affected made a choice to live the life God gave them. My brother-in-law suffered from addiction and went into Teen Challenge for a full year. In that year God moved. God moved in his life and saved him, giving him the strength to beat addiction and become renewed in the spirit. In my own life I faced doubts about myself, my ability to write and fears of the future writing and serving the next generation. I was able to see my writing improve and see the effects of people who commented on posts as well as people who came up to me and told me that I spoke to them. That’s all I ever want to do, make a positive difference in someone’s life. I also dealt with learning to forgive others who hurt me in the past and to overcome the second son mentality. I learned that without complete trust in God, I can do nothing, but with him, I can face all trials that come my way. All of these experiences and new lessons are projecting me towards this New Year, a new year filled with determination and a hope for the future.
Airplane Reflections
I love flying in planes. Something about it is so therapeutic, giving me a chance to simply sit back and reflect. Right now it is Christmas day and I am flying with my family up to Wisconsin to visit my grandparents. Wisconsin is fun because it’s cold and filled with cheese (I mean, what’s better than that?!). The past month I wrote about self-image and knowing the worth we all have in Christ. Last week my post was called, So Worth Loving, which was the climax of the series (check it out if you haven’t yet). This week I want to conclude this idea, giving the reasons why I wrote about this topic and share some of my heart with you. Reflecting is a word which here means looking back on where I’ve come from to see how God has moved in all things. That’s the truth in it, in all things that happen in our lives, God has orchestrated that to cultivate us into stronger people. We are all strong people. We have all been through some of the toughest times in life, and we have made it through these chaotic storms. Each of our lives is a story. Our story is a picture of what we have been through and where we are headed. The thing we need to remember is that the creator of the universe is in every piece of our story. We have been made in his image and he has given us the ability to write our stories because of that.
So Worth Loving
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:27
This past month I’ve been doing this little series about self-worth. I’ve been writing because for so long I hated who I was, that I never fit in right. I wasn’t an A student, I wasn’t very good at sports, and I had a love for stories. I didn’t feel like I fit in, I felt worthless, I felt like I had no purpose in life. I was being attacked by the enemy and I was living like he had won. The truth is, our enemy has been defeated by a creator that says you are so worth loving. In the moments where I felt worthless, I had the creator of the universe telling me that I was created in his image. This same God created each of us in his image, and because of that, we have victory over the lies of the enemy. We are unique creations. We were not created to fit into the mold of the world. I say this to give hope to the kids that felt like me, to the ones who love being nerdy, write poetry over playing on the field, and love learning about the world around them. Maybe you feel like an outsider. Maybe you have a passion for people, that you love to write stories with worlds filled with infinite possibilities, or that you have a desire to make music that rings in the ears of so many. I believe in this world because I believe we have a God that made us all unique individuals with purpose. Maybe you love running on the field and feel at peace when you play, maybe you have the heart to heal others and invent new ways to help those that are sick, and maybe you love to dance and express your heart for the world. No matter what you desire and love doing, you have been created by a God that says you are so worth loving.
The Power of Words
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:27
The past few weeks I’ve been writing to you about your self-worth. I’ve been writing because I feel like you needed to hear life giving words. You see, there is power in words. Words can build us up or tear us down, they possess so much potential but are rarely used to their full power. We are created by a God who spoke the universe into existence, one who sent his son to die on the cross for each of us, and while he was on the cross defeated death when he said, “It is finished.” Proverbs 18:21 says, “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” Our words are a powerful tool that we all wield. I think we need to reclaim this weapon. We have all felt the sting of what happens when others use this to hurt us, to tear our hearts open and cause so much pain. The past two weeks I have been writing about the fact that we are all made in the image of God, and we are so worth loving. We must believe this fact, we must believe that God created us for so much more. We are greater than what the world tries to say we are, we are made for a purpose. We are made to build up the kingdom, so we must use the power of our words to accomplish the mission.
My Beloved
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:27
I think one of the hardest things to feel is not being loved. So many times in our lives we try to earn the love of others. We try to have the people around us look up to us, think that we are important and relevant. Sometimes we try to earn the love from another person in a relationship, which can leave us empty and broken. Maybe you are trying to earn love from a parent who wanted nothing to do with you. You try to earn love in your job, hobbies, in most things you do. Why? Why do we do this to ourselves? We are creatures that were made for love, because our God is love. The thing is, we have become disconnected from God; we’ve lost our source of true love. This love is a deep love, one that enters into our life and breaks our heart, making us new creatures. We are searching for love in all the wrong places (that’s gotta be a song, right?). We are wanting love because we feel incomplete, and in our incompletion we feel the farthest thing from beautiful; we feel ugly. This is the lie Satan, the great deceiver, is speaking over us. The truth is, we follow a God who is all powerful and made us in his image. We have a God that calls us sinners, those who have chosen independence from him; he calls us his beloved.
Radiant
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:27
I love this verse. It seems so simple yet it reveals so much about who we are and the purpose that we have been created for. I used to not think this way. I used to feel like I didn’t have a purpose or that I wasn’t good enough. My self-image was based on what other people would say or treat me like, and this made me feel so crushed. I used to be self-conscious about my body; I’m a very tall and skinny guy with a large nose, and kids I used to go to school with would rip me apart because of it. I hated it. I would wear hoodies all the time to hide my arms and never tried too hard to stand out. At home and with my close friends I felt great, they made me feel the way all of us should feel; wanted and important. Then I would go to school, it was difficult. I have always been a geeky kid who read comics and watched science fiction TV (If you couldn’t already tell by the name of the blog). I felt bad about who I was, yet I was exactly who God made me to be. The truth is, I think this is true for many of us, for you. We feel as if we don’t add up to the super-model standard that society seems to adore. We feel that we have to like what everyone likes, have a perfect body, have a picture perfect life; but we weren’t made for that. God made us for more, because he made us in his image, and those implications mean so much more than we can imagine. God created us to seek and save the lost, to bring hope to the hopeless, to fight for what is good and right. God made us to be radiant.
Rejoice in Blessing
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
- Philippians 4:4
Well, Thanksgiving is almost here. In a few short days, the kids will be out of school, family will get together, and a feast will be had. It’s always a great time, but before you take that nap and then head out for your black Friday hunt (May the odds be in your favor, dear soul), take a step back and look at your life. One thing that this time of the year allows me to do is to think back on my past. Sure there are parts that I’d rather not dwell on, and I believe it is not good to dwell on the past for too long, but what I am saying is look at the blessings you have been given. The good, the bad, and ugly; all of these are in our past, but there’s something about it. Our past is a picture of how God has moved. Every choice made, every bad day, every question has all lead you to where you are in the here and now. I think that’s beautiful. We have been blessed so much, so we should rejoice in all things.
Fearfully and Wonderfully Created
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
Psalm 139:14
About a year ago I had this revelation. I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and saw a t-shirt. It was the daughter of someone that I follow and her shirt said, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” That stuck with me so much, because it means so much. The caption was something sweet about his daughter and helping her know she was made in the image of God. Cut to a few days later when I went to the Orange conference (a Next gen ministry conference), and they started talking about how vital the role of pastors and small group leaders play in the lives of the next generation. They said they do this by helping the next generation see that they are made in the image of God. Not a coincidence. Over and over since then God has been placing this on my heart, and if you’ve read my blog consistently, you know that I really like to push this fact. The reason I push it is because living into that title shifts your perspective. It allows you to move from thinking that you were some accident by science, but that you were created, fearfully and wonderfully, with a higher purpose for your life.
Joshua Writes 