Christian walk

Confidence

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13

In the elementary ministry I serve in, we have been talking about the idea of confidence; confidence, being defined as learning to see yourself the way God sees you. I love the way that’s defined, because I often don’t see myself the way God sees me. Whether it’s because of my past mistakes or things that have happened, or maybe it’s the enemy in my mind, I can often feel like I’m unworthy. I live with this cloud over me that I can never be good enough, but that’s simply not true. That’s a lie the enemy is trying to convince me is truth. The truth is, that I have been made in the image of God, all of us have been made in the image of God, meaning that there is great power we possess and God has placed many talents inside of us. We are not perfect, scripture says that humans were formed out of the dust, so, we’ve got some issues.

This is where confidence is key, we need to start learning to see ourselves the way God sees us.

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Reflection and Growth

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“Now we see only a dim likeness of things. It is as if we were seeing them in a foggy mirror. But someday we will see clearly. We will see face to face. What I know now is not complete. But someday I will know completely, just as God knows me completely.”

1 Corinthians 13:12

Two things keep sticking in my mind over the past year; reflection and growth. The start of the year, dear Danielle and I chose the word, “lover,” to be the word we would focus on and attribute to our mindset. Little did we know that this would be tested as everything changed in a crazy way. I am so thankful that we chose this mindset, because this year dealt with a lot, and there was a lack of love all around. I was ready for a year of busyness and wanted to focus on how to love better, but what happened was a year of resetting rhythms. I am thankful for that reset, I’m thankful for the time or reflection over the past and a growth towards what may be next.

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Living a Thankful Life

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

November is a great month. I love the season of Thanksgiving, being able to look at what life has given you and reflect on what matters most. This year might be a little more difficult to do that, but at the same time, this might be the perfect moment to do that. I have been told that I have a lot of joy, I have a lot of energy and I really love people. The secret is, I don’t have that come naturally. What I’ve had to do was grow a lot and realize, that by living a thankful life, joy follows.

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Never Give Up

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

Life gets really tough sometimes. There are days were you just can’t take it anymore. I’ve had a lot of time to think, just like many of you have during this time of social distancing, and I’ve thought about the events that have led me to where I am now. Looking back, I’ll be honest, there have been a ton of times where I wanted to quit. To just give up and let go. In high school, I knew God was calling me to be a pastor, it’s the clearest voice I have heard. I had a passion to help people and a passion to help young people especially step into who God made them to be. From that moment I felt very weird, I am still so passionate about it, but when I have pursued it, I get push back.

Maybe you have been met with similar pushbacks, you might not have enough experience, might be too young or too old in the eyes of the person in charge, or maybe you’ve been told you don’t have the right x-factor or cool enough. I’ve faced these exact same challenges, but in it, god has been with me. He always reminds me:

Never give up.

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Living as You Were Designed

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

I’ll never forget the first time I was able to have a conversation about Star Wars. After my dad showed me the original trilogy, I was in love with it. It made my afternoon playing outside have vivid stories of me dreaming about being in the Star Wars universe. I read the random books from the library trying to get more of this thing that I loved, but I really wasn’t able to share my love for it. My neighborhood friends loved skateboarding and video games, but couldn’t connect with my new thing. I wouldn’t talk about Star Wars, because they weren’t interested and thought it was kinda lame. Then, my friend from church named Grayson, told me about this new book he was reading, based off of Star Wars. Immediately I connected because I was able to be myself and talk about something that I loved dreaming about as a kid. That’s a bit of a random story, but I think it illustrates something that many of us face.

It’s hard to be ourselves.

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Vulnerable and Free

/ Joshua Thomas / 1 Comment

Life has been wild these past few months. I got married to my best friend and greatest woman in the galaxy. The holiday season was wild and fast. I lost one of my jobs. Danielle got a great job. We went on our honeymoon and had the best time. I started writing more. Danielle went back to finish up her school. So wild, filled with highs and lows. Yet, in all of it, I feel so very free. Normally, when I talk about what’s been going on in my personal life, I put a post under the title of “journey update,” but this didn’t seem to fit that style. Yes, this is a sort of update, mainly me laying out the things that have happened that I’ve only alluded to in my recent posts. I’ve been processing and reflecting a lot, maybe it’s the new year mindset of looking back and moving forward, but I think God has been speaking to me a lot. So, this is a personal post. It might go off on some tangents, but I promise that God wanted me to share the things I’ve been learning because it’s important to every single one of you who are struggling. Maybe you’ve hit a wall or feel like what you wanted seems far off, this, this is for you.

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Finish Well

/ Joshua Thomas / 1 Comment

I recently started running. If you follow me on Instagram, you have probably seen stories of me and how much I have run, as well as a tired dying picture of myself. Why am I doing this to myself? Well, at the start of the year, my wife and I decided one of our goals was to get more in shape. You see, some of my favorite things include candy (see last week’s post), movies, and fast food. None of those are very active and I am content with not being active, but I also work with kids. If you’re confused, let me explain. In the after-school program In work at, the kids love to play games. We play all kinds of games like, monster attack, west African alligator, and apocalypse. If you have no idea what those are, I didn’t either, but pretty much they are all fancy names of the same game; tag. Me, being the 6’2” giant, somehow always becomes the tagger. It’s a blast, but I get tired really easily. So, as part of my wife and I’s goal, I decided I would start running in the mornings.

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Letting Go

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

Well, we are now officially in the full swing of the new year! I hope all of your resolutions have stuck around, but more importantly, I hope you have set some great goals for this new year. It seems like there are always people who decide to get all “bah-humbug” about setting goals during the new year, but the truth is, the new year can be a great reset for all of us. Sure, we can set goals in June and not only January, but the new year truly highlights an opportunity to reflect. That’s why this year, my wife and I chose to focus on the word, dreamer, to always make sure we are dreaming bigger and dreaming about what God has. Our goals are to be active dreamers, not just head in the clouds, but doing something to accomplish these dreams. I have had to shift my mindset, and say, “God, you’ve got the plan, just lead me there.” I’m normally the planner, the past four-ish years, I had in my mind exactly what I was going to do. My job was going to head into full-time, Danielle and I would start working together and have enough experience to plant a church in a few years. I had it all worked out, but then God said, not here you won’t. In that moment I struggled, I’m not perfect, I grieved my job loss and my plans, but in the end, God was teaching me how to let it go and listen to his voice over my own.

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Journey Update: New Year and Dreaming Bigger

/ Joshua Thomas / 2 Comments

Just like that, another year has ended. This past year has probably been one of the most eventful years of my life. In the span of three months I was engaged and got married to my best friend! My nephew Gideon was born, and he’s probably the coolest baby ever (sorry not sorry to those of you who had children). I recently got an opportunity to write for Medium on pop-culture, which has always been a huge love of mine (Click here to read some fun stuff!). There have been so many great things, but this has also been a difficult year for me. I was working and carrying out a different vision than my own, and because of that, I stopped dreaming. I found myself working out of a routine because I wasn’t really able to experiment, I’m not saying this is bad, it just became an environment that didn’t help me thrive. The moments where I felt like I was myself were over shadowed by my anxiety to perform well with the hopes of others noticing my work and the craft I was giving. This anxiety really hurt me, causing me to forget who I am. When I was around people that love me and in situations where I could be who I was, that joy came back. As I reflect over this past year, I want to be different, I want to make sure that I am taking care of myself and following what God is calling me towards.

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Be the Light

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

The day is finally here! It’s Christmas Eve, hopefully you have all your gifts ready to go, and if not, I wish you luck with the chaos that will be happening today. Christmas is always such a magical time, there is so much going on and it can be easy to grow distracted with all the cooking, family gatherings, and making sure you’ve got the perfect gift for that person who is always so hard to shop for. Christmas can also be a challenging season. With emphasis on family and being joyful for what you have, this can be very difficult for some to cope with loss, heartache and fear of the unknown. For me personally, this Christmas has been a time of fun and uncertainty mixed together as the new year has many unknowns. So, what do we do? What can we do is we find ourselves busy and uncertain all at the same time as having to put on a happy face? I think the key is actually simple, just difficult to fully accept and believe. I say this, because it is something that I have to accept and navigate as well. This isn’t me saying, “this will change your life in a few easy steps,” really, it’s the beginning of how to grow and mature in your life. We have been called to humble ourselves and love others; in other words, we are called to be the light.

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