Well it's been a week......and I DID IT!!!
Of course, I'd take a sticker, but I think it's best we all keep our distance right now.
That is, our physical distance.
Anyways, something I wanted to share from this past week was this:
The little sheet with the "Breaking" daily routine I made...I actually followed through with! Except yesterday, I worked out, and immediately grabbed a cookie and a glass of milk.
But aside from that, I actually took a really crappy situation where I felt like garbage and got rid of some mental and physical garbage that was holding me back from my semi-normal/usual self.
And in addition to that, I have been taking photos of many things now that I'm kicking off the last bit of my sophomore year with a photography class.
As I was taking photos today, I took a really cool one (you probably already saw it since it was the cover, but here it is again:
And just like that, I was like "Woah God, I see what you did there!"
No, I did not on purpose place the "Choosing Joy" in the background, but was more focused on the sweetgrass flowers in front of me.
My assignment was to capture objects that had light reflecting from them, and I thought this jar with flowers in it was pretty cool.
Needless to say, a lot of my photos were just like this:
From a really sweet pineapple in a really dark and sad image of the pineapple looking out the window at his apple friends hanging out in the trees...
...to a light in the darkness, I was finding that everything I took a photo of reminded me of how God turns darkness into light.
God takes a lot of our crappy situations and uses them for good.
I mean for real, we just had Easter, and the biggest part of it was His perfect son, Jesus, dying for helping others, and then God raising Him back to life! I mean it doesn't get better than that.
Since I've been stuck at home, like many of us are, I've had plenty of time to think. With that time to think and reflect on Scripture and what my potential future could look like, I ran across this verse below:
1 John 4:18, and it says this:
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
The meaning behind the verse in Scripture is this: If we believe in God, and we believe in His ability to secure our future, whether it be our next trip to Target for back to school shopping or our last breath on Earth before stepping in line to shop for clothes in Heaven, we don't need to fear about how many more cases of the coronavirus there have been since yesterday.
We should be more concerned about one another, and not about something we most likely cannot control all that well.
With this beind the second week in the 21-day, 3 week challenge I'm going after, I'm adding a week full of things that will be added into my daily and weekly challenges of things to keep my mind off of the media and the crazy world around me, and to keep me more focused on Christ and His mission for me.
Here's the template you can steal from me:
And here is my own personal agenda:
This week, I really wanted to focus on building myself up, and building those around me up. After spending last week trying to shred body fat and get rid of a bunch of bad habits, I figured it might be best to fill myself up, too, so I can do the same for others I care about.
Last, but not least, here's a Bible verse that goes well with this week's message:
Psalm 84:11
For the Lord God is a sun and a shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does He withhold from those whose walk is blameless.
Coincidence or God, I seriously was upset last night because both my internships I accepted were shot down with the virus, and I had no idea the last few weeks how I was going to make money for college. I started praying before I went to bed last night, and at about 2 o'clock today, I got a phone call from one of those internships asking if I wanted a position working with them doing some assistant work at their place.
GOD DOES NOT WITHOLD FROM THOSE WHOSE WALK IS BLAMELESS!
If we work for Him, if we pray to Him, and if we truly believe in His promises, we will be high and lifted up by Him.
We know that God's answers to our prayers is not always a "Yes", but for this one time, I sure am thankful it was!
This week, we need to ask God to help us BREAK FREE from our past and build up our "new normal" of a lifestyle by working with the building materials in front of us.
Our Bible. Our phone. Netflix. Maybe not Netflix. Our healthy foods. Our athletic wear instead of our sweats and yoga pants. Walking or biking to somewhere instead of driving. Getting out into the yard instead of being stuck in our beds till noon.
And we need to work to the fullest for Him. Because the work we do for others and for ourselves to glorify God is going to be rewarded, just like I was with my job offer, and just like you will be when all of this COVID-crap is gone!
No more temptation for cookies and milk, or whatever your cookies and milk are.
We need to ask God to turn our darkness into light, our crappy days into brighter days, and asking Him to make us stronger.
Next week following this week's "Building" routine, I'll be thinking about the last devo of BREAK FREE and closing out my blogging until further notice.
And with that said,
Let's go build ourselves and others we love up UP UP!!!!
- Britt