Your Journey With God.

God dwells in us. (1 John 4:16) We are in charge of how much of God we allow to flow through in and out of us. How is this possible? God gives us free will. He can make us do whatever He wants us to, but He leaves that choice to us. God is in control as much as we allow Him to be. That sounds as if we are, in fact, in charge of our lives after all. Free will is the opportunity to make choices as we see fit in situations or what we are being led to do. Faith comes in when we trust God and move ahead, no matter how we feel. That is when He is in control, when we completely give our situation over to Him. How many of us do that? Or how many of us say, “God, I want your Will to be done” and immediately take charge when things get scary? How many of us fully trust God, even when we feel uncomfortable? This is a huge revelation that I have had recently. We can ask God to take charge and “take the wheel” but our human nature wants to constantly take the wheel back, as if we can do it better. This is where the ego steps in. The biggest enemy we have inside us, that goes against the will of God, is our ego. Like it or not, we all have one. And our ego isn’t always about pride. Our ego makes us afraid, irritated, annoyed, lazy, scared, mean- all of the attributes opposite to the Fruits of the Spirit. (Galatians 5:16-25) When we hear, ‘die to self’, that doesn’t just include dying to selfishness. (Ephesians 4:22-24) We need to take a hard look in the mirror- and I am not talking about staring at your reflection. Your reflection can fool you and everyone around you. (2 Corinthians 4:16) It is not about your outward appearance. Not at all. Can you look in the mirror, straight into your eyes and be real with yourself? (1 Samuel 16:7) There is a difference between being real with yourself and putting yourself down. Do not call yourself names. You are not stupid for the mistakes you have made. The mistakes may have been ‘stupid’, but YOU are not stupid. I have not talked nicely to myself for my whole life. I grew up being put down. So I created a defense mechanism to be mean to myself, that way if anyone else was negative towards me, it didn’t “hurt as bad”. Please do not do this to yourself. When you put yourself down, you are putting down God.(Genesis 1:27) He made you- He made every single part of you and He’s inside of you- if something isn’t looking good to you, how can YOU fix it? We can’t sit around and complain and expect God to fix it all for us. We need to take action for ourselves and God will help us along the way. Anytime we are moving to have a better relationship with God, He will bless it. And each one of us has a different way of having a relationship with Him. Nobody is able to tell you how to have a relationship with God. Since we are all different, we all have different journey’s, we all have different things that bring us closer to Him.

There are ways that we can be guided with to be closer to Him. Our ego keeps us from Him. I call it the ego, some people say it’s the bad wolf, the human side, our worldly ways- whatever you want to call it, at the end of the day, that is what keeps us from having a relationship in a spiritual way. Once we are able to recognize the parts of us that take our peace away, we are able to work on them. I am not going to lie, getting rid of the old self to make room for your spiritual self, is painful. As for myself, the first step was admitting that I have been a certain way for too long. I have hurt others and myself in the process. The second step is trying to acknowledge why these feelings are coming up. Again, for me, I had to look inside and face situations from my childhood that had cleverly found a home in my subconscious and would come out any time I felt the need to be defensive. You cannot bury your pain and expect God to move you to the next level spiritually. Pain is there to teach us lessons, not to be hidden away under the bed. This is where most of us get ourselves into trouble spiritually. (2 Corinthians 5:17) Our talents are not always our worldly accomplishments. (Matthew 25:14-30) A lot of times, we achieve success when we fight through our own pain and struggles to have a revelation. This is commendable. Being honest with yourself is where we grow. It reminds me of the story of Jesus & the fig tree. (Matthew 11:12-14) From far away it looked like this huge fruitful fig tree, but when Jesus came up to it, it had no fruit whatsoever. How many of us are like that? From the outside we appear to have it all together, but when people see past the outside, they realize our insides are a mess. We can fool other people, maybe even trick ourselves from time to time, but we can never, ever, fool God. And when you think you fool yourself, you’re actually just ignoring the truth. The way you look on the outside is not going to make or break your spiritual path. The way you are inside determines how far you go. You have to be willing to face yourself. You can be your own biggest cheerleader or your own biggest enemy. YOU keep yourself from happiness. YOU keep yourself from achieving the best in life. The ego will hold you back. The next time you get upset, challenge yourself to step back and ask yourself why you reacted in the way that you did. You really might surprise yourself. This is not an easy process but it is a rewarding one. How many people are in chains, thinking that they have a great relationship with God and they are frustrated at everything? That is not how God operates. He operates out of Love, not frustration. (Galatians 5:1).

Our foundation is the most important part of our spiritual walk. (Matthew 7:24-27) A lot of us have a religious foundation that was taught to us at a young age. We were taught to bury our problems and move on from them. That is so crippling to our adult selves. We need to face them in the moment so they don’t grow roots in us and then produce rotten fruit later on. It is harder to prune a developed tree. (John 15:1-2) No matter where you are in your journey, you are never too old or too far gone. You never have too many problems and you are never alone. Wisdom comes in the form of a painful lessons a lot of time. A lesson that frees you if you allow yourself to go through it and feel what you need to feel. Those are the lessons that produce good fruits, fruits that you can feed others with when they are struggling. Those are the fruits that you cannot buy, but that God gives us as a gift. Embrace who you are, at whatever stage you are at and really accept yourself without comparing yourself to anyone else. You will have good days and the days that are painful, allow them to happen. You are being taught something. Don’t shove down the pain anymore, it will weigh you down from reaching your full potential. Trust yourself and trust God.