A sleepless night....

I don't know about you but I hate it when I cant sleep! I hate the feeling when you wake up in the middle of the night knowing you only have a few precious hours to sleep but you feel they are wasting away as you stare at the ceiling. It is one of the most frustrating things for me.
After I realize I am not going to fall back asleep anytime soon, I let my mind wonder. You see, one of the main reasons I don't like waking up in the middle of the night is because it makes me feel like I am the only one awake and everyone else in the world is dreaming away. So this makes me think about the saying "You don't know that God is all you need until God is all you have." To me it is a pretty powerful statement but it can't be fully understood until you are down to that point where you feel that God is all you have in the world. Laying in bed tonight really mad me feel that way. I felt like it was just me and God in the world. It kind of put me back in my place because in my heart I know that God is all I need...but I don't always live that way. I place all these worldly desires and thing that I want to do in front of God and spending time in the Bible and praying. It breaks my heart because I know that in the end all the things I desire in this world will amount to nothing. Living life the way I want to live it only leads to heartache.
It all seem so simple when you think about it; God is all you need. You see, we already have all the answers we need in the Bible. God gave us everything we need to know in every situation in this book!...unfortunately we don't always follow what the Bible teaches us. We sin.
I can't relate any better to Paul than when he wrote Romans 7:18-20:
" ...For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do ; no, the evil I do not want to do- this I keep doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."
Sin is always going to be apart of our lives for as long as we live. It has been since the beginning of time and will be til the end of time. It separates us from God.
I want so bad to rely fully and completely on God. I want to live the life where God is all I need...but my sin keeps hindering me. It pulls me under.
Though sin is always going to be apart of our lives, we don't have to give into it. God is stronger than our sin. James 4:7 says, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." To grow closer to God we have to do just that, resist the devil, resist sin.
...and though we all sin, the question is; are we letting sin be the ruler of our lives, or God?

"...God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords....To him be the honor and might forever. Amen." -1 Timothy 6:15-16

Love your enemies

Loving your enemies is probably one of the hardest things to do. It is for me at least. It is hard to love someone who hates you, someone who hurts you, or someone who stands against everything that you do. Romans 12:9 says "Love must be sincere..." You can't love someone who you have hatred towards, the two cannot exist together. So how do you really love your enemy?
First, we have to fully and whole heatedly love God. We have to love him first and foremost, even before we can love the people who are easy to love. Mark 13:30 says "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." This is such a powerful verse! Jesus is straight up saying you have to love me with everything you've got and with everything you are! If you really loved God with all your heart; putting him first, doing his will, and what pleases him, and you let you let your soul overflow with his love and mercy, and focused every thought on him, and loved and cared for him with every ounce of strength you had so that you fell on the ground before him everyday, then nothing else would matter. All the troubles of this world will fade away into nothing. Whether or not someone hates you and is persecuting you doesn't infect you with hatred for that person, but with joy! You would be able to take anything the world threw at you with pure joy and patience. You would bless the ones who persecute you and pierce you for your faith. God's love changes you, but only if you let it.
Jesus goes on to say in Mark 12:31 "Love your neighbor as yourself." Now we have all heard this a thousand times, which i am not saying is a bad thing. You can take this verse in many different directions, but we are only going to look at it from one aspect; your enemies are your neighbors too. If we loved our enemies as we love ourselves we wouldn't call them names, talk bad about them, give them dirty looks, or anything like that. If we truly love God as it says to in verse 30, we wouldn't feel compelled to do any of those things. We would be filled with peace.
Never give anyone any reason to dislike you, other than for reasons regarding your love for God. Being kind and showing love and concern for someone who treats you horribly and hurts you is one of the greatest ways to show Christ's love.
Showing love and mercy to someone who has only treated you badly and hurts you convicts them far more than anything hurtful or mean you could ever do to them. No matter what, God is always going to overcome evil. We have to start believing that. God is going to take care of you. He will repay those who do you wrong, it's not our job.
"Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written; "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." -Romans 12:17-21

"You don't have to go to church to be a good Christian"

"You don't have to go to church to be a good Christian."
This is a phrase i hear way too often. The majority of the Christians that use this phrase don't regularly , if at all, attend a church.
I can't disagree with this statement because it is true. Going to church doesn't make you a good Christian. You are the one who determines that through your daily choices and actions. The church is a tool and safe heaven here on earth to help Christians grow and have fellowship together. Now granted their are some churches out their that are not like that and don't display the love and kindness of Christ, but we are not taking about those churches. Half the Christians who use the phrase above use it simply as a cop out. They are only trying justifying the fact that they do not go to church and they know they should. If they truly didn't think they needed to go to church they would flat out tell you that, not make up excuses and cop outs! And we all know good and well that half the time when you don't make it to church it's because you are too lazy or stayed out too late the night before and can't get out of bed the next morning for church!

Christ calls us to go to church! It is a place of Christian growth and fellowship! Fellowship is such an important part in the life of a Christian. In fellowship, Christians can share in each others joy, pain, hardships, and blessings! 1 John 1:7 says "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another..." Also Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 says "Two are better than one...if one falls down, his friend can help him up, but pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!....A cord of three strands is not quickly broken."
The church challenges you to be better and apply Christs teachings to your life. Christ is the church and the church is Christ! So when we deny the church all together, we are denying God.
Colossians 1:24 says "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of this body, which is the church."
And again, granted, not every church is meant for everybody! If you visit a church or two and don't like them don't just give up on looking! If you went to a certain restaurant to eat a hamburger but you didn't like the hamburgers at this particular place you wouldn't give up eating hamburgers all together! You would go to different places until you found one you liked! Church is the same way! It's apart of helping us grow in our faith. It is so hard to keep up a quiet time or a deep relationship with God with out accountability or motivation.

Now with this subject kind of made me go off on my soapbox, but church is something that is very important and I hate to see people take it so lightly.