Today's Question: Why Am I Afraid?

Well... this is the very last "Today's Question" because.. well, it's the end of October, and if I keep up, I will run out of questions! I may be doing a new series like... "This Week's Question" or something like that, but you guys will need to let me know if you want me to do it! :D

Okay, so, you may not be afraid of things, I am. I'm scared of the dark........... and I'm scared when I am the last person awake in the house..... Those are two funny statements, but let's get serious (but yeah they're both true, too)

I am frequently afraid that when I get older, I am going to do something stupid that I will regret. I'm scared I might someday turn my back on God. I've even been scared before like, "What if I'm not saved?!" You know, there are a lot of people that think they are saved, but never really were.... However, if you examine your life thoroughly, and dwell deeply enough on the why's of what you do, you can figure it out. (That's how I now know I am saved! lol)

So back to the case of me being scared I might sin really bad someday, and/or turn my back on God.

This is a big deal for me, or was, rather, before I found a very comforting verse.. "Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not death or life, or demons or angels, or our fears for today or worries for tomorrow, not even all the power of darkness" Romans 8:38 ... I was afraid because some people I knew had strayed from the straight and narrow. (By the way, this terror also crept in about what if my friends were to sin really bad and/or turn their backs on God) but then I found that verse. And I've been finding others like it, and it brings so much peace.

I am (or was, or sometimes am) afraid because I have a lack of faith in God to keep me close beside Him. I mean, why am I freaking out? After all, it's all through God that we even got saved, right?! So why would He just drop us? He won't, and that's why we can have peace! Another great post to advocate "You Never Let Go" by Matt Redman! :D That is MY song ;) It's very special to me. Tenth Avenue North may be my favourite band, but "You Never Let Go" is my special song.

Love and prayers,

Ruth

Today's Question: Do I Have Faith?

Do I have faith? .........yes. Enough? No. Like most things in this fallen earth, it isn't perfect as it should be. Our faith should be strong enough to move mountains.

When we stress or are anxious about things, it is because we do not have enough faith in God. I don't stress very much.. I do about school, I do about my friends that are just now launching into their own lives. I sometimes freak out when I realize some of my friends won't be at my church next year. They'll be in college. It can be very disconcerting for me at times. I wonder how things will be... like, "Oh my goodness! How will I survive youth without them?!" haha Yeah, I know, that is not something that should freak me out, but I feel like so many people are growing up so fast!

But, as in another post I said, the verse, "All things work together for good for those who are called", really helps me be like, okay, chill! lol That verse is pretty much my motto! If it could be called a motto... A song that really has encouraged me in changing times is "You Never Let Go" by Matt Redman (Love Matt Redman! :) ) It's helped me relax about friends I've been worried for and such soo... it's an awesome song! Besides, it's a great tune and beat! :D

Hope this encouraged you to be strong in your faith in God.

Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.
  --Hebrews 10:23, NLT

Love and prayers,
Ruth

Today's Question: Who Do I Love?

Sort of built off of Tenth Avenue North's blog post. And also by a post by LeCrae I saw on Facebook :)

So... Who do I love? I know a lot of people may find this hard to believe, but... I love just about everybody! There are only a very few people that I don't like, and I wish I liked them! lol

Okay, but what the answer should be is everybody. Because, didn't Jesus say to love as He loves? And didn't He come to save everyone? And didn't He say that "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." ? Yes he did. So apparently, Jesus loves everyone, and since Jesus loves everyone and also told us to love as He loves, shouldn't we love everyone?

This is a delicate subject, especially for me right now. But the point is, to love the world, and hate the sin. Sort of coined off of Phillips, Craig and Dean's "Great I Am". :) So we love the people, but hate the sin they are living. Make sense?

Let's show the world how much we love them but not shrink from pointing out sin. (No I'm not saying to go around telling everybody the sins you see them commit, just if you need to address it, then do and don't shrink from it!)

So I guess that's it for today's :)

Love and prayers!
Ruth

Today's Question: Why Do I Still Hold On?

I hold on to a lot of things. I do. It's hard for me to let go of so many things! Friends... that is something extremely hard for me to let go of. I am *cough* too loyal.

What we need to be doing is accepting what God is showing us, however it is that he shows us. If God shows me that certain "friends" are not desirable, I need to listen to His voice and break off my relationship with them. If He shows me that something I really wanted is not in His plan for me, I need to humbly submit to His perfect guidance.

I mean, why not submit?! He has my good in mind and is planning a perfect life for me! The most perfect life that could be designed for me! Why am I still holding on?

We need to let go of things. This world is too trivial compared with the next to let things in this life ruin our next life. Let's look to the final prize instead of these pennies scattered along our trail. Let us "forget those things which are behind, press on toward the prize" along with St. Paul.

We can do this through Christ who strengthens us!

Love and prayers,
Ruth

Today's Question: Why Do We Put Ourselves Down?

Let's start by my saying.. I am so puffed up this isn't much of a problem with me ;) Actually, I don't think I'm too puffed up lol I wouldn't say I'm puffed up but others might :D

Okay, but this isn't so much a question post as it is me saying, "Stop putting yourself down! Is God putting you down? No! So why should you?" My great-grandmother, God rest her, used to say, "Don't put yourself down. There will be plenty of people in the world trying to do that without you adding to it."

You feel worthless? God is telling you that you are worth something! He loves you and that alone is enough to make you worth something! God is telling you you have worth. Who are you to say "No I don't." He's given you worth with His own blood! Saying you're not worth it is the same as saying His life wasn't worth it! You were counted worth His blood! You're going to tell me you're not worth my love when you were worth God's?! I see something wrong with that picture! It is in essence saying that God is wrong.... Whoah.

Let me just add, even if you aren't saved and are reading this, God still does count you worth His death. It's not too late to accept His sacrifice. As a matter of fact, let me just say, if you haven't accepted Jesus, how dare you turn your back on such a gift from God! Do you know that's the same thing as saying, "I don't care that somebody sacrificed His only son that way I wouldn't die." Can you imagine not being grateful to somebody when a criminal was about to shoot you (or harm you in some other way) and they bodily threw themselves in front of you and were shot (or beaten) to death? And Jesus' death was even more painful. I can't imagine not being grateful!

Okay that was rather rambling, I hope it made sense. Hey, there's a reason for this blog's title right? :D

No song reference today, I'm sorry, unless you want to google "Mercy" by Matt Redman (love that artist, by the way!)

Love and prayers,
Ruth

Today's Question: Do I Really Want God?

Don't freak out about the title. I know all Christians are like, "Yes! Of course I want God!" But to understand what I mean, we need to look deeper into this question.

So, let's say, yeah of course you want God right? Okay. But do you always want God? You want Him to work in your life and to give you strength and faith, right? But do you want Him to say "No" when you want a "Yes"? Don't you frequently have that feeling? that, "but  why not?" when God says "No"?  I used to have that like.. all the time! haha I used to get pretty disappointed. Now that I've been thinking more about, "All things work together for good", I have a lot more peace.

For instance, today I wanted to go to Youth, but my mom's tired so she doesn't want to drive me. I don't drive so I can't go. ....A year ago I would have been sour for about an hour and a half! lol Today I was like..... okay, I'm disappointed but, okay.

Some other things I have really wanted in life, but, at least for now, it isn't God's plan, so that verse can really be a life saver! Well I guess so! After all, it was given to us by the Lifesaver, right? :)

This post was kind of inspired by "Completely" by Among the Thirsty. I love that song so much. It's about giving yourself completely to God. Go ahead and google the lyrics! :)

I hope we all really want God!

Love,
Ruth

Today's Question: Who am I Giving Glory?

This is inspired by a Bible verse I read today in Acts 12:23... "And immediately, the angel of the Lord struck him because he gave not God the glory"

..........................Yeeeeeeeah.. scary! That's a pretty creepy thing to think of. I know sometimes we seek our own glory. I'm prime for that, I know! haha Which is kinda bad.. actually it is bad. Like, my music. Okay.. To truly know me you have to know that I really love music. I love playing guitar and singing. So what I really want to do with that is to bring God's love to people, right? Well yes that's right, I guess you couldn't answer that question :P However, I also have this little part inside that wants people to think I'm awesome at the same time... which is bad. haha It's not bad to want people to like you and think you are talented, but that shouldn't be the focus in everything we do. Our focus should be on bringing glory to God, because He's the only One that deserves glory.

Funny, while I was writing this... I was listening to K-Love... here's what I heard.

Steven Curtis Chapman ... "Do Everything"
"Do everything you do to the glory of the One who made you 
Cause He made you to do 
Every little thing that you do to bring a smile to His face 
And tell the story of grace 
With every move that you make 
And every little thing you do "

Pretty good song, google it or yahoo it or something! haha It's a good reminder :)

Love and prayers,

Ruth

Today's Question: Am I taking it For Granted?

Holler over to Jason Gray... "Good to be Alive" ... that's where I got the line :) Actually, that line isn't in the song... I skewed what the song says to get that question out of it ;)

So this is yesterday's post... I was grounded yesterday, so I'm sorry about that! I may do another post later, but I don't know :D

Are we taking life for granted? I know I do sometimes.. more often than not, really. We need to remember not to take life for granted. It could be taken from us any day. Car accidents aren't so infrequent as we might wish they were ... I mean... scary right? You could die any day! :O So we need to make every day count as much as possible. Just smiling at someone can make a difference in their day! I've seen people just kind of dull looking and I smile at them and they brighten up. It makes it worth it, seriously.

Let's not take life for granted. It has been granted to us only as long as it has been and we don't know how long that is. So let's make it worth while right?

Praying for you as usual! Keep me in your prayers too, will you? I definitely need prayer, everybody does! I especially want this blog to help people, encourage them. Prayer for my posts to encourage would really be awesome! :D

Love you!
Ruth

Tenth Avenue North

Hey, check out their blog... it's super cool! I like this post they just posted :) They put some stuff up that makes me think, and other stuff that's just so fun! haha

Tenth Avenue North Blog

They are like.. probably my favourite Christian band due to their stance on a lot of things! :) I like their lead singer's encouragements! :D

Hope it encourages you!

Today's Question: Who am I?

So... Who am I? Ever been asked, "Who are you?" I have.. by people I thought knew! HAHAHA  okay but that's off topic right? Who are you? Who am I? I am a child of the one True King (little nod toward Matthew West there ;) ) I hope you are too!

But one of the questions (and this I think is just kind of a recurring thing in this series.. agreed?) we need to ask ourselves ABOUT this question is... do we show that we are a child of the King? Really this is one of the most important questions Christians should be asking themselves. We are ambassadors for Christ (ambassadors are people pretty much who represent their country/king) So we represent Christ and we need to be doing it correctly. Not saying anyone can be perfect, but we need to be actively aware of our missions.

Summary... Make sure you are showing you are a child of the King. Try to stay mindful of being an ambassador for Christ!

Praying for everyone (of course in general) that reads my posts!

Love,
Ruth

Same as before, feel free to comment, especially if you want prayer.

Today's Question: Am I a Light?

Okay, I'll admit, these are spur of the moment, not taking all that long a time to come up with a question HAHA This one was inspired by me going to K-Love and seeing they were playing "Learning to be the Light" by Newworldson.

Am I a light? I certainly hope so! But, still kind of running with the general drift of yesterday's, it is an active attempt being made on our parts that will make us lights. It isn't a laxidazical (yeah I made that word up!) just living doing the "right" things. It is actively attempting to be more Christlike, to help those in need that is being a light.

Let's try to focus on becoming better Christians. Let's focus on helping others and not just thinking "oh I have this". There's a bigger picture than most of us usually find the time to see. James says that "true religion is to help the fatherless and widows in their time of need" so let's help those in need, physical, mental and spiritual need. Prayer for those we know need strength/comfort/peace is also helping :) I must admit that is a great deal the extent of my helping! I don't have many resources at my disposal, but I love to help through prayer!

Love!
Ruth

If you want, feel free to comment below. I allow anonymous comments, but I would love it if you would sign your name! :) Feel free to ask for prayer, too, for situations in the world, or for personal things, or for friends. You can keep personal and friend prayer requests private if you want, by not signing.

Today's Question: "Am I Just Getting By"

Song title by Tenth Avenue North :D Love that band! They have so many good songs!

So... Today's Question (new series I'm going to do on here! :D) I think it's a good question to ask ourselves occasionally. Am I just getting by? Well... I know a lot of the time that's all I'm doing. But we need to be doing more. We being humans, especially those of us who are Christians. We should have a mission to fulfill. We should be actively working to help make our surroundings better. We should be fueled by something, and that fuel needs to be God's Spirit awake in our hearts.

So umm in summary....

Let us stop just living and become alive. Let's pull together, nearer to each other to strengthen each of us in our work. (Anybody need a reference to No Man is An Island by Tenth Avenue North?) We need to drop our petty quarrels and disagreements and draw together as one!

We can do this!

Love,
Ruth

l Haven't a Clue what I'm talking About...

... meaning I don't know WHY I'm talking about it.

You know, it's really awesome being a Christian. Since I've steadily become more serious about it over the last year, it's really been cool seeing the way I've been learning things/being shown things by the Holy Spirit. I've found that my greatest comfort has been knowing God has a plan and that it is perfect. I know some people are probably like... comfort in what? I'll be the first to say, my life is extremely easy, nice, filled with love from my family and friends. I do, though, tend to worry about my future. I'm rather flighty minded so I'm not too good with sciences so sometimes I worry I won't get into college (I'm a music major hopeful) sometimes I get scared like, what  if nobody ever wants to marry me. That's like every girl's dream isn't it? Sometimes I might want something right now... But always, no matter what the thing is that I want or worry about, I can know that it quite obviously isn't time for that right now or I would have it. I can know that my future is going to be the absolute best it could be even if I don't get a degree in music, or don't get married. 'God works all things together for good to those who are called according to His purpose.'

It also makes life and following God a great adventure because I don't know  what is around the bend, but I know it will ultimately all be best for me, because God loves me and only wants the best for me.

Love,

Ruth