Keep your chin up

So everyone in this world experiences highs and lows in life. Its inevitable and if you think otherwise, you need to stop kidding yourself, or come out from under that rock you have been living under. Life in this world is a roller coaster emotionally, physically, and most importantly spiritually. We go through periods where things are going great in our personal lives like we have a great boyfriend or girlfriend, our job is really great (or we find a job), our grades are good, and our relationships with our families are great. However, there are also periods where we go through crap. Pure crap.We are lonely and feel as though no one will ever love us, we are financially in trouble and unemployed, we have familial struggles, and so on and so on. Those times can feel hopeless. I am here to tell you though that in any situation, bad and good, we can have hope.

If there is one thing that I think most Christians can agree on, its that God is here for us no matter what. That right there SHOULD be all I need to say about this. I should be able to just leave it at that, wish you all a good evening, and let you all look forward to the next time I post something. However, its easy for us to accept that as a good enough reason to cheer up for about 5.38 seconds, then we feel insecure again. We humans are so focused on the tangible things. God is with us always? Oh well that's GREAT! ....Where is he? I don't see him....

However, if you read the Bible, and you might have to go skim through what it says again, it teaches nothing BUT hope for us. There are tons of stories about people who literally went through Hell on Earth. They experienced pain and agony and fear and abandonment. However, they were never left on their own and in the end, God would rescue them. Job I think is a great example of this. He was utterly destroyed. Everything taken away from him. His family, is property, everything he owned was taken from him. HOWEVER, Job remained faithful knowing that God does not back down from his promises and will always bless his people and deliver them. Pretty great example of how we should face the hard times in our life too.

I want to point out though as well that we are to have hope still in the good times as well. "Hunter, its so easy to do that." Sure, you might think that. Hope in God is very closely related to your faith. Our hope is in Christ and by having faith in him, we are to remember him in all things, good and bad. However, I have seen in both my life and others, that when things are going well in our lives, we tend to forget where these blessings come from and even sometimes that they are blessings, not anything we earned by our own doing. When things are going well, we need to understand that God is giving us the blessings and giving us a time of prosperity, and we therefore need to keep hope in God that his promise of giving us infinitely more in Heaven is still true. It may seem like you could be perfectly happy living like that in those times, but comparatively to Heaven, you have no idea what joy even means! So continue to have faith that God's promises of eternal joy are more than just the happiness we can find on Earth.

We are to keep finding our hope in God through Jesus Christ both in the hard times by knowing that God redeems his people and calls them out of the darkness, but also we are to keep seeing the hope in him in the good by knowing that his promise means so much more than temporary earthly joy. As Christians, it is so important not to get complacent in the good times or to feel as though God is not a part of our good times. Everything we have is from him. We have done nothing to earn our blessings or good fortune. Keep the hope that he will stick to his promise of eternal joy in his presence.

My prayer for you is that your hope in God is renewed today and that you recognize your worth. God will never forsake you, and he will never let you settle for the earthly happiness when he has so much more prepared for you in Heaven. I pray that you seem him more and more each day and feel him guiding you more and more along his will.

Having a Rough Time?

Check out these lyrics from Casting Crowns' song Praise You In This Storm...

I was sure by now,God, that You would have reached down
and wiped our tears away,
stepped in and saved the day.
But once again, I say amen
and it's still raining
as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain,
"I'm with you"
and as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise
the God who gives and takes away.

Chorus:
And I'll praise you in this storm
and I will lift my hands
for You are who You are
no matter where I am
and every tear I've cried
You hold in your hand
You never left my side
and though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm

I remember when I stumbled in the wind
You heard my cry to You
and raised me up again
my strength is almost gone how can I carry on
if I can't find You
and as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain
"I'm with you"
and as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise
the God who gives and takes away

Chorus

I lift my eyes onto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth
I lift my eyes onto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth 

Prayer

So something I have seen that a lot, if not all Christians struggle with, is prayer. How do I pray? When do I pray? What does praying even mean? Is there a wrong way to pray? All very good questions because prayer is a very personal thing for you and for God. Its not the same for any two people, so thus, we have a lot of differences in what prayer looks like and therefore now set of instructions that tell us EXACTLY how to pray. There is no list of things you have to cover or anything like that.

First off, I feel like the biggest question I hear is "How do I pray?" Or it could be phrased in the statement "I don't know how to pray." Well this is silly. Why is it silly? Well let's first look at what exactly is prayer? Prayer is simply our way of communicating with God. So many times, people look at prayer as our way to just talk AT God rather than to talk WITH God. What I mean is that simply, we talk, but rarely listen. I am sure that we all can relate to this. We pray to God and we tell him our joys and our struggles, we thank him for blessings and ask him for guidance and strength. However, once we say "Amen", that is often the end of it. Prayer is not just when we are talking. Prayer is a conversation, a dialogue, not a monologue. God is not the audience to his creation. He is the director. He is actually like a director AT a dress rehearsal of a play. He watches, but intervenes when necessary and talks to his actors and gives them new direction or tells them about how he likes what they already were doing. Not the best analogy, but I think it works for our understanding of who he is. The point is we can't just talk to him and ask him for things, yet not be listening to his response. Listening for God's response is just as much part of prayer as us talking to him. Prayer then can be just taking time to sit in quiet and just listen for his guidance and his assurance to direct you. Prayer can not be limited anymore to "speaking to God" because prayer ISN'T just when we speak. I can't stress this enough. This I feel is our biggest mistake in prayer as Christians. We complain that we don't feel God's guidance or that he is speaking or calling us, but are we actually even listening??

"Ok, Hunter, I get it! I need to listen. I will work on that, but when I speak to him, how do I do that?" Good question reader. How do you speak to someone you love, lets say your father or a close friend? I will give you a few moments to think about that question first......


OK, speak to God like that. God is your father and he is your close friend. He has your back and he wants to have an ACTUAL relationship with you where you are comfortable with him and you trust him. He doesn't want to be this unapproachable creator and ruler that we feel afraid to talk to. Be respectful, but be friendly and just TALK to him. It doesn't have to be laden with "thee", "thou", "thine/thy", and all of this wordy business that we are conditioned to think. Matthew 6:7 says "And when you pray, do not heap on empty words as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words." Don't be wordy, say what you mean and what you need to say and end it. God doesn't like when we talk in circles any more than other people do.

Well the next issue is when to pray. Always be in a state of prayer. As a Christian, it is important to always be in this "conversation" with our Father. When we are not directly talking to him, we should have an ear open to what he is saying to us and how and where he is guiding us. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says this: "Rejoice always, PRAY WITHOUT CEASING, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for all of you." Notice the capitalized letters. Pray without ceasing. Always be speaking or listening to God.

Why do we need to pray though? This is the easiest question of them all. We need to pray to build that relationship that I mentioned earlier. God wants a real relationship with us. Unlike the relationships or lack of, between people and the deities of other religions. God loves us and wants to be connected with us and have an actual working relationship with us. How many relationships with other people have you had that worked well without ever talking to each other at all. Romantic, friendship, or familial, none of them work without proper communication, both speaking and listening. Prayer is ESSENTIAL to building and maintaining our relationship with the creator of the universe.

Why would you NOT want to have a relationship with him? Talk to the guy for crying out loud!!! And listen to what he has to say in return, it is probably going to change your life.