Hi friends! I hope your life is so full and rich and blessed! Summer is right around the corner -- woohoo! I am so excited to be a professional camp counselor, going to four different camps for four weeks in a row. I love camps and all that they have to offer in terms of growth, friendships and new life experiences. It should be a fun month!
I feel like God has been so kind in showing me so much in the past month. It's been pretty simple stuff, but it's sunk in in a whole new way lately. Mainly, God has been showing and teaching me that perspective is the difference between sorrow and joy in so much of life -- hence the picture to the left -- do you see an old lady or a young girl? (I see the girl). The way that we look at the cards that we're dealt and the things that happen in our lives determines how we respond to them and the outlook that we have in life. A person can always feel like they aren't wealthy enough, happy enough, loved enough, pretty enough, etc. and those feelings only lead to feelings of inadequacy and sadness, and they only lead us away from God and the fullness and richness He wants to bring to our lives. EVERYTHING in life is a blessing. EVERYTHING. We are entitled to nothing in this life beyone the wages of our sin, which is death. Yet God pours out so many blessings to us everyday just because He's crazy about us. And the even cooler thing is that God even uses the junk and the sorrow we experience in lives for our good and turns those things into blessings. When I look back on the hardest, darkest times in my life I am so thankful because I see God's hand so much more visibly than in the happy, carefree times of my life. The hard times were times when I was stripped of the things I turn to daily instead of God, and it was during these times that I had no choice but to grip onto Him, to dive into Him and to grow into a better picture of Him. Romans 5 tells us we can "rejoice in our sufferings." Think about what it means to rejoice. It means to throw your arms up in the air and praise God! It means to be overfilled with joy! Pretty crazy that we serve a God who can take the worst of the worst that we experience and turn it into blessings we can rejoice over.
But we can only rejoice over these things if we look at them as blessings. We must see past the hurt and see the refinement; past the death and see the new life; past the loss and see what is gained. We can only do that if we have a Godly perspective, one that is focused on the Word and flows naturally from it.
Living a life drenched in God means living a life focused on what He does give us rather than what He doesn't. Don't have a girlfriend/boyfriend? I bet you have amazing friends who love you like crazy and who God loves you like crazy through. Don't have the wardrobe you want? I bet you are fully clothed everyday. Wish your house was bigger? I'm betting you have a roof over your head. Wish you had the top of the line Macbook? If you are reading this right now it means that you have access to a computer -- a benefit 80% of the people in this world don't have.
Need a little more perspective? Click here: http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm
Hope your life is drenched in His unfailing, unceasing Love! It's all that's worth living for :)
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