Love

Wow! Again, it has been a long time since I posted! This time, however, my lack of posting is not due to a lack of time or a busy schedule, but rather just the lack of knowing how to describe everything I am learning and feeling lately!
In the past couple of weeks God has been showing me a lot about my lack of love for Him in comparison to His infinite love for me. I say I love Him, but do I really? How do I show that I love Him? Well, really, the answer to this question is quite simple. If I truly do love Him, I show that love for Him by obeying Him and by loving others (John 14:15). Oh man. This has hit me hard. I do not love others as much as I should. I say that I love other people, but in my actions and responses, I really don't. I show by the way that I act towards people and by the things that I say to people whether or not I truly love them, and most of the time, I betray myself and my true heart. That hurts. I want to love others. I want to be more like Christ and love like He loves, but I definitely do not! I cannot love that way. Not in my own strength and ability, at least. I have to allow Christ to reign in and through me and love others through me. THAT is the ONLY way that I can possibly fulfill the second great commandment to love others as myself. Well, just some thoughts I have been musing and wanted to share! Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!!

Life

Why is it that some people struggle so much while other people tend to simply go through life and not struggle one little bit? I have had this question on my mind for some time. Any ideas? :)

"Lord, Change my Heart"

"Lord, change my heart from deep within;
purify me once again;
renew my mind to love Your truth;
make me more and more like You!
Lord, cause my will to choose Your ways
in each temptation that I face;
until Your glory's shining through,
make me more and more like You!
More and more like You;
more and more like You!
Do whatever You must do
to make me more and more like You!
Lord, now I rest in Your great love,
secure in Your own righteousness,
because Your Spirit's work of grace
makes me more and more like You!
More and more like You;
more and more like You!
Do whatever You must do
to make me more and more like You! "

This song has been the prayer of my heart for the past few days. God has been working in my heart on several levels, and I would like to take a few minutes to share some of what the Lord has been teaching me.

1. The first thing He has been teaching me has been about my love and His love for me. First, my love: for Him, and for those around me. I have been SO convicted on many levels over my love for my Lord and for my brothers and sisters in Christ. One verse that has challenged me has been 2 Corinthians 5:14 - "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead:" I have been challenged to make this verse a daily prayer in my life. If the love of Christ for me is controlling me, then everything I do will be done out of love for Him. If God's love for me is controlling me, then ministry will not be a burden, but a blessing; a means of showing that love to other people. I have also been impressed with God's love for me. God's love for me is so great that it caused Him to send His Son to die for my sins; it is so great that nothing can EVER separate me from it; it is so great that it surpasses any sin that I can commit and loves me in spite of myself! What an intense love!!


2. The second thing that God has been teaching me is on the level of my heart. So many times I say the right things on the outside in response to my circumstances or to the people in my life, but in my heart I feel so differently. I say that God is good and loves me and has a good plan for what I am going through, but on the inside I am thinking "how could God allow things to come into my life that hurt me if He really loves me," and "God isn't good because the things He brings into my life are not good!" The problem I face is my definition of good and of love. My definition of good based on those two statements is "whatever makes me feel good or doesn't hurt," when in reality, GOD'S definition of good, which is the only one that matters, is "whatever makes me more like Christ and brings God the most glory." My definition of love is "not hurting me; giving me what I want," when in reality, God's definition of love is "giving me what I need; chastening me when I need it; doing what is best for me, not necessarily what I want." God has been teaching me that I need to look at my circumstances through His perspective rather than mine. My perspective is so messed up because of sin, so I do not always see things very clearly. It is like my vision being blurry, and God gives me a pair of glasses so that I can see clearly, and I choose not to use them. That pair of glasses is His Word. His Word shows me who God is, and THAT is what I need to base my view of life on. When I try to look at life through my perspective, I will never see the goodness of God, but rather, I will see a God who is unloving and who is trying to hurt me.


Well, these are just a couple of things I have been learning lately, and I hope they can be a blessing to you all who read this post! If there is ever anything you want to talk about or any way I can be praying for any of you, email me at stephanie.nielsen@ni.edu or facebook message me!

"Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my ALL!"

Time

Hey! Sorry it has been so long since I have updated you all with how the Lord has been working in my heart and life this summer! Since my last post, SO many things have happened, some good, and some maybe not so much. In general, I have just been REALLY busy! 

I cannot believe that the summer is over half-way done! I feel like it just started a few days ago! Time flies by so incredibly fast! In the past two and a half months, the Lord has really been breaking me of a lot of things. He has been revealing tendencies in my heart that I didn't even know were there, idols that I had no idea were even idols, and things in my life in general that are not Christlike. It is so hard for me, sometimes, when I am shown an area of my life that does not measure up to God's standards, to simply submit and surrender that area to Him and allow Him to change me and make me more Christlike. I have realized this summer more than ever that I have such a skewed view of God! So often I go through life thinking that my view of Him is fine, but my reactions to circumstances that He brings into my life show that, in reality, my perception of God is WAY off. I know all the right things to say and the right things to do. I know the answers. I was taught well by so many loving and patient individuals. But my focus is not where it should be. When I am going through a trial, I don't turn my gaze and focus on my amazing and loving Savior who brought the circumstance into my life. Instead, I tend to keep my focus on the circumstance and on myself. 

All this to say, the Lord has been hitting me hard this summer with my obvious lack of trust. When trials come into our lives, they are designed by my all-knowing, loving Creator God who would NEVER do anything to me simply to cause me pain. He brings these things to show me my heart and to change that heart to be more like the heart of His Son, Jesus Christ. God is good. He IS good. HE IS GOOD! I know this so well! I have told myself this and so many other truths about God so many times! But when it comes down to crunch time, I forget...or rather I refuse to believe. I refuse to stand fast to what I KNOW to be true simply because it doesn't make sense to ME. How dumb! How foolish of me, a small, insignificant creation, to look at what my magnificent maker is doing in my life and say "this doesn't make sense. You are doing it wrong!" I have been SO convicted especially this past week over my lack of trust and my pride in thinking that I know better than my GOD, Who MADE me, Who SAVED me from my sin, Who LOVES me, and Who knows EVERYTHING. I think I know better than Him? How could I? He is SO much higher than I! He is perfect, and His plan is perfect, and even if it may not make sense to my puny little mind, His mind is WAY higher than mine and it makes perfect sense to Him! Wow. I am so overwhelmed by God's goodness to me and His patience with me. I fail Him so many times, but He is still right at the same place waiting for me to realize my failure, confess it to Him, and come back to Him. What a GOOD GOD! What a LOVING God! What a Savior!

Romans 6-8 ~ Wow! What an Amazing God!!

I have been reading, studying, and meditating on Romans 6-8 this week, and it has been such an encourgaement that I felt I just HAD to share it with you all!

Paul ends chapter 5 by talking about how when we sin, God's grace is greater than our sin, and His grace abounds. So then Paul begins chapter 6 by asking, "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Of course, our answer is obviously no. Paul says that before we became children of God we were slaves to sin and obeyed our sinful passions and lusts; but now that we have been set free from sin, how can we continue to live in sin, no matter what the reason? As children of God, we are set free from sin and also enslaved to a new master: God. But this new master, God, gives us a choice to Him. This is different from our slavery to sin where we were forced to serve sin and to obey Satan: we now have a choice! And what do so many of us (including me) do with that choice? We choose to obey our sinful nature rather than to obey God! How unreasonable and illogical is that? I find myself so many times getting so frustrated with myself because, even though I now have a choice, I still continue to choose the wrong. It is then that I must realize that I have a choice to make NOW. Not a choice two hours ago or even two minutes ago, but a choice now. I have a choice every minute of every day to do right and to obey my new master, and when I make the wrong choice sometimes, I cannot look back and dwell on that wrong choice, but I MUST look at right now and make the choice to obey God right now. I find myself loosing sight of God's forgiveness and often not accepting it even though I have asked earnestly for it. How foolish of me. Anyway, that is enough rambling on that point.

Paul goes on in chapter 6 to explain that we are not to sin because we are not under the law of sin that we were once under, but we are now under grace: God's grace. What a privilege! Then Paul asks another daunting yet convicting question: "Are we to sin because we are not under the law but under grace?" Wow! This is HUGE! I have known and heard so many people who claim to be children of God say that they can do whatever they want and sin however much they please simply because they are under grace. "It's all under grace. I can just ask forgiveness later," they say. But that is not how the Christian life is to be lived! We are not to sin simply because we are already forgiven! One thought that has helped me with this is that Christ died for every sin I committed in the past, every sin I am committing right now in the present, and every sin I will commit in the future. Every sin that I commit helps nail Christ to the cross. Do I REALLY want to add to the list? Christ suffered SO much on the cross just so that I could be a child of God and not spend eternity in Hell. I should be grateful enough to live the life that He has given me for Him. I shouldn't want to live for myself, doing what I want, when I want to do it. I am so guilty of this. I often live in the "whatever Stephanie wants" mode. That is a TERRIBLE life to live! It is so unsatisfying and empty! Only living for Christ really satisfies and gives my life any purpose! I want my life to count for Christ. I want HIM to be glorified in and through my life, not me. Well, this post has suddenly gotten very long, and I have run out of time to finish it. I will consider this part one, and will finish it later!

New Beginnings. . .Old Ways

Over the past couple of days I have been thinking and thinking about how short my spiritual life has been, and yet how much the Lord has shown me and grown me already. I cannot believe it has only and yet already been almost two months! I have been reading through Ephesians, and in the later chapters of the book, Paul talks about the old man and the new man. We are commanded by Paul, in several of his epistles, to "put off the old man," and "put on the new man." This subject has always been a rather difficult one for me to grasp, and it continues to puzzle me. I know what it means to put something off, and I also know what it means to put something on. The key, I believe, is what Paul writes in between these two actions: "by the renewing of your minds." In order to put off anything and put on anything, there has to be a change of mind. We must renew our minds! I must renew MY mind! This is such a huge process for me, one in which I am still struggling to wrap my mind around, but I am continuing every day to learn more and more about what it means to "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ." Growth hurts, but turns out to be so worth it in the end. Growing and becoming more like Christ brings the most satisfying reward in this entire world: a more sanctified person. I cannot wait until the day when we will eventually be glorified and be just like our great God!

My Amazing God, Found in Psalm 4

I was reading in Psalm 4 this morning, and this chapter, along with so many other psalms is completely filled with truths about our amazing God! This is one reason why I love to read the book of Psalms! Whenever I am struggling with my view of God, I go to the psalms. They are a great resource of encouragement.

Okay. Back to Psalm 4.

He hears my prayers. 

This is the first attribute of God that this psalm points out. God hears my prayers. He will always be there to answer when I call out to Him. Because of this, I should never feel like I cannot come to Him with anything. I should always feel open before Him and willing to come to Him no matter what the struggle, circumstance, or request.

He is trustworthy.

Wow. This attribute of God really hit me hard. If God is worthy of my trust, why don't I trust Him? He has proven Himself over and over again, and there is nothing that He has done that would say anything to the contrary. He IS worthy of my trust, and I can and should trust Him! I fall so short of this! Whenever a circumstance comes into my life that I don't like, I am quick to get upset rather than trusting my Almighty, Sovereign God who has a plan for my life that is absolutely perfect. I really need to grow in this area, and I am praying that the Lord will show me more areas where I fall short of trusting Him.

He is the true joy-giver.

This is another attribute of my Heavenly Father that I so fall short of believing. Because my Heavenly Father is the one true joy-giver, I should run to Him and look to Him to satisfy me and to give me true joy. But so often I run to other people and other things to satisfy me and to bring me joy. I am always trying to satisfy myself with empty things that I know will never satisfy me. In the past two or three days, I have found that God's Word truly does satisfy more than anything else in this entire world. I cannot believe that I have searched all these years in so many different places for something that was sitting right in front of my nose: God. For 18 or 19 years or so, I had searched and searched for something to satisfy me, but in all the wrong places. Not until the end of my second year of college at a Bible college did I finally realize the huge mistake that I had been making and give myself up in surrender to Him.

These are just a few of the several attributes of God that are found in this psalm. In the past several days, I have been so overwhelmed as I look at the psalms and see so many amazing attributes of my great God! I am  so thankful that I have a God who loves me and who is so amazing!

"Love, so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my ALL."

"Set Your Minds. . ."

"Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth" (Col. 3:2). "Those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit" (Rom. 8:5). These verses have been running through my mind the past couple of days.

What does it mean to "set your mind" on something? I believe that this means that my mind is so consumed with something that there is no room for anything else. So that means that for my mind to be "set" on things that are above, my mind must be consumed with "things that are above" (ie: God and His Word). Oh, how I fall short of this! I always consume my mind with things that don't matter: present circumstances, what other people think of me, how I am going to get the things done that I need to get done, etc. What I SHOULD be filling my mind (and consequently my heart) on are the things that DO matter: God's Word and who HE is.

So what is the difference between the days when I am (rarely) focused on my Savior and His Word, and those days (almost all of them) that I am focused on myself and on what is going on around me? I think that the difference is how I start off my day and the steps I take during the day. I have found that those rare days when I am focused on God's Word and on pleasing Him, are the days that I have started my day with MEANINGFUL time in His Word (not just reading because someone might ask me), and have gone through the day consistently reminding myself of what God's Word says. I have found that I MUST take every free moment that my mind has, and use those moments to rehearse God's Word in my memory so that I am focusing my mind on "things that are [. . .] true [. . .]" (Phil. 4:8)

Lord, help me to focus my mind on You and Your Word. I cannot possibly do that on my own. I need Your help desperately! Help me to love You so much that everything else is overshadowed in comparison!

In All Things God Works for our Good!

 "And this we know: in the journey of life, whether green rolling hills or the desert bare and dry, in all things, God works for our good: for those who love the Lord!" "I will wait on You, Lord, for my hope is in Your Word! More than watchmen wait for morn', I will wait for You, my Lord! I will wait for You, my Lord!" These two songs have been running and running through my mind lately, and they, along with so many other great songs, are packed with meaning and truth! The first song begins with "this we know..." This phrase alone has a load of meaning. Because of the fact that what we "know" is truth, we can say confidently that "we KNOW" that this is true. We know that God's Word never changes, and we know that He is good! The next phrase, "whether green rolling hills or the deserts bare and dry..." is very important as well. No matter if we are going through good times or bad times, through joy or sorrow, through victory or defeat, we can KNOW that God is good and that He works things for our good! This next phrase gets me every time. "In all things, God works for our good!" Wow! This is an incredible statement of faith! But what does it mean that in all things, God works for our good? Romans 8:28 says that "all things work together for good" for those who love God. But the things that come into our lives don't seem good! In fact, they seem bad! So where is the good? The good comes in the fact that this verse doesn't say that God makes everything to BE good, but He works everything together for good. In other words, the circumstances in our lives are bringing about good rather than being "good" themselves. The end result of those circumstances is our good because, if we allow them to, they will change us and make us more like Christ! That is such a comfort! Wow! That song has a lot of good truths! The second song is more of a prayer rather than simply stating truth. This song is a prayer from David's Psalm 130. This is a prayer to God acknowledging that He is in control. David is saying that because his hope is not in this world and not in himself, but in God's Word, he can wait on the Lord's timing. God's timing is always perfect! The allusion of watchmen was to older times when they would have watchmen guarding castles and important places. The watchmen on the night-watch had a much harder time than the daytime watchmen because at night it is harder to see. So the watchmen on the night-watch would sit or walk and very confidently await the morning light. This was a very expectant hope and watch. It is an eager watch of patience. Our waiting on the Lord should be even more than that! We should be watching so eagerly and intently for God's timing, knowing that His timing is best! These two songs have been such a challenge to me lately, and I hope they can be a challenge to you all as well!


~ Stephanie ~ 
    *Phil. 3:13-14*

What is Love?

Love...what is it? Is it that mushy feeling you get when you see that guy or girl? Is it a hug? Is it saying "I love you"? What is love? Love, as defined by our very accurate and correct Holy Bible is one word: God. I John 4 says that God is love. This statement does not simply mean that God is something else: He is really love. This means that love is His very nature. It is the basis of everything that He does. And we are commanded to love. In Matthew 22, we are told that we are to above all else love our God most of all; then in the very next verse we are commanded to, next to that, love our neighbor the same way that we love ourselves. We love ourselves WAY too much. I know from experience that I love myself way more than I should. Whenever I have a choice to make, I will most likely make the choice that makes things easier for me, not for those around me; but by the grace of God I am able to deny myself and show love to others and make the unselfish choice, but that isn't even very often. I am so selfish, and I know so many people who are. So then if we are commanded to love, how DO we love? If God is love, and I KNOW I am certainly not God, then how do I become something that is that is the very essence of His character? This has been a question in my mind for some time, and I am just completely amazed by the love of my God. His love is not a selfish love. It is not a taking love. His love gives and sacrifices and puts others before self. THAT is my God. THAT is love. And how to do that, I have no idea; but I will continue to pray that God will be gracious to me and grant me His love so that I may love others the way that He loves me: unselfishly and sacrificially.

~ Stephanie ~
    *Phil. 3:13-14*