Tag - past

Where’s My Passion?

June 23, 2020

Contentment, Freedom, grace, peace, shame

Where’s the passion I used to have? The determination to run with strength? The boldness?

I hear people think-out-loud along these lines. They wonder how their motivation disappeared, or why they procrastinate or feel so stuck. They can’t seem to rev their wheels anymore. They get stuck in the mud.

I relate. I’ve tried to get started on certain projects and then they’ve just — fallen through. Not all the issues are me, but still — the outcome feels embarrassing.

Ever been there? Maybe you have a big dream but you haven’t followed through. You have hopes for a relationship. You want to stop a bad habit. Or, go a new way…but you just can’t seem to succeed. There seems to be a stopper right ahead of you.

This morning, this verse spoke to me in a powerful way:

“So we must let go of every wound that has pierced us and the sin we so easily fall into. Then we will be able to run life’s marathon race with passion and determination, for the path has been already marked out before us…” (Heb 12: 1-2)

I must let go — to go. It is only by letting go of old wounds and sin that I can run ahead. For, no one can run effectively ahead while looking back. To run looking behind you is to run into things. To bang yourself up. Reconsidering and rehashing (aka. looking back) prohibits one from seeing the good thing God has ahead.

I realize I must (REALLY) let go of what lays behind me. Only then, can I “run life’s race with passion and determination.” Only then can I easily go down God’s path already “marked out” before (me).

God offers me a new beginning today. He gives you one too! Wonder is knowing that Jesus presents us with an endless amount of new beginnings. Today you start over. Repent if you need to… Then, you trust that the Author and Perfector of faith, Jesus Christ, is doing His best work. Believe that the Shepherd of all shepherds is protecting you from what happened in days of old. Fully rely on The Light of the World to illuminate your world in an exciting and joy-filled way.

When we look ahead at the beauty of Him, we won’t as much want to look back. Instead, I believe, we’ll move with fervor, passion, and excitement, like never before. We’ll be able to perceive the light of His goodness ahead. We will focus on Jesus, and with Him, we’ll go again.

Prayer: God, give us the grace to let go of what lays behind. We don’t want to look back anymore and miss what is ahead. Come and help us to look to Jesus, constantly. Give us undivided attention and renewed fervor. We love you. We want to live all-out for you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Being Dissed. The (real) bad – and good of it.

January 15, 2016

purposefulfaith

attack, awe, Contentment, faith, fear

9 Comments

She looked at the girl sitting next to me, and said, “Hey it is so great to see you” and continued on not even giving me the time of day.

Who does that?

Who completely ignores someone when they completely know someone?

Boiling hot, I was about ready to make a primed kettle sound. Wwwhhh….
Someone was going to get burned, and I had a feeling it was going to be me.

In an instant, my mind returned to a time of old,
me, the new girl, trying out for the team,
her, a potential friend that I really enjoyed being with,
all was good, until…
[walk in villian],
her age-old best friend walked in… (dun. dun. dun.)
and whispered to my potential laughing-mate, “Don’t be friends with her.”

Things went cold, I went hot. Wwhhh!!!

Discouraged. Dejected. Demotivated. I lost my athletic swagger.
I was rejected from the team.

I felt rejected by everyone. Wwhhh!!!

Clearly, it was apparent that there was something deeper going on here.

I couldn’t help but think:

Boiling over happens because of past pain that lays under.
Yesterday returns to sear us with the markings of – unwanted today.
The devil is a avid scorcher, using his red trident of age-old shame – time and time again.

He hits us with it – and we almost can’t help it. We jump out of our seat, jump on the person and rip the person apart from the insides out. We say, you won’t mess with me or rule over me or hurt me ever again. Our eyes close, our fists move and our whole will is determined not to live on repeat. Except, when we open our eyes, the person we look at is not the girl on the field, but the thirty year old with two kids and a whole heaping lot of problems just like us.

Hmm…

I want to cut off this record on repeat that won’t stop playing,
“I think I am dumb. I think that is why. People don’t love me. They will always pass by.”

This kind of song makes you live in limbo. It makes you live believing people have one foot in and one foot out. It makes you live expecting the next diss. It makes you live wondering when you will feel hurt again. It makes you wonder if God will be out the door on you too.

Wwhhh!!! It starts to rise in you. You feel like hitting again. Except when you open your eyes you realize who you would be hitting, and you remember – he was already hit.

Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Mt. 26:67

You want to get angry, but as you start to soften your face, you remember:
‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone… Mk. 12:10

The stone that keeps the unsteady fabric of beings from falling over.
The stone that was never thrown.
The stone that binds eternal life.
The stone that knows the depth of rejection.
The stone that rose up to build a church that unites hands around the world today.
The stone with a clear purpose, despite the mocks, slanders and accusations of others.
The stone that was raised on high.
The stone that the Father adored.
The stone that seals us as always accepted.
The stone that pursues us and loves us and owns us always and forever and then forevermore.

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It Will Surely Come

January 14, 2016

purposefulfaith

Contentment, dreams, faith, fear

2 Comments

Post by Karina

“And the Lord answered me:

“Write the vision;
    make it plain on tablets,
    so he may run who reads it.
For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
    it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
    it will surely come; it will not delay.” Habakkuk 2:2-3

These are the words of God. I read them and I know they weren’t just for Habakkuk. They are for me. And they are for you. At the dawn of a new year, we are filled times of reflection. We look back, sometimes with a sense of accomplishment or delight. But often, with a sense of regret…regret for what we did or didn’t do.

On the other side of looking back, we look forward. We look forward not knowing what lies ahead. The future entails so much mystery. We can prepare and plan all we want but, we cannot control what is to come. We never could.

Mystery is okay. It can be a good place to be. I have found that it is in the mystery where God reveals Himself. He does His best work there because it is there where we learn to completely depend on Him.

All of us have dreams. God has dreams for us. Along with those dreams, God has a strategy for how He desires it to come to fruition. We want the dream to happen now. We are such a people conditioned to expect a suddenly. Now, God is well able to bring about a suddenly but, He is much more concerned about the process. He is not so much concerned with the outcome as He is with who we are becoming. The Father is looking to develop patience in us a character within us that can sustain the calling He has for us.

Write down the vision.

What are the dreams of your heart? What are the longings of your soul? Write them down. Pray over them. Call them forth.

It will not lie.

God is a God of His Word. He is not a man that He should lie. His promises stand true throughout eternity. He is a God of purpose and of order. That holds true whether or not we can see the work of His hands.

Wait for it.

This whole timing thing is tricky! There is my timing and there is God’s timing. As much as I want it to be true, my timing is rarely His timing. You and I have to be okay with that. He really does know best. He knows the end from the beginning. We have to trust that. We have to trust His timing. Ours dreams will come at the right time under the right circumstances.

God’s new mercies are here and waiting for us to take hold of them.

The Lord will never place a dream in our hearts that He doesn’t intend to bring to life. He wants us to simply trust Him and partner with Heaven to walk in the fullness of our callings.

Be brave my sister.

Hold onto your God-Sized Dream.

Trust in His perfect timing.

Destiny is calling your name.

What is the vision that you are believing God for?

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Karina is a devoted follower of Jesus from New Orleans, Louisiana, but has made her home in Baton Rouge for the past 15 years. She spends much of her time leading worship at church, writing, reading, dancing and mentoring the next generation. She has a huge heart for serving and missions. She is an advocate for the local church especially the one that she attends, Healing Place Church. She also enjoys working out, traveling, photography and going to concerts/conferences.

Karina believes that every woman has a God-sized dream on the inside of them and it is up to an encouraging community to help nurture that dream. Her goal in writing is to see women get a revelation of God’s Word and discover how to apply it to their lives in order to walk in freedom and live the life that God intended. But the most important thing to her is to live out the call of Isaiah 26:8…For His Name and His Renown are the desire of our souls! You can connect with her at “For His Name and His Renown.”

Getting Past Bad Memories

August 18, 2015

purposefulfaith

attack, failure, fear, guilt

59 Comments

I can’t stop remembering.
I want to, but I can’t.
Already processed words, feelings and hurts remain pressed up in me – concentrated.
Like cars at a landfill, I have squeezed in so much; these memories tower high.

Sure, I want to wave goodbye,
but my mind holds on as if I am losing a long lost friend.

Sure, I want to finally turn my back on the, tears, embarrassment, shame and pain –
but it seems I would negate or excuse all that happened.

So, I hold on, like one carrying a stinky diaper.
I hold on like one dealing with month-old trash.
I hold on like a 2-year old looking around at who may hit them next.

I keep my stink near, out of fear.

Why? Yes, I raise my hand, to acknowledge what I am about to tell you is a lie. But it lures me every time.

The Lie:
Tying myself up in yesterday,
will keep my heart from being tied up today.

So, I keep my antennae’s up and out;
threats are analyzed.

My warning bells are working and tested;
safety walls can fly up.

On-demand memories are readily available;
they are the boot camp to my feet, helping me to run as needed.

But, does my strategy even work? Because it seems I spend a lot of time in the landfill – walking over bad waste, smelly pieces and unloved emotions.

I can’t help but ask, does being around the stinky
somehow generate the sacred?

I don’t think so. So, why do I keep doing it?

My delay in demolishing only seems to work in demolishing my heart yet again.

That is what happens to wastelands of bad memories, they only hang out to make things more disgusting. I don’t want to allow flies to buzz, mold to grow and my heart to grow cold to others because of the garbage that I can’t seem to unload.

The reality is, when I take a hard and fast look:

Reserving these pains doesn’t revive my worth.

Remembering the frustration doesn’t relieve my agony.

Reliving these pinpricks doesn’t reject future hurts.

It just doesn’t. And, God knows it too.

Simply said, he tells us, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” Is. 48:13

I love what comes next even more:

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.
The wild beasts will honor me,
    the jackals and the ostriches,
for I give water in the wilderness,
    rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
  the people whom I formed for myself.
that they might declare my praise.
Is. 48:19-21

Notice this: Here, God doesn’t care much about fixing an old thing;
he cares about doing a new thing!

He cares about:

Generating life out of now-dead things.
Making the wild-ones obey and honor him.
Giving water to the souls with holes.
Providing for his chosen people.

When we see past the days of old,
we see the abundance of God.

When we keep our heart in today,
we suddenly step up above the fray.

God wants to give us the essential and the substantial
to fill us with his potential.

Notice the result? It is powerful. God in his wisdom protects our skittish mind from doing what it loves to do best. He prevents us from acting like a pig in a trough – returning to his old stink.

How?
He replaces our precautionary stance with a praised-filled one.

Suddenly our arms move from crossed to open.
Our eyes look from side-to-side, to straight up.
Our heart is laid down at his feet, just trying to inch closer to his goodness, rather than closed up in safety walls.

Our eyes are open to see goodness rather than pain.
Restoration rather than hardship.
Glory rather than trash.

And, it is beautiful, budding beautiful, sunrise beautiful, springtime beautiful. It captures our eyes with new hopes, new dreams and new what-ifs. It opens up a whole new world – a fresh, exciting and adventurous world.

I guess the choice is mine, it’s ours…
We can choose to sit in the pain of yesterday
or we can choose to sit in the glory of today.

I know which one I am going to pursue.

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