Remain | “Sticking Beside Him” Series

Hey Readers! Thank you for joining me again for another entry. I’ve been M.I.A for more than a month and I hate that for me! Please understand that life has been life-ing and I’ve been overwhelmed but I knew that if there was any time to sit and write, it was now so here I am!

In light of our new series “Sticking beside Him”, I wanted to kick off our first entry with two scriptures:

Philippians 1:6 “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (ESV)

Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (ESV)

Both scriptures are a part of letters written by the Apostle Paul to the churches in Ephesus and Philipi. His intentions were to uplift, encourage, empower and push the believers in those areas to continue pursuing God and holiness. While I was away, I found myself thinking about them in my prayer time and throughout my work days whenever I felt myself getting discouraged about different things I couldn’t control. The truth is, in this walk with Christ we aren’t promised life without hardships and trials. We are expected to go through life holding onto the faith that God is with us through it all. Depending on what you’re going through, I can empathize with how tough it is to believe that. But it is true. With God we can overcome anything.

With that said, I wanted to share these scriptures with you because the word of God is a weapon. As you are sitting in your situation and wondering “why you”, I want you to remember these truths. For example, the enemy likes to try to make me lose my faith in God by telling me every now and again how insignificant my impact will be if I did ANYTHING for God. He’ll say things like “you’re wasting time doing that”, or “if you do that, you won’t get anything out of it so don’t even try” or “someone else can do a better job than what you’ve just done. Walk away.” For someone who has struggled with her purpose in Christ for years, this has been in times past just enough negativity for me to quit whatever it is I started. If you’ve been a part of my life in a close way, you can attest to the fact that I had a habit of not seeing things through. I never waited for the final result of a thing if the initial launch of it was not what I expected.

It wasn’t until I found and began meditating on the scriptures that I gained ammunition to not only call the devil a liar, but believed that he is one too. You see, one of the trick’s of the enemy is to reiterate the negative feelings you already believe about yourself. He doesn’t have to tell you new lies if there are already a set of lies you’ve had on repeat in your brain for the last 10 years. He just needs to hear you tell yourself that and then he can keep using it against you. So there I was, a girl with big dreams and big insecurity…until God revealed to me that I do have a place. There is special work He has set aside for just me to do. He has started something on the inside of me that He fully intends to complete. Do you know what that meant? It meant that I don’t serve a God who is a quitter; therefore, I cannot be one.

The Word of God is life. I know for some, it can sound like a song on repeat when people say “God has plans for you” because they never feel like they are seeing them revealed. The American church especially wants God to reveal the plan before they move. We want to ask God for instruction one time and one time only in prayer and then have it all laid out before us so that we can review it, and maybe even revise it so that we feel more comfortable obeying it. That is not how the God of the Bible works. When we open scripture, we don’t see people ordering God to do things they want him to do so that they can be happy. We see people walking step by step with God and with other believers, engaging in conversations with Him, believing that whatever He would have them do is for the best. We should read our Bibles more quite frankly.

So believe. If you are that person who is having trouble believing your life has purpose, meditate on the scriptures above. It’s not empty words. You have specific work that God has set aside for you to do on earth. Work he created with you in mind. Work that he took pleasure in reserving for you. He also has created inside of you something great and fully intends to complete what he started but he needs you to stick beside him to do it. You have to remain in prayer, remain in His Word, remain in good community, remain remain remain. How do you expect for the plans to be revealed to you if you don’t? Scripture shows us that he speaks through it all. Even through the community of people you don’t think you need. News flash, you need them and they need you. (See blog post “Community Matters”)

I’ll wrap up this entry here. I hope to have said something to encourage you. Please let me know down in the comment section. I enjoy hearing from you there :)

***Also, please check out my merch ! I have more designs coming for the fall and winter seasons but there’s already something there for everyone to wear and it would be a blessing to me as well as help with everything that I have going on behind the scenes. Until next time, God bless you!