One Day Without God

 I’d never doubted the Bible before, not even before I was a believer. So what made me entertain that moment of disbelief? What made me give it a second thought? This post is going to relay a brief account of the single day in my life that I somehow managed to doubt the existence of God, and the affect it will forever have on my life.

I can remember it clear as day, it was summer, I’m pretty positive I had only become a true believe the November before that. I totally believed the Bible, I loved God, I thought He was so awesome and powerful and that this earth He created was totally amazing! Being raised in a godly home, I had been thoroughly taught the scriptures, though, of course I’m am still learning. Anyway, I think it was a Saturday afternoon, the previous night our family had watched a movie called, “Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution.” I totally believed everything being said. I had never, ever for a second ever considered the possibility of evolution, even prior to my conversion. I thought it was stupid, I knew there was a God and that He had created everything in the universe. So that night I went to bed. I didn't give it a second thought. God created the world. Fact.

The next day I was in my backyard swinging and talking to myself (I actually do that a lot!) Anyway, my mind began to think about the movie we had watched the night before. I thought about the men on the movie who had shared their testimonies about how God had delivered them from the false belief that there was no God and that the world had evolved. Suddenly, that thought began to grow, I shouldn’t have giving myself the time to even consider it!  I am ashamed to say that I thought, “What if there wasn’t a God?”

“No, of course there is a God! Look at the world around us…you can see God everywhere!”

“But what if that really all evolved?

“I couldn’t have…the Bible said God made everything in the world.”

“But if evolution is true then the Bible isn’t true and God doesn’t really exist and He has NEVER been there.”

It’s sad to say that I really had that conversation with myself. And for that one day  I fell into the doubt that God didn’t exist. I can’t describe to you the anguish and misery I experiences. I didn’t tell anyone about my struggle…I was too ashamed. I began to imagine a life without God. I began to contemplate how much that would change everything I’d ever been taught and everything I believed in. I remember walking to a friend’s house and finding absolutely no pleasure in the creation around me. The trees weren’t beautiful, the sky was grey, the people I saw barely existed. I couldn’t stand to be alive; I couldn’t understand how I could be alive, how I could breathe. Everything in the life was misery. I couldn’t laugh, I couldn’t think straight, and nothing, absolutely nothing was beautiful to me.

I fell asleep that night feeling sick to my stomach. I couldn’t read my Bible or pray. I couldn’t eat or even think very well.

Needless to say it didn’t last long. I’m pretty sure the next morning I woke up feeling like a total idiot. The doubt was gone, the truth was back. It was the grace of God. I saw the absolute ridiculousness of believing in anything but the TRUE creator of the universe. Everything was okay because God DID exist and because He HAD created me and everything in the world.

Life is beautiful only because God created it. Fact. 

Sarah-

Life

I know it has been shamefully long since I last wrote anything. AHHHH!! Life has been so crazy these days. First, Laura and Josh are going to have a baby in August. I am trying not to freak out. She’s a girl!!! The name is Molly Elizabeth Beall, a name which I find incredibly adorable and I am finding it somewhat difficult to contain myself due to my manifold excitement!

Next, Em and Luke are getting very serious in their relationship…I mean, come on, they see each other every other day! I think they are a perfect couple and I would not be surprised if we all heard wedding bells in the near future...don’t tell her I said that ;) Oh yeah, Em and some other friends of mine are going to Turkey and Greece! They’re leaving on Tuesday!!

Daniel is getting really good in his CAP (Civil Air Patrol.) He got to fly a plane yesterday! My heart was racing all day! He looks so cool in his uniform. I love his combat boots!! Aside from that he is at least 6 ft. tall and grown up looking. Lucky girl that gets him ;)

David is his adorable self. It’s all guns and spiders with him. He broke his bow that Luke made him for his birthday. It was a pretty dramatic experience. He still listens to his “Hank the Cow Dog” tapes and could probably quote all of them. Love that kid!

Mom and dad are the same…a stead and constant couple that will always be the best example that I ever have! They’re pretty psyched about the grandbaby…though dad is determined not to let Molly call him by any silly grampaish name such as; Umpaluma, Bah Bah, or anything else strange….trust me, the list goes on and on 

What have I been up to there days? . Life is so different than I thought it would be. I fell like a grownup…most of the time. I just feel like a completely different person than I was a year ago. I feel closer to God and my family. Of course I’m still the silly, unreasonable, impulsive and ridiculously hopeless girl that everyone knows…but I feel like life has finally caught up with me and made me into a Woman…and I don’t mind it like I thought I would. For a while I really was looking for Neverland ;)

I’ve been working in the Dental office in Kansas City and am enjoying it immensely! My coworkers and employers are the bomb! I am learning SO much! I have had to learn to be very thorough and patient. I enjoy having something that I can do well. I have also gotten over any weak stomach issues that I use to deal with. Trust me, once you’re gone a while smelling bad breath and seeing bloody and decayed areas dealing with the mouth, certain things stop bothering you…plus I get to wear scrubs…so that’s a plus! (Sorry, the sentence above was a little graphic :P )

Now, about my spiritual life…since that is definitely the most important… the more I live the more I see how much I desperately need Jesus! I know that sounds original but I really mean it! In the past year and a half I have been diligently seeking God’s will in my life. As of right know I can see nothing else but the mission field, in some way or other. If you were to ask how I arrived at this place it would be very difficult to explain. But the short story is a lot of sleepless nights and a TON of prayer have led me to believe that God wants me to devote my life to spreading the gospel (specifically to children.) I have no idea what that will look like, if I will leave the states, if I will marry first (or ever,) plus there is just a whole lot more that I just don’t know! But that is alright, I am convinced God’s will direct me down the path He has for me.

Anyway, I know I owe my blog sooooooo much more than I actually end up penning, but life has been crazy. So…this will have to do!

Thanks for reading! Promise I will try to write more often ;)

The Day My Jesus Found Me

That day began with sorrow,

Like every day the same,

‘Cause I knew not dear Jesus

I felt nothing except shame.

That day my Jesus broke me,

And brought me to my knees;

My sin so deep confined me,

Yet my Jesus set me free.

That day the old self left me,

And a new one took its place.

This new one loved my Jesus,

And hated sin’s every trace.

The day ended in beauty,

I’d never felt this way!

Such praise and worship filled my heart,

That I couldn’t help but say,

“This is the day my Jesus found me,

And called me for His own,

He has my hearts allegiance,

I shall worship Him alone!”

That was the day my Jesus found me,

Oh, blessed, wondrous day!

My heart will ever praise Him,

I will never be the same!

So I know my Jesus found me,

And with me, forever He’ll stay,

He’s made new life within me,

For the old me died that day.

Knowing the God We Serve

Of course to a degree we must learn to relate to those around us. We must learn to sympathize with them. We must teach and serve and share the love of Christ with those who don’t know Him. But I think it is a very dangerous thing for Christians to spend lots of avoidable time with people (or doing things) that do not think, believe, talk or act the same way that they do. I’m talking about the extra time where we really could be doing something else.  You may say, “Well we have to learn to be strong in every situation, we have to be prepared. “ To a certain degree I would agree with that…but I don’t believe we should seek out such “experience.” I think God will give us the strength when it is needed. I think the best thing we could do when faced with an ungodly situation is run as fast as we can in the other direction. Sure, there will be times when we will stand and defend our faith when we will befriend unbelievers and try to share our faith with them. But I think we should be very, very careful with what we allow ourselves to be drawn into. I guess, I have learned from trial and error that I am very weak…so I shouldn’t give myself any room to fall. I can tend to tolerate things that I should openly refute. I should be strong…but since I am weak I should almost cage myself in, giving myself no room to fall...I don’t mean from life, but definitely from anything that could cause me to stumble. Does that make sense? It’s loud in Starbucks today …I’m not tracking very well. :P

I guess if we saw evil the right way then we would treat it the right way. If we really saw the depth of human depravity and what it is capable of doing then we would stay as far away as possible. But how will we know what evil is and just how bad it is? (Yeah, now you know where I’m going with this.) Well, the Bible says that God alone is good…good and evil are opposites, right? So if we knew God well enough then we would know exactly what evil is, right? (I’m talking to myself.) So, if we read the Bible more with the intent of understanding God and all His attributes then we would see evil is its truest form…everything contrary to the holy nature of God.  So, I think what I’m advocating here is this... we should seek to be strong by knowing our Father, not continually throwing ourselves in the line of fire (the world)…especially when we don’t know exactly what we’re running from. If we know God then we will know what God hates, and we can stay away from it. We need to know the God we serve. We need to know everything we can possibly know about Him so that we may better serve and obey Him.

Sorry to preach again, but I need to do this to myself more often :)  

Searching for Perfection

I am going to write a piece about something I struggled with for nearly three years of my teenage life.  Let me just say right off that it’s taking a lot for me to put this on paper. I’ve never actually told anyone all the details of my struggles. I’m trying to consul myself by believing that no one reads my blog anyway …but that would defeat the purpose of writing this…so I really hope people do read it.  This was an incredibly emotional thing in my life. It may not sound big, but to me it was huge, it was life or death.

First off, let’s face it, this world is enticing to girls my age (to everyone really.) It takes things so close to the truth and then turns them into lies. It makes evil look beautiful. It takes pure things and turns them into cleverly disguised sins that are incredibly easy to fall into, believe me, I know.

This world is trying to reach into the susceptible and impressionable minds and hearts of young girls. They tell them that life will be better if they only look or dress or act or talk or walk or even think a different way. They make it seem so natural, so simple. They give us girls to model ourselves after, thus beginning the cycle of unsatisfied and unsettled hearts. These girls are seemingly flawless. They have everything we could ever want. Of course it must be a good thing because they are so rich and always have the perfect boyfriend. Everyone loves them. If only we looked like them we would be successful and happy like they are.  

We begin to spend time and energy trying to achieving “the perfect look.” Before long we are skipping meals to make up for something we ate the day before.  Each week we resolve to start over and eat only what we need to stay alive and enough that our parents won’t notice what we’re doing.  Sometimes we chew the food and then spit it out so we don’t have to count the calories. On top of starving ourselves we begin to exercise. We spend hours torturing our bodies then rush to mirror to see if we look thinner. We cannot do anything that doesn’t remind us of how weak and ugly we are. When people compliment us we deny it and remind ourselves that we fell from out “diet” just yesterday so we can’t possibly be pretty. We tell ourselves repeatedly that we hate who and what we are.

Mirrors become torturous to us because every time we pass by we are reminded of what we look like. And it only takes one trip to the grocery store to remind ourselves what we desperately want to look like.

The scenario above is incredibly similar to what I went through. Actually, it is my story.  I am being brutally honest about this because I hope that it might help girls who still struggle in this area. From age 14 to 17 my life was consumed (even though it was somewhat unconscious) with the fact that my body wasn’t perfect. In response to my plight, I acted in ways that were borderline anorexic, though I didn’t realize it at the time. If you read a list online of the symptoms of an anorexic, I had almost all of them. I would starve myself for three days, then fall and eat anything I could get my hands on.  I think it became a mental game; I wanted to see how long I could go without eating. I never skipped a day of running and another hour of exercising every night. I would wake up and realize I haven’t done a certain exercise and I would get up to do it. I would exercise in between each meal. I would say I wasn’t hungry when I was starving. I tell you all this, not for pity, but to show you that I had fallen right into the devil’s trap. I had thought it was normal, I had thought that every girls put this much effort into being thin. I thought it was okay. I wanted to be perfect, didn’t every girl? I wanted guys to think I was beautiful, didn’t every girl?

Until one day…okay, maybe that’s a little misleading, I wasn’t completely free from my struggle in one day, but things dramatically changed inside of me. I remember thinking how much I wanted to be perfect. I remember trying to explain to myself all the reasons that I was doing this. Why I was basically killing my body to achieve my goal. Suddenly, it all looked so disgusting to me. I hadn’t ever really realized what I was actually doing and the real motivations behind it.  It felt like a slap across the face. Suddenly I saw everything so differently. I felt pretty and I wasn’t sure why.

Over the next couple weeks and months I saw that I had been completely and totally wrong. I had been trying to find my worth in something other than who I was in Christ. I saw that God says I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I was beautiful to God and that was all that mattered!

God told me that day that I was beautiful! I was beautiful and there was nothing I could do to change that. I was His. He had, in the complexity and beauty of how He works, fashioned me exactly how He wanted me. The outer shell on my little body didn’t matter; it’s the young woman within that He cares about.  I felt so convicted about my obsession. I realized what an idol it had become to me. Did I spend that much time on my knees in prayer? Or reading my Bible?

So, where did I go wrong? It was my mindset. I was looking for perfection in something other than Jesus Christ. I was looking in this world. I was looking in myself. I wanted to reach the goal that I had set for me. I wanted all of this for me! I wanted everything to work out for me. I wanted (me) to be perfect.  It was ALL about me! Jesus is the only true perfection…so logic would say that trying to find it anywhere else is pointless. Well, that’s what I figured out. I figured out that Jesus’ perfection covers me. I am His. He loves me. I am who He created me to be. I make Him smile.

Girls, here’s my plea to you…if you are searching for perfection like I was, look only to Jesus Christ, you won’t be disappointed, I promise.  

My Life, At Present

"It’s just another season" …that’s what I’ve been trying to tell myself these days. You see, I’ve been feeling rather trapped in my day to day to life, wondering, “what am I really going to do with my life?” Surely God won’t have me selling apples for the rest of my life, will He? Surely one day I’ll be living my adventurous life somewhere overseas, feeding starving infants and teaching small children about Jesus.

I have such big dreams….most of them are pretty crazy. Sometimes at night I can’t sleep because I’m so excited about what God is going to do in my life! Needless to say, my life had felt pretty dull recently. I’ve struggled with feeling satisfied with my present situation. I guess I got into the wrong mindset that unless I’m serving the Lord somewhere in a third world country I am wasting my time. This is, of course, ridiculous because not everyone will become missionaries away from home.  There is work to be done everywhere!  There are people next door that need Jesus. There are schools that need teachers who are strong enough to stand up to the lies and tell children the truth. There are churches that are dead. There are people in the city that are hungry and abused.  God’s work is never out of reach, for anyone.  There are no excuses; there is no lack of opportunity.  The real tragedy is that I have been sitting around waiting for something seemingly “dramatic “to fall into my lap when there is suffering everywhere.

In every adventure there comes a time where the obvious path ends and so we must begin to blaze our own trail. You never know quite where it will lead you. I’m anxious to see where mine will take me once I’ve begun to blaze it! But for now, my path is quite clear; I am to submit to my parents and try my best to become a godly young woman, searching after God’s own heart. I am not to waste my life with the busy nothings that this life has to offer; instead I am to spend my every breath glorifying Christ with my actions. I should anxiously seek to know him better and begin to prepare myself for the life He has for me. I am to spread His praises and not be ashamed of the King I serve. I am to be thankful of where God has graciously put me and never doubt His goodness.

But I have to wonder, where will I be in ten years? Once I am completely grown and must make decisions on my own. What will be like? What day to day struggles will I face? Will I literally be blazing trails through some unnamed jungle? Will I be teaching children in Africa the name of Jesus? Will I still live in the States and support God’s work through my prayers and financial endeavors? Will I be a wife and mother?  I long to live an adventures life, the kind most people would be afraid of. I want to do dangerous things for the sake of the gospel. I want to move mountains! I want to save lives. I have spent so much time praying about my life. I truly want to do what will bring God the most glory. I have this fire in me about the whole thing…of course it is partly because I’m so excited, but really, I don’t want to let this go. When I was younger, right after I was saved, I had similar feelings. I had a real burden for children that were abused and starving. I wanted to love them and tell them about God. I want to teach them, clothe them, feed them and save them from people who would hurt them. I was (and still am) sure that God was calling me to a life like this. I resolved to give my entire life to helping children who didn’t have all the blessing I had been given. But slowly, over the years, my passion got pushed out by my selfishness. I started to imagine a life much easier. I thought of having a career. I thought of making a perfect little world for myself and the family I was sure I would have. The impossibility of what I had always planned to do scared me. The fact that I would have to leave all the comforts I was use to, the thought that people would reject me, that they would hate me. The thought of seeing people suffering and at times being helpless to do anything… it was thoughts like this (and much more) that made me pretty much put off my plans and I began to selfishly seek my own happiness. I thought I would still serve the Lord, just not in the way that I truly believed He was calling me to.

Well, that kept up until recently. I began to remember what passion I had once had. The dreams and screams and motivations I had previously had. I don’t remember exactly what I did with the feelings at first...I probably ignored them to some degree. But gradually, these thoughts began claiming more and more of my thoughts. I had difficulty sleeping at night because I couldn’t stop imagining suffering horrific suffering and sometimes even dreams. I began to pray. I began to see my selfishness. I told my dad, he told me to pray more. I went to camp and the first sermon Paul Washes preached contained a statement something very close to this, “There are children who are naked and staving, if God is telling you to help them then do it!” I really felt like God just set it right there for me to see. He showed me what he wants for my life. Of course I don’t know exactly what it will look like or where I will be, but God brought me this far and I know I can trust him to bring me the rest of the way.

I know there will probably be many more sleepless nights to come, and a whole lot more prayer. I know God has put me where I am at this time to sanctify me and continue teaching me just how much I need him! I just pray that I will, in the future, be much more willing to obey His call to follow Him. God is the best thing I can possibly imagine and not following His voice is just crazy! I have to follow my Lord, the sustainer of my life. The one who loves me and has promised that I will be with Him forever! And it’s that love that I pray will carry me through the darkest jungles that I will have to face.

P.S. I know my train of thought is not very consistent...and I rambled a whole lot…but these are some of the thoughts that have been running through my head for the last six months or so and I had to get them down on paper. 

Our God is an Awesome God

"Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, “Who is this that darkens counsel By words without knowledge?  “Now gird up your loins like a man, And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!  “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? 

Tell Me, if you have understanding,  Who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it?  “On what were its bases sunk?
Or who laid its cornerstone,  When the morning stars sang together
And all the sons of God shouted for joy? “Or who enclosed the sea with doors 

When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb;  When I made a cloud it's garment and thick darkness its swaddling band,  And I placed boundaries on it
And set a bolt and doors, And I said, ‘Thus far you shall come, but no farther;
And here shall your proud waves stop’?"

Job 38:1-11