Draw close to God and God will draw close to you. James 4:8 (NLT)
You are as close to God as you choose to be. Like any friendship you must work at developing your friendship with God. You must learn to honestly share your feelings with him when he asks you to do something, learn to care about what he cares about, and desire his friendship more that anything else. Complete honesty about your faults and your feelings. God doesn't expect you to be perfet, but he does insist on complete honesty. Bitterness is the greatest barrier to friendship with God. To be God's friend, you must be honest to God, sharing your true feelings not what you think you ought to feel or say. Releasing your resentment and revealing your feeling is the first step to healing. Expressing doubt is sometimes the first step toward the next level of intimacy with God. *I must choose to obey God in faith. Every time you trust God's wisdom and do whatever he says, even when you don't understand it, you deepen your friendship with God. We obey God, not out of duty or fear or compulsion , but because we love him and trust that he knows what is best for us. We follow Christ out of gratitude for all he has done for us, and the closer we follow him, the deeper our friendship becomes. God is more please when we do small things for him out of loving obedience. Great opportunities may come once in a lifetime, but small opportunities surround us every day. Even though such simple acts as telling the truth, being kind, and encouraging others, we bring a smile to God's face. It's better to obey than to sacrifice. *I must choose to value what God values. *I must desire friendship with God more than anything else. The more you become God's friend, the more you will care about the things he cares about.Intimate friendship with God is a choice, not an accident. You must intentionally seek it. Pain is the fuel of passion- it energizes us with an intensity to change that we don't normally possess. C.S. Lewis said, "Pain is God's megaphone." YOUR MOST IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIP -There is nothing absolutely nothing more important than developing a friendship with God. It's a relationship that will last forever. --I'm as close to God as I choose to be. Since we were restored to friendship with God by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies we will certainly be delivered from eternal punishment by his life. Romans 5:10 (NLT)
God wants to be your best friend. Knowing and loving God is our greatest privilege, and being known and loved is God's greatest pleasure. God says, "If any want to boast, they should boast that they know and understand me... These are the things that please me." BECOMING A BEST FRIEND OF GOD -> Through constant conversation. You will never grow a close relationship with God by just attending church once a week or even having a daily quiet time. Friendship with God is built by sharing all your life experiences with him. Of course it is important to establish the habit of a daily devotional time with God but he wants more than an appointment in your schedule. He wants to be included in every activity, every conversation, every problem, and even every thought. You can carry on a continuous, open-ended conversation with him throughout your day, talking with him about whatever you are doing or thinking at that moment. "Praying without ceasing" means conversing with God while shopping, driving, working,or performing any other everyday tasks. Everything you do can be 'spending time with God' if he is invited to be a part of it and you stay aware of his presence. According to Bother Lawrence, a humble cook in a French monastery, the key friendship with God, is not changing what you do, but changing your attitude toward what you do. What you normally do for yourself you begin doing for God, whether it is eating, bathing, working, relaxing, or taking out the trash. Worship was not an event to attend, but a perpetual attitude. The Bible tells us to 'pray all the time.' Practicing the presence of God is a skill, a habit you can develop.You must train your mind to remember God. We don't praise God to feel good but to do good. Your goal is not a feeling, but a continual awareness of the reality that God is always present. -> Through continual meditation. By thinking about his Word throughout your day. This is called meditation. When you think about a problem over and over in your mind, that's called worry. When you think about God's Word over and over in your mind, that's meditation. You just need to switch your attention from your problems to Bible verses. The more you meditate on God's Word,the less you will have to worry. Prayer lets you speak to God, meditation lets God speak to you. Both are essential to becoming a friend of God. --God wants to be my best friend. --"Friendship with God is reserved for those who reverence him." Psalm 25:14a (LB) Give yourselves to God...Surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes. Romans 6:13 (TEV)
r The heart of worship is surrender.Offering yourself to God is what worship is all about.True worship bringing God pleasure- happens when you give yourself completely to God. Fear, pride, confusions are the three barriers that block our total surrender. Trust is an essential ingredient to surrender. Fear keeps us from surrendering but love casts out all fear. Admitting our limitations. Pride, a second barriers to total surrendering. Surrendering to God is not passive resignation, fatalism , or an excuse for laziness. Surrendering is not repressing your personality. Surrendering is best demonstrate in obedience. You know you're surrendered to God when you rely on God to work, things out instead of trying to manipulate others, force your agenda, and control the situation. You let go and let God work. The Bible says, "Surrendered yourself to the Lord, and wait patiently for him." Instead of trying harder you trust more. You also know you're surrendered when you don't react to criticisms and rush to defend yourself. Surrender hearts show up best in relationships. You don't edge others out, you don't demand your rights, and you aren't self-serving when you're surrendered. Surrender is hard work. In our case, it is intense warfare against our self-centered nature. Victory comes through surrender. It doesn't weaken you it strengthens you. Surrendered to God, you don't have to fer or surrender to anything else. "So give yourselves completely to God." The best way to live: Everybody eventually surrenders to someone or something. If not to God, you will surrender to the opinions or expectations of others, to money, to resentment, to fear, or to your own pride, lusts or ego. You were designed to worship God. You are free to choose what you surrender to, but you are not free from the consequences of that choice. Surrender is not the best way to live it is the only way to live. You cannot fulfill God's purposes for your life while focusing on your own plans. Don't be afraid, nothing under his control can ever be out of control. --The heart of worship is surrender. --'Surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes. Romans 6;13 (TEV) I think about this sometimes: about how messed up we all really are on the inside. How we put on this “day face” and try to just live life and be okay, but underneath all that we have all these layers of neuroses and disappointments and unresolved issues that stay dormant until they’re triggered. Not overtly, most of the time — we wouldn’t be able to function if it were overt all the time — but under. Underneath us, inside of us. Things that happened to us that changed us. Heartbreak and trauma woven into the texture of our skins.
I think about this sometimes when I’m talking to someone, especially someone I know. It’s always more pronounced when it’s someone you know: you’re looking at them and they’re looking at you and you’re discussing something stupid like where to get dinner and all of a sudden it’s a surprise punch in the stomach, simultaneously seeing the person right in front of you and everything they’ve been through smudged around them like a sort of aura. You look at this person who was once on the verge of suicide, or overcame a serious illness, or had a dad who drank or no family at all, and they’re right there, talking, standing. They’re fine. They’re there. And you get this sudden impulse to weep or just touch them actually to make sure they’re real and wish you could borrow their strength for a moment because your own bones are crumbling. It’s crazy to think about sometimes how all of us, even the most put together of us, are comprised of layers upon layers of experiences that once broke us, cracked our shells; about how we’re constantly mending ourselves, gluing ourselves together so we can remain in one piece and keep going forward for some reason. Underneath the outer layer we’re these coarse tangles of fears and mental blocks and sense memories and the older we get the more they just build and build. Sometimes we want nothing more than to be able to “let go” and leave the past in the past where it belongs, but these things imprint, in a way. They brand us. We can’t get rid of them and we wouldn’t be ourselves without them. I was talking to a friend of mine recently and we started discussing our “stories,” and the more she told me about her life the more I became in awe of her — I felt like, if I were ever made to go through what she went through, I probably wouldn’t have made it past the 8th grade. But then, if I step outside of myself sometimes and take an objective look at what I went through, I’m in awe of myself as well. It all looks like so much more when you just look at it from a distance; more intense, in a way. More overwhelming. More something. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger but it also makes us f-cking tired. We promise ourselves we’re going to stop letting ourselves get hurt. We wrap ourselves in impenetrable cocoons, or we try to. But it doesn’t really work that way — as much as we want to become immune, become untouchable, we can’t be: the world still wants to play and we can’t really say no. We’re just as fragile and breakable as we’ve always been; we just have more layers on this time around. Of course, someone somewhere always has it worse. And I’m not going to say everyone deserves some sort of medal for getting out of bed in the morning. But damn it, when you think about all this weight that piles up on us, and all our different coping strategies (some adaptive, some not so much), and the scars we accumulate throughout our lives (everyone has them) that make us all the interesting damaged messes that we are; the way we individually experience loss and heartbreak and nothingness and push through it, we’re doing a pretty good job as humans. We do things. We go to work. We go to school. We do the laundry. We breathe. We function. We grieve and we pick ourselves up and adapt and keep going. We keep moving, because there’s not a whole lot else to do. I’m beginning to think how pathetic I am that I’m actually affected by things like these. But for Pete's sake I’m affected and I have no choice but to deal with this. And my pain can do a lot of things to me like writing this blog post and weeping for hour.
Being a cry baby pisses me off. Ugh I'm so annoying. So what if my bias is already dating? He deserves to be happy and to feel inspired but I can’t even deal with everything. It cuts me deep down knowing that I cant freaking explain this to myself: what happened, how this came to be, and why. God, it’s utterly selfish of me to think of myself again. I'm selfish aren't I? It really saddens me a lot to know that he's in dating stage with someone but who I am to differ? But I know I'll soon be happy for them because everyone deserves to live their life. If they're really dating, I just wish them the best since they're actually so cute together. (I'm being serious here.) Baek dating his bias makes us all believe we'll be able to too one day and here comes the sad vibes once again. How can I date my bias if he's already dating his idol? </3 Okay, okay I need to stop. I get it. I'm his Tinkerbell but not his Wendy. Some other time in my life I felt so humiliated. Siguro kasi ako din naman ang gumawa ng reason para mangyari ang mga ganoong bagay. I'm the one at fault. I'm getting frustrated lang because of my sensitivity. The world will revolve even if it means I won't. Minsan, even me I can't even handle it. Sobrang sensitive ko to the point na maliit na bagay lang iniiyakan ko na. Well, I'm just a human after all. I'm the one to blame. Yes, ako ang may problema. I'm such a weakling when it comes to temptations and slacking around. I learned that the hard way. Kaya ko naman eh ang problema lang ayoko. That's the problem. I'm weak. I'm not that good enough. I'm not that strong to stand up with my words and actions. I'm not mature enough to handle such problems but I have no choice. Ginusto ko 'to eh and I need to face the unknown na. It's happening and I'm scared and fcked up and have no clue for what will happen tomorrow, the next day and to the other day or next month or even next year. I'll probably facing a lot of disappointments and pains but I know God will never leave me. Even though I'm having this fear, my dreams are far greater than my fears. God's purpose in my life will reveal soon and I just have to brace myself. I'm still hoping for the better though. May the LORD smile on you... Numbers 6:25 (NLT)
Smile on me, your servant; teach me the right way to live. Psalm 119:35 (Msg) The smile of God is the goal of your life. Since pleasing God is the first purpose of your life, your most important task is to discover how to do that. The Bible says, 'Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.' God smiles when we love him supremely. This is what God wants most from you: a relationship! God made you to love you, and he longs for you to love him back. He longs for you to know him and spend time with him. This is why learning to love God and be loved by him should be the greatest objective of your life. God smiles when we trust him completely. Trusting God completely means having faith that he knows what is best for your life. You expect him to keep his promises, help you with problems and do the impossible when necessary. God smiles when we obey him wholeheartedly. That means doing whatever God asks without reservation or hesitation. Obedience unlocks understanding. "We please God by what we do and not only by what we believe." God smiles when we praise and thank him continually. God smiles when we used our abilities. You don't bring glory or pleasure to God by hiding your abilities or by trying to be someone else. You only bring him enjoyment by being you. --God smiles when I trust him. --'The Lord is pleased with all those who worship him and trust his love.' Psalm 147:11 (CEV) You created everything, and it is for your pleasure that they exist and were created. Revelation 4:11 (NLT)
The Lord takes pleasure in his people. Psalm 149:4a (TEV) You were planned for God's pleasure. God did not need to create you, but he chose to create you for his own enjoyment. You exist for his benefit, his glory, his purpose and his delight. Bringing enjoyment to God, living for his pleasure, is the first purpose of your life. One of the greatest gifts God has given you is the ability to enjoy pleasure. He wants you to enjoy life not just endure it. The reason you are able to enjoy pleasure is that God made you in his image. Bringing pleasure to God is called "worship". Worship is not a part of your life, it is your life. Worship is not just for church services. We are told to 'worship him continually' and to 'praise him from sunrise to sunset.' Praise should be the first activity when you open your eyes in the morning and the last activity when you close them at night. Every activity can be transformed into an act of worship when you do it for the praise, glory, and pleasure of God. How is it possible to do everything to the glory of God? By doing everything as if you were doing it for Jesus and by carrying on a continual conversation with him while you do it. The Bible says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for Men. Doing everything as if you were doing it for Jesus. "Take your everyday, ordinary life your sleeping, eating, going-to work, and walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering. Work becomes worship when you dedicate it to God and perform it with an awareness of his presence." --I was planned for God's pleasure. For God has planted them like strong and graceful oaks for his own glory. Isaiah 61:3 (LB)
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