Be Still

I am sure many of you have heard of this verse before. It is like one of those verses you scribble on your notebook or you edit it into a beautiful picture of you lying on the beach while your tan body is glistening in the sun and your toes are in the sand. 

This is actually the verse God gave me for the year. Now if you know me at all, you know I have a VERY difficult time being still. If I am sitting I am shaking my foot, leg or whole body (yeah the person that shakes the whole row at church….that’s me!). If I am standing, I am rocking, twisting, or shaking my legs. I can’t even be still in bed; I am always twitching and rubbing my feet. And then there is my mind….I can analyze something in 206 ways in approximately 2.2 seconds and I can twist and turn something that is no big deal into a massive problem. Can you relate? So when God gave me this as my verse for the year my thought was “no God you have the wrong girl, remember it is impossible for me to be still...EVER!” Well, God didn’t change his mind and that is still my verse for 2012 so I thought I would share with you how I am learning to be still and rest in Him when that really isn’t in my type A personality.

I found a guy in the Bible that found it pretty hard to be still too, Abraham. Abraham was a very faithful servant of Gods for many years, but his deepest desire was to have a child and he is now about 76 and still has no son. 

Genesis 15:1-6

¹ After all these things, this word of God came to Abram in a vision: "Don't be afraid, Abram. I'm your shield. Your reward will be grand!"

 ^2-3 Abram said, "God, Master, what use are your gifts as long as I'm childless and Eliezer (ew Eliezer, who would want to give everything they own to some dude named Eliezar! I picture the witch in Snowhite, the one with the black and icky, long, nasty nails saying his name, Eliezer, in her deep creepy voice)  of Damascus is going to inherit everything?" Abram continued, "See, you've given me no children, and now a mere house servant is going to get it all."

 ⁴ Then God's Message came: "Don't worry, he won't be your heir; a son from your body will be your heir."

 ⁵ Then he took him outside and said, "Look at the sky. Count the stars. Can you do it? Count your descendants! You're going to have a big family, Abram!"

 ⁶ And he believed! Believed God! God declared him "Set-Right-with-God."

Yup, pretty sure Abraham is pumped! He even told his wife Sarah so she could share in his excitement too that they were going to be parents.

But, can you relate? Have you ever felt like God has given you a promise?  Or have you ever had one of those moments of feeling at peace knowing God has everything under control in your situation? After you feel like God has spoken to you or touched you, you are over the moon, at peace, and totally content. You are not questioning what God spoke to you. You take it at face value and believe that he is going to heal the sickness in your body, open the next door of opportunity, heal your relationship, or insert what you are believing for here.

Then like it did for Abraham and Sarah, time passes and you start to question what God “really” meant when He made that promise to you. Or you start to wonder if that peaceful feeling you had wasn’t just a moment. You start trying to take the whole promise into your own hands much like Sarah and Abraham did in Genesis 16. I can just see Sarah talking to Abraham saying: “You know, I bet what God really meant when He promised you a son is that you should sleep with my servant, Hagar, and let her have the baby and we will raise it!” ….and Abraham agreed that was a good idea.  

Well, let’s think about this, 2 girls going after 1 guy ALWAYS = T-R-O-U-B-L-E! Can I get an amen?

Well my point in this story is that we need to learn to be still and rest in God. A promise left in our own hands only means a delayed promise. By trying to take a God promise and achieve it by human means only caused heartache for them both (read on in Genesis 16 to find out more).  How often are we guilty of this? We hear from God then weeks, moths, years down the road when we haven’t seen the promise we try to achieve the promise on our own and show or tell God what He “really” meant. Your thinking might go something like this. God I know that you promised me this amazing man who loves Jesus and supports me and encourages me and treats me like the princess You created me to be, but I don’t really think he exists and Tim Tebow doesn’t even know I am alive. So I am just going to date this guy. He thinks I’m amazing and treats me pretty good and he doesn’t really have a great relationship with you but at least he prays every night. Nope, stop trying to take the situation into your own hands. It didn’t work for Abraham and it won’t work for you. God is a gentleman and He will let you exhaust every means to achieve the promise on your own until you come to him broken and say “I can’t do it anymore.” At that exact moment is the moment I picture God saying “I had hoped you would say that, now whatch what I can do!”

Personally, I would rather work on strengthening my “being still skills”  in God’s waiting room than delay what God has for me.

And if God has promised you something or there is a desire in your heart that has not been fulfilled: don’t settle you are ONE DAY closer to whatever you are believing for. It could be a family member to be healed, a financial breakthrough, a baby you’ve been praying you and your spouse will have, that right person to come into your life, whatever it is know that you never have to go through today again without it. You are one day close, don’t give in, don’t give up. Hold on to your convictions; our God is a faithful God.

If this is you at all I hope these scriptures help:

Hebrews 10:33 So don't throw it all away now. You were sure of yourselves then. It's still a sure thing! But you need to stick it out, staying with God's plan so you'll be there for the promised completion.

And one of my absolute favorites when being still and waiting on God is hard is

Romans 8:17-18 And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him! That’s why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times.

This is one of my favorite scriptures. It is just a beautiful promise that is so important to remember in the hard times.

I use a lot of makeup brushes as you can see. I use to keep them in a bush case but that is just asking for a bacteria buildup. What girl wants a brush they put on their face to hold bacteria? Anyway, you can make this quick and easy and for only 3 bucks! I bought all the supplies (except the brushes) at the Dollar Tree.  I chose to fill my vase with water beads. These beads start small and swell in water. You drain off the water and put them in the vase. I have also seen this done with coffee beans and marbles.

I think it could be cute to add a ribbon and a flower too. I’ll let you know how that goes :)

Absolutely love this song!

Jessica Alba's Updo

I loved this updo of Jessica Alba’s and decided to give it a try. If I can do it, anyone can. I’ve never been great at doing different things with my hair.

Pin up the hair around the crown of your head leaving about an inch and a half of hair around your face to the back of your ear to French braid. Also pin back the back bottom layer of your hair (from the back of the ear and back). Once both sides of the hair around you face are braided secure them with clear bands and add them to the hair pinned up on the crown of your head. Secure the hair with bobby pins or a clear band. Take the bottom section seperate it in pieces about an inch wide, curl it around 3 fingers and secure it to your head. Do the same with the top section. This style will hole better if you have texture to your hair so add some volumizing mouse before you blow dry.

The Answer to Your Need is in Meeting the Needs of Others

Let’s be honest with ourselves, we all have needs in our lives right? It could be anything from needing a financial blessing, a husband, clarity from God in where your life is leading, healing in your own life or a family members, the list goes on and on.

Last week I was reading the story of Joseph, one that is familiar to many of us. It is a story of God’s faithfulness. I was reading the story in Genesis chapter 40 and stopped after I read verses 6 and 7.  Okay, before I continue let me set the context of the story if you are unfamiliar. Joseph was his fathers favorite son and was quite the dreamer. His brothers were envious and plotted to kill him but then thought on second thought, nah we will just sell him as an Egyptian slave. Well Potiphar, one of Pharoah's (the king) right hand men, saw that Gods hand was on Joseph and everything he put his hands to was blessed so he put him in charge of everything. Well, Potiphar's wife had a thing for Joseph and wanted to jump his bones, but when Joseph said no, she called rape on him and he was then thrown in prison where he meets the butler and the baker who recently ticked off the king. They are now in the same prison as Joseph. Now Genesis 40:6-7 (NKJV) “And Joseph came in to them in the morning and looked at them, and saw that they were sad. So he asked Pharaoh’s officers who they were with him in the custody of his Lord’s house, saying “Why do you look so sad today?”  After reading those to verses I paused.  I was kind of puzzled. I started thinking here is Joseph, I mean I know God was with him but in reality his brothers sold him into slavery after deciding it would be better than killing him, he was accused of rape by Potiphar’s wife , and now he is sitting in jail! Hello, maybe it is just me but I am pretty sure it is safe to say that Joseph had some need in his life. But the crazy part is that while it isn’t hard to see the need in his life, he was recognizing and meeting the need in two other people’s lives. By taking an interest in the butler and butcher he had his own need met because a few years later when Pharaoh needed his own dream interpreted and the butler remembered Joseph. When Pharaoh saw that God’s hand was on everything Joseph did he was not only released from prison but exalted and put in charge of all Pharaoh (the king of Egypt) possessed.  When I read this about Joseph it inspired me and I thought I want to be like him. I want to be someone who never gets so lost in my own needs that I miss the needs I can meet in others lives.  It would have been so easy for Joseph to never have said a word to the butler because he had plenty to worry about himself. Instead he cast his needs in the hands of Jesus and made a conscious choice to serve the needs of other amidst his own and was therefore set free from his own needs. Too often we miss the answers to our needs because we won’t answer the needs of others that God is strategically placing in our lives. Selah