Dedication // God vs. The Super Bowl

Happy New Year! How has your all's year been going so far? :)

So yes, I realize that I should probably have done some sort of New Years thing for my first post of the year, but this is just something I've been thinking about today and thought it just needed to be said, so... here ya go!

So. Today is the day. The BIG day. The day that all the frenzied football fanatics everywhere gather together with friends and family around their TVs to watch -- yes, my friends -- none other than the great Super Bowl.

I'm not much into watching football or the Super Bowl myself. So of course, because of this, I'm not very dedicated to watching this big game and all that. I mean, if I go to a Super Bowl party (which is a rather rare occasion), I'd honestly just mainly be there for the socialization and snacks. Pretty much.

#I'dratherbewatchingTheSoundofMusic

So yeah, basically my not caring so much for the game makes me to look at some of the super dedicated fans of it in a bit of awe. It's so interesting to see how pumped and excited people can be for something..... something as seemingly simple as a man throwing a leather ball to another guy who runs as fast as he can while the other team tries to clobber him. Thrilling, eh? I mean I get it, it is rather impressive the length that those guys can throw the ball, and how fast they can run, etc. But... well yeah, you get what I'm saying. At least I think you do... Do you?

BASICALLY WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY IS that I've been thinking a lot about this today... that is, how people get so excited and pumped and dedicated to the Super Bowl, and football in general really. It's incredible. And as I've watched this phenomenon more and more, over time, I got to thinking about it in a different way than I had before.

Recently, there was a football game on TV that either my dad or one of my brothers were flipping past one day. I wasn't really involved in watching it; I was just passing through the room when I saw people and players running out on the field at the end of the game, jumping, shouting, and SO EXCITED. Then I stopped. I watched all these joyful, excited, exuberant people. They were so excited, I suddenly thought with an internal chuckle, "Did someone just get saved? You would think so..." Then it hit me. If these people can be so excited about winning a temporary football game... Christians should go WILD when someone accepts Jesus as their Lord, and is saved from eternal torment! How EXCITING is that?!?! I thought. Christians should be SO MUCH MORE excited about this, right?! Why aren't more excited when someone gets saved?! Why haven't... I been more excited....?

So, I started thinking more about this lately. And especially today with the Super Bowl happening and all, I've begun to wonder...

What if Christians were as dedicated and excited and pumped about God and what He's done like people are about sports?

What if we treated God and His Word like so many do football and the Super Bowl? What if we spent hundreds, or even thousands of dollars to be able to get a seat in an outdoor arena in the cold of winter to be able to hear God's Word preached and taught to us, to be able to praise and worship and go wild about Jesus with other like-minded believers, and to be able to see God work miracles in people's lives?

WHAT IF WE SO ESTEEMED GOD AND HIS WORD LIKE THAT? Like all these other dedicated people, who paint their faces and cheer and shout, excited, exhilarated, invigorated -- all in hope of a football player catching a ball and running down a field across a line in order to make a touchdown to outscore the other team. What if we were as excited as they are about what God did and is doing??

GUYS. We have SUCH a greater hope, SUCH greater news than a certain football team winning a game that will be soon forgotten in years to come. We have an ETERNAL, LASTING hope! An ETERNAL, LASTING destination with God in Heaven! Jesus scored the ultimate touchdown -- He loved us so much, so he decided that he would touch down to earth to come and save us from all our sin! The God who created this whole universe -- who created YOU -- KNOWS you and LOVES you and CARES about you SO MUCH! WHAT AWESOME NEWS THIS IS!!!

So guys...

Seriously.

Let's get more excited about God!!!!! If people in this world can be so excited like they are about a football game that will only last for one day -- HOW MUCH MORE excited should we be about this amazing hope that we have in our Lord Jesus, and in His grace and mercy toward us that will last FOREVER AND EVER!!! WE SHOULD BE SOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!

Oh come on, y'all, it's okay! You can get excited for things like this... we were created for it!!! Let's not hold back our excitement and joy for our Great God and in what He's done for us!!!

"Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. 
For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations." 
~Psalm 100

Don't ever forget how loved you are by your Heavenly Father, and never be afraid to show your excitement for Him! :) Of course, we don't HAVE to take time to praise and worship and show excitement for God -- He will of course still love us just the same! But He's been so good and done so much for us... why don't we do something for Him for a change? He deserves and is worthy of our praise!

I hope all of you have a great rest of your evening, and I'll write to ya later! God bless!

~Faith

P.S. If you like football and watching the Super Bowl, please don't think that I'm trying to say that that's a bad thing -- I'm just trying to say that we need to keep our priorities straight. Watching and playing sports is fine, but as God's Children, our relationship with our Father should come FIRST and should be placed ABOVE all these other things. So, please don't let me spoil your Super Bowl/ football fun... just always remember to keep God FIRST in everything you watch and do! :)

But Daddy Said

Well... Christmas just blew by, didn't it?! And now here we are -- New Year's Eve!!!

So, with Christmas flying by so quickly I didn't get to post all the things I had wanted to for the 12 Days of Christmas blog party I participated in this year. I was happy that I was at least able to do two posts, but there was especially this one that I had pretty much finished that I was planning to post Christmas Eve... but unfortunately, I never actually got around to it. But instead of waiting another whole year, I decided, why not just share this post now and have a little after-Christmas party? So... here it is! :)

Growing up, our parents never did the whole Santa thing with my siblings and me. We've joked around about Santa Claus sometimes, and even usually leave cookies and milk for "Santa" -- but we were always told and knew that it was really Mommy and Daddy leaving us presents, and that the jolly old bearded man who is said to live in the freezing North Pole with his happy little elves, making toys for good children and mining coal for the bad ones, was all just make believe. So, of course, when my parents told me he wasn't real, I believed them. I trusted them, not giving it a second thought.

But when I was around five or six years old, my trust was put to the test. One evening (I think it was Christmas Eve) me and some of the other kids at our church were standing outside on the church porch after a service, probably getting ready to leave to go back home.

So we were out there chattering and such when one of the older girls pointed up suddenly and said to me, "Look! It's Santa's sleigh! There!"

I jerked my head up and searched the night sky for a second. "Aw, you missed it," she said.

And then our conversation continued something like this...

"You were just joking," I said back to her.

"No! I really saw it; Santa's sleigh was really there."

I stared up at the moon bright in the sky that night, searching deep into my thoughts for some explanation. And then the thought hit me... IS Santa actually real? Is she kidding? But why would she lie to me? She keeps saying it's true... Maybe it... IS true...

This older girl kept insisting it was indeed true, that his sleigh really was just in the sky. I can just imagine now the mischievous fun she must of had messing with my innocent little five or six year old mind.

It wasn't too awfully long before I came to myself, however. Daddy and Mommy told me Santa wasn't real. They wouldn't lie to me. I knew that. So, I chose to believe them instead of this girl. I put what my parents said above what she had said.

Most of us would probably say that we trust our parents more than other people we don't know as well. Especially when we were little, and didn't know doubt like we do now, we would believe and trust anything our parents told us was true because we trusted them.

So, I was thinking... How much more then should we trust and believe our Heavenly Daddy and in what He tells us is true above what others say?

Even if our parents are the best parents in the world, God is still a much better Father to us than they could ever be. Like Jesus says in Matthew 7:11, "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!"

If we've had good, loving, caring parents all our lives, we've built a trust in them. We know we can trust them because we know their character. But sadly, a lot of people, even confessing Christians, don't seem to know much about God's character -- so because of this, they don't fully trust Him. They think He's the one causing all their problems and is out to get them; they think they can never know what God will do. They think He is breaking and hurting them.

But this isn't what God is like at all! God is a trustworthy Father. He is faithful. He is love. God doesn't give us problems -- He gives us answers! I think there are actually many times when we forget that there's a devil in this world, too. God isn't the bad guy. The devil is the one who's doing the killing, stealing, and destroying here on this earth and in our lives -- not God! God is working to help us out of those messes the devil tries sending our way. And He sent Jesus to this earth to give us life -- and not only that -- but life more abundantly! (John 10:10)

If we knew just how good our Heavenly Father is to us, more than even our earthly parents, then how easy it should be to trust in Him and what He says! When we know we can trust God, we can, much easier, be able to take Him at His word. When the devil tries to play with our head and throw a lie in our face, we can think back to what our Daddy told us is really true. When the enemy tells us the lie that we can't do something, we remember the truth that our Daddy said we could do all things through Him. (Phil. 4:13) When the enemy tells us that we're all alone, we remember the truth that Daddy said He would never leave us or forsake us. (Heb. 13:5) When the enemy tells us we're a loser, we remember the truth that Daddy said that we're more than conquerors through Him who loved us. (Rom. 8:37)

We can be like Jesus when the devil tried to tempt Him in the wilderness. (Matt. 4:1-11) When the devil throws a temptation or lie our way, we should be saying right back to him, like Jesus said, "'It is written!' What my Father says is the truth of the matter, and I choose to believe and trust Him -- not you."

God really is good. He loves us so much. And one big way you can especially see His love is through the Christmas story -- when he sent His only Son, Jesus into the world to die for us and pay for our sins. He did all that so we could have relationship with Him, have an abundant life here, and be able to be with Him for all eternity.

When you grow up a Christian your whole life, I think it can sometimes be easy to become passive about the whole Christmas story and Jesus' resurrection. But maybe we should think about it in this way... God didn't have to send Jesus for us. I'm sure God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and all the angels up there could have just stayed right where they were and had a fine time up in Heaven without giving another thought to all of us down here after Adam disobeyed in the very beginning. God didn't have to make the extra effort for us by sending us His Son to save us... but He did. He chose to. Why? Because of how much He loves us!

John 3:16 makes it very clear just how much God loves all of us -- he "SO loved the world"! He didn't just love us -- He SO loved us! And that is why that first Christmas happened. Because of God's great love for every person here on this earth. There would be no Christmas if God hadn't "so loved the world". But He did so love us. That's why we celebrate Christmas.

And that's why we truly can trust our Daddy and in what He tells us is true. <3

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas, and I pray that you will have a fresh revelation of God's Love this New Year's Eve and throughout the coming year! Happy 2019 to each and every one of you, and God bless!! Write to ya next year! :D
~Faith

Reams of Rereads Blog Event // How did I do?

Well, my friends, the Reams of Rereads blog event has come to a close. How did I do on my reading? Well, here was my original list:

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- Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

- Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter

- By the Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleishman

- Heidi by Johanna Spyri

- Toliver's Secret by Esther Wood Brady

- Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate Dicamillo

- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

- The American Girl Kirsten book series by Janet Shaw

- Nim's Island by Wendy Orr

- 12 Empowerment Truths about Two Sons in Want by Terry Tripp

- More Than Conquerors by Terry Mize
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So.

Out of all of these wonderful books, how many of them did I actually end up reading?

Yep. Just two. Well... okay so, I guess if you want to be really technical about it, it was more like I read part of two books....

Sooo..... I actually didn't end up reading all the way through any of the books listed above. I reread part of Understood Betsy and Nim's Island, and that's all I got to. (Oh yeah, and I just remembered that I did read a little bit of More Than Conquerors one day as well, so I guess that's technically three that I read some of.) But yeah, I know. It's kinda sad.

HOWEVER, there actually was one reread that I did read all of again this month though (so I didn't entirely fail, you see!) I reread the classic, The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner which was fun. :) (But.... that wasn't even one of the ones I had on my list up there, so I guess that didn't really even count...)

So, in short... I didn't do so well.

I suppose I could make up a bunch of excuses as to why I didn't get very far into this list. Like life happening and stuff. But, I actually don't have a very valid excuse honestly. It's true, I've been pretty busy this past month, but I've also had quite a bit of free time as well. The problem was that I ended up using that free time doing other things besides rereading the books on this list. I didn't make reading them a priority.

And isn't it like that with so many other things in life? Take spending time reading the Bible and praying, for instance.

(So apparently I just decided now that I'm going to turn this over into a spiritual lesson, how about it?? ;D)

I'm sure all of us at one point or another have tried to make excuses for not spending enough time with God, listening to what He has to say to us and wants us to do. We look back over the past week or month or however long it's been and realize how much we haven't spent time in God's Word and with Him. We scrounge for excuses like, "Well, I was just so busy with work/school/everything..." "I was too tired..." "I just haven't been 'feeling' God lately..." and on and on we go, trying to justify ourselves for putting off doing the right thing.

But instead of making excuses, why don't we just fess up? We messed up. It wasn't anyone else's fault but ours that we didn't get to spend more time with God. The reason we didn't get to it wasn't because of all this other stuff going on in our life... it's because we didn't make spending time with God a priority. We didn't make time for it.

We need to look back, realize what we've done wrong, and ask God to forgive us. Then we need to move on and make a better effort. We shouldn't go back and wallow in our past mistakes, regretting not doing better at life before. Trust me, it isn't worth it. I've done this WAY too many times. Like I said a while back in my No Condemnation post, we need to let ourselves be convicted, but not condemned. We need to learn from our past mistakes, but not focus on them. Learn from them and then use that knowledge to make better choices in the future.

We make time for a lot of things. We make time for reading, watching movies and shows, sports, birthday parties, hanging out with friends, etc. etc... So this really goes to show that we indeed CAN make time for things. We DO have extra time. Or if we don't, we MAKE extra time to do these things, because they're important to us. We don't want to miss out on doing them.

Well then, as God's very own children, we don't want to miss out spending time with our loving Father, do we??

If you really want to do something, you've got to make it a priority. It needs to be first above other things in life. And that's how our relationship with our Heavenly Father should be. He needs to be number one in our lives. We need to make our relationship with Him our very, very top priority! Think about it... God has done SO MUCH for us. He's the very one who created us and the entire world, and is the very reason why we're living and breathing right here and now!!! We have SUCH a privilege -- we can come BOLDLY to the Creator of the universe's throne of grace to talk to our Father and receive help ANYTIME we want or need to! (Hebrews 4:16) How amazing is that?! How terrible would it be to ignore such a privilege? To put off spending time with such an amazingly loving Father as we have?

I challenge you, as well as myself today to take special time out to express to your Daddy how much you love and appreciate Him and His goodness toward you!

So, there you go. There was my little spiritual turn-around to that reading predicament I had up there. ;) I basically didn't get to reading very much of the books on my list because I didn't make reading them a priority.

But, on another note, *enter Faith's ramble about reading* even if I DID make reading them a priority, I'm not really sure that I actually could have gotten to reading every book on my list. Maybe if I was some sort of reading ninja I could have. But I've heard that many people have indeed read that many books and more in a month, so... I guess there are a lot of reading ninjas out there.

I'd like to think of myself as a bookish person, but to be honest, I've gone back and forth between reading lows and highs many times. One month I'll be all like, "AWW YEAH LET'S READ ALL THE BOOKS!" and then the next month like, "Yeah....... I have time to read that, buuut... I'd rather do this other thing right now." But even in my times of reading like the wind, I might read only about five books in a month or something. That's what really amazes me. You reading ninjas. How all you other bookish people out there can read so many books at one time. I applaud you. For instance, I just recently saw that my blogging friend, Faith read fifteen books this past October... and that's not counting the six short stories she also read......

HOW.

HOW DOES ONE DO THIS?

I need to up my game, I guess.

But really, depending on the story, I usually don't want to finish a book in just a couple days. I guess I like to drag it out more and be able to spend more time in the story and with the characters.

"When she finished [the book], she felt happy and sad at the same time, because the ending was warm and smiley but she didn't want to say good-bye to the people in the book." ~Nim's Island

^^ Yep. :)

But then, of course, there are those long drawn out stories that you just want to be able to get through and finish as quickly as possible before you get to the point where you're just like...

Anywho. Sorry, now I'm just rambling.

I think that's really all for now. Wow, this post was all over the place... :P Did it even make sense all together? Well, however it turned out, I hope it wasn't too rambly and that you enjoyed it and all the random gifs and such anyway! ;)

Did you participate in the Reams of Rereads event? If so, how did you do? Did anyone out there not get to reading any of the books on their list either? Did you read ALL the ones on your list? What do you plan on reading this month? I'd love to hear how your reading has gone and is going lately! :D

I hope all of you are having a lovely day! Write to ya later, and God bless! :)
~Faith

A much belated Bible Study Blog Party wrap-up post

Hello once again, friends!

So... WHERE HAVE I BEEN???

Well, first off, I was a very unmotivated person a month or so ago. (Not that that's an acceptable excuse for my lack of blogging) But this honestly is most of the reason why I didn't do a Bible Study Blog Party wrap-up post before when I was supposed to. (A sad reason, I know..... I'm really sorry about that, you guys... D: Please forgive me.)

Whenever I thought I was going to sit down and write that post, I'd get restless, and just couldn't seem to come up with anything to write. I felt unmotivated and just... blah...

I kind of knew what I wanted to write, but I just didn't seem to have the attention span to think hard and long enough about how to write what I wanted to write. I realize now that it wasn't so much of a writer's block problem as a focusing problem. It was hard to just focus on writing. And it turned out to not only be with writing, but in other areas of my life as well, especially in spending time with God and reading my Bible. It was so hard to just be still and focus on Him.

One big reason I believe I got so unfocused was because I started filling up my life with other things. I let myself get distracted with earthly things that my flesh was pulling so hard on me to focus on. I was filling up my schedule and brain power with things that weren't necessarily bad, but just... temporal. I wasn't "fixing my eyes on eternal things" like Paul says in 2 Corinthians.

So that's what basically happened with the Bible Study Blog Party -- I didn't take the time to get myself to really focus on it after writing that first post for it. I'd just groan within myself, hiding under a shell of irresponsibility, declaring that I would get to it some other time when I actually felt like writing it. But that time when I actually felt like writing that blog post never seemed to come. So I just keep putting it off and off.... and off...... Yeah. Not a good life motto.


The part of Romans 8 that I really wanted to talk about during the blog party was in verses 9-12. And basically, these were the exact verses that I needed during that time of unfocused blahness. But instead of truly focusing and letting God speak to me through them and taking the time to write a post about them, I gave into my flesh and didn't really let these words sink in. Recently though, they've been making their way back into my heart.

Here's what these verses say:

"But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh." ~Romans 8:9-12

That last part there has really stuck with me recently. We're not debtors to our flesh. We don't owe our flesh -- ourselves and our feelings -- anything. Sometimes we say things like, "Well, I owe it to myself" or "I just can't help doing that", and we use this as an excuse for not doing the right thing or putting things off. The thing is though, if we have Christ living in us, we don't "owe it to ourselves" -- we owe ourselves to Christ. You CAN help doing certain things. How? THROUGH CHRIST living in you! You CAN do all things THROUGH CHRIST who strengthens you! (Phil. 4:13) This is what the Lord has really been working to get across to me recently. I have the Spirit of Christ dwelling on the inside of me. So now with Christ living in me, I can overcome my flesh and what it wants to do. With Christ in me, I can overcome my feelings and emotions. Feelings and emotions are very real, but the reality of them can't ever supersede the reality of what God says about our situations. He says that we are more than conquerors through Him! (Romans 8:37)

So that's just one of the things that the Lord has been teaching me in that passage recently. There is of course a whole lot more to get out of all of those verses. Hopefully I'll get into more of it in another post sometime soon. :)

But for now, let me FINALLY get to wrapping up this Bible Study Blog Party!

Thanks SO MUCH to all of you who read and participated in this -- you all are wonderful!! Be sure to go over and read Brooklyn's post and Emma's post that they did for the Bible Study Blog Party! They did such a great job, and it's so exciting to read what God put on their hearts to write! If you wrote a post for this that I missed, please link back to it in the comments! I would love to read it!

Again I greatly apologize for my laziness and extreme lateness with finishing up this wonderful study. I will probably end up doing another Bible Study Blog Party again sometime in the near future (and do a much better job at keeping up with it ;) ).

I hope all of you have a wonderful week! God bless!
~Faith

P.S.
It is true that most of the reason for my absence in the blogosphere here has been because of my lack of motivation... but for the past two weeks the main reason has been because I was away on vacation with my family. It was a grand twelve day Colorado adventure, in fact! I will most definitely elaborate on my adventures there in another post very soon, so be on the lookout for that! :D

NO Condemnation // Bible Study Blog Party

Hey there! Welcome, everyone to the Bible Study Blog Party!

LET'S GET THIS STUDY PARTY STARTED!!

From today, May 28th, to June 9th we're going to be reading and blogging about Romans 8! Anyone can participate, and if you would like to find out exactly how this all works and want to join in, look back at my original post about this.

Romans 8 is such an awesome chapter. As I was reading through it again last night, I started getting so excited -- I was so glad I chose this chapter for the Bible study! One thing is that a lot of it seems to be telling of the benefits of being in Christ. It's a great reminder of who we are and what we have in Him! Take the very first verse for instance:

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."

You may have read this verse before and have been like, "Okay, yeah. That's cool. No condemnation, nice." But seriously, think about that. That's GREAT news! We don't have to be or feel condemned if we have Christ living in us!

But then, why do we as Christians still feel condemned sometimes?

I think so many times we equate our worth with what we do or have done in this life. And when we haven't done enough or have messed up, we personally start beating ourselves up about it. We unknowingly crack the door open for the enemy to slip a little condemnation through into us. It's not God who's condemning us when we're doing these wrong things, it's the devil. It says right there in that verse that there's "NO condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus."

Of course, God will convict us when we're doing wrong, but condemnation and conviction are two different things. Condemnation causes our focus to be on ourselves, on our failures, and on how bad we are. Conviction causes us to focus on doing better, on improving ourselves, and on going up higher in what we think and do.

We need to get our focus off of ourselves, our performance, and our works. Who we are and how much God loves us isn't affected by what we've done. Like it says in 2 Timothy 1:9, "[God] has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began..."

You are saved and called by God's grace! And because of that, those who are "in Christ Jesus", who have accepted them as their Lord and Savior, don't need to be condemned about anything! We need to and will be convicted by the Holy Spirit at times, but we need to take the focus off of ourselves and accept that conviction without mixing in the enemy's condemnation with it. We're free from ALL condemnation in Jesus! What WONDERFUL news!!!

So, those were just a few things God has showed me from Romans 8:1. I've personally felt quite a lot of condemnation from the enemy in my life before, so this verse has really spoken to me a lot. Knowing that God loves me for just me, not for my accomplishments or what I've done is such an amazingly freeing feeling! And then, when I realize God's love for me and what He's done, trusting and focusing fully on Him, it causes me, in turn, to be convicted by the Spirit to do the right things and do good works for Him as well!

What about you? What did you get out of this verse? What has God taught you through this verse? Share in the comments below!

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The party is just beginning, and I'm excited for what's to come! If you're participating, be sure to put the link to any posts you may do in the comments of the Bible Study Blog Party introduction post.

Hope all of you are having a fabulous start to your week! God bless! :)
~Faith

6 Distractions Bloggers Can Probably Relate To

Ah, blogging. What a fun life we bloggers lead. I mean, it's so easy to come up with and write posts and put them up regularly and all that, you know? Such a breeze. AM I RIGHT OR WHAT??

Okay... so no, not really (as I'm sure you could tell by the plethora of blogging I've gotten done this year... heh :P) It seems hard to not get distracted whilst trying to craft the perfect blog post and trying to keep up with your blog. So here's a list of six things I've found to be pretty big distractions for the average teen/early 20s blogger person.

1. Pinterest
Pinterest is amazing, don't get me wrong. And it's a wonderful tool, especially for bloggers. But -- as we all know -- there is SO MUCH to find on this site that it can be a two-edged sword at times. You might just be getting on to find one nice sunset picture to go along with some blog post you're writing, and then suddenly find yourself looking at a pin of how to do your hair up to make it look like a bow.

^ Basically what browsing through Pinterest is like.

2. Social Media
Other social media platforms can be just as distracting as Pinterest, maybe even more at times. Or maybe not. Or maybe so. Who knows. All I know is that it's quite a big distraction.

3. Food
Sometimes food can be a motivator, but then other times it seems like it's just an excuse to take a break and slack off. When you're mind goes blank with what to write, you might say to yourself, "Well... maybe I can get those creative juices flowing by just taking a little break... in the kitchen..."

This might just be one of the cutest gifs I've ever seen... =D

4. Other People
People are wonderful, they're absolutely wonderful! But when you're trying to focus on writing or doing something with you're blog, and someone interrupts you to ask you about something... or they need to get on the computer you're on...

5. GIFs
So maybe not every blogger gets distracted with trying to find the perfect gifs for their posts... but...... I probably know of at least one who does..... heh.

6. Real Life
Of course, we bloggers always have high hopes of posting regularly, maybe on a certain day each week or something like that. But then it suddenly hits us that we actually have real lives in the real world and things don't always go as smoothly in real life as we plan them to. And we can't usually be working on or writing something for our blog at a certain time each day right when we want to and have this meticulously perfect plan of how we keep up our blog (unless blogging is your actual job and it's the main thing you do in life).

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So, our real lives often get in the way of our blogging lives. But you know what... that's actually not really a bad thing. I think a lot of times we put social media/blogging/computer things higher on our priority list than just living life and spending valuable time we won't get back with family and friends in the real world without really meaning to. (I've caught myself doing this too many times unfortunately...)

We've been given this amazing life, the chance to make a real difference in this world. I keep needing to remind myself not to waste it all on earthly things that won't last. It's of course not bad to spend time on social media and the like occasionally, but I realize that I need to watch myself that I don't let it dominate my life and I start becoming obsessed with it.

In fact, I've discovered one easy way to tell if you're addicted or obsessed with something: If you're constantly or regularly thinking about that thing. 

I found this out one night a while back. My younger brother had gotten the game Minecraft. Well, so I decided one day that I would try it out and play a little bit. Needless to say, I got a little too into it. But for a little while I didn't even really realize how engrossed I had become in the game. One night, however, I finally came to reason. As I was lying in bed getting ready to go to sleep, I suddenly caught myself thinking hard about how I should construct some part of the house I was building in the game and anticipating waking up the next day to work on it. A jerking thought came to me: MineCraft is one of the only and biggest things that has been on my mind these past few days...

And so that's when I realized -- I had become addicted with this game. Once I realized that, I tried hard to stay away from it for a while and focus more on truly important things. It wasn't easy of course, but I asked God to help me with this obsession, and He did. And now, I actually hardly ever play MineCraft at all.

So basically what I'm trying to say in all this is that we all really need to take a good look at our lives and where our priorities lie. I'm definitely not trying to say that Minecraft or any other games, or even blogging for that matter are bad, but the problem begins when we start obsessing over them, or any other temporary natural thing. If we find that our priorities aren't where they should be, then we need to step back, and fix and reassess them. That's much easier said than done of course, but we CAN do it -- not alone, but with our Heavenly Father working in us and helping us along the way. Nothing is impossible with God! And if we just pray and ask Him to help us with keeping our priorities straight and put Him FIRST in everything, He WILL help us!

So guys, let's do our best to put God first in everything we do and make Him our very top priority -- even above blogging -- praying and asking Him for His help in doing so.

"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak." ~Mark 14:38

Well, that's all for today! I hope this could be of some encouragement to all you fellow bloggers out there. :)

Have a fabulous rest of the week, everyone! Happy blogging!
~Faith


P.S. Are there any other distractions that you as a blogger face that I missed? How do you keep from getting distracted whilst blogging? Any tips for us fellow bloggers who get distracted easily?

A TODAY Mentality

Happy 2018, everyone! It's hard to believe that a whole month of this year has already flown past us! How could this have happened??? But let's not be discouraged! We still have 11 months left of this thing. We're far from over with 2018. We're still just getting started!

Maybe you didn't get much done in January. To be honest, I myself didn't get a whole lot done of what I wanted to do. I didn't start out this year with that big bang I was hoping for. For one thing, I was planning to post a lot more and do more with this blog at the beginning of the year. Did that happen? Well as you can see... no, it didn't. This is actually the first thing I've posted this year, so...

It's easy to get discouraged when you don't start out the New Year the way you hoped. When time seems to just keep flying by, not stopping long enough for you to catch up, it's easy to just give up on the things you had first planned and set out to do. But let me encourage you guys (and I'm talking to myself here as well) that it's a new day every day -- it's never too late to get started on goals or projects you may have for this year. You still have time!

BUT REMEMBER, don't take that as an excuse -- an excuse to not get things done. And maybe it's not like this with everyone, but I know that with myself, I've done this way too many times. "Faith, what are you talking about?" Okay sorry, let me back up. When you're at this age, teenage/early twenties, you have many people tell you things like, "You're so young, you have plenty of time to do that!" "Don't worry about that, you have plenty of time to get that done!"

Now, I'm definitely not saying that that's wrong to say to someone. That can be a very encouraging thing to say. I know it's been encouraging to me when I've been feeling like I've wasted a lot of time already, and it helps remind me that my life is far from over yet and that I still have plenty of time ahead of me to get the things done that I want and need to do. But... I think sometimes we take this "plenty of time" thing the wrong way. I think we do this without even realizing it. When we get it into our minds that we have "plenty of time", for some of us (not all of us, but probably quite a few) it gives us an excuse to not do anything right now. Because we tell ourselves, "Well, I have plenty of time to get that done, so I'll just put that off for now... I'll do that later... I have plenty of time..."

And, YES, we have a lot of time. We have our whole lives ahead of us. And NO, we shouldn't just rush into things because we need to hurry up and get 'er done! We need to seek God's will and not bolt into something just because everyone else is doing it or others are telling you that you need to do a certain thing.

BUT we also need to not always be putting things off for tomorrow, for next week, for next month. We don't have an unlimited amount of time here on this earth. We're all going to move on from this life eventually. Even if we live to be 120, we still need to use our time wisely here and not just sit around, waiting for that sudden burst of motivation to rise up in our veins every now and then to get us going out and doing something. We can't always do everything right away, and sometimes we have to be patient and not rush into everything right now; sometimes we need to wait until tomorrow to do the thing. But there's always SOMETHING that can be done today. Maybe you can't do the whole job today, but you can do a step. That's how we ultimately get things done, right? One step at a time.

God has a plan for your life. A GOOD one. He has things for you to do. But it's up to you if you want to follow that plan, and do the things He has for you to do. He usually doesn't give you His whole plan and a bunch of things you need to do all at once. He guides us in steps. One step at a time. We can walk in His plan for us if we'll only listen and take the steps He tells us to take. What step is God guiding you to take TODAY? What He's telling you to do might make no sense to your head right now... But if you're faithful to do that one thing, He'll give you another thing -- another step -- to do, and little by little, it will suddenly all start to make sense. God would never lead us down a path that doesn't go anywhere, or down one that leads to destruction or confusion. He only has GOOD planned for us. So let's not be afraid to follow Him, to do what He's instructing us to do, and to take the steps He's wanting us to take with Him.

So, let me ask you... What's you're goal? What's that thing that's been pressing on your heart that you know God's been leading you to start? Maybe it's just a small personal thing that you've been desiring to accomplish, like eating healthier. What can you do TODAY towards reaching that goal?

I challenge you, as well as myself, to have a today mentality. What can be done today? A lot of times I find myself always thinking to tomorrow, to the next thing that needs to be done, and not the thing that needs to be done right now, that needs to be done TODAY. But, don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that you should never make a plan for things ahead. Plans are very important! Getting a plan together is one step in getting things done. But if we're only focused on our plans for the future and never on the here and now, we'll miss out on a lot and never actually get much of anything really done.

Psalm 118:24 says,
"This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." 

This is the day. Today. Right now. We're not talking about tomorrow... THIS day -- TODAY -- is the day the LORD has made! So come on, guys, let's go out and do something with this day the LORD has given us!

~Faith

What are the goals you want to accomplish this year? Share them down in the comments if you'd like! :)