Sugarcoating is crap!

There is a difference in censoring and sugarcoating.

Huh. To further explain this, I just now decided to look up both in the dictionary. Interesting. I'm that guy..."Let's define this," ....But no seriously, let's define it so that there isn't any gray area. I like black and white, not gray.

I think that this definition best describes what I'm thinking of with censoring:
— vb
5. to ban or cut portions of (a publication, film, letter, etc)

Ok, and now sugarcoating:
2. to make (something difficult or distasteful) appear more pleasant or acceptable

Mmm. Alright. So when you censor yourself, you cut out the bad stuff. You just take it out. With sugarcoating, you just dress up the bad stuff to make it more acceptable.

I think sugarcoating is crap. I can't stand it. LIFE IS NOT SUGARCOATED. Yet here we are, trying to make it look more peachy on the outside. It reminds me of the Pharisees cups, but I want to save that passage for another post I have in mind. However, the verse is Luke 11:39 if you really just want to go take a gander at it.

I recently met this guy that one of my friends was wanting to set me up with, which was super sweet of her and I was flattered, but the guy also knew that I was a friend of hers from our Journey Group. Journey Group is Bible study basically. So after I met him, he told my friend he didn't want to talk to me "because he was afraid he would corrupt me."

I had to laugh at that. How sweet of him! He must think I'm naive...or sheltered? HA! I'm sitting here writing this and I just smile remembering that. Silly.

Now, when I met him, he was talking about how he was good at partying and wanted to party all the time and this and that, and I had thought about it later, and I really just wanted to ask him, "What's REALLY going on?" And no, don't sugarcoat it. I just said I can't stand that. If we were talking, I don't even want you to censor yourself. I think a lot gets lost in translation if people feel the need to censor themselves, and I've lived in this world for almost 24 years and can I just say, it's not new to me.

Anyway, back to where I'm going with this. There is this beautiful story in Luke 7:36-50 that I can really identify with, and yes I will share it all because I am not comfortable with paraphrasing at this point. It's all important. Don't be a baby it's not that long.

Jesus Anointed by a Sinful Woman

36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat.[a] 37 When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. 38 Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.

39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”

40 Then Jesus answered his thoughts. “Simon,” he said to the Pharisee, “I have something to say to you.”

“Go ahead, Teacher,” Simon replied.

41 Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people—500 pieces of silver[b] to one and 50 pieces to the other. 42 But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?”

43 Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt.”

“That’s right,” Jesus said. 44 Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.

47 “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” 48 Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”

49 The men at the table said among themselves, “Who is this man, that he goes around forgiving sins?”
50 And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

I read this, and I get so choked up sometimes. Silly Simon. "If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!" OOOOHHH SHE'S A SINNER!!!!

Jesus knew that. Jesus knows that. He even says, "I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven..." I like how He added in there that her sins were many, and how that's still ok. We don't need to try to clean ourselves up, or sugarcoat anything when it comes to being real with Him. Jesus knows what FILTH you are trying to sugarcoat. He also knows what you don't even want to admit to Him. You just want to leave it out. 

Well guess what? HE ALREADY KNOWS!!!! He sees you every single day at every moment of the day and YES He sees you in the bathroom and you are nasty! But He loves you anyway. He loved that super sinful woman anyway. You can fall at His feet, weeping because of the weight of your sins is SO heavy -I know, I've been there- and Jesus will say to you, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

It's really a beautiful place to be, at the feet of Jesus.

So, what's REALLY going on? Don't sugarcoat it for Him, He already knows. But I can tell you that if you don't sugarcoat it, shoot don't even censor yourself, it will be for YOUR benefit, and He will become that much more real, instead of this detached image of a god sitting up on a cloud watching you. Jesus is personal.

What's REALLY going on? Tell Him.

Believing in vs. following God

Hmm. Where to start.

I have been thinking about my friends that "believe in God". I put this is quotation marks because it's really more like a cliche to me these days. You believe in God? That's great! You're halfway to Heaven already!

So what's the issue? Why aren't you actively seeking His face everyday? Maybe you want to, but let me guess...you aren't sure. I think you are sure, but you know that actively following God would require a major life overhaul. Hey, I've been there. We may have even partied together. I know about all that. And let me say I don't miss it. I miss you as a person, but I don't miss the drugs, booze, and the general feeling of disgust with myself the morning after.

Let me add before I go on that God sees all of this, and loves you anyway. No matter what you've done. I do mean NO MATTER WHAT.

There is a line in one of the Anne of Green Gables movies (that everyone needs to watch! SO heartwarming! :D) where Marilla says, "God does not want you for a fairweather friend."

Well, that seems harsh! But before you go run off, choosing only to hear "God does not want you", let me explain. God does want you. But He wants ALL of you. He is even jealous for your attention to other junk. There are several places in the Bible where this is touched on, and here is a good one; Exodus 34:14:

14 You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you.

He wants you when things are good and bad. He doesn't just want you when you need Him, but when you think you don't need Him. WHO wants a friend to hang around only when things are peachy? No one. That's how you know who you're real friends are, and we all know that. Jesus is the realest friend you've got.

He's not going to be angry or annoyed with you if yall haven't spoken in a while. We may think that because we often forget that Jesus doesn't think like we do. He is ALWAYS happy to hear from you.

1 Kings 18:21 says:
21 Then Elijah stood in front of them and said, “How much longer will you waver, hobbling between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him! But if Baal is God, then follow him!” But the people were completely silent.

Uh oh. Feeling a little uncomfortable? Good. It's because you believe in God. If the Lord is God, follow Him!

Now come the excuses. I'll address one that I've come across countless times, and struggled with for years myself.

If God is so good, why do bad things happen? Or why does He allow them to happen?

The best answer I can give for this is an analogy, and I do love analogies.

I worked at Taco Mac for about 3 1/2 years as a server, and every year, we would sell these stupid paper fish that kids would color on or people would write things on. The proceeds would go to saving the Chattahoochee river. Great cause, I know, but I couldn't stand those fish. They were obnoxious, because they were all over the place. So one of the years I was there, my GM was putting them up on the wall and there was a bunch of them clustered together near the ceiling and then a line of them coming down the wall to make a half "U" shape. And we all said Rob (that was his name, obviously), WHAT are you doing with these fish? To which he replied, just wait, it's gonna be cool when I'm done. So for the next few days we watched as he would put fish here and there and it just looked ridiculous for a while. However, one day I came into work after being off for a couple days, and the whole thing was finished. He made this HUGE pirate ship that took up the entire wall on the side of the restaurant. It was awesome. And all the little messages and pictures that people had drawn on the little fish made it that much cooler.

So my answer to the question is that I don't know why God allows bad things to happen. Yes, He does allow them to happen sometimes, but does He cause them to happen? No. God is good, all the time. But the point is that if we are FOLLOWING God, we trust that He sees the bigger picture, as stupid, or ugly, or ridiculous it may seem. Because at the end, when He shows it to us, we can't even begin to fathom how awesome it's gonna be.

Personally, I could go on and on about the bad crap that's happened to me. One of the most devastating was losing my father my senior year of high school, right after I turned 18. And let me tell you I was definitely a daddy's girl. I was his only daughter, and he had three sons. So not only is there all this terrible crap going on in the world, but in my personal experience...I can't even describe the magnitude of how awful that feeling is.

But I can tell you that I trust God. No, I don't know what His reason was for allowing my daddy to leave us. And I was VERY angry with Him for a LONG time because of it, but thank God, that's ok. He can handle whatever beef it is you have with Him, even if it's misdirected. I am now thankful that I was so incredibly blessed with the most amazing father ever for 18 years, who taught me a lot about what a real man looks like. And I do miss him. But at the end of the day, God knows better than I do about everything.

I can't see the big picture, but if we are not just believing in God but following Him, seeking Him, there will come a day when He shares it with us.

To blog or not to blog?

As I stated somewhere else on here, I am new to blogging. There are a couple blogs that I really enjoy reading, like http://brantleyjohnson.wordpress.com/ and http://www.jonacuff.com/stuffchristianslike/, and as I was playing around with this thing to put them into a neat little list so I could follow them more easily, I started to search for more people that inspire me who I also follow on Twitter. Big surprise, several of them have blogs, YAY! I am in for a treat. 


However, as I was reading through some of these blogs, and went back and re read my first post that I wrote yesterday, I had two thoughts.


(1) Well duh, Jesus is our ultimate security, how juvenile of me to ramble on about it, and
(2) Who could possibly benefit from me blogging?


So, I started to think about everything I could write about and everything I want to write about and my brain was just bouncing all over the place so I decided I needed to have my quiet time. The book I'm reading now for my studies is the same one we are doing in my Journey Group, and tonight, I am on a chapter we have already covered. The chapter deals with "A Doubtful and Unbelieving Mind" and Joyce Meyer wrote the book and she is wonderful so shout out to her!


Anyway, as I was reading, I was having a VERY hard time focusing because I was thinking of so many things to write about and then it occurred to me that the wise people's blogs I follow probably won't read this. Who will read this? If anyone? My friends. Some of my friends are in bad situations; bad marriages, negative mindsets, financial problems (who doesn't have those though, really?), etc. Then it also occurred to me that these friends of mine have seen me walk with Christ, have seen me fall away from Him, and have seen me find my way back to Him. They see a change. They may judge me, but THANK GOD, that doesn't matter. At the end of it all, their judgement is not what is important (sorry guys!).


As I kept reading, 1 Corinthians 1:27 came up:
²⁷ Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful.


Oh yeah! Way to tell me Jesus! MAN He is good! So ok, maybe God does want me to blog. Wow, how presumptuous of me to think that! Then the verse Philippians 2:13 came to me:
¹³ For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.


Ha! Ok God! You got me again! I said in my little "About Me" section that my hope for this blog is that it will bring glory to God. Maybe my self-perceived 'juvenile' post will minister to a juvenile. WELL, Romans 8:28:
²⁸ And we know that God causes everything to work together^[a] for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.


One of the other things I was worrying about was whether or not I was saying "I" too much, and whether or not He could be heard through my big mouth. Then in my book, right after the first verse, was 1 Samuel 16:7:
⁷ But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”




He looks at the heart. Praise Jesus, He looks at the heart. Let that sink in. It just makes my heart happy. Looking at all this now, it looks like I was having a conversation with Jesus. He's got all the answers. Daggum He is good.




With all that being said, I'm gonna keep blogging. Lol.

Security.

First of all, let me give you a little background about myself. I am a 23-going-to-be-24-in-less-than-three-months, southern-by-the-Grace-of-God, woman-who-likes-to-hyphenate. I am single. This is the important part.

I was on the way home from church this morning, and I realized that if Jesus wants to keep me to Himself for the rest of my life, if I’m to be single the rest of my life, that’s ok with me. It was definitely an interesting thought for me to have, seeing as how I have been praying for the man that God wants for me, for what-seems-like-but-probably-isn’t-on-the-scale-of-things-that-are-a-while a while. I hope you got that; I did say I like to hyphenate. That’s just how my brain works. 

This thought was interesting more so because I LOVE MEN. I love man things; football (number one for a reason), golf, baseball, Nascar, March Madness (love picking my brackets! Basketball in itself is just ok), fishing, shooting guns, drinking beer (not in excess anymore), cars, muscle cars, working on cars, going to car shows, driving a stick shift, going to Bass Pro, camping, kayaking, rock climbing, the list goes on I’m sure. And because I love man things, I have a lot in common with a lot of guys. I have dated a LOT of guys. Let me also say I’m over dating, I hate it. Dating sucks. Buy anyway, this has helped me over the years figure out what I want in a man. The number one thing now is that he HAS TO BE A MAN OF GOD, and let me also say, it seems like all the hot men of God are already married. But getting back to my point, I realized a while ago that even though I know what I want in a man, the one thing I think every woman wants out of a relationship with a guy is a sense of security.

We all have an idea, I think, of what women want, but at the end of the day, every woman wants to know that a man will be there for her, no matter what. Till death do us part. I’ll admit, I want this too. Yes, I want to get married, and it seems like I’ll NEVER meet anyone, and it’s frustrating sometimes. It’s like Charlotte says in Sex and the City, “I’ve been dating since I was 15, I’m exhausted, where is he?!?!!”

Now add God to this tired-of-being-single existence. This is when I realized that the reason I am ok with being alone is because Jesus is not only everything I need, but He is my security. If we are to trust Him with our lives, everything else just doesn’t matter. It took me a LONG TIME to get to this point. I dated too many guys and some of them were really great, and some REALLY WEREN’T, bless their hearts, lol. The last guy I talked to would have been exactly what I was looking for, had I not fallen in love with Jesus, again. Jesus makes everything better because He is ALWAYS there when I need Him, like no man could ever be. The Bible says in Isaiah 26:3,4, “You keep in PERFECT PEACE all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.” He is the epitome of strength, our rock. He also says, ladies, in James 1:3,4, “For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, NEEDING NOTHING.” 

The Bible is peppered with verses that are just…GEMS… waiting to be discovered and rediscovered when you need them. And Jesus knows when you need them. He says in Matthew 6:34, “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring it’s own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” As women, we worry. I am slowly learning how to really GIVE everything to Jesus, and take His yoke instead. But he just keeps on; Philippians 4:6,7 could be one of my favorite, sum-it-up, you-should-have-no-buts-left, verse. It says, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”

Basically, Jesus is like, “Don’t worry baby. I got this. You just tell me what you need, and I’ll take care of you. I LOVE YOU!” Wow. AND, not only will He take care of us, but He already knows what we need! There is not a man on the planet that could EVER provide THIS kind of security. EVER. Ya, it is hard sometimes to grasp, and I do have to remind myself every day that He is ALL I need, but thank you Jesus for being persistent! I am also a stubborn woman. And Jesus is the first man ever that hasn’t, and won’t ever give up on me. He is ALWAYS glad to see me. He ALWAYS thinks I’m pretty. And He ALWAYS wants to hear from me. THAT, is real security. THAT, is love. What more could a girl ask for?