God loved you first!

I have been listening to Rick Warren's podcast "What on Earth Am I here For?  Called to Be Loved" and I wanted to share Rick Warren's points regarding what we are called to do.

Our first purpose of our life is to be LOVED BY GOD.  Our first calling is to ENJOY A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD.  That relationship that God wants you to have is to be His SON or His DAUGHTER.
1 John 3

God's love is wide enough to be anywhere - no place on the planet where God's love doesn't exist.

Because we are God's children, He will share His inheritance.  We have total access to God because He loves us that much.  We can go boldly to God anytime we want and talk to him.  We can go to Him with confidence in our time of need.  We are daughters and sons of God and we can ask for anything in Jesus' name.

When I stopped having a religion and started having a relationship with God, I could then experience peace in the mist of the pain.  That's the difference between having a "religion" versus having a "relationship".  Our God is a LIVING GOD, He is available 24/7 if we acknowledge Him and pray.  It doesn't mean He will give us everything we ask, because some of the things we ask for are not the best thing for us and we don't even know that because we can't see the bigger picture.  There are just going to be some things that happen that we can't explain that are negative life events, God promises to give us the "peace that passes all understanding" if we go to him with thanksgiving and supplication (earnestly asking for help).

Everything Happens For A Reason

There is a saying "Everything happens for a reason" I subscribe to that with the disclaimer that bad things don't "happen for a reason". The "Happen for a reason" part happens when we take our bad moment and apply a redemptive process to it finding the good that could come from it and releasing it from making us bitter. I've had some bad things happen to me....things I've had no control over, and I admit ...applying this process to those events didn't come easy. The one central theme that did come from applying this redemptive process with each negative life event, I became more and more empathetic to those around me. People became not only more relatable, but I felt their pain. While I would love to wish nothing bad ever happened to me, I would not want to give up my ability to empathize with others on such a transparent level.

This learning came from creating my life plan from Donald Miller's "Creating Your Life Plan".  If you want more information, go to: http://www.creatingyourlifeplan.com/

Making room to love

Making room for love by getting rid of judgement.

As soon as I realized what the part is I play in this thing called life (my unique gifts), I stopped judging others who didn't have the same , they are playing their part, I'm playing my part - just as in a choir. You do don't chastise the bass singers for not singing soprano, nor do you judge the altos for not singing tenor. We are not the director, we are merely the person playing "our part". Once I understood this (recent revelation), my frustration with others not seeing things the way I do - fell away and made room for peace and love.