My earliest memory of me experiencing God and
Christianity was when I was around 8 years.
I remember my mother had been going to church without me when I would be
with my Dad every other weekend and eventually she brought me with her. I remember not wanting to go; having to wake
up early and my mom taking me away from my precious cartoon watching time. Believe it or not, I was quite shy for a lot
of my childhood. I didn’t want to go to
Sunday school and preferred to stay with my mother in the normal “adult”
service. My mother did make me go to
Sunday school sometimes but I was just too shy to really want to hang out with
the other kids; I was definitely a momma’s boy.
I feel like a lot boys who grow up with single mothers end up having a
really close relationship with their mother and for me, I just didn’t want to
leave her side a lot as a young kid. I
don’t really remember too much from those early days, but my mother tells me
that there were times that I would sing and dance during worship and sometimes
she would just look down at me and see my face being lit up!
Much to my mother’s dismay, I rarely paid attention to the pastor’s sermons. Even as I got older I just never was too interested in what they were saying; either that or thanks to my ADD I just couldn’t stay focused on the sermon. I would get bored and end up doodling or something to help me pass the time. It makes a lot of sense actually; to this day, I really don’t enjoy long lectures unless I am really into the subject (which these days in church, I certainly am), but I am a kinesthetic learner, which means that I learn by doing things; hands on, otherwise I tend to lose interest. I do remember though around the time of me being in fifth grade, so 11-12 years old I would read a lot of the book of Revelations during sermons. Now I know that might seem kind of strange seeing as Revelations is somewhat of a dark book as it talks about the end of the world and Jesus’s return. I think I simply just found it really interesting at the time; like a really crazy fantasy novel and it therefore held onto my short attention span lol.
Much to my mother’s dismay, I rarely paid attention to the pastor’s sermons. Even as I got older I just never was too interested in what they were saying; either that or thanks to my ADD I just couldn’t stay focused on the sermon. I would get bored and end up doodling or something to help me pass the time. It makes a lot of sense actually; to this day, I really don’t enjoy long lectures unless I am really into the subject (which these days in church, I certainly am), but I am a kinesthetic learner, which means that I learn by doing things; hands on, otherwise I tend to lose interest. I do remember though around the time of me being in fifth grade, so 11-12 years old I would read a lot of the book of Revelations during sermons. Now I know that might seem kind of strange seeing as Revelations is somewhat of a dark book as it talks about the end of the world and Jesus’s return. I think I simply just found it really interesting at the time; like a really crazy fantasy novel and it therefore held onto my short attention span lol.
I remember into my preteen and early teen years finally
starting to go to groups and services that were designed for my age group. I remember it being fun and I enjoyed the
singing and even started to pay attention more to the sermons. There was a part of me that was just
beginning to understand who Jesus was and what He did for me when He died on
the cross. However, I was also being
pulled in the other direction; our culture I think playing a large part in that
as it tends to be really focused on outward beauty, sex, alcohol and the
like. I was introduced to pornography at
a fairly young age and became addicted pretty quickly. I remember being obsessed with video games
and I started to get chubby. In school,
I was still a shy kid until towards the end of eighth grade, except for a few friends
I had made in the neighborhood I lived in; and as I was teased a lot for being
fat or assumed to be gay in most of middle school, I believe I started to get
somewhat depressed and it lead me to turn to pornography and video games even
more for “love” and “acceptance”; as those things wouldn’t tease me and they
made me feel “good”. It was like I was
being torn between good and evil, and evil was winning many of the
battles. Thanks to God’s grace, I am not
really hard on myself for who I was, mainly because of the forgiveness God
constantly grants me through the repentance of my sins in His Son’s holy name;
but I believe I was just too immature being that young; immature in myself and
in my faith to really understand how to live a righteous life. I just was not
passionate about my faith. Church was
more like something I went to and learned about Jesus because my mother told me
to go and brought me; I pretty much didn’t have a choice in the matter, which
in many ways I think is good because I was being taught great things, I just
wasn’t absorbing hardly any of it. I
even remember going to the grocery store with my mother after church and
sometimes stealing Xbox demo discs from the Xbox magazine in the store; clearly
I wasn’t learning much, mostly because of my own ignorance and immaturity.
There was a big season in my life that really shook
things up for me that had me dive into those evils even more; which spanned
from the summer before my freshman year of high school into the summer after my
freshman year of high school. My dad
moved to Maine and my mother got remarried. (Mom and Dad, I LOVE YOU BOTH SO
MUCH, and in no way am I upset at either of you for the choices you both have
made in your lives. They are your lives
and you control them); and to clarify these weren’t “bad” choices by my
parents, just ones that greatly affected me.
Let’s rewind for a moment to try and have why both of those things
impacted me so hugely make sense. My
parents split up when I was 2 years old so I have no memory of my parents being
together and never grew up in a normal two parent household. The interesting thing about the situation
though is that both of my parents grew up outside of Washington DC, my mother
growing up mostly in Maryland and my father growing up mostly in northern
Virginia. I was born in Oklahoma at a
military base as my mother and father met in the Air Force. After the separation they both moved back to
where their families were and by the time their divorce was finalized when I
was 5 years old; I had become accustomed to the custody agreement which was me
seeing my dad every other weekend. From
my earliest memory, I lived with my mother and I would only see my father every
other weekend unless there was a special trip planned or if there was a
holiday, which my parents normally spilt those up equally; for example, I would
spend every Christmas Eve with my dad and that side of my family in VA and then
spend Christmas Day with my mom and that side of my family in MD. The point of all of this being is that I had
just become so accustomed to my dad always being around and in my life, even if
it was not every day like most families so when he moved to Maine, it took a
big toll on me. All of sudden there were
no “Boys Nights Out” every other Friday night anymore and the fun weekends we
would spend together. I remember the day
he left pretty clearly; my mother was dropping me off at the local YMCA because
I was a summer camp counselor that year.
As we pulled up I noticed my dad’s car in the parking lot FULL of
stuff. He came out and walked over to
the car and said he was on his way up to Maine and wanted to say goodbye as he
held back tears. My mother even started
to choke up a bit (which amazed me because most of my memories of my parents
interacting had been fighting); I remember my Dad saying to my mother something
along the lines of, “I bet you’re happy I won’t be around now”. I gave my Dad a hug which he returned with a
bigger hug than normal, told me how much he loved me and then he left. The moment seemed to go by fast and my memory
probably fails me on the exact details but that is how I remember it for the
most part; I think I was too excited about my day at the summer camp. My dad had briefly mentioned to me that
things might be changing soon and that he might move to Maine, but I guess I
never thought it would happen or even took the time to think about what that
truly meant. It wasn’t until a few days
later and the weekend came that I was supposed to be with my Dad, did it really
hit me. All of sudden my routine of seeing
him ended and my world exhibited a huge crack in its foundation. I remember being in the basement and I just
started to bawl my eyes out. My mother
was doing laundry and asked me what was wrong; and I said “my Dad is gone”
…even as I reminisce about it now, I can still feel what it felt like; the
tears currently in my eyes as I write the words; showing how hard that was to
endure for me. He didn’t die, but it
almost felt as such. He was no longer in
the routine of my life and it stung; it was strange and so foreign. My normal was now abnormal. If you tack on going through puberty and the
"fun and crazy" emotions that come with that, starting high school and doing so
in a Christian school for the first time, it was a lot to take on as I started
ninth grade. This year was my
“rebellion” year. For the first time my
grades were not A’s and B’s, I started to fight/argue with my mother which
hadn’t really happened before; or at least not at the level that it was
occurring at then, I would sleep during classes and I just stopped caring about a
lot of things. Being in the Christian
school didn’t really do anything for my faith either; I just wasn’t “into it”
at all so to speak. For some reason it
just wasn’t impacting me yet, and maybe it’s because I didn’t care about it or
it didn’t seem like something valuable to me; yet. Fast forward through the year and we get to
my mother getting remarried. I was not
excited about it at all. Growing up it
had always been mostly just me and my mom; I was the man of our house and I was/am
very protective of her. She knew this
guy from the past and they had reconnected but he lived in Florida and I had
only met him myself less than a handful of times. When she told me she was going to marry him,
I was pretty shocked but I don’t think I let it really hit me because I was too
busy being 15 and being “angry at the world”.
The next big shocker was that my mother was moving us to Florida because
it was cheaper to live there and then she could be the mother she had always
wanted to be; a stay at home one. This
shocked my system because I was being taken away from the area I grew up in, my
friends, and my family who all lived in the same area for much of my life. I remember after getting to Florida, just
feeling really unsettled about living there.
The church we went to down there was actually pretty cool and really
relaxed but I just couldn’t shake that living in Florida was not where I should
be. I can’t explain it even to this day,
but everything happens for a reason and I know it was all a part of God’s
plan. I started to get this idea that I
wanted to “give my dad a chance” and live with him in Maine for the first time
in my life and after begging my mother to go, after a month in Florida I was on
my way to Maine. It was one of the
hardest decisions I had to make especially because I knew that it was one that
killed my mother to let happen; and to this day I think still bothers her a
little. I felt so awful watching my
mother cry in the airport as she told me to give her my ticket because it felt
wrong for me to leave and she was going to rip it up. I had to hide from my own mother in the
Jacksonville airport on my way to Portland.
I would never wish that feeling on anyone; another one that brings up
tears again…
Now my father is someone that, until recently, never
expressed to me that he believed in God or even had any faith. He didn’t attend church every Sunday and thus
neither did I anymore; whatever faith I had was now on hiatus and “on hold” for
the next 8 years of my life. I moved to
Maine in August of 2003 and it wasn’t until May of 2011 that my faith started
to become “unfrozen” and awaken from its deep DEEP slumber. During this eight year time span (which
wasn’t as bad as the picture I am painting, but I am focusing on the bad for
the purpose of showing how badly I needed God in my life), I continued to fall
deeper into the many misconceptions of love and happiness in this world. I turned to sex, drugs, alcohol, and pornography
among others which lead to one bad/unhealthy relationship to the next and at its
worst (without diving too far into my personal life) minor bouts of depression,
slight alcoholism, blackout nights in college, a bad pornography addiction, an
insatiable appetite for sex in order to feel loved, and an overnight stay in a
hospital which included a psych evaluation; which I passed with flying colors
lol, I am not mentally ill, I had just been extremely drunk one night which lead
to me saying things and doing things that isn’t truly me but did lead to me
being forced to have 8 weeks of counseling.
I say all of this and am so open because I am not afraid to share how
bad things got with me on my fruitless quest for love, acceptance, and
happiness through the avenues that this world claims they can be found in. I want people to know my story not so I can
have their pity but because I want my life to be an example and a great
testimony to how amazing God is and what coming to know Him has done for my
life!
Okay, so now we are up to May of 2011. As some of you have read in my first blog post, I met a really special woman; my current ex-girlfriend and someone who a part of me will always love. Now I do not want to talk about my relationship with her anymore to respect her wishes and also because that stuff I realize should be private; but I do need to get into it some because she played a HUGE role in my life; specifically to my faith and how I got to where I am today. We will call my ex-girlfriend “Silver” in this blog. Without getting too much into things between Silver and I, we were both not in the greatest of places when we met; we were both desperate for love and “ready” for it; but we both
fell in love with broken and damaged hearts.
We fought for our relationship many times and even broke up twice throughout
the 9 months that we dated, but I think a lot of the time, we didn’t really
understand why we were together other than the love we had for one another and
us wanting a deep intimate and personal relationship. Little did we know at the time, but our
relationship was part of a much grander plan than we could see at the
time. Silver and I shared pretty much
everything to each other and it became really clear to us the more and more
that we did share with each other, of how badly we needed a greater love to
heal us; we couldn’t “fix” each other.
It lead to Silver’s faith growing and being “re-found” and it lead to
mine truly being found for the first time.
I can remember the night very clear when I just surrendered to God. I was tired of hurting Silver and not being
the boyfriend I knew I could be, and should be.
I knew I was better and greater than I was exhibiting and through
Silver, I realized how badly I needed and wanted God in my life. Granted my motifs were solely based off of my
love for Silver, to be a better man for her and a better person in general; but
it was done out of love. To truly Love
is to know God and I believe in most any circumstance if you are doing
something out of love in a pure, honest, righteous and Godly way; you are exhibiting part of God’s character; the
most important in my opinion.
Okay, so now we are up to May of 2011. As some of you have read in my first blog post, I met a really special woman; my current ex-girlfriend and someone who a part of me will always love. Now I do not want to talk about my relationship with her anymore to respect her wishes and also because that stuff I realize should be private; but I do need to get into it some because she played a HUGE role in my life; specifically to my faith and how I got to where I am today. We will call my ex-girlfriend “Silver” in this blog. Without getting too much into things between Silver and I, we were both not in the greatest of places when we met; we were both desperate for love and “
“God is love, and all who live in Love live in God, and
God lives in them.” – 1 John 4:16b
“Three things will last forever; faith,
hope, and love; and the greatest of these is Love.” – 1 Corinthians 13:13
It was a night towards the end of October in 2011; I was
listening to a song by Jars of Clay titled Worlds Apart (the first song in the
playlist below of songs that I am listening to as I write this blog post) after
getting into a fight with Silver on Skype, as she was living in England for
four and half months of our relationship.
As I listen to the song again now, I can remember exactly how it hit me
that night; because I can feel the same things again right now… here are the
lyrics to the song that moved me to my knees.
“I am the only one
to blame for this
Somehow it all ends up the same
Soaring on the wings of selfish pride
I flew too high and like Icarus I collide
With a world I try so hard to leave behind
To rid myself of all but love
to give and die
To turn away and not become
Another nail to pierce the skin of one who loves
more deeply than the oceans,
more abundant than the tears
Of a world embracing every heartache
Can I be the one to sacrifice
Or grip the spear and watch the blood and water flow
To love you - take my world apart
Somehow it all ends up the same
Soaring on the wings of selfish pride
I flew too high and like Icarus I collide
With a world I try so hard to leave behind
To rid myself of all but love
to give and die
To turn away and not become
Another nail to pierce the skin of one who loves
more deeply than the oceans,
more abundant than the tears
Of a world embracing every heartache
Can I be the one to sacrifice
Or grip the spear and watch the blood and water flow
To love you - take my world apart
To need you - I am
on my knees
To love you - take my world apart
To need you - broken on my knees
All said and done I stand alone
Amongst remains of a life I should not own
It takes all I am to believe
In the mercy that covers me
Did you really have to die for me?
All I am for all you are
Because what I need and what I believe are worlds apart
I look beyond the empty cross
forgetting what my life has cost
and wipe away the crimson stains
and dull the nails that still remain
More and more I need you now,
I owe you more each passing hour
the battle between grace and pride
I gave up not so long ago
So steal my heart and take the pain
and wash the feet and cleanse my pride
take the selfish, take the weak,
and all the things I cannot hide
take the beauty, take my tears
the sin-soaked heart and make it yours
take my world all apart
take it now, take it now
and serve the ones that I despise
speak the words I can't deny
watch the world I used to love
fall to dust and thrown away
I look beyond the empty cross
forgetting what my life has cost
so wipe away the crimson stains
and dull the nails that still remain
so steal my heart and take the pain
take the selfish, take the weak
and all the things I cannot hide
take the beauty, take my tears
take my world apart, take my world apart
I pray, I pray, I pray
take my world apart”
To love you - take my world apart
To need you - broken on my knees
All said and done I stand alone
Amongst remains of a life I should not own
It takes all I am to believe
In the mercy that covers me
Did you really have to die for me?
All I am for all you are
Because what I need and what I believe are worlds apart
I look beyond the empty cross
forgetting what my life has cost
and wipe away the crimson stains
and dull the nails that still remain
More and more I need you now,
I owe you more each passing hour
the battle between grace and pride
I gave up not so long ago
So steal my heart and take the pain
and wash the feet and cleanse my pride
take the selfish, take the weak,
and all the things I cannot hide
take the beauty, take my tears
the sin-soaked heart and make it yours
take my world all apart
take it now, take it now
and serve the ones that I despise
speak the words I can't deny
watch the world I used to love
fall to dust and thrown away
I look beyond the empty cross
forgetting what my life has cost
so wipe away the crimson stains
and dull the nails that still remain
so steal my heart and take the pain
take the selfish, take the weak
and all the things I cannot hide
take the beauty, take my tears
take my world apart, take my world apart
I pray, I pray, I pray
take my world apart”
I was done; I was done trying to live my life without
Him. I was done hurting her and
myself. I broke down in tears and cried,
but cried like until this night in my life, I had never cried before. I literally fell to my knees begging God to
forgive me, repeating over and over that I wanted Him in my life and that I
needed Him. That I could/would no longer
live my life without Him in it as the Jars of Clay song played on repeat for
about an hour. I cried so hard; there
has only been one other time in my life that I cried as hard as I did that
night which didn’t happen in my life until roughly 5 months later. I was saturating the floor and my shirt; the
tears just kept flowing and flowing. It
was like I was releasing 23 years of built up pain as I surrendered my heart to
my Lord and Savior. Snot was coming out
of my nose and I eventually even just curled up into a ball on the floor as I
cried and reached out for God. It was an
intense and amazing experience.
I remember feeling so good about it and so excited to
tell Silver about the experience the next day.
A part of me hoped it would not only be a turning point in my life but
also in our relationship; which at first it did. But like I mentioned before, there was too
much that needed to be healed and fixed in us than we could do for each other
and I was so new in my faith; on fire for it as I am today, but very spiritually
immature. I would say there are parts of
me that still are today, but not like I was then. However, I do feel like God has placed me on the
“fast track” in my faith and I feel like I have learned and grown a lot in it
through the many trials I have faced since that night in October. I did notice though, that at first I started
to act “holier than thou” and judgmental; WRONG! Thankfully God has humbled me greatly in
those areas and has shown me that who I am called to be is not someone who
judges others (and for the record I judge NONE of you reading this, whether you
share in my beliefs or not); that judgment is God’s and God’s alone and the main
purpose of my life is to love God and love others as God loves us and to be an
example of who He is to the best of my abilities as an imperfect person.
“Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not
condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you
will be forgiven.” – Luke 6:37
“God alone, who gave the law, is the
Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have
to judge your neighbor?” – James 4:12
“Do not judge others, and you will not
be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use
in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.” – Matthew 7:1-2
“Work at living in peace with everyone,
and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the
Lord. Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of
God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you,
corrupting many.” – Hebrews 12:14-15
“Don’t just pretend to love others. Really
love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. Love each other with genuine affection, and
take delight in honoring each other. Never
be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically. Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in
trouble, and keep on praying. When God’s
people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice
hospitality. Bless those who persecute
you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with
those who weep. Live in harmony with
each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And
don’t think you know it all!” – Romans 12:9-16
“Teacher, which is the most important commandment
in the Law of Moses?” Jesus replied, ‘You
must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your
mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your
neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law
and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” - Matthew
22:36-40
As Silver and I’s relationship continued
to fall through the cracks of the broken foundation it was built on; something
still so beautiful and wonderful that only God could design was happening at
the same time. I was falling in love
with God. More and more I wanted to know
Him, more and more I began to seek Him and pursue Him in my life. Even after I moved to be with Silver after
she came home from England and we broke up for the last time 3 weeks later and
as I stayed there hoping her and I could use our renewed faiths to fill the
holes in our hearts, God was working through the pain; just not as I had hoped
for. Silver and I did not work out but
God has blessed me enormously through my relationship with her. It forced me to take a deep hard look at who
I was, who I am, and who I want to be.
To see things I couldn’t before.
He blessed me with meeting two amazing people in Maine at a Christian
Marriage Conference I went to last November to try and learn how to have a better
relationship with Silver and more importantly on how to have a relationship
centered upon God. He blessed me with so
many amazing people during my stay in Connecticut; including at least one
lifelong friend.
Even with me being diagnosed with
cancer; my faith has grown and God has blessed me in it. I feel God’s love for me in every new
friendship I have made and it has given me an even greater
appreciation for the friends I already had; whether they
are Christians or not, because I can feel God in them, even if they don’t even
know it themselves. I am just so
thankful to God for all He has done.
Even through the fear of this disease, I can feel God’s power overcoming
that fear and instilling in me the hope that this season is only temporary and
I will be stronger and better than ever after!
I am growing so much as a person and spiritually throughout this time
and God has blessed me with some great people here in Maryland and many others
spread not only throughout the country but even across the Atlantic.
I wish I could truly explain the joy in
my heart that God has brought me; but I honestly can’t because it’s a feeling
that really just has to be felt to be understood; no words give it proper
justice. I am falling more and more in
love with our Creator and less and less with “creation”. God has helped me overcome many of the things
I used to struggle with. I haven’t
looked at pornography in over 10 months, I have made a commitment to myself and
Him to be abstinent until I get married, I haven’t gotten drunk in over 9
months now and I have a new found understanding of what true love is; His love.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does
not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it
is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love
does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects,
always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
I realize that I use that verse a lot;
the reason being that it is one of the most important verses in the Bible and
one that I know I will need healthy reminders of throughout my life; seeing as
I want to love as God loves us!
I also realize that many of you might be offended by my choice to not get drunk anymore; and for me, I just realized that too often I became someone I didn't enjoy being. Once I beat this cancer; I may have a beer now and then or a glass of wine; but I am vowing to myself to never get drunk again; it just caused more problems than it was worth and I don't want or need any "false temporary solutions or highs" in my life.
"So be careful how you live. Don't live like fools but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don't act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don't be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." - Ephesians 5:15-20
I can honestly say that I feel a greater "high" from praising and worshiping the Lord than I ever had getting drunk; and better yet, it's free and you don't have a hangover the next day! =)
I am just completely on fire for Christ and
wanting to share this feeling with all of those I encounter. Will I be able to do it perfectly, no; but
that doesn’t mean I should stop trying.
I find hope and inspiration in many things. One of them being in other Christians; such
as Ashley Paige and Jefferson Bethke who made these videos below.
DEAR POP CULTURE
COUNTERFEIT GOD'S
And also through my family and the many
friends who I am so blessed to have in my life!!!!!
So here I am today, the same Matthew
Nelson in some ways, but also a completely new Matthew Nelson in many others.
“This means that anyone who belongs to
Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” - 2
Corinthians 5:17
I thank God for it all, I thank God for
the hardships I have experienced in these past 15 months and even the one’s
further in the past because they have brought me to where I am today; I also
thank Him for any future trials because they have all been and will all be for
my good and ultimately have given Him and by His mercy and grace will continue
to bring Him glory! HALLELUJAH!
“Dear brothers and sisters, when
troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 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. If you
need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke
you for asking. But when you ask him, be
sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided
loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the
wind. Such people should not expect to
receive anything from the Lord. Their
loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in
everything they do. Believers who are
poor have something to boast about, for God has honored them. And those who are rich should boast that God
has humbled them. They will fade away like a little flower in the field. The hot sun rises and the grass withers; the
little flower droops and falls, and its beauty fades away. In the same way, the
rich will fade away with all of their achievements. God blesses those who patiently endure
testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God
has promised to those who love him. And
remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is
never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else. Temptation comes from our own desires, which
entice us and drag us away. These
desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives
birth to death. So don’t be misled, my
dear brothers and sisters. Whatever is
good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father, who created all the
lights in the heavens. He never changes
or casts a shifting shadow. He chose to
give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became
his prized possession.” – James 1:2-18
“And we know that God causes everything
to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to
His purpose for them.” – Romans 8:28
Ya’ll gotta realize this; God is Always
Good! Even if you can’t tell right away,
continue to trust Him, continue to praise Him, and continue to love Him; He
never stops loving you!
I am so excited for this new life I am
beginning to live and I just want to spread His love to as many people as I
can!
I challenge you all this week to seek
God in some way, in any way; whether it be attending church, loving someone you
haven’t in a while, watching a Christian film, or reading the Bible etc. You really have nothing to lose; except for
your old self but I promise you, the new you is still you and awesome, just
even better with God in your lives and hearts and minds! Take a leap of faith; I PROMISE you that it
won’t kill you; but in fact actually give you L I F E!
I love you all
God Bless,
-Matthew =)
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