Tag Archives: faith

Are You Trying To Please God? Stop.

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Hey hey, I posted a recap of last Friday’s young adult service on our Strictly Young People (SYP) blog.

Go check out the full recap there, but here’s an excerpt:

Yes to Friday’s message, for two main reasons: it’s something that everyone needs to hear, and it was a “been there, learned that” message for me. Guest pastor, Pastor Gary Wilkerson (David Wilkerson’s son) spoke on trying to please God. Sounds kind of funny, right? Can we ever please God?

Even though Pastor Gary’s son grew up in the church and knew who God was and had parents that loved him and loved God, he still felt like God had let him down in some areas of his life.

When we see that something is wrong in our lives, we try to fix it. We try to do extra to make God be pleased with us. But, that’s not what God is asking us to do. We are applying the wrong law to our problems. Making God promises, doing good deeds, acting more righteous, very little sinning one week, lots of bible reading and praying…and then you fail. (Or, maybe you don’t do these things at all.)

But, when sin dominates us, it rules over us and causes us to choose the wrong way. It may seem that sin is superior to the power of the savior, but nope, thank you Jesus. Check out the book of Romans, Pastor Gary called it the “key of liberty” and I think that is so true! There is so much truth about living in God’s freedom in the book of Romans.

You don’t have to try to earn His blessings, you already have them! He is looking for you, ready to pour into you and to give you life. Nothing you do has to be in your own effort.

Ok, enough here…go check out the SYP blog !

With love,

Rinny

Life Is A Race. Run It To Win It!

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Life is a race and we’re all running it to win it.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 24 Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! 25 All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. 26 So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. 27 I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.

How can you win if you don’t train properly? Different sports and positions require different types of training: strength training, endurance training, sprints, healthy diet, stretching…you get what I mean. Different workouts, different equipment for each of these things…it’s just like life. The various seasons of life brings you different lessons, the trials, the happiness.  Each experience you go through is for a reason. Even when you don’t realize it, you’re taking away something from every experience: wisdom, discernment, faith, forgiveness, etc. I just hope you’re learning the right things from everything you go through lol 🙂 Your workout IS life.

God wants to strengthen you with the tools to keep running faster and stronger. Train with the word daily and I think you’ll have a good chance of winning. Equip yourself with the right tools and you’ll have an even better chance of making it to the finish line strong. What are these tools? Besides the word and praying and having a relationship with Jesus and knowing Him for yourself, a few things that I think are important are:

– A clean heart and pure spirit, one that is forgiving and giving

– Surrounding yourself with good spiritual (God following, loving, fearing) leaders and friends, people that will hold you accountable. Ones who will encourage you as needed and discourage you in your wrong ways. You need peeps that keep it real!

– Give thanks, have faith, love, be positive

– Discipline. Staying focused on God. Lay aside your fleshly desires, resist temptations (esp ones that you’ll regret later). You can do it! — Matthew 6:33, 1 Corinthians 10:13

– Healthy diet: Stay hungry and thirsty for the word. Feed your spirit with truth and life, the Bible.

– Strength training: Trials you go through (fights with family, friends, career issues, death, relationships)

– Endurance/sprints: You’re never in it alone. First you have Jesus. Then, these leaders/friends mentioned above (and fam of course) are there to help you.

Of course there is a lot more, these are just a few that are top of mind for me. What do you think is most important? As you run this race called life, don’t forget to stay in your lane. You are only purposed to run your race, God has not called nor equipped you to run someone else’s. We all play different positions 🙂 Our goal shouldn’t be to beat each other, instead it’s to beat the negative influences, the bad, the wickedness that’s all around us.

What is winning? For me, it’s eternal life and living in His will, not by my own strength but through God and glorifying His kingdom. The sacrifices we make now are so little when we compare them to the everlasting blessings we are storing up.

Lots of love yall!

❤ Rinny

Dreams, Favor and Faith

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Came across this on the web a few days ago…I love this.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

– Henry David Thoreau

and think about this scripture with it:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

Yeah, this is where my mind is today.
❤