Joshua 1:6-9

Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.

I really like this passage, but i especially wanted to focus on verse 7, "Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go." Basically, he's telling us to not tweak the word as to fit our life. We need to live accordingly to what the Lord tells us. It's not the other way around- we don't tell God how to tell us how to live..it just doesn't work that way. We're nothing compared to Him..that's why He's God, and we're human. Even though this is a firm command, the Lord is still compassionate and constantly reminding us that He'll be with us through and through. Yeah, it'll be tough. But nothing's impossible with God.

"I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.." - Philippians 4:13

Psalm 119:105-109

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws. I have suffered much; preserve my life, O LORD, according to Your word. Accept, O LORD, the willing praise of my mouth, and teach me your laws. Though I constantly take my life in my hands, I will not forget your law .

God's been teaching me to trust Him these days. I'm slowly but surely learning how to lean on not my own understanding, but His. The world has been dimming the light, but seeking His word is slowly making it all bright and okay again. My heart and mind are all in chaos right now, but I'm finding security and comfort in His presence.

Weird how that is, because some people would just call that religion. I call that faith.

Psalm 63:1-4

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.

Why is it so difficult to seek God in all things? we have everything in the Lord, but always overlook Him. God is the ultimate Provider with everything that we could possibly need/want, but because i can't see Him, i overlook that He's there and i try to fill that desire with other things. and 99.99999% of the time, it comes back and kicks me in the butt. Right now, God's teaching me to seek him before anything else. Stop looking towards other comforts, stop trying to fill that thirst, hunger with worldly food- replace it with Holy water and i'll be a-ok.

Your love is better than life, better than this world. Strip me down and humble me till You need to. Have Your way with me, because nothing else can do it.

Psalm 60:11-12

Give us aid against the enemy, for the help of man is worthless. With God we will gain the victory, and he will trample down our enemies.

Just another good reminder that I can only do so much with my little strength. The rest, i have to depend on the Lord and His mighty strength. Looking to other people or the world might help relieve the pain but it's only temporary. Looking to God is eternal.

Psalm 124:6-8

Praise be to the LORD, who has not let us be torn by their teeth. We have escaped like a bird out of the fowler's snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

All David says here is how God will never give us over to our enemies. He won't ever make us do something we can't. Sure, He pushes us to our limits, because that strengthens character let alone teach a lesson. But He does that so that when we are at our breaking point, we look to God. We ask God for help Who will deliver us. I just wish this was easy to remember when I'm feeling like that. It's part of the humbling process- thinking that i can deliver myself was a huuuge mistake on my part. I can only do what i can by my little strength but everything is from the grace and mercy of the Lord.

Psalm 121:1-2

I lift up my eyes to the hills- where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Don't stress out. I can't do anything to make it go away. I can't do anything to help myself but only to look to God. My mom always said to close my eyes, take a deep breath, and envision my Father sitting with his arms open wide for me. Run to Him and not to the world. Don't try to seek comfort & encouragement from anything/anyone else. Only then can i feel a small sense of peace, and that's enough for now.

=)

Romans 5:3-5

"Not only so, but we rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the holy Spirit, whom he has given us."

Our characters are truly built when we are pushed to the limit. The true test is seeing how i take all the sufferings and stress, and how i come out of it. The byproducts of sufferings, if you will. Do i continue to complain about lack of this & that? Or..do i just put my hope and faith in the Lord, and believe that He has that greater plan? KNOW & BELIEVE. even though you can't see Him, He's always giving us hints and clues in our chaotic lives- most of which we miss because we are so caught up in our own miseries.

Lord-- i really need you this week. Help me not to succumb to Satan's temptations and give up, but to persevere and keep pressing on. Move forward, not sideways and certainly not backwards.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is god's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Yeah this is a pretty verse to quote and write on any write-able surface. But this passage has proven to be a real encouragement to me the past several weeks. It's so easy to blame God when things don't go my way. Countless number of times, i found that i had to catch myself from doing that..hating and complaining to God for every unanswered prayer, tough times, etc etc...but He tells us to be joyful in every circumstance. I always complain about how i'm not making progress in my walk with Christ,.. well here's why. A huge chunk of Psalms is all about King David who cries out to the Lord for all the sufferings he goes through, but there's a difference there between me and David. I continue to blame God, while David turns his sadness to joy. I wish i could just take a leaf out of King David's book.

Pray, pray, pray. Be joyful in everything, because there is a path carved out by God.

Psalms 30:11-12

You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.

What really sticks out to me in this verse is how King David is just reveling at how God will turn whatever's bad into good. King David felt that a huge blind had been pulled over him in his despair, but putting faith in the Holy Spirit makes you feel re-clothed, reborn, revived. The gloomy turned into rejoicing even when David was having a tough time. Satan will take that vulnerability and just twist me in every possible way so that he'll see me buckle. I just need to be like King David and trust that God will remove my sackcloth and clothe me with joy.

what's it gonna be.

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

-- Romans 1:18-25

Ever since Sunday school, i've been constantly taught that God is loving, God is good, kind, merciful, and forgives us of our sins. And while that is true, i can't help but think that maybe it's not all that complete. God is also to be feared, and consequences can be pretty crazy when God gets angry at people. Like this passage- God just gets so fed up with people who decide to live in sin, He lets them do the things that would lead to their downfall. He lets them succumb to their carnal and human desires, and that's scary. The world says that i should "live how i want", "make my own decisions", because "it's my life". Negative. it's not my life, but God's.

What if God left me? I know i sin day to day, but yet he still continues to forgive me and love me. It's such a simple thing to say, but once i try to understand it, it just boggles my mind. I can't live however i want to live because that's what's best for me. Verse 24 says that God gave them over to sin. the world conditions us to live for the self, and fit in some good deeds here and there because it's "the right thing to do", but where does God fit into this picture? Sure, it's nice to do whatever i want, but if i want to call myself a child of God, i can't at the same time call myself a child of the world.

so right now. what's it gonna be. God or the world? its a question that i deal day to day with.

Ecclesiastes 1

These are the words of the Teacher, King David’s son, who ruled in Jerusalem. 2 “Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless!” 3 What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. 6 The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. 7 Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. 8 Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.

9 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. 10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 11 We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.

12 I, the Teacher, was king of Israel, and I lived in Jerusalem. 13 I devoted myself to search for understanding and to explore by wisdom everything being done under heaven. I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race. 14 I observed everything going on under the sun, and really, it is all meaningless—like chasing the wind. 15 What is wrong cannot be made right. What is missing cannot be recovered.

16 I said to myself, “Look, I am wiser than any of the kings who ruled in Jerusalem before me. I have greater wisdom and knowledge than any of them.” 17 So I set out to learn everything from wisdom to madness and folly. But I learned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind. 18 The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief. To increase knowledge only increases sorrow.

-- Ecclesiastes 1 (New Living Translation)

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Everything is meaningless!!!!!

Solomon is so right. We live our lives in futility. I like to think that i have this grand goal in life, to fulfill whatever God's purpose may be for me. But then i get sidetracked by a million other distractions that life throws at you, and so eventually my head is in a million different places, and i lose sight of my so-called destination. It's sorta eye-opening when he describes humans living their lives like their chasing the wind. The wind ultimately has no goal..it just breezes through with the flow. It has no purpose, no destination, no will. Humans do have those things though, and that's what is eye-opening. God created human beings with the ability to think, ration, choose, plan, etc etc etc..and yet we choose to live like the wind- ignorantly and impulsively.