Category: encouragement

encouragement, prophecy

The Prideful and The Prejudiced

Adrianna Smith

Prideful

A lot of people say don’t judge a book by it’s cover, but how many people actually listen to this statement? Even in the Bible, God does not judge a person based on what man can see, but instead what He sees in the spiritual. However, I often see people in the Christian community, especially, judging and turning their nose up to people they feel are a certain way. Let’s be honest, we’ve all been down this path before. We’ve all gotten to a place where we judged someone without knowing them too well or made a hasty decision on whether or not to associate with a person because of their past or things they have said or done. Sometimes your decision to stay near a person was purely based on what a person could or could not do for you. The question you need to ask yourself is: Who are you?

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encouragement

Idol Killer

Adrianna Smith

idol

Some people don’t really know this about God. There is so much attention on God’s loving and doting side that people don’t realize He’s a killer—a stone cold murderer…of idols! See, it’s good to know the many faces of God and one of them is that He gets very jealous. He does not like it when we put things before Him. And if you’re anything like me and have experienced Him getting jealous, you know this is a dangerous territory to travel in because when God gets jealous things can get seriously scary in your life.

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encouragement, lessons

Help, God, I settled for a counterfeit!

Adrianna Smith

help

–>Lessons in Contentment<–

So, you prayed and prayed and prayed. Finally, God opened up a door, seemingly miraculously and it seems like He would have you to walk through it. From a distance everything looked great. It seemed to be almost exactly what you needed, however as you started to move closer and closer to it you began to see tons of imperfections that you didn’t notice before. Or worse, you’re like me, and notice every imperfection that could begin to exist in the door before you walk through it and are complaining the whole way and time you walk through it. Thoughts come to your mind that cause you to wonder: ‘Is this really the best that God can do?’ But perhaps you don’t dare utter them out loud, since you know it’s not too good to complain about where God has sent you. As you bite your tongue and decide to settle with the portion God gave you, you still can’t help but think: ‘Lord, I settled with this option.’

Continue reading “Help, God, I settled for a counterfeit!” →

encouragement, lessons

Are We There Yet?

Adrianna Smith

WethereInsta

–>Rushing through your seasons <–

Are we there yet? No, seriously, have we arrived at the destination yet? Not, yet? Really!? Why are we still at this same spot? Round and round again we go. Not knowing when we’ll ever get off of this ride. If I could just get to this place, this spot, with this person, this amount of money, or this position I’d be where I want to be. If I could just jump out of the cold harsh winter I am in and into the fresh sunny Spring I’m craving everything would be settled, right? I just want to get out of here and move forward! There comes a time in everyone’s lives I believe where they are craving and screaming to get out of the current position in life they are in and ready to move onto the next one. You might realize the past position was horrible (read about that HERE), and even if you are moderately ok with the current season, you still find yourself craving a new avenue in your life.

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encouragement, salvation

The Best Gift

Adrianna Smith

gift

At Christmas time, when I was younger, I used to wonder what my parents were going to get me. The joy and excitement of opening presents were really what the thrill was in this holiday as opposed to the actual presents. Out of all my siblings, I was usually the one who was the most excited and happy to open the gifts and enjoy the gifts no matter what they were. In fact sometimes I would get so excited I would open or take my siblings gifts, but I’ll talk about stealing on another day, heh heh. I always have to say the best gifts I’ve ever received were gifts that the giver somehow knew I needed or wanted, when I didn’t even express or know I wanted it. There’s something about receiving something that is exactly what you needed, even if you don’t realize it at the time. This is why I have to say, the best gift is God’s salvation.

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encouragement, lessons

Respect Your Position

Adrianna Smith

position

You’ve just been moved or have moved on your own. You thought this move was in God’s plans. It seemed like a wise choice. You’ve asked God multiple times about this move and everything seemed to point to this being the right choice. However, as soon as you start to get to this new apartment, job, city, or this new place in your walk with God, you feel uncomfortable. Although it seems this is the position God wants you in, you can’t help wonder if you would’ve been better off staying where you were previously. Even though the place you were at previously had a lot of negative things and would leave you in the same complacent and mundane routine, you find yourself forgetting those things and wondering if the move was worth it. The question you need to ask yourself is: Do you respect your position? Do you respect the position God gave you? The Israelites were a people who had a hard time respecting the detour that God purposely sent them in to be free from slavery Egypt.

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encouragement

You’ve Been Recruited!

Adrianna Smith

Recruited

God wants YOU to follow Him all the days of your life, to give up your life as a living sacrifice, and to honor Him with all you have. The question is will you honor the requirements of being recruited for service or will/have you forgotten about them? Have you forgotten what you first said to Christ when you were first saved? When God recruits us into His kingdom it’s almost the same as when a regular soldier is enlisted.

These soldiers can be called at any time or any day to drafted into service! They cannot afford to be too wrapped up or too attached to what they are currently doing because they never know when it will be their time to be called to serve.

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encouragement

The God of Mediocrity

Adrianna Smith

mediocre

—> Put Your Best Foot Forward For Christ<—

When we prepare ourselves to go on job interviews we make sure we look nice. We practice questions that may be asked or research before applying. The point is we put our best foot forward. We try our best to show the interviewer that we really want the job. I had applied for jobs in the past that seemed to come up miraculously, from people who only met me once but remembered me years later enough to recommend me for a really good job. All those jobs seemed to not work out, the door closed on them for one reason or another. As I was talking to someone about how odd it seemed that all those offers didn’t go through, but the last job I applied to seemed to work out, they told me I probably didn’t show I wanted it enough.

I knew this was a lie, because I’m an overachiever who has applied for jobs and went on externships or job shadowing in my field since I was a freshman. However, this made me think about our walk with God. Do we show Him that we want Him? Do we show Him that we actually truly want to go to heaven? Do we show Him we want to serve Him? We put our best foot forward when it comes to an interview, but what does God get from us?

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encouragement

Millionaire Matchmaker

Adrianna Smith

MM

–>Persistent Prayer<–

What if the richest person in the world came up to you and asked you to ask them for anything you wanted, as long as it followed their morals and standards of living? Note that this rich person is very fond of you in a platonic way and wants to help you with anything, especially your needs. Their wealth is infinite, in the sense that no matter what you ask for their wealth will not be depleted much at all. They will match you up with anything or anyone that you need. Not only do they ask you if you want anything, they want you to ask them for the things you need. What’s even more awesome is you don’t even have to pick up a phone to ask them, you just have to start talking and they’ll hear you.

Most people now-a-days would probably be ecstatic at first about being able to do this. They would make sure they followed the rules of making the request. They would probably love asking daily because since they can see that person, they know who that person is, and trust in what others say about that person’s wealth they have full faith that this person could deliver their requests. Why, then, don’t people feel this giddy about God?

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encouragement, lessons

Get Your Own Oil!

Adrianna Smith

GYOO

So, you’ve spent a little time trying to approach God. You feel like you know Him and maybe you do. You feel like He’s telling or leading you to do something in your life: start a business, get a degree, get a job, or whatever it is you feel like He’s leading you to do. You’ve told everyone that God has told you to do this thing. You’ve boasted about how awesome the idea is to as many people as you could.

There’s just one problem: it’s been years since He’s told you to do this thing. What’s worse is you haven’t even started doing anything about this idea, maybe at the most you’ve started a facebook page for it. And to make things even worse you procrastinated so long you no longer have time to do this idea or thought God gave you. So, what do you do? You try to get other people to do it for you–and for free too. If you’re doing something like this you need to ask yourself: Why would God give you something just so you could try to force it on someone else’s shoulders?

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