Tag: Jesus

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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Christianese 101, lessons

Christianese 101: Being Led By the Spirit

Adrianna Smith

spiritled

So we’ve all heard it before if you’ve been in church for quite sometime now. Preachers and pastors always answer almost every single question a young Christian has with, “You need to be led by His Spirit”, when making whatever decision it is they are to make. So, what is that exactly? How can one be led by the Spirit of God? It’s simple really: if the fruit is not there and the works of the flesh are, it’s probably not the Holy Spirit guiding you.

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lessons

The Indecisive Leader

Adrianna Smith

Indecisive

–>Knowing God’s Will<–

Thirteen year old girls are moody, sometimes bubbly, or sometimes crabby. One thing I’ve learned from being one and chatting with some, is they might change their mind at the drop of the hat. One minute they’re bffs with Jessica, the next her and Jessica are having a huge argument. One minute they think Taylor Swift is the best singer ever, the next minute they’re moving on to Beyoncé. If anyone would know the smell of indecision it would be them, or at least their mothers. Could you imagine though if your boss or CEO at your company was this indecisive? Hiring people and firing people, but then changing his/her mind a few seconds later. Unfortunately most people think that God and his will are like this.

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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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encouragement

What Does the Man in Charge Say?

Adrianna Smith

WDTMICS

I’ve worked for a little while in my life despite my age and dealt with many different supervisors over the years. Sometimes, especially when you really care about doing well on the job and pleasing your boss, we can become obsessed with doing ‘perfect’ work. We can get to the point where we are over analyzing every little detail or thing that we are doing because maybe we really like the place or the people there or the job in general. Sometimes we get so excited about the job we worry too much about how well we are doing and start listening to what others are saying about us. Or worse we nitpick and look down at our own work.

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lessons, testimony

Knowing who God is

Adrianna Smith

DYKM

Have you ever just talked with someone for years and years and suddenly your relationship with them just blows up in your face? Questions come out about whether this person was ever really for you or if they ever really knew who you were. See, what I’m learning is we can have conversations with people for days, or years even, and find out that they don’t really know and understand who we are and what we are about. The truth is that this person probably never really wanted or tried to understand who you were from the beginning because they might be clinging to whatever preconceived notion they had about you from the beginning. When I see this happen so easily in human relationships, it makes me wonder about our relationship with God. Do we really know Him? Do we really try to learn and understand who He is? Or do we just believe what others have said about Him or our own initial judgments we had about Him?

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