Simply Renovated

The holiday season is coming to a close...I feel ready. 

Sometimes I ache when it's over because I love the tree and the decorations and the meaningful December that I force upon my family (smiling).  But for some odd reason I am ready for 2015.  I have no idea what it brings but I do know that this year came with A LOT of learning and preparing for what's to come.

I had a hard personal year.  I didn't lose a close loved one or almost die myself.  My Grandma was diagnosed with Dementia and my heart hurts every time I spend time with her. But personally it was a year of figuring out who I am in Christ.  Yes...at 30 (almost 31) years old...I am still learning and figuring out who God has designed me to be. 

 When I say I went through a rough year personally I mean that I had some hard relationship issues to get through or get over.  And getting over them is harder than getting through them in my opinion because that means I am truly leaving that relationship up to God to restore. 

But going through them was the hardest of all because it was a battle of listening way too much to Satan's lies and trying to hear God's voice through them.  To me that is like trying to hear my husband call my name in the Mall during black Friday sales.  I cried...I pleaded...I asked too many people about my uncertainties...I tried plugging my ears and listening to God.  I didn't like who I was and didn't want to be anyone's friend.  

Praise the Lord it didn't stay that way! I love how God works.  I believe He ordains every part of my day and yours.  So when another situation rose this week where all of those questions and doubts flooded back to me, I couldn't help but rejoice and praise Him for bringing me a friend, His Word, a godly husband who takes my hand and prays with me and these words to sum up what I learned this year for my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Take warning...they are hard to hear...but this is what I learned from my year...

Just a bunch of random quotes to sum it up...

"And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."

Colossians 3:14

"Love is the overall grace from which all others grow.  Indeed, love binds all the other virtues together in perfect unity."

"our devotion to God is validated by our love for other people."

"We cannot truly love God without loving one another.  To recognize that there is someone I do not love is to say to God, 'I do not love you enough to love that person.'"

"I am referring to the attitude of not even wanting to love the person, of being content to allow a lack of love for someone reside in my heart unchecked and unchallenged."

"Love inclines us and directs us to be kind, to forgive, to give of ourselves to one another."

"God was love long before he had made any creatures to be the objects of his love, even from all eternity."

"If we desire to be godlike and to glorify God in our lives, we must make the cultivation and exercise of love in our hearts an urgent priority."

"Love is priority.  for if I love God, I will seek to be holy, and if I love other people, I will seek to be humble, putting their interests ahead of mine."

"love gives, even at great cost to itself/oneself."

"Do we love one another enough to forgive each other, with or without apologies for wrongs done to us? So often we want to exact the last ounce of remorse and repentance form our erring brother before we will even consider forgiving him.  But God did not do this.  When we were still sinners, still His enemies, He sent His Son to die for us so that HE might forgive us."

"Forgiveness cost God His Son on the cross, but what does it cost us to forgive one another?  Forgiving costs us our sense of justice.  WE all have this innate sense deep within our souls, but it has been perverted by our selfish, sinful natures.  We want to see "justice" done, but the justice we envision satisfies our own interests.  We must realize that justice has been done.  God is the only rightful administrator of justice in all of creation, and His justice has been satisfied.  In order to forgive our brother, we must be satisfied with God's justice and forego the satisfaction of our own."

"Love is more than a mere act of the will.  Love is a vigorous spirit that rues the whole man, ever directing him to the humble and loving fulfillment of his duties to God and man.   We should do more than just decide to do acts of love: we should desire to do them."

"We are to lay hold of God in prayer until He gives us that vigorous and loving spirit that delights to reach out and embrace our brothers and meet his need or forgive his sin, even if it is at great cost to ourselves."

"How, then, can we fulfill our responsibility to love more and more?  First, as we have already seen, the Spirit of God uses His Word to transform us.  There, if we want to grow in love, we must saturate our minds with Scriptures that describe love and show its importance to us.  The second thing we must do is pray for the Holy Spirit to apply His Word to our hearts and to our daily lives."

"AS we do our part, we can count on God to perform His, not because our working obligates Him to work but because He is a gracious and loving God and wants us to become gracious and loving children of His."

I have small New Years resolutions like capturing my kids daily lives and my husbands...being a planner when it comes to the budget and grocery shopping...eating a cleaner and healthier diet and making sure I am giving my kids good nutrition as they grow...but my big one...is to continue to grow in knowledge of my Lord Jesus Christ and to put all of the above into practice.