I Have Decided...

My goodness! It feels like forever since I last wrote! How I miss this time of reflection! & I know you miss all my random thoughts ;) I have a bunch of topics that I want to talk about so this blog should be quite updated for the next few days!

Once again I am re-reading my favorite books, the Mark of the Lion Trilogy by Francine Rivers. I'm so happy I bought these books... cos now I can read them all the time. This set is actually the first book that I've ever re-read. Usually I'm pretty content reading a book once. But this book I can read a zillion times. I think this is my 3rd or 4th time reading them. And everytime I do... I get something else from it.

The book focuses on a few characters whose lives are somehow with one another but mostly it focuses on this one girl, Hadassah... who is a Christian when Rome conquered Jerusalem. I absolutely love this character... Hadassah has changed my life so many times. I always learn something new from her! The author used her to create such a simple and realistic way to be a Christian that you can't help but be inspired. Everytime I read the books I'm reminded what Christianity is all about... and the kind of person I'm maturing to be.

Of course the Trilogy has a love story in it. Hadassah and Marcus (a Roman) fall in love w/each other. But Hadassah is a slave in Marcus' house... but he falls in love with her still. Because she's so different. He keeps saying how she's unlike anyone he's ever met. She isn't like every other girl.

I want to be seen that way.

But I realised that the difference between Hadassah and I... well at least one of the many differences... is that she carries herself as one who is different. She has set apart herself from every other girl. She knows her worth and her purpose. She is following Christ wholeheartedly... standing on the things she believes in. No matter the sacrifice. She gives up the love of her life to follow God.

I wrote a blog a few weeks ago about being seen as nothing special. And I feel like I do things to try to stand out but not to God... Who really matters. I try to be seen as special to the world's standards. Am I really acting like I'm something special? Am I setting myself apart? Being true to who I really am and what I'm all about? Or am I just trying to be who I think someone else wants to me to be... mirroring what I see in their eyes... being like everyone else?

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Romans 12:1-2 (The Message)

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If with heart and soul you're doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you're still better off. Don't give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you're living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They'll end up realizing that they're the ones who need a bath. It's better to suffer for doing good, if that's what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That's what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others' sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.

1 Peter 3:14-18 (The Message)

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Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

1 Corinthians 15:58 (New International Version)

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Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!

Hebrews 12:1-3 (The Message)

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Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?

Matthew 16:24-25 (The Message)