Living Unfiltered for God

How easy is it for you to trust someone? Do you automatically do so, or does the trust have to be earned, or built? What about with God? Does He have to earn it? How do you grow your trust with Him? What types of things grow your trust in the Lord?  I think these questions are pertinent, because if we are going to truly live an "unfiltered" life for God, we have to learn to trust Him. Really trust Him. Trust Him with a "more than we trust anyone or anything in the world" kind of trust. He's going to ask us to do things, to go places and to say things that may not be comfortable. For us to be able to do them, we'll have to trust that it will all work out OK.  So how do we make this happen? Our pastor offered up some clues regarding this last Sunday during his message on  Delighting in the Lord . He said something that really made a lot of sense... That our faith starts with obedience, but then it moves to trust. That the best way to increase your trust ...

How closely do you pay attention to those little voices in your head? You know,  the one's that say "do this" or "don't do that"? Well, the other day, while crafting a short Facebook post in my head during my commute into work, I heard these voices arguing. (OK, I know what you're thinking, and to some degree I believe commuting in Atlanta can drive one a little crazy!) It was a simple idea I had about understanding stress - that there are some things (and people) that cause it and some that reduce it. That we need to spend more time with the things that reduce it and less with those that produce it. My brain went to a couple of examples of how to do that. Then, this one popped in my head, "more God, less world." Almost immediately, I heard one of those voices say, "Oh, you can't add that, some of your "friends" may not agree with it and they might be offended." I started to think about who might "Like" th...

Last week at a family camp retreat, while leading a Creative Writing session (used as an avenue to hear from God through writing), I heard what has become a new motto for my life and which has led to the creation of this blog. God impressed upon me this idea of how those of us who are Christian often have a tendency to "sanitize" the word of God to make it more palatable to others in the world who may not share our faith. Not only do we do this with His Word, but also with our actions and behaviors. We know what we should do or say, but if we don't think it will be received well by whatever audience we may have, we "clean it up". We choose to disobey God for the sake of being socially acceptable. Well, what I heard from God that day was that He didn't want that anymore. What He wants is for us to live our lives "unfiltered" for Him. No longer should we feel we need to put a filter on Him. No longer should we try to dumb God down so that we are more...