Grace Inspirations

              Valentine’s Day. An entire holiday built around hearts, ginormous teddy bears, and chocolate. Gotta love the chocolate. But even though all these things are great (like the chocolate), Valentine’s Day is about one thing. Love! But there is more than one kind of love. The first kind is the most commonly known kind of love. It’s the kind of love that most people think about when they hear the word “love”. It’s the romantic kind of love. This is the kind of love that Valentine’s Day is built around. Like the love a boy might have for a girl. The second is the kind of love a child has for their parents or the kind of love we have towards God. The Bible tells us about it in Matthew. “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’” Matthew 22:37 But the Bible tells us about another kind of love. Like the love two friends might have for on...

(I found this in one of my old notebooks, and I wanted to pass it on to you. Huh. Another reason you MIGHT want to write things down. J [See my “Bible” blog])        David and Goliath. It’s one of those “Tale as Old as Time” kind of stories. It’s that story you remember hearing from your kind and gentle Sunday school teacher, who patiently worked you through the Bible, teaching you each story. They answered your questions with ease, and you wondered how they did it so easy. You never wanted it to end… Ok, that’s enough flashback for one day. Moving on!                 While David and Goliath is one of those stories you’ve heard a thousand times, we are going to uncover it again, and see if you can pick up some things you didn’t before, when you were back in Sunday school.                 Let’s lo...

The Bible is like a huge treasure chest filled with coins of knowledge, jewels of wisdom, and rubies of warning. But the Bible holds hidden treasures also. I’d like to uncover a few of those hidden treasures so that you can better understand the Bible. 1.        THE BIBLE TELLS ABOUT THE PAST This is a fact almost everyone knows. Even if you’ve never held a Bible in your hands, you probably know that the Bible talks about the past quite a bit. I was looking through an old notebook of mine and there was a page that said, “The Bible is the world’s history in the palm of your hand.” The Old Testament is the first 39 books of the Bible. They tell about creation, all the way to Jesus’s birth. And many of them tell about past events! 2.        THE BIBLE TELLS ABOUT THE PRESENT   Many of the things people might think about the Bible is that it is old, and won’t apply to your daily life. It is true that the Bible i...

  Be you. This is one of the most popular sayings in our world today. It’s literally everywhere. Our billboards, signs, television. But what does it really mean? Many times when something is said over and over again by many people, it starts to loose it’s meaning. It becomes something that is just said, but doesn’t have the same impact as it did when it began. “Be you.” is one of those sayings. In this post I would like to dive a little deeper into what it truly means to be you. My first thought as to its meaning is to encourage those who thought they had to change to be accepted. They thought they needed to change things such as hairstyle, clothing, etc. Basically, they had to change their OUTWARD APPEARANCE to fit in. Someone apparently saw someone else in this state, had compassion for them, and told them to be themselves. Since then, it has been said so many times that people has taken it out of context. BE YOU. Even when this is used in the right context it is sti...

Recently I talked to a family member about the word repent. I, as well as many other people, think that the word repent means to confess. Let’s start at the beginning, by talking about sin. At the very front of your Bible, you’ll find the book of Genesis.                                                                                                 Genesis 2-3 “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array…Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put t...

In all honesty, politics is not my area of expertise. Although, there are some things that I have noticed. Some things that politics can do to people. And by pointing out these things, I hope to warn others, so that they can avoid them. One thing that politics can do to people is it can make them anxious and worried. What will happen about this topic? Who will be the next President? These questions won’t be answered until the problem is solved or the next election. So why worry about it? There are things you can do to solve the problem or elect your preferred candidate by voting. But you shouldn’t be worried. What’s going to happen, is going to happen. It’s God’s plan, and His plan is above your own. You worrying isn’t going to make things change. It will only hurt you. In some cases, people may think that the person in a political office is causing more damage than he or she is helping. This is another case where many people can become stressed and anxious. I heard a pastor ...

In my last blog, I shared with you about Nature and Worship and how nature reflects God. In that blog I briefly talked about how we were created to worship. In this blog, I will be diving deeper into our purpose. What is my purpose? This is a question many people ask themselves at least once in their lifetime. Many of those people try to answer this question the wrong way and find themselves believing something that isn’t really the truth. A good place to look for truth in any situation is the Bible. We find many answers to this question through the life of Jesus. Of course, you have your job. Is that my purpose? Not quite. God put you in your job for a reason, but you still have a bigger purpose. Actually, you have many purposes: 1.        To Worship God 2.        To Serve 3.        To Share the Gospel If you have read my last blog, you know that you were created to worship God. ...

(This post is based off of one of my older Grace Inspirations letters. These letters were sent to my neighbors. They were the beginning of Grace Inspirations blog.) Nature may seem completely separate from worship. Before I tell you how they go hand in hand, let's look at worship. Worship may seem like a very religious thing to do. You go to church, and worship God through singing songs. Actually, many people, who aren’t necessarily “Christians” do it everyday. But you are capable of worshiping other things, not just God. And, worship can take many forms. What other things am I capable of worshiping? When I ask this question, you probably think you know where I’m going with this. You can worship other gods like Thor, but you need to only worship God. But actually, you are capable of worshiping just about anything, not just God and Thor. Yes, worshiping other gods is something you can worship, and it is true that you need to stay on track. But, really anything you put ...

In this blog, the names Jesus, Messiah, Savior, and Christ will be mentioned often.   Today, I will be writing about who Jesus is. For some people this may seem like a ridiculous question. But after reading this, the name Jesus may seem a little more complex than you thought. Jesus was a man who lived on earth a couple thousand years ago. His mother was Mary and his father was Joseph. Yep. It’s the old Christmas story. Even though Joseph is called his father, he really wasn’t. You see, God worked a miracle through Mary. She was a virgin. Part 2 of Jesus’s life is when he is an adult. He preached everywhere he went and performed miracles that healed the sick. This sounds great to us, but there were people called Pharisees that were sort of like priests. They literally hated Jesus and everything he did. Why? When people started believing in Jesus, they turned away from the Pharisees. This made the Pharisees very JEALOUS. This is the reason they ended up nailing him to the cro...

Hello and welcome to my blog! Here you'll find encouragement to share the Gospel with others, as well as posts to deepen your love for Christ. Grace Inspirations started with letters. I would send "sermons" through letters to my neighbors. God put it on my heart through some very special people to start a blog. And here we are! My posts come from many different places. Sometimes they will be based off of things I've seen or heard. Or maybe something I've come to realize. They can come from one of my old notebooks, or maybe even some of those letters I sent to my neighbors! I try to post as often as I can. As I am a student, I have a busy life. But it's not really on my time-table. It's when God shows me something I need to write. I am always glad to share what God shows me with you! I am learning right along with you! Whether you have been a believer for years or you have never heard the Gospel, this blog is for you! I write to everyone and I enjoy e...