The Fight We Face To Find Joy

 Joy is one of those things we’re all searching for. No matter where we’re at in life, we all seem to want the same thing: To be happy. We choose to look to a person, money, Job, Bigger house, Newer car, a better anything. Our pride takes over what we thought we knew was ourselves. We live in a world where if we don’t have what another person may have then we don’t fit in or we aren’t appreciated or noticed. 

I have found myself as well trying to find joy for awhile now. With everything changing around me it makes it harder to accept the things that are happening but I know that God is in control and that He is here with me and He is there with you too! He never leaves us, nor forsakes us.  

“We might find Joy for a moment, especially in the wonderful blessings that come from God himself, but yet even with the best of things, the Joy never seems to last.”

This joy that we continue to seek for in this world can never be found because joy isn’t apost to be found in this world it is apost to be found in God. I’ve found that once somethings goes my way or I get exactly what I want, I often feel like I did opening presents up on Christmas as a kid. 

Have you been there?

Maybe you have tried looking for Joy everywhere, including some places you now regret. Decisons and things you’ve done that you only wish you could take back. You tried to look for joy and all you found was brokenness. 

Well if that is you, I am in the same boat as you. We all have tried to find joy but very few people actually find it. 

“Joy is one of those things that everyone is searching for, but few people find.”

So, if this is true, where can we find true joy? Is it even possible?

Yes, true joy, great joy, is only found in one place: Jesus.

Instead of running after all kinds of different things looking for joy and never finding it. Instead of being miserable. Instead of piling up regrets.

Great joy, an abundance of joy, is found in Jesus.

And get this:

Jesus doesn’t offer us joy, He is joy.

Do you want joy? Jesus!

Do you have no joy? Look to Jesus!

Do you want more joy? Jesus!

But here’s the truth when it comes to joy – we have to fight for joy.  Because each day there are countless things that will try to steal our joy. It’s gotten to the point where sometimes it’s our routines of everyday life that are joy stealers. 

Life has a way of beating the Joy right out of you.

I haven’t even metioned the big things like:

Cancer.

Marriage problems.

Sickness. 

Sometimes it just feels like it’s one thing after the other. But isn’t that why we need to fight for Joy?

Its deciding that regardless of what I am going through, Jesus, I choose you. And regardless Of what today might bring you, I’m keeping  my eyes on you. And regardless what I’m walking through even through this, Jesus I choose you.

Joy isn’t about putting on a happy face.

Having joy doesn’t mean being fake and wearing a mask, instead the good news about Jesus is that in the midst of our hurt, in the midst of  our stress, in the midst of life, and in the midst of our broken world, God sends us Jesus, and through Jesus we can have Joy. 

We might need to fight for that Joy, but His joy, Jesus’ joy, is constant, and it’s unchanging.

~ Gabby Chase 

What if what you have in mind isn’t what God has in store?

God always has a plan for you!

We go throughout are days based on the agenda we have planned that day, whether it is school, work, clubs we may be involved in or even scheduled practices for sports. But how often do we think of things going wrong or out of order that day? Well I would say not pretty often because we tend to get upset or mad when things get out of order. I know sometimes I do but what we need to understand Is that we are not in control of our daily agenda!… God is He is there with us walking with us through our days controling what happens. 

I know it is hard to be able to understand that but notice how we cant ever control the things changing in our lives in every moment. But what we can control is our attitudes, mind sets about the things changing. If we take a look at the bad things that happen to us in a different way we will have a different aspect and view of life. This view will be better and we will become more optimistic about our lives. 

There are many good things about life and there is also a lot of setbacks to it to as well. There has been times where I myself have had things happen to me that makes me wonder the question “Why Me” God? But the real question we should be asking how can You help me handle this? Not often do we ask God for his help. We choose to question Him on what He is letting happen without going through it with him together. I find myself doing that a lot and it never got me anywhere because you can’t do things on your own.

This world was not made to do things on our own that’s why God created lots of us humans so that we can work through this together, those called according to His purpose. Everyone has a purpose to this life and we have a part to play in this world but that only depends on how we choose to live in this world. Whether living by faith or by what we see. We believe what everyone does we need to do but that is not how it is a post to be. Because God created all of us very different and unique in our own ways. 

To sum up all of this, God didn’t intend for us to have things our own way but He gave us this world to be able to live in it. He gives us a choice whether to follow Him or to go are own way. But He knows exactly how things are gonna go in our lives that’s why he uses different trials for each season of our lives to lead us back to him. But thats only if we choose to follow that path He has set before us.

When something that you have in your mind that is planned goes another direction it is just God saying I have something better in store for you. 

~ Gabby Chase

After The Trials

What comes next when heartache appears to be unending. 

“In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.” — Francis Bacon

Pain. Heartache. Suffering. We loathe those words, for we all know the weight they carry. Everyone has suffered loss, everyone has been in pain, and everyone knows what it is to feel your heart ripping out of your chest…

There have been nights where I cried myself to sleep…Some days were filled with extreme loneliness…Depression and fear have consumed me in years that I wish I could get back…I’ve been tossed and turned around in this wild ride called life. Trust me, I get it. That pain that stabs in the back of your soul isn’t you going crazy, it’s you being a broken human in a fallen world.

Where is God in all of the pain? This question is often discussed in churches and in Bible studies, often shrugged of by saying, “Well, even so, God is good. The end.” Yes. This is true. However, are we leaving something out? Does Paul simply shrug and smile, accepting his fate? Let’s take a look:

 “So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.” – 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

 “So we’re not giving up…” There it is. Not only does he say that God is making things new, acknowledging that God is good, but he takes things a step further: we have hope for better things to come!

Not only is God good, but He is also giving us grace to get through the heartache of today, creating a better future for us beyond our present pain.

God’s grace is with you, whether it be in the light of day or the dark of night. You’re not alone in your pain. We’re all going to experience heartache, yet even so, we are all called into a better future.

If you’re hurting tonight, know that you always have hope. Better days will come and the sun will shine again. Keep hoping and believing in better days ahead.

~ Gabby Chase

Your Faith Doesn’t Have To Be Perfect To Be Real.

 I often find myself thinking about the great men and women of faith we see in the Bible. Their boldness, courage, fearlessness, and tenacity to pursue after what God had laid out for them. I often compare myself to these individuals. Maybe you’ve done the same. I wish I was that bold and faithful I tell myself. I wish I trusted God as unabashedly as they did. It’s really easy for me to compare myself to those who have done things I yearn to do. Not only within the words of the Bible but also in day-to-day life.

But what I have to constantly remind myself is the fact that these people we’re not perfect, and what I may perceive as a perfect and flawless life of faith and trust in God isn’t actually the case. They were human just like you and I. They made mistakes. They fell short. And they sometimes even chose the wrong. I’ve learned that your faith doesn’t always have to be perfect to be faith. In fact, it never will be and the Bible tells us that to be true (Ecclesiastes 7:20).

• Mary
• David
• Joshua
• Moses
• Abraham
• Peter
• Paul

And the list goes on…

These are all people who in the Bible did incredible things, had incredible faith, but also had some incredibly deep imperfections. I say this not to expose their flaws to feel better about my own, but to remind myself that we’re all flawed and a little messy. There is no such thing as perfect faith, and that’s something that should unite Christians around the world instead of divide us. We’re all perfectly imperfect, journeying through this thing called faith together, one mistake and one victory at a time. If this wasn’t the case then we wouldn’t have needed a perfect Savior, Jesus, to die on a cross, and pay the penalty for our personal sins.

 So no matter what you’ve got going on in life. Whether your faith is as strong as it’s ever been or as empty as it’s ever felt, know that God is still God and his love for you stays the same. We all go through ups and downs in life. We all have highs and lows as it pertains to our relationship with Jesus. We all make mistakes.

Don’t give up because you’re feeling down. God hasn’t given up on you yet, so neither should you. Try to keep your head up high even through the lows in life. Try to keep your eyes open to God’s goodness even when you feel like all you want to do is close them. Keep your heart surrendered even when you feel like closing it off to the world.

Your faith doesn’t have to be perfect to be real faith.

~ Gabby Chase

I Could Not Plan This

This was not my plan…

No one plans for things they dont like to happen or for things to fall apart but why Is It that we live In a world where we expect things to go our way and If they don’t go our way our only reaction to It Is trying to make things go our way. We ask ourselves these questions of doubt, of hopelessness like questions of why Isn’t things going the way that we want? Or what did I do wrong to deserve this to happen to me? Well the real question Is…

Why does things fall apart?

Everyone has something they are going through In their lives whether It Is family memebers being sick or parents fighting or even losing friends and going through difficult change. All of these things may make you ask yourself what Is the purpose of things going wrong?… Well If we look at things a certain way whether looking at things In a bad way would cause us to feel more down and will stop us from enjoying the good moments of life. But what If you were to look at things In a good way your life wouldn’t be just based on the unhappy thoughts but would be based on the postive things things In your life. 

 Have you ever felt as If your life couldn’t get any worse? 

 I know I have felt like that but are things really getting worse or Is that what the world Is telling us? In reality things may seem like they are getting worse but that’s not God’s intention. His intentions are to put us through things He knows that we can handle and that we can grow stronger throughout them. But the only way for us to have hope and peace and strength Is to have trust and have faith In God. If we trust God through these hard times then He will be there for us, with us, and will never leave us. 

But How do we know that He Is In control of things?

If we look at things In the worldly way then we will believe that we have control of everything but really don’t because we can’t control what can happen to our families or to us. Because God Is the one that Is In control of all of us, He Is the one who created all of us. He gave up His life for us to be able to have a life. 

 Why can’t we fix things ourselves?

We can’t fix things ourselves because we are too broken Inside, we are full of sin that Is how our hearts are. Our hearts weren’t made perfect In this world. This world Is not gonna last forever. All these things we go after In times of trouble or to feel good are gonna fade away. 

Basically to sum up all of this we can’t do anything on our own without God because of how God made us, our human nature Is to go after sin but God Is made perfect and He has took all of the pain that we would’ve went through If He didn’t die on the cross for our sins and we wouldnt be living In this world right now. 

He loves us that much to give up His life for us and everything we did wrong. 

Why Christians can be calm in a messed up world.

How in such a crazy world?…

Here are 3 good reasons on why Christians stay positive and calm even when our world seems to be falling apart:

1. God is Sovereign

Over the chaos of our world, God will always reign Sovereign. God’s Sovereignty won’t always make sense to us, but the truth of God’s Sovereignty should serve to remind us the world will never spin out of God’s control. We need to return to Isaiah’s vision of Our holy God, high and mighty, and lifted up, who is not surprised when the world rages (Psalm 2:1-6). He alone is holy. He alone is worthy. He alone rules over all.

2. God calls us to walk in his peace

Jesus says in the midst of every season:

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hears be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27)

God calls us to walk in His peace, not add our voices to the world’s chaos. Now this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t speak truth to culture. There are times for this, but our tone, motivations and heart should be completely opposite of this world.

3. We believe in a God who redeems the very worst hearts

We serve a God who turns things around. A God of the comeback. A god of the resurrection. And His resurrection power lives and dwells inside of us. Our hope knows no bounds, because it rests in a boundless God!

Half of our New Testament is written by Paul who did worse things than almost anyone in our world today. And God redeemed Him. This s the God we serve!

Throughout human history, God has worked on behalf of His people whose hearts were His. He has done mighty wonders. He has turned nations around. He has moved in power as His gospel was proclaimed. He has built His church, and the gates of hell have not, nor will ever, prevail against it.

A different way forward

What if we walked in the peace of God. A calm and stillness in a time where it seems we should be doing anything but this. How would God’s peace in us shine the glory of God in a dark world?

God gives us the strength to handle all of our battles because He created us to be able to handle them and gives us a the strength to through Him and only Him, Without God’s strength no one would ever be able to become new or be strong in such pain. 

 

The Feeling Of Being Numb

When emptiness feels safer than facing the pain.

There are some nights where the silence is deafening and the darkness feels eternal. There’s something about our darkest days that is like gasping for air, yet devoid of oxygen. I’ve been there many, many times in my life, especially when everyone was fighting in my family.  The pain can often feel as if it’s on constant repeat – a broken record. The darkness whispers fictitious rumors about a never-ending heartache.

Art is the language of the soul, which is probably why much of our music, literature, film, and social commentary revolve around the matters of pain and heartache. Whether it’s a country song, an impressionistic painting, a book about human suffering, or even the Psalms in the Scriptures, we find ourselves fixated on the matter of pain and the longing for a cure.

“Nothing in the cage of my ribcage got no heart to break, like it that way nothing in the cage of my ribcage emptiness is safe, keep it that way”

— Andy Black, “Ribcage”

“Emptiness is safe”…How often have I embraced a feeling of emptiness over the pain of facing my brokenness? Feeling empty is the drug for the soul that leaves us numb, reeling through our days as if we are the walking dead.

Numb. Empty. These words may give us a false feeling of “safety”, but they are ultimately words that lead to our demise.

Over the years, I have found that healing comes when we face our brokenness and pain, not when we choose to become numb to life.

The truth is, I was suffering alone. Healing didn’t come when I became empty and numb. Healing began in asking for help – the right help. Healing began when I chose to hope for a better future, even when I couldn’t see it in that moment.

I’ve taken both paths in my journey. I’ve hidden in the emptiness of being numb to the pain. I’ve also faced my pain, choosing to hope and to fight for better days. This isn’t me preaching to you from a high and lofty place of perfection. I get it. I’ve been there myself. So, please trust me when I say that feeling empty and numb is NOT going to fix anything.

The truth? There is hope for a better future. You are not alone. You can face your pain and come out on the other side stronger than you could ever imagine.

If you’re hurting and you just want the pain to go away, know that it’s OK to not always feel OK. You don’t have to feel great all the time to live a meaningful life. Choose to seek healing, choose to embrace hope, and choose to fight for your life.

~ Gabby Chase 

Why Does It Feel Like God Is Absent In Our Lives?

The silent & seemingly absent God. 

Some of the darkest, loneliest nights I’ve ever lived were when I felt as if God had abandoned me…It’s strange, but God often seems distant and silent during the moments I so desperately long for His voice…For many years, the thought would cross my mind: what if God has completely overlooked my cries for help?
Prayer has been painted in such a twisted light in modern generations, being presented as a way to get God’s “favor”, “blessings”, and “divine revelation”. The truth of the matter is, prayer is much more about us reaching out in faith, knowing that God is up to something, yet fully understanding that we may not get an answer immediately. In fact, even when Jesus prayed in the garden before his crucifixion, it doesn’t appear that it was a two-way conversation. God the Father seemed quiet as God the Son prayed for His will to be done.

I’m not going to pretend to have this all figured out. I hate it when God seems to go missing…It’s as if I lost Jesus somewhere in the midst of my busyness. I turn around and he’s nowhere to be found. I cry out, yet he’s left the building. As I said, those have been some of my darkest moments…

Yet, what if we have it all wrong? What if God is answering us in the apparent silence? What if He is as close as ever before when we feel His presence the least? What if the very feeling of God’s abandonment and the very silence that we fear so much are God’s way of growing and strengthening our faith in Him, not our feelinmgs or our dependence upon instant answers?

“I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for Him to wait.” — C.S. Lewis 

Let’s be honest: we have become very acquainted with instant gratification in our society. Need an answer? Email, text, call, direct message, etc… Want to purchase something? A few clicks and you’re golden.
God doesn’t work like amazon.com, nor is He as impersonal as a robotic shopping mall. God is ever present, despite our feelings. He is also outside of time, knowing what comes next before we do. That perspective changes everything.

It’s hard to accept, but I believe that no prayer is overlooked or lost in translation. Maybe we’ll never fully understand what God was up to behind the scenes, but He has promised to always be with us until the end of time.

Are you waiting on a prayer to be answered, yet you feel as if God has left you empty?

Have you been feeling as if God abandoned you, regardless of what you may believe about His promises?

What if we began trusting that God is near because of who He says He is, rather than on our feelings?

What if we began to trust that He has the best in mind, even when it looks as if the world is falling apart?

~Gabby Chase

If God Is Good, Why Does He Allow Suffering?

Why do we go through suffering?

There are are so many things that could go wrong in a day… Each day is a day planned by God. He knows what is in store for us on that day we don’t. It is impossible to understand why God allows some things to happen, whether good or bad things that He let’s happen. You may have heard the term “there is good in everyday” that term is true because God is good all the time. There is not a time that He isn’t good to us. It may seem like He isnt good to us when he makes our days bad or has something happen that we don’t expect or even changes what we had in mind to something that He knows is better for us. 

God may allows us to go through hard days because He knows that we could get through it if we trust in Him and know that He is with us all the time. These Hard days will only make us stronger and more willing to go to Him. No matter what the hard day holds God is always in control and is always there. 

The answer to the real question.. Why does God allow suffering when He is good? Well the answer to that question is that the suffering that He puts us through brings us to a point where we are hopeless and lost and our hopelessness causes us to go to Him. He is only making us stronger and making us to want to go to Him. All God wants is our hearts. If we let Him have a our hearts and be in control of our lives then we will no longer have to be hopeless when things get bad and to have fear for the next day because He holds each and every day. 

~ Gabby Chase

God’s Great Love For Us!

It is by grace you have been saved. 

“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.” 

— Ephesians 2:4-5

So you are probably thinking what does this verse mean when it says we were made alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions?… Well first of all to define the word transgressions meaning we were dead in our own doing (sin) we chose to sin against God therefore we were not living in the light but trapped in the darkness of this world. This world is full of darkness but in the presence of God there is only light and no darkness. 

Jesus took us out of the darkness into light so that we can live in the light with Him and live according to His word. God is rich in mercy because He has had so much mercy with our overbearing sin against Him. 

Because of His great love He is only able to have mercy on us from sinning against Him and He is the only one who is able to take us out of the darkness into light and He is on the only one able to make us alive with Him. 

~ Gabby Chase