A Girl's Guide To God

Understanding Your Spirit vs. Soul for Spiritual Growth

December 9, 2024
And yes, there is a difference

I wrote this post seven years ago, but just like anything involving God, it is just as relevant and true today as it was in 2017. I wanted to republish because I think that it can honestly help clear up any confusion someone may have about having a true connection and relationship with God.

Trying to make natural sense out of spiritual things serves as a hindrance for many of us when it comes to our spiritual growth and understanding how God works.

What I’m about to explain is something that a lot of us probably never really learned or were able to grasp when we were growing up in church as kids and teens.

I also think that when it comes to speaking about things of the spiritual nature and the spiritual realm that exists outside of our physical one, people tend to get spooked.

BUT, let me tell you this: this is one of those things where not being aware of it or ignoring it doesn’t make it any less true and it doesn’t make it go away. Since it’s something that affects your life daily and definitely affects your communication with God, you should probably be aware.

You can’t stop it, you can’t change it. The spiritual realm exists and we as human beings, are like Gold medals in the Spiritual Olympics between two teams: Good and Evil.

So, as Christians, I think it’s crucial that we know where we fit into all of this and how our relationship with Jesus is the key to being gold medals to the winning team!

Did you know there was a difference between your Spirit and your Soul?

We, as humans are comprised of three parts: Spirit, Soul, and Body. (The world will tell you different by telling you that we consist of “mind, body, and soul” or that spirit and soul are one in the same, but God’s word says otherwise.)

Your spirit is what gives life to the body. Without the spirit, the body is dead.

Your soul is your personality, aka, your mind, will, and emotions.

Your body, of course, is your physical shell.

When we are born, we are born with the human spirit of life. We are NOT born with God’s spirit.

However, when you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are then gifted with God’s Spirit, aka, The Holy Spirit.

And no, the Holy Spirit is NOT something you only receive when you’re in church and you have a reaction to the music that causes you to jump up and down, take off running down the aisle, turn a cartwheel, whatever.

I’ve had that same reaction at a Beyoncé concert and I can guarantee you there’s nothing “holy” about raising my hands in praise to Drunk In Love.

NOW, In scripture, there is actually a distinction made between man’s spirit and God’s Spirit.

God’s Spirit is always capitalized when written about and man’s spirit is always written about in lower case.

Romans 8:16 states: The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God (see the distinction made between THE Spirit and OUR spirit?)

SO, what it means to receive the Holy Spirit is that a spiritual transaction ACTUALLY occurs upon your acceptance of Jesus.

This isn’t something you can physically make happen. It is a spiritual thing.

When you make that decision to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, God implants the Holy Spirit inside of you in seed form.

This is what it means to be “born again”. Your spirit, which was only human, is born again and intermingled with the Holy Spirit.

Now, just like any other seed, the seed of the Holy Spirit has to be fed and watered in order to grow.

The food and water for this seed is the wisdom and knowledge of God, which is the word of God, only to be found in the Holy Bible.

Now, as you take in this food and water, this nourishes and grows your spirit and you grow stronger in the wisdom and knowledge of God.

BUT, here’s where the hard part comes in and where the struggle happens with us as a whole:

God’s intention for us through our relationship with Jesus Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit is for us to operate in this order:
1. To receive wisdom and instruction from the Holy Spirit
2. Which then dictates God’s truth to the soul (our mind, will, and emotions)
3. Which then dictates to the body how we are to physically respond to a matter.
BUT, unfortunately, we do it the other way around because our human spirit is now in conflict with the Holy Spirit and why is this? Because we have allowed our SOULS (mind will and emotions) to determine what’s right and wrong for so long.

How have we done this, you wonder? Well, it’s complicated but yet, oh so simple.

Our souls (our mind, will, and emotions) have led the way for so long and determined what is right and wrong according to the information of the world.

Our souls have accepted what the world tells us as truth and allowed the world’s truth to dictate how we live our lives and so forth.

So we haven’t been operating out of spirit. We’ve been operating out of man’s limited knowledge our own will and our own emotions.

Once you’ve been saved and you start to read the word of God, your new God-infused SPIRIT recognizes the word as truth, but if your SOUL is still taking the lead and determining what is true and false according to the world, then you’re going to constantly find conflict within yourself because you’re operating out of confusion.

This is because what the world dictates as truth and what the scripture dictates as truth are total opposites.

This is why Romans 12:2 says:  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

This is where we have to get on one accord and decide whether or not we’re going to live out of our flesh or out of our Spirit.

And if we choose to live out of our Spirit, then the only way to overcome this is to surrender our souls (again, our mind, will and emotions) to our Spirit.

Because when you surrender your soul (your mind, will and emotions) to the Holy Spirit and allow it to dictate what is true to you, only then, can you truly be transformed.

Jesus speaks on this in Matthew 16: 24 when he says:

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

He’s basically saying that by denying your “self” (aka ego, which stems from your mind, will and emotions) and living by the Holy Spirit instead, only then will you receive eternal life.

NOW, knowing this,

This explains why there can be so many Christians who claim to love and follow Jesus, but their actions don’t reflect that.

It’s because they are still operating out of instruction of the world, versus submitting their souls to their new (BORN AGAIN) Spirit, and allowing the Spirit to lead them.

Too many times due to a lack of understanding, Christians do it the other way around: We become believers but we still operate from the outside in.

This is because we’re not growing that seed of the Holy Spirit through taking in the word of God.

I know this to be true because I did it myself. I accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior but I was still sinning it up!

But I didn’t do this on purpose. At the time, I didn’t understand the spiritual nature of the whole process and I wasn’t allowing myself to be transformed because I definitely wasn’t taking in the word of God.

I believed in the spiritual but I’ve always seen it as something that occurs invisibly around me only. I never knew that one of the gifts of accepting Jesus was receiving God’s Spirit.

So, I was believing in Jesus but I was attempting to manually control my sin by just saying, “oh okay, I know that’s wrong. I won’t do it anymore”.

Not yet realizing that if we were physically strong enough to resist temptation on our own, there would be no need for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit does a work in us that eradicates sin from our hearts. But when we try to do it on our own, we’re only removing that sin from our mind and trying to manage it without any true change of heart.

And again, I know THIS to be true because it happened to me. Over time, when I did fully surrender to the Holy Spirit, the desires of my heart began to change and it became much easier for me to say NO to the things I previously wasn’t strong enough to say no to in my own will.

When you do allow the Holy Spirit to take over, THIS is how you get Christians who truly DO change and it’s noticeable in the way they live their lives. You can tell it’s not a front and that they’re not trying to manage their actions and behavior.

This is what Jesus meant in Matthew 7:15-16 when He said:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.

Their “fruits” pertain to their output, or their actions and their behavior.

A lot of people don’t recognize this because they don’t recognize or acknowledge things of the Spirit.

And this is DANGEROUS! While you’re operating from the perspective of there being nothing influencing your life that is outside of your physical existence, demons in the spiritual realm are laughing at you and having a field day manipulating your circumstances.

BUT, that’s another topic for another post where I plan to talk about how the spiritual realm is the true source for MOST of our earthly, physical problems and how we can combat that.

THIS IS WHY it is CRUCIAL to have a personal relationship with God, OUTSIDE OF CHURCH, as well as inside.

Because I cannot stress to you enough how growing in God is a SPIRITUAL OCCURRENCE.

It’s not about just opening up a book, reading something and doing what it says.

It is about receiving the Holy Spirit and growing it through God’s truth.

ONLY THEN, can you recognize and understand the spiritual things of God and only THEN can you begin to have an impact on your physical circumstances.

One more thing I want to point out when it comes to the spiritual.

Science and Spirituality are NOT in competition with each other.

Science is amazing at explaining how things work in our physical realm but it CANNOT explain the spiritual.

Science breaks down the facts of how things work in the physical.

But you can have all of these facts and still have no truth.

1 Cor 2: 11– For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

For who among men knows the thoughts of man except his own spirit within him? So too, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Translation: Just as no one can tell you what’s on your mind because they can’t access your spirit, no one can know the mind of God without His Spirit.

But think about how AMAZING it is that He grants us access to His mind through the acceptance of Jesus Christ!  Talk about a blessing!

I’ve included a couple more verses that refer to the spirit of man and the Spirit of God below.  I hope this has been helpful and I hope you’ve taken away the most important message that I’ve tried to convey here: A relationship with God through Jesus Christ is not about religion. Religion is actually the opposite. As a matter of fact, knowing the truth of God is more freeing than anything this world could possibly offer.

Through His word, God lets us know that there’s a whole lot of deception going on around us daily that has been happening since the beginning of our creation. Trusting in Him not only reveals but saves ❤

  A couple of additional scripture verses:

1 Cor 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

John 4:24 God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
Why the Bible doesn’t “work” for you and how you can change That

May 3, 2024

Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? I don’t anymore, but I used to. Do you know what my number one resolution was almost every year? “I want to get closer to God.”

But as every year passed, I never took the steps toward making that connection. I didn’t go to church, my prayer life was non-existent, and I definitely didn’t read my Bible.

However, around 2010, my desire for a relationship with God grew even stronger. I was desperately seeking to know my purpose—I guess you could say I was having an existential crisis, like Barbie. So, I pursued God even harder for these answers.

I finally started looking for a church. I began to pray more, and I started reading my bible. I was searching HARD for the answers. “Why am I here, Lord? What do you want me to do with my life?” But it seemed like the harder I searched, the less I could see. I grew so frustrated because everyone else around me seemed to have these “spiritual epiphanies” except me.

Then, one day, in true God-like fashion, He did what He always does, He had someone speak a message that applied directly to me:

Matthew 6:33: But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Even though I’d heard this verse repeated a million times before, its meaning never struck me. I never understood what it meant until that moment because, again, that’s what God does. God was basically telling me to seek Him and His kingdom first, and everything else would fall into place. There was just one thing: I had no idea what it meant to seek His kingdom.

If you grew up in church between the 1960s and the 1990s, it was all about the prosperity gospel, which taught us that our faith equals material and financial success. Bible verses like James 4:2, “You do not have, because you do not ask,” had many Christians thinking that this applied to material wealth. So many verses similar to this one were misinterpreted as all about us when the Word is about God. Only through reading His Word can we learn who He is, who He created us to be, and how He wants us to show up in this world. But our perception has been skewed. Through false, harmful teachings, we’ve come to view the Bible as a book of genie requests and God as our own personal genie. But when those genie requests didn’t work for us or the people around us, many wandered off to false gods, just like the Israelites did when their impatience took over and their faith failed.

I’m trying to say that the Bible doesn’t “work for us” because it was never intended to. It’s not a book of commands to pray to God to get Him to move on our behalf.

God wants a relationship with us and wants us to want Him more than we want things from Him. It’s just that simple, but we have to get out of our own way. And since the prosperity gospel has taught us all wrong, we must be willing to forget what we think we know to understand and absorb what is.

Let me leave you with this: What if someone came to you daily seeking things? This person hasn’t taken the time to get to know you. There’s even a whole book written about you that they can read to know you better. But instead of reading it to get to know you, they read it to try and figure out how they can benefit from knowing you. They are more interested in knowing what you can do for them than caring about who you are. That’s the perspective most of us were taught to have about God, and when He didn’t show up for us, we decided He wasn’t real instead of thinking maybe we’re the ones who’ve got this God thing all wrong.

When Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:33 to seek the Kingdom of God first, he’s saying to us, “Hey, come sit with me, spend some time with me. Get to know me and who I am, and I will take care of all that other stuff that you concern yourself with on a daily basis.”

It’s okay if you struggle with skepticism of the Bible. Pray about that. Ask God to help you with that. Just come to Him honestly. Let him know you have doubts and that you’re skeptical because I’ll tell you a secret: He already knows you’re skeptical anyway.

I hope this has helped to shift your perspective and look at the Bible in its proper context. Remember, it’s not a book of Genie requests. It’s a book that shows you (among many other things) who God is, who He created you to be, and how to experience the kingdom of heaven here on earth until the two are joined together once again (that’s another topic for another day).
How I’m moving myself out of my own way, and how you can Too

April 30, 2024
You know what I realized today? I have a hard time letting God be God in my life and I get in His way all the time. Yesterday, I was reading the New Testament, 1 Peter, to be exact, and there was a verse that mentioned spiritual gifts. Like my mind always does, it began to wander and ask God, “What are my spiritual gifts and what am I supposed to be doing with them?”

I’m sure like many of you, my life consists of a lot of doing. I’m constantly doing or feeling like I need to be doing something. I can’t even read the bible without seeing all the things the apostles did for Jesus and inserting myself into the equation. “Okay Lord, what am I supposed to be doing? What are my spiritual gifts?” I ask these questions instead of just focusing on allowing God to work through me, exactly where I am, using exactly what I already have. I seem to fall into this trap of thinking that I am missing something.

Throughout the bible, God ALWAYS worked through His people right where they were, using exactly what they had. How else was David able to kill Goliath with a slingshot? Stories like this put my lack of faith on full display because I would have waited on God to send me an AK-47 to slay Goliath. I can hear myself now:

“Lord, the Philistines are threatening to capture our people and take them into slavery. I know in my heart that you’ve made me a mighty warrior with my sling and stone. You’ve proven it several times, but I think I’mma need a gun for this one. So I’m gonna sit here and wait for you to send me the gun!”

THIS is how I get in my own way. I claim to have faith for things or for certain outcomes but I will sit around and wait for what I think my circumstances should look like before I move. THEN, when nothing happens at all, I’m looking at God like, “Why didn’t you help me? Why didn’t you do this for me?” But the reality is, I’M THE ONE who didn’t move! I never took one single step in the direction I wanted to go.

It’s like asking someone to meet me somewhere. They show up to the meeting place and they’re waiting for me but I never show up. That’s how I’ve been in a lot of the things I’ve sought God for, not even realizing it. And why have I done this? Again, because I didn’t think I had whatever it was I needed to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. I didn’t think I could use what I already had. I felt that I needed more.

Another one of my favorite stories in the bible that illustrates God working through us and using what we already have comes from 2 Kings 4. It’s a story about a widow whose husband died owing debts, and to pay off those debts, the creditors were coming to take her two sons into slavery. In a desperate attempt to save her sons, the woman turned to the prophet Elisha for help because she felt helpless.

When she told Elisha her situation, he asked her what she had in her house and she responded, “Your servant has nothing in the house except a jar of oil.” Elisha then told the woman to go to all of her neighbors and ask them to borrow “empty vessels”, aka, jars. He told her not to borrow a few and to get as many as she could, which is what the woman did. He then instructed her to go back to her home and begin to pour the oil she had in her house into all the vessels, which she did, and the oil didn’t stop flowing until the woman ran out of jars. By the time she was finished, she had enough not only to pay the debt to the creditors but also enough to live on.

Now, if this were me, I would have messed this blessing ALL the way up! I know myself. I would have either been too proud to go borrow jars from my neighbors, or even worse, I would have overlooked the value of the oil and neglected to mention it. Or maybe I would have operated from a state of lack and neglected to mention the oil out of fear it would be taken away from me. God can’t do anything with all of those obstacles I just put in the way! I mean, He could. He can do anything, but He’s not going to do anything in my life or yours that we are fighting against. There’s no faith in any of that.

As I write this, I have to ask myself, how many times have I not shown up because I lacked the ability to have faith and trust that God is already waiting for me where I asked Him to meet me? Not only that, but He’s already given me everything I need to do what I’m supposed to do! I don’t know about you, but I had an epiphany that when I move this way, I don’t really trust God. I only trust myself.

Here’s my overall point, well, I have a couple, so bear with me:
1. God’s ultimate purpose for our lives is the same for everyone: To glorify Him in this earth through everything we do: how we walk(figuratively, not literally), talk, live, treat others, etc. How each of us accomplishes this looks different for everyone, but that’s His ultimate purpose for our existence. The beautiful thing about that is, He has given us everything we need to accomplish His purpose for our lives. The way we move on what we already have determines whether or not He increases or decreases that (aka, the entire purpose of the parable of the talents).
2. Sometimes, God gives us dreams way bigger than anything we can accomplish on our own. He very seldom gives us tiny dreams. If He did, we would be able to take all the credit for accomplishing them. So if you’re only operating within the boundaries of what you know you can accomplish alone, you’re thinking too small and God’s not in the business of small thinking.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go take my own advice and re-structure my goals because they were originally written from the perspective of what I know I can accomplish in my own strength. What about you? Do your goals need restructuring too?
With all due respect, PLEASE get out of your Feelings!

April 25, 2024

I used to be one of those people who had a hard time grasping the truth and reality of God’s love because I couldn’t feel it. Heck, I’m a trained actor. I’m trained to feel. We are trained and encouraged to live out of our feelings and emotions. UGH, the drama!

But guess what? Our feelings are not facts, and they’re definitely not reliable enough to guide our lives. If I allowed my feelings to lead my life, I’d be in prison because there are a couple of people I would have tried to take out by now. What? I’m a work in progress.

I was always searching for a feeling when I was in the early stages of growing closer to God. I expected to feel Him all the time, to feel spiritual. But God doesn’t work like that.

Here’s a quote from Tony Evans about feelings that I love:

“Feelings are important. God created them, and He expects us to experience them. He doesn’t expect us to be emotionless machines. But feelings have no intellect. They are real and powerful, but they do not think. All we can do with our feelings is react. Feelings will react to a lie just as they react to the truth. Feelings even react to things that are not real. That’s why feelings must always be the caboose of the train, never the engine.”

There’s a song I love by Lauren Daigle. She’s a Christian artist. The song is called, “Hold on to me.” In the last verse of the song she says this:

I could rest here in Your arms forever

‘Cause I know nobody loves me better

Hold on to me

Hold on to me

As you can see, I put the lyrics “‘Cause I know nobody loves me better” in bold. Lauren said she knew this. A lightbulb went off as I listened to it, and I said to myself, “I know it too because it’s in His word!”

And THIS…this is the beautiful thing about the Word of God. No matter how we may be feeling at any given moment, no matter what we can or can’t see, we can open that book and know exactly How God feels about us at any given time.

Many things contribute to our feelings. People who think they’re in control of their feelings don’t realize that spiritual forces are always at work, causing us to think, feel, and possibly even react a certain way. But the beautiful thing about the Word is that we can open that book at any given time and determine whether that little voice inside our heads is telling us the truth or a lie.

But that’s a hard thing to do when you doubt the validity of the Word of God. I know it was hard for me to do before I actually surrendered my stubborn will and asked God to show me who He is in His word.

Until then, I remained in confusion. I was waiting to feel something. I was waiting to feel the presence and realness of God. Plus, I was around all these people who claimed to have these spiritual experiences. They always talked about how they FELT things, or they had these encounters they could see. And maybe they did. But all spirit is not God’s spirit:

1 John 4:1-3

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

As you can see, God even gives us a way to test and see if these things we feel, hear, and/or see are real. For example: if you’ve got a constant voice in your head telling you something as dark as suicide is your best option, then you know that’s not from God because God says in His word that He came to give us life and give it to us more abundantly.

Or if a voice constantly tells you how worthless you are, you know that’s a lie because God said in His Word that His plans for you are to give you hope and a future. So the voice telling you these things is not the voice of Christ. That is the voice of the antichrist.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many things we may think or feel about ourselves or someone else on a daily basis that are just flat-out lies. But you can always check whatever is being said to you to see if it stands with or against what God says about you.

What’s that saying the world encourages? “Fake it till you make it!” We are encouraged by society repeatedly to fake a state of mind or a state of being until we actually arrive at that place. But isn’t it a beautiful thing to have a TRUE WORD for yourself to refer back to and know FOR SURE who you are created to be?! Even if you don’t FEEL God’s word is true for you, it is!

So you don’t have to fake it! Say it until it is ingrained in you. Say what God says about you until you have actually caught up with the TRUTH OF WHO YOU ARE! That’s why it says in Hebrews 4:12:

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

You see that?! The Word is LIVING, BREATHING, and ACTIVE!! So while you’re saying it, even if you don’t FEEL it, it is doing a work inside of you that you can’t even begin to comprehend because it’s not just some mantras or quotes given to you by some spiritual guru. YOUR CREATOR SAID THIS ABOUT YOU! So who are you gonna listen to?
If You Want God To Change Your Life, Do This!

April 19, 2024

Most times, I start with a story, but I’m just going to skip to the good stuff!

I was spending time with God this morning, reading Matthew chapter 6:9-15, and He revealed the most simple yet important thing to me.

Matthew 6:9-15 is Jesus giving, what we know to be the Lord’s prayer. You know, the one that starts with, “Our Father, who is in heaven…” For those of you who don’t know, Jesus meant for this to serve as a template for prayer. He wasn’t instructing us to say these specific words, although it’s also okay if you choose to say this specific prayer, especially on days when you don’t feel like you know what to pray for; saying this prayer is better than not talking to God at all. But I digress…

I’ve started reading bible commentary along with scripture. A commentary is basically an explanation given for the particular verse you’re reading. Commentaries are usually written by scholars, theologians, etc. I’m currently reading Tony Evans’ Bible Commentary.

While reading the prayer, I zeroed in on Matthew 6:11, “Give us this day, our daily bread…” This is Pastor Evans’commentary on the verse:

“Ask God to meet your daily needs so you can fulfill his plan. God doesn’t establish a program that he doesn’t fund…” (meaning, that God didn’t put us here to do his will without making a way for that will to be done). “Nevertheless, our requests for his provision are to be DAILY. This is a reminder that you are dependent on him all day, every day. Just as the Israelites relied on God to provide manna regularly in the wilderness, so you are to live your life in dependence on God – one day at a time.”

As simple as this is, I have always taken what this verse means for granted. I probably even took it literally at one point, thinking “daily bread” meant daily provision in the form of food, water, money, or whatever I needed to get MYSELF through the day.

But it means so much more than that!

Sure, DAILY BREAD refers to God giving us what we need to survive physically, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s also asking him to supply us with what we need in order to do HIS WILL FOR THE DAY!!!!!

I am so guilty of going through my daily life, focusing on my own agenda. Some days, I may wake up later than usual, and I think it’s more beneficial for me to get right to work than to take the time to pray, which is wild for someone who considers themselves doing everything for the glory of God. In light of this revelation, I had to stop and ask myself, “If I don’t think it’s necessary to talk to God on a daily basis, whose glory am I REALLY doing things for?”

God’s will for our lives encompasses everything from our big overall purpose to how we treat others and/or go about the most mundane things on a daily basis. But praying for our needs to be met daily so that we can do God’s will doesn’t mean God expects us to sit and wait for Him to tell us what the purpose of the day is. It simply means, “Yes, go about your day the way you always do, BUT pray for God to give you the daily provision you need to do the things He may place upon your heart along the way.

What does that look like,? Well, let’s say you’re a schoolteacher, for example, and you’re responsible for stewarding the education of several students. Your “daily bread” or provision could be God providing you with wisdom and compassion to help a student who may need it that particular day.

Or what if you work face-to-face with the public? Your “daily bread” could be God’s provision of more patience and an overwhelming capacity to love the people you encounter, no matter how much they tap dance on your last good nerve.

What if you’re a stay-at-home mom? Let’s say you have a million things to get done that day. Your “daily bread” could be God giving you that extra boost of energy when you feel like doing absolutely nothing, or even better, God could lead you to discover a brand new chicken recipe for your family on Pinterest, because let’s face it, there are only so many ways you can cook chicken before your whole family is ready to banish it from the household completely!

Again, this is so simple, but for me, it’s life-changing! In hindsight, those days I’ve gone forward, relying on my own will and strength to do things, have been very fruitless. Now I know why. I’ve been getting up to conquer almost every day relying solely on myself to get things done.

I now realize that something as simple as asking God to give me what I need so that I may carry out HIS WILL on a daily basis is what it looks like to rely on God and not on myself. I also realize how difficult we make our own lives and how much we put on our OWN plates when we are probably doing things God never meant for us to do in the first place.

God’s will for our lives on a particular day could be something as simple as showing kindness to someone we encounter in line at a grocery store. It could be something as simple as praying for the person who cuts us off in traffic instead of having a fit of road rage (Lord KNOWS I don’t have the daily bread on my own to do that!). These things seem small but we have NO idea how something so tiny could possibly save someone else’s life or even our own.

So friends, I know your day is already halfway over, but that’s the amazing thing about God. He sits outside of time. Therefore, it is NEVER too late to ask Him for daily bread because if you’re willing to be used, He could have an assignment for you on the way to the water fountain, bathroom, or even the dinner table.

I am so grateful to God for revealing this little nugget to me and even more grateful that I got a chance to share it with you!