What Would Your Reaction Be If Right Now The Story Of The Life Of Jesus, And The Bible Were Completely

"he is risen" if you believe in him then he rose 2000 years ago. put down your roses and get in the dirt there are people suffering now get out in the street there are people being occupied get out in the world maybe he is risen but it is your job to keep him alive

Insignificant?

I know you didn’t just apply that word to yourself. Seriously? Insignificant? If you only knew.

I composed the melody of the universe and choregraphed the dance of the stars. I am the architect of the cosmos, the weaver of the fabric of time and space, the maker of heaven and earth. I am the surpreme master of the universe, I tell the stars where to go. I can stop and start the orbit of the earth at a whim. My whispered commands brought forth the blazing supernova of the sun’s power, and the sun is just a small star. Imagine the immense power in my very breath. In my very thought. And yet. And yet, I care if a sparrow falls from a tree. My child, how much more do I care about you? Do you know how much I care about you?

I know how many grains of sand cover the earth, how many droplets of water make up the ocean, and how many stars are in the sky. I don’t even have to count, I just know. Guess what else I know. I know exactly how many hairs are on your head right now, and that number changes constantly. In fact, I know everything about you. Because I care about you. I know what your handwriting looks like, I know what you got on your last math test, and every math test before that. I know your favourite food. Do you know how much I care about you?

Through my will, the pattern and rhythm of the universe is sustained, and yet with all these astronomical duties, you are NEVER beneath my notice. A sparrow is not. And how much more do I care for you, my child? I am the God of the Universe, and I love you. You have inifinite worth. I’ve loved you intimately, passionately, deeply, personally, since eternity and will do so for all eternity. You are worth more than the world to me. More than words can express. More than your finite brain can possibly understand. More than your frail human heart could possible contain. More than life itself. Insignificant? No. You are of divine significance. You matter. Very much. You matter infinitely to ME.

-God

So if you feel insignificant, stop and really think about it. Do you feel insignificant because of what people think of you? WHO FLIPPING CARES what people think? What do they know? The CREATOR, MASTER AND RULER OF THE UNIVERSE cares about you! He thinks you’re so important and precious and special! That trumps what people think, without a doubt.

Insignificant? Erase the word from your vacabulary.

The Law and The One Who Made The Law

On Sunday, I was helping out with the kiddies program in the morning church service. I LOVE being with the kids, but this morning I felt that there was something wrong. The lesson was about sin, and I think that the message the kids were supposed to take home was "Don't Sin." We told them stories about people who did drugs and stole stuff and ran away from homes and discussed the various mistakes these people made, and defined sin and then told them that the people in the stories met Jesus and cleaned up their lives and went on to do a whole bunch of really great things for God. 

I'm sure it sounds like a very positive message at first glance, but something really unsettled me about it: 

It's all well and good to tell the kids to obey their parents and tell the truth and share and don't do drugs and stay in school. However, why are we so focused on all these rules for how we should behave and not on The One who made the rules? 

Cause see, the gospel is not a behaviour-control program. The church does not exist to make sure that everyone is following the rules. And Jesus didn't die so that we would have to be perfect. 

What I'm trying to say is that instead of telling these kids what they can and cannot do, we should introduce them to Jesus, and tell them about his amazy-crazy, upside-down inside-out, spin-you-all-around LOVE. I think that we should tell them that Jesus knows them better than anyone else in the world and that He loves them more than anyone else in the world does. I think we should tell them that they are His precious treasure, His beloved son/daughter, the apple of His eye. I think we should tell them that He has an awesome plan for their life and that He's gonna do great things in them and through them. Finally, I think we should tell them that He loves them so much that He died for them, so that their sins would be repaid and they could go to heaven. Don't you think that such a message would be far more effective than "Don't do this. Don't do that." I feel like if they knew the one who made them and loves them, they would be naturally less inclined to seek fulfillment in thrills, drugs, alcohol and sex ANYWAY, and we wouldn't have to try and hammer it into their skulls so much. 

Don't get me wrong, we do tell the kids all the stuff I said up there. We tell it to them all the time. My church is not remiss in informing the children of their infinite value to their creator. I just think that if Sunday morning's service was the only one a child had ever been to, they would think that church was just a list of Do's and Don'ts. So I believe that instead of just talking about sin, we need to prevent a more holistic view of the relationship between God and humans. I think we need to present the gospel to these kids in BIG BOLD ITALIC CAPS every single time we see them, because knowing the love of Christ is infinitely more important than knowing the rules. 

That's all.  Peace and love!  -Katherine

“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”

— Maya Angelou

New Year's Reflections

At the beginning of 2015, I was broken. Broken like something that didn’t work right. Something had gone wrong in my brain and I was glitching. I had just come out of the worse year of my life, and January 2015 followed possibly the most serious emotional/psychological crisis of my young life. I wasn’t me. My self esteem was virtually nonexistent, replaced by omnipresent self loathing. All of my relationships were in shambles, corroded by incessant deceit and self sabotage. I honestly wasn’t sure how I was even still in school based on my grades. And I had strayed so far from the moral path I wanted to be on that I didn’t even recognize myself. I was broken. My life had become nothing but a toxic cycle of lies, guilt, tears, denial, avoidance, and self destructive habits*.

 And 2015 was the year that God fixed me. I am in awe of His care for me. He had orchestrated the perfect cure for the bugs in my system, because He knows what is good for His children. He reminded me of who I am. Summer 2015 was basically like a hard reset for me. Like when your laptop freezes so you hold the power button until it restarts. That’s what God did to me this summer. He sent me to Africa where I felt more alive and more myself than anywhere else ever before. He reminded me of the purpose He placed inside me and the plan He has for my life. Then He sent me to camp where I met girls who not only understood the regrets and struggles in my past, but could relate and sympathize, and they accepted and loved me unconditionally. I learned that I’m damaged, and I’m not perfect, and I glitch sometimes, but I’m still capable and usable and worthy of love. It’s amazing to feel God’s grace in the realest form I’ve ever felt it. The grace that makes me beautiful despite my flaws. The grace that makes me usable despite my weaknesses. The grace that justifies me. The grace that makes me worthy despite my wretched unworthiness. The grace that is so much greater than my perception of my imperfection. The grace that showed me that I can’t shrink myself into something that God cannot love because His irrevocable love transforms me into something greater than human measures. 

 2015 was a good year, by the grace of God. 

 *for the record, my self destructive habits weren't substance abuse or self harm. They were just skipping school and sucking dick. harmful but not quite as bad.

Is sex before marriage a sin? If so, why? Does the ceremony make a difference to God if you're in a fully committed relationship? Is it a sin to have sex the night before the wedding but not a sin 24 hours later? I've always believed in waiting but now I'm questioning what the difference is to God

In your question I can see that you have already gotten rid of the idea of marriage as a covenant. When you ask “does the ceremony make a difference to God if you’re in a fully committed relationship?” the answer is yes because it’s not a fully committed relationship until the ceremony that symbolizes the covenant relationship between you and your spouse before God. If marriage is just a ceremony or a social contract, then yeah, it wouldn’t make that big of a deal, but it is so much more than that. It is an image of the relationship that Christ has with his bride the Church. 

Marriage is not the small thing that the culture has made it out to be. The call in marriage is to give your life for your spouse, and when people throw their marriages away for nothing then it gives people the idea that marriage really isn’t that big of a deal and that in the end it’s basically just like any other relationship. Once you start thinking that way, then marriage becomes irrelevant. But that’s not what marriage is. It’s a covenant between you your spouse and God, and as such it should be treated with great reverence.

"I think that if you're a half decent person, you'll get into heaven."

So guys I was thinking today: 

If someone says they're a Christian and then they look at me and they're like "I just think that if you're a half decent person you'll get into heaven." .... I honestly have to wonder if they've read the bible. The phrase you just uttered undermines the entire foundation of Christianity. You can't "get into" heaven by being a "good" person.

I mean, first of all, NO ONE is a good person. We're human. We're imperfect. We're mortal. And by default, we are literally incapable of being truly good. I mean, you can be alright and not like, kill people and stuff. But how do you define sin? I mean, where's the line between good people and bad people? Can you still be a good person if you've held a grudge against someone, judged someone or lied? Cause see, all sin is equal in the sight of God. There are no degrees of sin to God. It's a yes or no question. Have you or have you not done something that is not of God? The answer will always, irrefutably be yes. Romans 3:23 says "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

And so...and this is very important, so listen up...if you could "get into" heaven by being a good person, Jesus would never have had to die on the cross. 

So if you believe that you can get into heaven by being a good person, I guess you believe that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is completely meaningless. And if Jesus Christ, being fully God, stepping into a mortal body, bearing the weight of all the sins of all the people who ever were and are to come, going to Hell, stealing the key and coming back to life to give you eternal life means absolutely nothing then what do we even believe in? 

Do you get the fact that Christianity is ALL ABOUT God reconciling the separation between sinful man and perfect deity? Do you realize that that is literally EVERYTHING that we believe in? 

Don't get it twisted: I'm not telling you that you're a bad person. I'm not telling you that you can't get into heaven. I don't think that I'm better than you and that I'm going to heaven and you're not. Because believe me, I am acutely aware of my own deficiencies. I KNOW how much I need grace. I'm just telling you that we are all human, and we all need Jesus if we wanna go to heaven. If you don't wanna go to heaven, well..I can't help you. :P

Lots of love :) Peace y'all! -Katherine

I'm not attacking your beliefs, i'm just playing devils advocate. Why do you believe in Christianity? There's no proof of any reality to the bible.

Here :)

Warning signs of a potentially unhealthy relationship 

Why The Abortion Debate Is Such A Difficult One

The crux of the conflict of opinions on the matter of abortion is that different parties define personhood differently. I think we can all safely agree that murdering an innocent human is wrong, but what qualifies as an innocent human? At what point in development does this creature become a true person? What makes a person? Is it the soul? That intangible essence of existence, the source of all love and character? The thing that you and I fall madly in love with, the undefinable presence of someone's identity? What IS that? How do I measure that? How do I count and quantify and categorize that? How much does it weigh? What does it look like? There is no way to empirically define what makes someone a PERSON. If it's what makes them human, DNA alone would do that. But what is it that we see as sacred and precious? And more importantly, when does it occur? When is that cluster of cells infused with a a soul? When does it become more than just tissue and transform into the vehicle for an identity? When the brain develops? When the heart starts beating? When they emerge from the womb? Or at conception? Who really knows? This concept is so abstract that you can't possibly pinpoint a moment in time and say "there. THAT's when they became a person." Because as soon as they're a person, everyone unanimously agrees that they're worthy of life. As long as that issue remains grey, so will abortion. I've asked many more questions than I've answered. But if you are able to answer the questions I've asked in the space between your own two ears, you can formulate a stance on abortion. I know mine. Please, give it some serious thought. And good luck.