Life

Right now, I’m feeling a little lost. I read the Bible and am amazed at how loudly and clearly God works in the lives of the people in those stories. I long to be able to experience God as they did.

Instead, I feel stuck. I feel like there might be something big waiting for me, but I don’t have the strength or knowledge to get there. I feel like my prayers about it have fallen on deaf ears.

Maybe I am not meant to know until it’s happening. Life is a mystery. I just don’t know what my mystery is. All I know is that right now I don’t feel okay. I want okay to be here.

Emofaith 2.0

Hey everyone,

I got a new web domain for emofaith, so be sure to update your links! You can now find me at www.emofaith.com. I will probably be duplicating posts for a while, but eventually everything will get moved over to the new site.

Take care!

Amanda

Prayer totally works.

I know this to be true without a shadow of a doubt now.

I’ve prayed many many times for God to help me and my ex-boyfriend to overcome our problems and get back together. After getting into a fight with him yesterday, I took a different approach. I asked God to help heal my heart and get me through the immense hurt that I was dealing with. I simply asked Him to help me be okay again.

Many tears and tissues later, I was talking with the ex again. I was being my typical teary self and basically without flat out telling him, hinting at getting back together. Realizing that this wasn’t going to work, I asked him to give me a hug if he saw me the next day. His reply was somewhere along the lines of “I don’t think so”.

It’s amazing what those four words can do. They were the trick for me. After hearing those four words and processing them through my brain, I came to a major epiphany – it wasn’t HIM that I loved anymore; it was the idea of being WITH him that I couldn’t let go of and was still very much in love with.

Looking back afterwards, I realized how incompatible the two of us were. We weren’t one of those toxic relationships, but we definitely weren’t meant to last.

Realizing all of this stuff DID heal my heart. I’m happy now for the first time in a long while. I am finally over him. I think I was over the actual person before our relationship ended. I just needed to see that. God helped me through it. He answered my prayer.

We have to see that God DOES answer prayers. You just have to pray for the right thing. =)

I will update this eventually.

Hi everyone. I will be updating emofaith eventually this week. I am trying to get settled in to my dorm room and classes again, so I’m very busy.

Expect very good things to come to emofaith very very soon. I’m in an amazing class on religion this month, so it is already sparking idea for blog posts.

Until then, God bless and see you later!

Thank God.

I was sitting at church today when an image came on the screen that was really familiar to me. The images are everywhere – people in a vacant room, falling to their knees in despair, ready to cry out to God for help.

Every time I see one of these images I can’t help but think about how much we blame God. We blame him for the bad in our life, but are more than willing to cry out to him when our life gets to be more than we can handle. Do we ever stop to thank God for the things he’s given us?

1 Chronicles 16:8 tells us to “Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people.” I think a lot us fail at this with the first task we are given. We do not call upon God to give him thanks for sending his Son to die in our place. We do not thank God for the blessings He has showered down upon us, no matter how small. If we can’t even tell God how much we appreciate all that He is doing for us, how can we spread the word of how great He is to others?

We are not willing to give God thanks, but I can guarantee that many people are more than willing to ask God to thrown in a few miracles and blessings here and there. How selfish can we be? Phillipians 4:6 instructs us to “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” We can’t just simply pray to God and order up something like we’re in the drive-thru lane at McDonald’s. We have to tell Him how grateful we are that we can call upon Him and that HE WILL ANSWER US.

I know that I am guilty of this. But what Christian isn’t? I’m leaving you with a challenge, in the form of 2 Corinthians 9:14. Tomorrow, take a look at your life and see where God is working in it. Then I want you to say this verse and mantra:

“Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”

Judge not.

It sickens me that churches in America are judging people harshly and unfairly. In Arlington, a church refused to host a funeral for a man that had been an upstanding citizen because he was a homosexual.

For those of you who haven’t heard about this, you can find the article here.

Some Christians today are forgetting a simple rule that God told us in the Bible – don’t judge.

” Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God; as it is written, As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God. So each of us shall give account of himself to God.” Romans 14:10-12

In the end, it is not up to us to judge other people. We are all sinners, created equally. We will have to answer for our sins in the end, just like everyone else.

Love the sinner, but hate the sin. You don’t have to accept their lifestyle, but you can accept THEM.

A random quote I heard today…

“God doesn’t need any dams, because he can walk on water.”

Suffering

At around midnight on July 29th, my boyfriend of six months who I loved very much broke up with me. When I awoke the next morning, my mom came into my room, crying hysterically, to tell me that my grandmother had passed away about an hour before.

I know that life is not always easy or fair. But after this happened, I found myself question God’s tactics. Why would a just and loving God cause me so much pain? Why would he make me suffer so much?

I have found the problem in my logic. God is not the one who is causing my suffering and my pain. It is instead Satan trying to get me to have a crisis of faith.

II Corinthians 12:7 says “And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure.”

Satan will stop at nothing to turn people away from God. He wants people to blame God for their suffering and their pain, even though God is the one who can take it all away. Sure, it might not be an overnight thing, but GOD WILL BRING HAPPINESS FROM YOUR PAIN. I know, I’m probably betraying my emo roots there, but it’s true.

“For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong,” is the advice given in II Corinthians 12:10. The strongest way we can show our faith and love to God is to continue to love Him, worship Him and live for Him when our troubles continue to mount.

I have to trust God and love him even though terrible things have been thrown my way. Although I may stumble, I know that He is with me and will guide me down a road of immense happiness and love.

An introduction.

Hi everyone! I’m not sure who all might be reading this, but I thought I would just take a little bit of time and introduce myself and this blog.

My name is Amanda. I am 21 years old and live in Iowa. I’m currently a member of the Father’s House Vineyard Church in Cedar Rapids.

I am currently at a crossroads in my life. I am entering my senior year of college, about to receive a B.A. in Computer Science and Religion. Last year, I became a born-again Christian and have found a wonderful church home. Right now, though, I am confused as to what God’s plan for my life is.

I really feel like God has something big in store for me. I can only try and sort through my life, pray, and reflect to try to figure out what that is.

That’s where this blog comes in. I am going to use it as a place to collect my thoughts. I know that most people would want to do that privately and personally, but I love to hear what other people have to say. And who knows, maybe someone will see something I don’t.

So, here begins the spiritual journey of a very religious emo kid. She’s trying to figure herself out. Help her!