Dying to Self

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. Luke 9:23-26

Do I really live a life of complete surrender to my Redeemer Jesus? I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately. What does it look like to take up my cross daily and follow Him? How do I live a life that is lost for Christ? This world that I live in seeks comfort and security over anything and everything. We would rather sit on our couches and watch the world fall apart and shake our head then get off the couch and onto our knees to beg Jesus to restore His Kingdom on this Earth. We would rather take a Saturday and do something to "serve" the community and check it off our list than take each day and empty ourselves for the advancement of God's Kingdom into the Nations. We would rather hang out with our friends who are like us than walk across the street or drive across town to meet new people and love on people as Jesus did. I fall in this camp each and every day and how I long to be rid of my self-absorbed, sinful flesh! I long to be transformed into the likeness of Christ so much that my material possessions are in my life to only glorify God and serve others. How does one do that though? Is it through reading more books? Is it through talking about it more or even writing about it? I would say NO. I wonder if it humbly living out the daily struggle of Matthew 6:33 "But seek FIRST the Kingdom of GOD and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you." How I long to be so Kingdom-minded that I would not even consider it a loss to lose my possessions, my career, my friends, even my life to see every ETHNE worship our Risen Savior (Phil. 3:8)! This was a bit of a more passionate post than what I was planning on, but these are the thoughts that plague my mind every day...

My first blog EVER!

I never thought that I would be a blogger! But as I've read some of my friends blogs, I see this as a great place to put my thoughts on what God is doing in my life and around the world. I am not an eloquent writer, nor do I write any sort of poetry, but I do have thoughts and I love to write them down! So here I am blogging my thoughts and the lessons I am learning as I trust God. I hope to share some funny stories along the way as well!!

I called this blog Stepping Stones because of a picture that God gave me during some extended time with Him. I have realized in the past few months that I am often paralyzed by fear of the uncertainty of what lies ahead in my future. I had stopped moving forward in my pursuit to be apart of God's global purpose in unreached areas because I didn't know what my next step should be. The picture that I was given was me standing on a rock on a river. Ahead of me there were multiple rocks to jump onto so that I could continue moving down the river, but I stayed put because I was fearful that the next rock wouldn't hold me. Because of this I never moved forward. God gently spoke to me in this picture telling me that I can step on those stones because He is the one that had placed those there for me to walk onto. I can trust Him that He does know what lies ahead and that is all that I need to know. Hence the title of this blog...

God has been revealing so much to me through my decision to move into full time ministry. He has been revealing my sin and at the same time has shown me how abundant He is in His grace and love towards me as I see myself as I truly am in Christ. I look forward to what else He has to teach me and what other praises and lessons I can blog about in this blog!

Oh and I will probably be using this to blog about my training for the Green Bay Marathon that I am going to run in May!!!