Above and Beyond

Victoria. 19. Christian. Jesus is my Savior! A sinner saved, a stumbling saint.

[thewannabeee]

Fun Facts About Honey

- Honey is mostly sugar (WoW!) it is 80% sugar and 20% water (double WoW!)

- There are over 20,000 species of bees, but only 4 make HONEY

-Honey is the ONLY food that contains all the substances you need to survive (Including WATER)

-Children under the age of 1 should not eat honey… why? because sometimes it contains bad stuff called botulism and can cause them to get botulism poisoning (that sucks, even infants should taste the deliciousness that is honey)

-Honey will crystallize under optimum temperatures (this has a lot to do with how you store it)

-Bees produce honey to eat during the winter when there are no flowers and no nectar for them.

-A honeybee would only need an ounce of honey to be able to fuel a flight around the world (this makes for a very cultural bee!)

-A typical beehive can make up to 400 pounds of honey a year! (Wowza!)

[p1325]

2000′s Pop Albums (Cassette Edition)

[swanisms]

I was a little hesitant to make this post but -

My brother was killed last Sunday. I was out on vacation, not knowing anything until the day before yesterday because my family didn’t want to ruin my vacation though my life feels ruined anyway because my brother is just gone. He’s gone.

But this post isn’t for me, it’s for my niece, his 2 year old daughter and the absolute light of all our lives.

He loved his Arianna Rose more than anything, and she loved - loves her daddy. Knowing that, his friends put together a gofundme to help us support her.

https://www.gofundme.com/tyler-timmons-memorial-fund

If you’re able & willing to donate, thank you, but even just sharing this would be very appreciated. My baby brother would probably grumble and say something about us caring only about his bighead baby but he’d be just as - somehow even more grateful than us, so thank you from us, from Tyler, and from Arianna for even just reading this

[fallinhisarms-deactivated201907]

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

— Philippians 4:6-7 NIV (via worshipgifs)

[thesovereignword]

Proverbs 31:25

[thesovereignword]

[thesovereignword]

[notoriouslye]

“I firmly believe in small gestures: pay for their coffee, hold the door for strangers, over tip, smile or try to be kind even when you don’t feel like it, pay compliments, chase the kid’s runaway ball down the sidewalk and throw it back to him, try to be larger than you are— particularly when it’s difficult. People do notice, people appreciate. I appreciate it when it’s done to (for) me. Small gestures can be an effort, or actually go against our grain (I’m not a big one for paying compliments…), but the irony is that almost every time you make them, you feel better about yourself. For a moment life suddenly feels lighter….”

— Jonathan Carroll (via wordsnquotes)

[adarably-me-deactivated20190901]

“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

— Ephesians 4:2 (via abibleverseforeachday)

[worshipgifs]

“Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.”

— James 1:12

[thesovereignword]

Arthur W. Pink

[jspark3000]

“I’m starting to find that everyone’s Christian faith is utterly, uniquely different. Not so different on loving Jesus and loving people — but the way we wrestle through doctrine by strict academia or by poetic reflection, how we sing at the top of our lungs or in quiet osmosis, how some of us pray at sunrise in a pew or at three a.m. on a beach, how some of us are dying to journal or would rather die than journal, how our political tensions clash so broadly and brutally, how one forgives so quickly and the other is bitter indefinitely, how some of us are strong in faith or we’re faith-weaklings, how we each hold onto quirks like Bible translations and worship genres and preaching styles, how we like to gather in crowds of thousands or a group of a dozen.There’s no need to fight over these things. No need to accuse another of being wrong, or to try to be better than the ‘other’ church, or to recast the same mold. We are so many shades of an endless jewel, a glorious community of unified diversity fueled by the endless imagination of God. I hope we don’t dash ourselves on our personalities. There is room for you and for me in this Body.”

— J.S.

[jspark3000]

Visit Original Link

Hello beloved friends!

This is the second part of a sermon series called “The Names of God: Who We Are In Who He Is.”  

This message is titled: The Unexpected Friendship With The Maker of Everything.

It’s about the mindblowing truth of how we can actually be friends with God, and what this really means for each of us.

Stream above or download here!

  Some things I talk about are: How to pick groomsmen for your wedding, when your friend sees you flip out and melt down and all your slobbery mess, bringing a big dude to a schoolyard fight to get your back, who Jesus would sit next to at church, how to destroy your enemies (spoiler: turn them into friends), that brave moment when you try to make a joke in a crowd and it falls dead, and good news for the awkward introverted shy kid in all of us.

Be blessed and love y’all!

— J

[jspark3000]

Remember: Who You Are

If you’re down today, remember who you are.

In Christ, you are a child of God: saved, forgiven, and free.

You have a strong father in Heaven who absolutely loves you, and who actually likes you.  It’s why Jesus came to be one of us.

He gets your struggle, he’s alongside you, he’s rooting for you, he will never stop.

We are the sons and daughters of a Heavenly Father who is in control of everything.

We have a Savior who wrote himself into the story of the world to write the final victory on our lives: so nothing else gets the last word but him.

Look no further than the cross and the empty tomb.

You have — right now — a Spirit of courage, bravery, compassion, love, and truth.

Remember: you are His.  You are secure forever.

[jspark3000]

It Was A Good Life

  Sometimes a friend will ask me for advice because they feel like they’re going nowhere in life.  They tell me their whole story, whether for two minutes or two hours, and I listen.

I can see they’re totally dead inside. Their eyes are hollowed out. Their hands shake. They have that numb zombified look of giving in to lesser things. They have the desperate look of the Reaper coming to collect their corpse. 

It’s always because of a boyfriend. Or a lack of purpose. Or terrible parents. Or a ninth year in college. Or an addiction: porn, heroin, meth, weed, people. Or a low-grade haunting fatigue and depression and cynicism with no discernible cause. 

It’s all these things but none of these things. It is emptiness, and we try to fill it by finding a god in things that are not God. 

  At this point, I tell them:

You stand on the precipice of a very difficult decision, where you can let go of your dead-end self-induced slavery and turn away from everything that is draining the light out of your eyes. You can walk away from the wreckage. A clean break. You are young and it’s not too late. Tomorrow can be a different day. A fresh start. A new you. A rediscovery of who you are and who God made you to be. 

Because I’ve seen your story a million times. You have fun for a little while with semi-interesting people in dimly lit venues putting things into your veins while saying popular catchphrases to win your cultural zeitgeist and you’re certain that this pseudo-rebellion is everything you’ve always wanted. 

Except here you are with me, asking me for help, because on some level you know you’re settling for less and selling yourself short and doing nothing valuable and you’ve become this fake version of you, and time is running short and your friends are getting younger and you feel creepier and cheaper and lonelier everyday.  You’re tired of being someone else’s boredom-filler. 

I hate to be a jerk about it and I know it’s hard: but I think you already know the answer. I think you know there’s no easy way to do this except to crawl out of the burning building and to be free of all this stuff that is less than you.  

It’s going to suck, but unless you walk away, you will end up right back to this seat in front of me and ten years will have passed with the same story and the same emptiness. 

I just love you, and God loves you, and we don’t want you to fake it anymore.

I don’t know what it will look like for you to turn. Smash it to pieces. Tell it goodbye. Throw it in the trash. Get your friend to stop you. Go to rehab or turn yourself in or get a therapist. It will probably be drastic and dramatic. You’ll hate giving it up, because it’s your baby, your god, your idea of you. 

You might have to leave people behind, mostly people who want to stay there. Some might follow. It might feel like you’re killing a part of yourself. You might fail to get away for a while. Your “friends” will hate your guts. You’ll think I was wrong, that you were wrong, that you were crazy to ever think of walking away.  You might go back and it could even be okay, if you’re really lucky. 

  But sometimes I see the other end of this story. I see people who really make that hard decision and really persevere and suddenly find out there must be more to life than self-entertainment and preservation. 

They find a purpose and their God and their meaning and their value and dignity and self-respect, and the light comes back on in their eyes. They actually start doing something worth a damn.

They drop the zombie look. They take big risks with charity and generosity and big ideas and grand visions and care about all those things we always wanted to care about.

They get to “help people” like we said we would when we were six years old dreaming of being firefighters and doctors and superheroes. They get to be on those exciting adventures like the ones we read about in those inspirational articles we share on Facebook that we could supposedly never do ourselves. 

And there’s nothing wrong with “partying.” You’ll outgrow all the old stuff but you can be around it without being controlled by it: because it doesn’t hold weight anymore. You actually learn how to celebrate for real: because there’s a direction, a richness to your one God-given life. I think what you think is partying right now is actually just little kids playing grown-up, and real partying is what grown-ups do when they see their ideas come alive. 

If you decide to wait it out: I think your existential itch will keep bothering you. The cognitive dissonance will be too much to bear. But what will hold you back from moving forward is the fear. To be honest, it’s scary as hell to leave all that comfort and your cute friends and your whole escape-routine. Everyone likes mindlessness. It’s easier. So we just keep being afraid. I understand that.

I just don’t think it’s worth it. 

  But hey, God has grace for you whatever you decide to do. I just think that for one type of person, God’s grace sort of gets them out of trouble and helps them barely make it. That’s for mostly all of us. But for the other person: God’s grace actually empowers them for something more. It drives them to a real life. It gives them a soul. Their eyes quit being dead.

I don’t mean you sell your stuff and move to Zimbabwe, unless you want to. I don’t mean you go to church nine times a week and lead the choir, unless that’s your thing. I just mean: you make a difference in your corner of the universe.

That’s probably really corny and it sounds like a bumper sticker, but it doesn’t mean it’s untrue. I bet you’ve been waiting for it your whole life. You’ve been thirsty to do something else. And I hope you let go of whatever you need to so you can make it happen, so at the very least, you can move on and stop feeling this way.

You can get out of this fog and feel like you’re breathing your own air.  You can finally feel like a real human being. 

This is morbid for me to say so: but I think you’ll look back from your deathbed on this day and you won’t regret letting go. It’ll be the day you said —

“I was living however I wanted, but I knew something had to change, and as hard as it was: I walked away. I chose something better. It was the day I really became free. By the grace of God, I made something out of my life. I made something. And it was a good life.”

— J.S.

[jspark3000]

Grace Upturns

Why is grace so threatening?

Two opposite and equal reasons.

Some of us think, “No one else should get grace but me. I want grace when I’m caught in the act: but it’s not right that anyone else be let off so easily.  Grace would solve my problems in an instant, but others should have to pay for their crimes.”

Some of us think, “Grace is for everyone except me.   I think everyone else deserves grace, but you don’t know what I’ve done.  I can never forgive myself.  I deserve what’s coming.  Grace would solve all my problems in an instant, but I should have to pay for my own crimes.”

If grace is real, then that means grace is unfair in both directions.

It means we don’t always get what we want —

But we also get way better than we deserve.

For grace to work, both must be true. We cannot have a world of only one or none of either.

For grace to work, it must be embraced despite what we think we deserve, and we must be willing to let go of our idea of what we want: because grace is so much better than that too.

— J

[jspark3000]

Sometimes I forget to listen. I forget to let a friend be. To tell their whole story and paint their full heart into the air.

I’m too eager to respond with a fix, a solution, a plan. I interrupt the art. I look for a pause to jump in and offer all sorts of articulate banter, when this isn’t what they want. They just want to speak until they’re out of breath, and then meet eyes and feel like they’re okay and understood and not alone. It’s a beautiful thing, and I want to let it happen. I want to let them finish painting in their own words. And then maybe I will understand. — J