Walk the Talk

My life inside the pens and lens.

[jacintanest-deactivated20200103]

Love them always. The strangers, the friends, the family and the ones you’d often look past on the streets. Love them when it’s the last thing you feel like doing - not because you have to, but because love is what you’re made of. Love them because everyone deserves someone who’ll go the extra distance for them, especially on the days when they can’t go the distance for themselves. Love them when they believe they could scream down highways, through valleys and up mountains and still go completely unheard.. And please, even on the days when your bones feel dry, your mind feels full, and you couldn’t think of anything more exhausting than giving someone else what you think you need yourself, love them. Love them with every fiber of your existence, because love is the difference between being seen and living unseen. Love them with eye contact, and honesty and with a pursuit of mirroring the Fathers heart. I assure you it will hurt deeply, it will ache you and break you apart at times, but love anyway - love because without love, life is motionless and weightless. Without love, the world keeps turning, but the people in it fall away and feel forgotten.. Love when your well feels dry and drained, and you feel you’re running low, love them.. But also love yourself. Love yourself enough to fill your heart with Kingdom gains and goodness. Love yourself enough to learn the path to His throne room so well that you could walk it with your eyes closed. And on the days where you believe your overflow is minimal, love yourself enough to soak, dwell and drink from His everlasting cup - to fill yourself so high that you cannot help but go out and live and love in abundance. Love, love always. Love because it ignites a flame in every heart it crosses paths with, a flame that cannot be snuffed out. Love passionately and fervently - as though it’s your first and final opportunity to show each and every person you cross paths with, that they are important, seen, heard and they matter. Because at the end of the day, when it’s all over - His love is enough.. For you, in you and through you. #100daycreativechallenge

For more faith and inspirational devotionals, follow @jacinta.nest on Instagram, and feel free to share.

[jacintanest-deactivated20200103]

The average person lives 77 years. That’s 28,000 days, 670,000 hours, or 40 million minutes. In an average lifetime, men will spend 46 days getting ready, whilst women will spend 136 days ‘getting ready’ for something or somewhere - that is an average for women, of 3,276 hours applying makeup, doing their hair and showering. In an average lifetime, and we will spend 99,214 hours at work and an astonishing 23,214 hours washing our clothes. We will spend 6 months of our lives in queues, 20 weeks waiting on hold, 3,000 hours shaving, 366 days being sick and roughly 11 years in front of a television. In this lifetime, an average person will spend 5 months of their life complaining, 38,003 hours eating, 5 years on the internet and roughly 26 years sleeping - that is roughly 227,468 hours. We spend 38 hours annually in traffic, and 27 days waiting for public transport. The average person will wait 7 years to fall asleep, women will spend 17 years trying to lose weight, and a standard commuter will spend 6 months waiting at traffic lights. We spread our time and our patience over such trivial moments, activities, places and things, and waste a great portion of our lives on the completely mundane - yet tell ourselves we don’t have time to read His word, go to church, pray, worship or encourage others. We get impatient with God more often than we get impatient with traffic lights, hold music, queues and ads - and we act like that’s just fine. We stock our lives with empty boxes, building them higher and higher, in the hopes of someday getting somewhere, with something in our hands and being someone great - draining the hours we’ve been given instead of making the most of them. If you’re tired, burned up, worn out and weary - or even if you’re not… Come to Him. Find a moment within the hours that you wait in life, and wait on God whilst you’re there. Rekindle your patience, your love and your willingness to soak and listen to Him. Seek Him and find Him amidst the busyness of your schedule and the pleasantry of your routines; Whether you tune in on a crowded train or from a quiet mountain top; You will find Him. Embrace the time you have, today, here, now.

Follow @jacinta.nest on Instagram for more encouragement and faith devotionals.

[jacintanest-deactivated20200103]

One of Satans greatest lies that we fall victim to believing, is that we’re alone in our sin. By believing we are alone in our sins, our mistakes and our slip ups - we often find ourselves choosing to drown in shame, humiliation and regret. We find comfort in choosing to slink back and hide away from confrontation and conversation about the realities of our lives, not because we should, but because we are certain we are the only ones struggling with ‘controversial’ things, or even the more common and simple things. We allow ourselves to be sucked into the toxic lies of satan, and rather than pursuing the light, we bury ourselves in the shadows and keep our fall outs quiet. We don’t let others in out of a fear of being judged; out of a fear of being misunderstood, out of a fear of being cast out or being considered distanced from God. We let the deception of Satans lies rob the joy that is rightfully ours. We hold so tightly to our difficulties and temptations, because we feel like there’s no way out, and no space for relational conversation. We fill our hands to capacity with our errors, and leave no room in our hands to hold the joy of living an open life, free from guilt and condemnation. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we allow satan to have such a hold over our lives!? Christ made a way to the throne room, He called His people to humble themselves, pray and be the church that welcomes every saint and every sinner - just as He always has and always will. He tells us that temptations will come knocking, lies will come leaking and disunion will rear its head; but He also tells us to stand firm, to keep our feet firmly planted on His truths, and to hide His word in our heart; so that when Satan comes knocking, we are equipped with a double edged sword that can discern even the slightest signs of deception, and obliterate it with God breathed truth! When the time comes for you to confront the things that weigh you down and hold you back, and your lips begin to tremble out of fear; remember that you are not alone. People will understand you, they will still love you, you will still love you, and God will still love you. Forgiveness and freedom await you.

Follow @jacinta.nest on Instagram for more encouragement and faith devotionals.

[wnq-anonymous]

Don’t react to toxic people. Not giving them a reaction when they desperately seek it, is far more powerful.

Anonymous (via wnq-anonymous)

[jacintanest-deactivated20200103]

If you’re not where you thought you’d be by now, that’s okay. There’s still time to do all the things you thought you’d have done, and all the things you weren’t really sure you wanted to do up until now. So what if all your friends are in relationships, married or having children, or they’re off zooming around the world on lavish holidays and studying abroad. I get it… Everyone’s life seems more exciting, more interesting, more adventurous and more developed from your perspective, because you’re too busy looking out the window at other peoples homes and belongings, instead of celebrating what you have filled your home with… Yes, the pressures from society to perform and achieve by a certain age are heavy, but only if you choose to add them to your scales. You’ve let other people’s timelines effect your self esteem for far too long, and it’s time to repair the damage and start fresh. It might be a shock reminder, but your idea or concept of when you should have obtained certain things in life isn’t always perfect or accurate, or what is best for you long term. Your desire to be working a particular job by a particular age or to be married by a certain year no more gets you the job or the marriage than eating a carrot makes you a rabbit. You need to allow yourself and God the time, space, patience and grace to reach your goals and milestones in a valid and practical way that is suited to you, your story and the bigger picture. You need to relax your stance, fall into the waves of His overwhelming, captivating and directional love - and bask in the peace of knowing that you are right where He intended you to be, and that who you are is still growing, changing, developing, experiencing and preparing for that which has yet to arrive. He is the author and perfecter of your faith, and your story. The world will read you in many different ways, some cover to cover whilst others will only flick through - they will develop opinions on how your story should read, but at the end of the day, the only opinion a book seeks, should be its author. Rest in the fact that He writes nothing short of timely perfection, and you are doing just fine. #100daycreativechallenge

Follow @littlekinta on Instagram for more.

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

There comes a day when you realize turning the page is the best feeling in the world because you realize there was so much more to the book than the page you were stuck on.

Zayn Malik (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[weltenwellen]

Good intentions don’t excuse bad behavior. You will always enjoy yourself less when you have planned for it. Grief has no solution. Let it be. Not forgiving someone destroys you more than it destroys them. Sometimes there are no amount of encouraging words to pull someone out of the sheer exhaustion and melancholy of being alive. People see you the most when you don’t want to be seen at all. Honest laughs must be drawn out until all the air is gone. Like a balloon. Panic attacks exist to make you think your life is wrong. It is nearly impossible to maintain a close friendship when one person is depressed and the other is not. Not really knowing someone is what makes a life look interesting. Like when the movie trailer is better than the movie. If you need them to care more than they do, it won’t happen. Ever. Learning to dance in public without pretense is incredibly liberating, and people will envy you for it. There is a spiritual war raging inside all of us. Deciding to do something different just because you know it’s different does not make you unique. Unique is liking what you like. Unique is shamelessly admitting how much you still love that band even after they’ve sold out. Being alone is powerful. People don’t praise others because they’re afraid there will be no glory left for them. Nostalgia is the art of abandoning details. You’re never fooling anyone nearly as much as you’re fooling yourself. Small talk is THE WORST. No one hates the prettiest person in the room more than the 2nd prettiest person in the room. Regrets are useful, not useless. Dwelling is useless. Humbling yourself is the biggest component of self-improvement. It’s easier to get in your own way than it is for anyone else to. Kindness is the fastest way to earn respect. Depression is a lack of willingness. Opposites attract because they have so much to learn from each other. If you have to test their love, you’re not worthy. Half-hearted encouragement is worse than no encouragement at all. If a woman is constantly being let down by a man, it’s because she doesn’t know how powerful it is to be a woman. Nothing could be more bittersweet than knowing that it’s not going to play out the way you envision it. Helping people is the most rewarding thing on the planet and the least practiced. If you had everything figured out about anything, you wouldn’t be here. The more you don’t wear makeup, the better you look without it. Love is not rare. Unconditional love is. You’re the only one who thinks your family is embarrassing. Getting rid of one vice means replacing it with another. It’s all in your head. Literally.

Amy Shock (via splitterherzen)

[jspark3000]

Visit Original Link

[jspark3000]

Hello lovely wonderful friends! This is a message I had the privilege to preach at an amazing college ministry in Gainesville, FL. 

The message is titled: The Reckless, Relentless, Sloppy Grace of God: The Church That Jesus Had In Mind.

Of anything I’ve ever preached, this one is the truest message of my heart: that we would become a community of reckless honesty that gets entrenched into the mess of real lives with thoughtful nuance and that costly love called grace.  Whether you hate church or you’ve attended your whole life, I believe this is what God is after.

Stream above or download here!

Here are other messages from the podcast.

Be blessed and love y’all! — J.S.

[jspark3000]

So many times I thought I owed people something, when really I was just afraid to say “No.” We’ve trained ourselves to think that saying “Yes” means having value, but the very same people we reluctantly give our “Yes” to will be long gone after they’ve gotten what they want. Worse, you’ll still feel like you’re in debt to them. I’m learning that it doesn’t matter if others can’t handle my “No.” What matters is that I keep my Yes for things that matter, and that I owe this to myself before anyone else.

— J.S.

[zenpencils]

NEIL ARMSTRONG TRIBUTE

[zenpencils]

CHRIS HADFIELD An astronaut’s advice

[lemmepetyourdog-deactivated2016]

Timothy Leary: You aren’t like them. (x)

[zenpencils]

JOHN GREEN ‘Make gifts for people’

[zenpencils]

NATURE LOVES COURAGE by Terence McKenna

[zenpencils]

ERICA GOLDSON: Graduation speech

[jspark3000]

Occasionally we let someone in, we open the folds of our insecurity and give access to the darkest parts of us. We hand over the key, and it’s terrifying. And sometimes they bump into a raw nerve, they say a callous insensitive remark, they ridicule a strange notion we have, they poke at our dreams just a bit. It hurts pretty bad and we push them out and fold up fast. We remind ourselves, “This is why I don’t let anyone in.” And we run. It’s right here that most people apologize like crazy. They feel terrible. They were trying to figure out how to navigate the labyrinth of your wonderful story. It’s like holding a tiny flash light in a cave of a new world. They didn’t mean to provoke those old wounds. They didn’t mean to poke fun at your dreams. They considered it an honor that they held the key, even for a few frenzied moments. Intimacy takes work, trust, wounds, hurts, sculpting in the dark: and that takes time. It takes more than a single chance. Of course we can close the doors, at any second, when we know it just won’t work. But there are many opportunities if we had trusted a little longer, reset the tempo, and spoke up louder: it would’ve been okay. Bridges would be built. New stories are made. You find your hand closing around theirs. They begin to traverse the folds of your heart with ease, and they learn to say those things which give life, which give freedom, which grow dreams. Intimacy is formed out of stumbling, but further down the path: there is so much light, so much laughter, so many steps to the horizon together.

J.S.  (via jspark3000)

[jspark3000]

Loving people: this is where it gets real and it’s no longer abstract doctrine. To really love people and restore them, to get in the grit of their lives and lift them off the floor. It’s messy. It’s painful. It’s not romantic. It’s what Jesus did, and they killed him. But it’s what we’re made for.

J.S. (via jspark3000)