Believing God....Applying the Gospel....
........Living on the Branch that can never be cut from under ME

So, i'm beginning to believe what God has been gently showing me in the last year and a half...the gospel heals everything.......

Ephesians 6:16
"....in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one."

A year ago i went through a bible study called "Believing God" put together by Beth Moore. It really opened my eyes to my unbelief....that may sound simple, but really it opens up huge things in the heart! God's word began to show me more of who He was and what He said....and many times it contradicted with how i thought and lived.

So i tucked away many verses and thoughts i got as seeds in that study and tried to apply what i could. With a new baby and many changes it was easy to find opportunity, but also hard in that i would get very distracted and i found myself in unbelieving cycles again.

i am now 6 mos. pregnant with our second child and as wesley-grant gets older, things aren't as distracting and i've found myself in a new season of looking at "old lessons". I'm reading the book on believing God and walking through it with a girl who lives in our neighborhood. And in a bible study on Hebrews. I am finding myself refreshed looking back at some victories and renewed by reapproaching old lessons i have not yet applied.

"Our toughest battles will invariably concern matters of faith-times when we're tempted to think God's Word and His ways won't work for us, that He has abandoned us, let us down, or failed to come through for us." -Moore

Like Eve i find myself taking satan's spade of deceit and sowing doubt about God, myself and life....then i find myself, as Moore describes, "crippled, my doubt contagious, and losing the ground God has placed under my feet".

Who do i say the Son of Man is? (Matthew 16:13)

My belief goes back to the gospel....the place where i first believed, but don't i know that the gospel is not about salvation from hell only, but salvation for this life? salvation from all the built up lies in my life? To walk in freedom is to apply the gospel in all things.....too often i recreate an image of God that makes me feel better.

So, lately me and my friends around me have been challenged to apply the gospel whether about moving with our children to another country, being a single wanting to be married or a mom who wants to leave a real legacy that counts to her children.

My insecurities that are rooted from fears sprung from unbelief are beginning to change as I apply the truth of God's Word and Who He really is. The grace of the Gospel is so real and springs up from a real God, my savior. I am praying for it to wash over my heart in a new way these months. As spring comes and Easter approaches, it is a sweet reminder all around of the gospel. I want to believe more, and keep exposing myself more, keep offering my all. I want to go as far out on the limb of grace God has me on as I can. Christ is the branch that no one can cut out from under me....and the branch i am living on...now i am trying to apply that and live.