Monthly Archives: May 2017

My Journey, Personal Growth, Prayer

From Loss to Love

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songs_of_loss_and_love

Experiencing loss is never easy. The grieving process alone can be torture, leaving one paralyzed in a state of sadness, loneliness, anger, and denial.

Late last year, I experienced the loss of a child by miscarriage. My heart broke into a million pieces as I held my baby, the size of a pea, in the palm of my hands. The days following that loss were filled with a desire to find comfort in the midst of extreme pain. I prayed for comfort and God provided. He led me to a song. A song that healed the hurt and gave me a peace that surpasses all understanding. This particular song blew me away. It was as if I had written it myself. My exact thoughts and feelings bleed out though the lyrics. I was so moved by it that I wanted to know the story behind why it was written. In my search, I found an interview with the woman where she stated that she wasn’t yet ready to share her story. She wanted listeners to have the chance to hear it through their own trials first.

One month after hearing it for the first time, the singer shared the message behind the music. Here is what she said. “I wrote this song in the middle of experiencing everything that comes with a miscarriage, so it was my most raw place that I could have been when this song poured out of me.” God sent me his comfort, his love, and his healing with the words of a song through the voice of someone who went before me.

My suffering today is somebody’s comfort tomorrow.

Personal Growth

Gods at War: The God of Entertainment

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Entertainment

Week three of defeating idols that battle for your heart brings us to the god of entertainment.

Jesus My Passion

The god of entertainment promised us a circus. And in our adult world, which can be gray and drab, filled with obligations and responsibilities, that sounded pretty good.

We looked for attractions and surprises and amusements to create in us a sense of wonder. Maybe we would find it in music or in movies or in games or in sports. The god of entertainment was hawking them all, like a carnival barker: “Step right up! Be amazed, be amused! Come one! Come all!

But in the end, the music was flat, the movies were formulaic, and the games were rigged. The circus would leave town and we wait impatiently for another one to take its place. 

Then we found our passion in Jesus. If you haven’t experienced it for yourself, I get that it sounds ridiculous—how could a dusty old Bible character compete with big budget movies or action-packed games or soulful tunes? But once you know Jesus and passionately pursue him, it seems ridiculous that we thought we could ever find what we wanted on a movie screen, a website, or a playlist.

Jesus said in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

In this section of the book, the author breaks down the word amusement and what it actually means blew me away. It is the lack of inspiration, the lack of reflection. The actual definition is a pastime, play, game, anything which pleasantly diverts the attention. So we seek amusement because we don’t want to think.

I encourage you to dig deep in this area. Do you find yourself seeking entertainment to simply divert your attention away from things causing you stress? If the answer is yes, maybe it is time to turn to God, letting Him walk you through the process of healing things you prefer not to think about.