Ree At Level 29 !!

It's my birthday today and I just turned 29...... and I am writing about it!! Which is pretty crazy and beautiful all in one if you ask me! Why you might wonder? Because for the longest I have been so private about my age.

Me after my BigChop 2 weeks ago

I remember when I turned 23 and I was so depressed that I was growing 'old' and 'not where people my age were supposed to be', and that 'everyone' I went to school with was way ahead of me. Writing this just reminded me a quote I saw on Heather's Instagram that said - "If social media makes you feel like you are behind in life then you spend too much time on it. Our life is measured by God's seasons not by comparing our life to others "- Food for thought if you currently find yourself there. Anyway so there I was joining uni to study my undergrad (which was a miracle and blessing in the works and I had so much to celebrate and be thankful for but there I was focusing on the negative). I felt so behind in life that I kept my age details so private, I was so guarded, sensitive and insecure about it all  - I didn't lie about it ( I'd be flattered when people would insist to know and then guess that I was much younger than I was) but I was simply NOT TELLING!! Pretty sad ay! Crazy mental bondage I tell you (one of the many beautiful things that my new life in Christ has set me free from and He continues to develop me in these and more areas!)

Fast forward 6 years later - I am now a born-again Christian, I'm single (if we are not counting Jesus, lol) and so content with this season of my life and that's been the case for almost 2 years now since I gave my life to Christ in August 2014 - Infact I've began writing a series on this and you can read that here .

Today I guess I am just here to say that - you know what, I don't know what tomorrow holds, I have a whole lot of uncertain circumstances all around me and there is a lot I could be down, worried and sad about, but guess what? I am not!!! I have the peace that surpasses all understanding. I am filled with so much joy about the endless possibilities of my life because I personally know the maker and giver of my life, the one who knows and sees my end from my beginning ( the entire universe's for that matter), the one who runs this show! I am safe, so safe in the loving capable hands of my God my Father, guided by His very own Spirit living in me and saved by the finished work of Christ on the cross. I have everything I will ever need in this life and body and my life eternal forever. God created me to be in a relationship with Him, to be in perfect fellowship with Him, I was created to worship Him with my life! So I will continue to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all other things shall be added unto me. He alone shall supply all my needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. He alone satisfies my soul. I know He cares for me, I know He loves me!  Jesus is my life!! In Him I live and move and in Him have all my being. My everyday purpose is found in Him and out of my daily walk with Him my entire life purpose is unfolding right before my eyes.

He is my God. He is my Shepherd ( he protects and provides for me). He is my King ( I am in the hands of He who has all power, and is sovereign over everything and owns it all) and He is my Father (he really cares and really knows what I need and will work for me to be sure that I have what I need) so I rest and find love and authority, provision and guidance in Him alone.

And this is where I am and will always be. He will give me the grace for every season of my life and all the ups and downs they will come with, His grace is always going to be sufficient, and his grace also comes with joy and enjoyment for He is there and for where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom! Freedom to just be me and be all God created me to be and to be free to focus on pleasing Him the creator and not the created. I now live for an audience of One, my Lord who is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. I am free, I am glad, I am full of joy for He satisfies my soul !!!

And if you don't understand what it is I am going on and on about, my prayer is that you will have a real and true encounter with the one true living God! I can't wait for you to feel and know like I do, for this to become a real living truth in your very own life!! This is more than just a good feeling, it's a very very very real reality! Jesus is the love of my life, The Holy Spirit is my best friend and God the Father is my the perfect loving Daddy I never had. And He is very very real, as real as you understand you and me to be.

But don't get me wrong, I do know first hand that it is no a light matter, we may all find ourselves at one point or another caught in the dump of feeling like our lives don't add up, like time is running out to accomplish abcd and e!.. that age is catching up with us, or not being where we thought we ought to be or feeling all kinds of pressure from society, or that everybody else's life seems to be progressing and yours simply isn't!! But I also know that there is a way out of it, I know someone who has made the way out for each and everyone of us, He has done it for me and countless other and He can do it for you too. Jesus makes it possible to see the truth of life from His very own eyes and to be set free from all of this and more. I promise you, life is bigger and sweeter than those false feelings based on mindsets built on lies and I know our life is measured by God's seasons not by comparing our life to others.

I can smile at any storm - because Jesus!

I am not perfect, I am a daily constant work in progress, but I am also so far from who I was on this day 2 years ago. I am all that I am today by the grace and strength and power of God, not of my own, nothing of my own. You can think positive all you want, plan to and do better with your will power, but there will always be a missing link. We find our completion in Jesus alone.

Life with Jesus is not a walk in the park, it gets very real, but you don't get to do life alone, He carries you through it all, all the seasons! It is so worth it living for Jesus !! He will reveal to you your true identity in Him, and give you true contentment and it won't matter what is or isn't going on in your life. Life will become much bigger and more beautiful than you used to see it. Living for Jesus is so worth it, so beautifully worth it!!! Nothing is this world will ever come close to giving you what He does. Would you give Him your life ?

If you woke up feeling purposeless, remind yourself that today is a part of your big picture. You need these days to remind yourself that you have purpose & it has nothing to do with how you feel. You were given purpose in your mothers womb by God & that same God that started a work in you will complete it. So smile & enjoy the journey! #Rest - Heather Lindsey

Don’t measure yourself by others. Measure yourself by your potential in Christ. The real question is how to be the fullest, most God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, loving, humble mission-advancing, justice-seeking, others-serving person you, you can be. - John Piper

Christian living doesn't have an "on/off" switch. Living for God is 24/7/365. God is your life, not part of your life. - Frank Powell

I love you Jesus! Thank you for another year and opportunity to live for You and to worship You with all my heart, all my mind, all my soul, all my strength! To live for You with all my life, with all that is in me!

                                                 Brooke Fraser – Lord Of lords
Beholding Your beauty
Is all that I long for
To worship You Jesus
Is my sole desire
For this very heart
You have shaped be your pleasure
Purposed to lift Your Name higher

Now unto the Lamb
Who sits on the throne
Be glory and honor and praise
All of creation resounds with the song
Worship and praise Him
The Lord of lords

Spirit now living
And dwelling within me
Keep my eyes fixed
Ever on Jesus' face
Let not the things of this world
Ever sway me
I'll run until I finish the race

Now unto the Lamb
Who sits on the throne
Be glory and honor and praise
All of eternity echoes the song
Worship and praise Him
The Lord of lords

Now unto the Lamb who sits on the throne be all glory and honour and praise!

Till next time !

Love, Ree.

Come over to My Facebook Page to stay in touch with me when I am not on here :)

Ps: If you are ever in Nairobi and are looking for a church family to visit with, during your short or long stay. My church Eagle's Faith Christian Centre ( EFCC) would be privileged to host you! OR if you live in Nairobi and are looking for a church family or if you simply want to visit and send our love back to your home church family, get in touch with me for directions, or Get Directions Here  !

The published information in no way reflects the views and opinion of my employer and represents only my personal viewpoint.

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The Right Focus !!

Trust in the Lord with ALL your heart!

Hola!! So last month I began what I am calling - " Single God's Way : What it's like for me " series , and you can read about that here .... a sequel is on the way, but today we do something different. 

Today.. today I just want to Worship God! .... Today I just want to exalt Jesus!.... Today I just want to love on and revere the person that is the Holy Spirit, who is more and more becoming my great comforter and my true friend!! Today I just want it to be about the Lord and us giving Him all of ourselves, our entire beings and everything that is in us! All of our heart, all of our mind, all of our strength! All of us and all that is in us!! 

Today I just want to remind our hearts to fix our eyes on Jesus, on the eternal and not the temporary! Be it the attractive, appealing and enticing things of this world, or the sad dire situations in our very own lives and all around us! May we pursue magnifying God above all that is around us. May we adjust our focus to the right subject !
  
Today I want to challenge us to be bold, radical, Christians who are on fire for Jesus!! To stop fearing the ones who don't hold our eternity in their hands, the ones whose souls so desperately need us to be doing what we have been called to do (even if they don't know or understand it yet) for them to see the Truth! That we may be Christians who seek God's okay over every area of our lives and place His opinion way above what we ourselves or men think of us. That God's opinion is the only opinion that matters to us. That obedience to Him on the daily is our story!

That we stop seeking to please the created and seek to please the Creator instead! To live for an audience of One!! 

To remember that this is all temporary, this is all for a season and Eternity is forever! 

May there be a burning desire in us to love The Lord more and more as each day passes by! To want more and more and more of Him!

Pastor Cornelius Lindsey

We can't be saved and want to be cool too, if it's God we are really after - we have got to choose one master! Don't lose your ticket to heaven and a chance to be used by God. We can't have a part of us loving the world and another part loving the Lord, it doesn't work like that, we are either on His side or against Him, we are either black or white - there is no gray. (Jonathan McReynolds - No Gray)

We are here for God's glory. May your heart find this a beautiful reminder to soak in always!

God created us for his glory.

“Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory” (Isaiah 43:6–7). God made all of us in his own image so that we would image-forth, or reflect, his character and moral beauty. - John Piper

Every human should live for God’s glory.

“Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The way to live for the glory of God is to love him (Matthew 22:37), trust him (Romans 4:20), be thankful to him (Psalm 50:3) and obey him (Matthew 5:16). When we do these things we image-forth God’s glory. - John Piper

May the reality of the magnitude of God consume our spirits that we give Him His due worship, that our lives are radically transformed day by day by the reality of who He is and His Story! That the cares of this world would take a back seat and for Him to ever be at the front!

The more we know Him, the more we will want to know Him!!

God Bless you always!

Love, Ree.

Come over to My Facebook Page to stay in touch with me when I am not on here :)

Ps: If you are ever in Nairobi and are looking for a church family to visit with, during your short or long stay. My church Eagle's Faith Christian Centre ( EFCC) would be privileged to host you! OR if you live in Nairobi and are looking for a church family or if you simply want to visit and send our love back to your home church family, get in touch with me for directions, or Get Directions Here  !

The published information in no way reflects the views and opinion of my employer and represents only my personal viewpoint.

Comments are not moderated but author reserves the right to remove any comment deemed defamatory, inappropriate, or spam. 

Single God's Way : What it's like for me - Proem

Just me and Towera's compadre,Giraffe on our usie flow,lol. :)

So the other day I was entertaining a little fantasy of a time in the future when I am married and I'm sharing about being married Gods's way, how hubby and I courted God's way, about spiritual purity, what we both learnt when we were single and all that other cute but real stuff......then I got the conviction in my spirit to share about being single God's way during my current single season!! Sharing about the walk while it actually is happening! Relationship posts for me are very unfamiliar territory and this is such a heavy, revealing topic and not an easy one to share about, but I remember that it is not my own strength that I do anything I do, including writing on here. So as I experience and go through life everyday in communion with the Holy Spirit, as I unlearn the worldly thought systems and 'wisdom' and continue to take on and learn the wisdom that comes from God through His Word by the renewing of my mind, especially in this area, I know He will equip me with all I need to share on my lessons and experiences. So ......here goes!!

In a world where fornication (to have sexual relations with someone one is not married to) seems like the order of the day for a 'normal' person,(and for years I myself fell right into this here category), even if you don't agree with me and think this type of thinking is backward or makes no sense, stay with me, hear me out till the end.

When it comes to love between a man and woman, I believe many times because we know no better, we open up the doors of our hearts to this kind of love too young, too early, even too immature  ( Song of Songs 8:4) and also for the wrong reasons. In the processes we begin to leave trails of brokenness as we carry on with our lives that we may not even recognize and many times end of passing that on to our children and their children's children and contribute to the negative light of this topic in our society.

Unfortunately for us if we are not guided with the right foundation of love from the time we are kids, we take on the definition of 'love' as the world many times mislabel's it. All around us, it is on sale and we are consuming this wrong definition of it in crazy quantities .. This mislabelled love is in the movies we watch, the sensual music we listen to, the literature we are exposed to, the TV advertisements, in the lives of the people we look upto, our peers, it is everywhere directly and indirectly.. !

On top of that sex is being sold as part of the romance package!! It would seem to most of us that everyone is having a lot of it, for various reasons, all one has got to do is pick the one that sits well with their conscience. Being a virgin  or staying pure and saving yourself for marriage is for the weak and totally uncool lot. Besides marriage has been given such a twisted ugly face - which goes right back to the broken foundations and mislabels.

I have come to the beautiful realization that the author of love is God. More than that - His very nature is Love. I also now know that I get my bearings for my life journey from Him and through His book, the Bible. This isn't simply a relic, it is as relevant today just as much as it will be forever because it is more than just mere words of wisdom. The Bible comes alive if you ask and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal the scripture to you, and you begin to understand it with your heart and what a journey and adventure that is! The Holy Spirit comes into your life when you get born again.

I've been born again (and single) for 1 year 6 months now, and up until I got born again from the first time I started dating, now better known to me as recreational dating (sometime in 2000), I had actually never been single as I now know it to be, and even when I wasn't in a 'dating commitment' so to speak all those years! It is astonishing when you finally come to realize the difference between what the world says vrs what God says about being single, about sexual purity, about His plans for marriage and so much more! I pray I can get my new understanding point across well enough to help you.

To begin I am just going to lay out the foundation of where I am at.
I find this article by Cornelius Lindsey titled The differences between courtship and recreational dating a good place to begin. Here is an excerpt from the article .

Notice some of the things we've adopted as if they actually come from the Bible. And before I list these things, I must tell you that the Bible doesn’t speak of the type of ‘dating’ we’ve adopted in our society.

DIFFERENCES IN MODERN DATING and BIBLICAL COURTSHIP

A. “Playing the field” vs. Commitment to one person

1.   Modern dating advocates exploring your options to determine what it is you want in a mate.

2.   Biblical courtship focuses on a goal where all emotional and physical intimacy is reserved for just one person, your spouse.

B.  Alone time vs. Supervised time

1.   Modern dating assumes all time spent with the relator should be done in private.

2.          Biblical courtship advocates spending time where the two are supervised in group activities, family or with the church.

C.  Deep connection vs. Real commitment

1.                  Modern dating assumes that you should know all there is to know about this person before making a commitment, marriage, or that you should know this person more deeply than you do anyone else in the world.

2.                Biblical courtship believes that real commitment to the person precedes a high level of intimacy. This lessens the amount of your heart you give away to undeserving people.

D.  Meeting my needs vs. Ministry and service to God

1.                Modern dating assumes that the relator should ‘meet all my needs and desires.’ This is self-centered and not biblical.

2.                Biblical courtship suggests that the relationship should be a ministry and service unto the glory of God. It has no foundation in self-gratification.

E.   High intimacy vs. Low to no intimacy

1.                Modern dating teaches that you should have a high level of emotional connection with the person, and you should assume that there will be some physical involvement, i.e. kissing, touching, sex, etc.

2.                Biblical courtship teaches there is to be NO physical intimacy and very limited to  no emotional intimacy outside of marriage.

F.   Private decision vs. Spiritual accountability

1.                Modern dating says that who I date and what I do when I date someone is my business.

2.                Biblical courtship says that there is a level of spiritual accountability.

G.   Finding vs. Being

1.                Modern dating is all about ‘finding’ the right person for ‘me’.

2.                Biblical courtship is all about ‘being’ the right person to serve my future spouse’s needs and being one who glorifies God in marriage.

H.   Intimacy vs. Commitment

1.  Modern dating puts intimacy before commitment.

2.  Biblical courtship puts commitment before intimacy.

I.     Act like we’re married vs. Really get married

1.  Modern dating says that we should act like we’re already married. If we like it, it’s official. If we don’t, we will have a pre-divorce.

2.  Biblical courtship says that Scripture guides us as to how to find a mate and marry. And, we are not to act like we are in a marriage-level commitment until the commitment truly exists before the Lord.

So in an attempt not to overload this article, I'd like to announce that we just began a " Single God's Way : What it's like for me " series - so look out for my next post next month which will have more of my story.

God Bless you.

Love, Ree.

Come over to My Facebook Page to stay in touch with me when I am not on here :)

Ps: If you are ever in Nairobi and are looking for a church family to visit with, during your short or long stay. My church Eagle's Faith Christian Centre ( EFCC) would be privileged to host you! OR if you live in Nairobi and are looking for a church family or if you simply want to visit and send our love back to your home church family, get in touch with me for directions, or Get Directions Here  !

The published information in no way reflects the views and opinion of my employer and represents only my personal viewpoint.

Comments are not moderated but author reserves the right to remove any comment deemed defamatory, inappropriate, or spam.