Loving life with Jesus

Sometimes the most honest prayers we can pray are the ones that sound like "This is hard. I'm scared. Please help" The one thing I knew I wanted to take back as a souvenier from my Israel trip were mustard seeds, to have out as a reminder of what Jesus teaches us about having faith the size of a mustard seed. If you haven't seen a mustard seed, they are so small, you can hardly see just one single seed if it was in your hand. In the bible, Jesus teaches that if we have faith even as small as a mustard seed, we can move mountains, and it will grow just like a mustard seed will, one tiny seed if planted will grow into something so much bigger. Even with such a small amount of faith, we can do so much more then we can imagine, and that is all we need for Jesus to do the work in us and flourish that faith!  I have never understood that illustration more then the past couple of months. When my health started going off the edge and it went from living in pain everyday, to l...

  A cool breeze gently blowing through my hair, the gentle rock of the boat, the beautiful sunset over the horizon, and the glowing lights all around us beaming off of the cities on the hills. I couldn't put it to words, but the peace that came over me as our boat sat on the sea of Galilee, the same sea where Jesus was on, and it was like I could feel Him there, just as if he was sitting on that boat with us.  Its hard to even begin to explain what it was like to spend 10 days walking through the same places that Jesus did and being in the land where the bible came alive! It was one of the most beautiful, chaotic, calming, exciting places I have ever been too, and without a doubt I would go back in a heartbeat! No matter where we are, we can always feel God, but there is something different about being in His land, where Jesus lived and breathed and died, and I cannot explain the feeling, but it made the whole bible come to life, and in a sense it made my faith more real, bein...

"My body hurts, and so does my mind, it's a vicious cycle I can not get out of"  "Health is a relationship between you and your body" says Terri Guillemets.  It is so fascinating, how connected our body and mind really are, and I don't think we always realize that. There are so many worldly things that can cause pain and sickness in our bodies, and as much as those things are real and do affect us, people are finding more and more these days that a lot of the problems we have to deal with in our bodies actually comes from our mind and the state it is in. When our minds deal with mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, and stress, it can drag our bodies along with it. It is wild how connected they are, two different things that are one, so connected with each other, and so when one is hurting, the other hurts as well. It's amazing the stories I have heard about how people's bodies have healed by healing their mental health first, and takin...

Two months felt like two weeks, and before I knew it, I was back in Canada, living the rich life again. What am I suppose to do now? Go forwards and leave everyone and everything I saw behind? Because I can not, what I had seen and experienced changed my life, and my heart is so full of joy but also filled with sorrow that I had to leave these people behind in those conditions, while I get to go back and live comfortably again.  I have been back for four months already, and it was a hard adjustment back, and I felt like I could not put the right words down on paper about the last leg of the trip, until now. The last two weeks in Nicaragua were full of sight seeing, building deeper connections with the people there, and soaking in everything we could before we had to say goodbye and drive away, not knowing if we would ever see them again. I did not think I would become so attached to the people there when I could not even speak to them without a translator, but I did, and seeing the...

Street lights shine into the darkness of the night all around the city. Above, the sky is sparkling bringing off the radiance of perfection, but down below, I don't see perfection, but pain and brokenness everywhere I look. I see broken families, wounded hearts, addictions, homelessness, lost souls looking for some comfort, but unsure of where to find it. Hunger coursing through their bodies, holding on to the little belongings they posses.  Most of my life, I have been pretty sheltered from a lot of things, including homelessness. You briefly see a homeless person sitting alongside a building, but most times you pass by not thinking much of it. A lot of the darkness is hidden away from the eyes of the public throughout the main streets you drive or walk on everyday. When you don't intentionally go out looking for the people who are living on the streets, you won't see it and most times it will get pushed to the back of our heads.  I was given the opportunity to go out with...

  Everyone has giants in their lives that come and knock on their doors, threatening to take away their confidence, peace, and happiness. Even though the giant, Goliath, that David faced in the bible was a real human being, our giants are not humans but rather things like, fear, doubt, insecurity, habits, etc. These giants, when we are confronted by them, can seem larger and scarier than they really are. It may seem impossible some days to stand up and fight against them especially when they have been a part of our lives for so long. But no giant we ever face is too big for God, because the giants before us will never be greater than the God who is beside us. God is always standing with us, fighting for us every single day of our lives, and too many times we forget that we have the creator of the whole world fighting our battles for us. Deuteronomy 3:22, "For the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory" . When w...

  I can not believe that it has already been 8 months since I started Bible School and now I am living back at home again. These past 8 months, I had my life planned out for me and did not have much to worry about. The thought of leaving scared me, because my future is unknown and I would be leaving what is comfortable to me and all the people I love. After living in this amazing place, I thought that moving back home would mean I would be downgrading back to how my life was like a year ago before I went to Bible school. These past few weeks I have been wrestling a lot with this idea, and God turned that idea I had and flipped it around to show me how I should view this change in my life. God showed me that living a life with Him is never downgrading, and even though it may physically look like I am downgrading back to my old life, I am different internally and can take this change and have a whole attitude and perspective on life. God is bringing me back home for a reason to...

Life can throw unexpected situations at us that can be sometimes difficult to handle. As humans, we love the comforts of our lives and planning out every situation we go through or have to face. The problem with that, is that there is only one person who knows exactly what is going to happen and has control, and unfortunately that person is not us. We may think we can control what happens, but really the only thing we have control of is how we react and respond to the situations we find ourselves in. Are we going to surrender and say yes to where God is leading us, or are we going to ignore His calling and stay in our comforts? I am not saying that our comforts are bad, because they are not....unless they hold us back from following God. God will put us in situations for His purpose, to test and strengthen us, even though we may never understand why. Instead of being afraid of the unknown, we need to trust God and step into uncharted waters with faith. He will never put you in a situ...