As a child, I had a favorite toy that I brought everywhere. That toy was a teddy bear named Jeffrey. Jeffrey wasn’t my only teddy bear, but he was my favorite. I packed him up in my oversized backpack and brought him to school, to church, to restaurants, and most importantly, he was always there right next to me when I went to bed.

As I grew up, I spent less and less time with Jeffrey. I also moved him to his own little spot on my desk where he could read and watch me do my homework. As I entered high school, my father was cleaning up because we were having family coming over to stay with us for a few weeks. That day, I stood there and watched as Jeffrey was put into a cardboard box and shuffled up into the attic. If he was my favorite, why didn’t I keep him with me? Why didn’t I watch over him?

I think all of you notice it too. We live in a very great and awesome time, but with that greatness and abundance comes very scary times. The news networks report terrible things happening all around our world. Every channel or internet article focuses on new details about the Australian brush fires, news about protests and the brink of military war, and massive earthquakes crumbling our world like a puff pastry.

I watch all of this and ask. Is God still watching over us?

In Acts 10:34-35, Peter states, “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.”

God is always with us, but the true question we all need to face. Do we favor God every day? Do we place God at the forefront of our everyday living? From personal experience, this is a constant battle for me every single day. At different decisions I make during a course of a day, I know I somehow place God second to my impatience. For example, at the grocery store a new cashier opened up and said I was next. I noticed the person behind me had only a few things so I let her go before me. Of course, that she had to pick up the one item that needed a price check. Internally, I was fuming with impatience ready to burst into anger. It was so fast. I had placed God on the back burner. I had acted selfish and that selfishness got me all disturbed and worked up for really no reason.

This happens to us all. For some, many times a day at work or at home. The truth is when we place God, as our favorite things get easier. When we remember that He is with is in everything we do we can live with no fear. God is love and there is no fear in love.

Loving Father,

Help us to put You first in our lives. Help us to favor love first and everything else second. Help us to keep the fear out of our lives so that we can only feel your warming love over us.

Amen.

I am going to be frank about it. I am a big big coward. As soon as things get tough, all I really feel like doing is to curl up into a ball and just give up. The reason I started this website is to glorify God and I thought that would be simple enough. It is not that my belief in God has changed in any way, but my faith and trust in God has been tested and tried this past month to the fullest that I couldn’t provide hope to all of you when I was need of so much hope myself.

The thing is I know that everyone has problems. Everyone is going through something that tests them. But, this time I folded my cards and I succumbed to a world without God. It was a horrible month to say the least. I am just so ashamed that I let myself down. I let my mental and physical illness get the best of me. I allowed it to lose my focus on what is important to me – my faith in God.

I found myself praying and praying, but I could not feel or hear God in my life. Where did He go? Why was He not with me? Was I selfish to believe that God would also grant me success? I used to feel His presence in my life, but it felt as if He just abandoned me. On top of all my negative thinking, I would also find myself sitting in front of the evening news watching one tragic story after the other. In the past month or so, we heard tragic stories of mass shootings, and catastrophic natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes wreak havoc on people’s lives. How could we believe that God would let this happen to innocent people let alone believe that He took a vacation from my life too? My thoughts and prayers go out to those families who had to go through so much devastation.

Then one day, I saw this t-shirt with the saying “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” And, I felt a jolt go through my body. I was in a rut and I needed to find way out of it. I had stopped praying my evening prayers, I had stopped taking my mindful minutes to reflect on all the good that was happening in my life. At this moment, I was going to rid myself of these negative thoughts about that I had to wait for God to answer me. I had forgotten that God granted me a mind with abilities and the power to act.

So I decided to act. I decided that I would live by this mantra – Grateful Effort Matters. Step one is to be grateful that God has given me this day to live and breathe. Step two is make sure to put maximum effort into everything I do no matter what the task. I need to stop taking for granted that I have the ability to do something now, when others don’t so I can’t waste it doing things half-assed. And, the third step, what I did today matters. All I that I do is for a purpose. The purpose to utilize each and every day to be a better human than the day before. It is with that purpose that I can use my talents to glorify God and hopefully be a contributing person in this world.

Perhaps it’s not that God abandoned me, but rather helped me grow. The fact of the matter is it is our responsibility to invite God into our lives if we chose to do so. I know for fact it easier said than done, but I it’s worth taking the leap. This will be a long journey one I hope to share with you and I hope you will share with me. There are so many more obstacles to overcome. I may have lost my way for a bit, but I know that trusting in God is definitely the path I will take.