I saw this quote today on Pinterest that said something along the lines of, "When God is holding you back it is to stop you from going where you are not ready to do." Totally get the point trying to be made, but I had to stop the first time reading it after the words "God is holding you back..." Yeah, no. God is not holding you back. There are times in life when God has us wait and when He does not allow us to go to some specific place or have some specific thing in life yet

About two weeks ago I saw Frozen 2 with some friends. Yes, I'm 24 years old and went to see a children's movie. Not ashamed. And let me tell you... this movie has so many good spiritual lessons and messages in it! One of the songs in the movie was sung my Ana after she believed she had lost all the people (and snowman) she loved and in despair she could barely move on... what got her going again though was to "do the next right thing". You ever been there? A place of such pai

Tonight in the Bible Study we talked about trust. Pretty much most stories in the Bible deal with having to trust God, at least the majority of the stories boil down to that. We talked about Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph, a lot of those stories you heard if you grew up in church. Re-reading them has definitely given me a new perspective. That's one of the many things I love about the Word of God-- you could read it a thousand times and still learn something new from it every tim

This past weekend my sweet niece spent the night. She kept asking me to play with her, color with her, to braid her hair, etc. When she was upset because my mom tried to get her to take her cough medicine she called for me crying, "I want Aunt Cami!" My heart automatically jumped as I ran to her, scooping her up in my arms, snuggling her close and tight, and assuring her that the medicine would make her feel better. While I know my niece loves me, she has never been the one t

Another Sunday, another Bible verse. If you've been following this months devotional you know the drill. It's late and I am tired after writing two papers and a project for grad school. Today God has reminded me yet again of the importance of a rest day! My personal goal is to finish all my homework BEFORE Sunday so I can take this day as a true Sabbath. What keeps you working when you should be resting? I am slowly but surely learning how to prioritize my time, and that incl

A month from today is my birthday, my 25th to be exact and to be honest I have a lot of mixed emotions leading up to it. I feel like I am not where I dreamed I would be by that age but I also feel like God's done way more than I even hoped for in these years. As I reflected on my birthday last year I kept praying, "God, please let this year be better than last year..." Due to expectations I had for certain people in my life last year and not realizing I was trying to squeeze

Recently God kept bringing up the Bible verse about asking, seeking, and knocking to me. "God, haven't I been doing that for years now? Isn't that all I have been doing?" He, gentle as He always is, corrected me. I found that I've been quickly "praying" for certain areas of my life, which actually looked more like passively mentioning, "Oh hey, God, I know I mention this basically every day, but I just thought I'd cover my bases and mention it again, but here's this thing I'

I don't know who needs to hear this tonight, but here is it: man cannot heal what man has broken. What? Yep. The only one Who can heal a broken heart is the One Who made it in the first place. In an earlier devotional I wrote this month we talked about this. But today God brought me back to a post I had written (as a draft, never actually posted it) in March of last year. Reading through it was like trying to understand what someone is saying when they are sobbing uncontrolla

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it." John 1:5 (NLT) Doing something a little different for today's devotional. Tonight, God reminded me of a poem He inspired me to write almost two years ago and I felt Him urge me to share it. Before I share, I want to reiterate that if you're in a dark place, know that Jesus will be your light if you will allow Him to be. There is no place in all of existence too dark for Him, no mindset too depressed

I really enjoyed tonight's Bible study. Most who came participated and put in their ideas and what God is doing in their lives. It's always so special to me when I am in a small group of people and everyone feels like they can open up. Hearing from others helps us learn from a new perspective while also building community. Tonight we talked about promises, starting with the story of Noah, where God put the first rainbow in the sky as a promise to never flood the earth again.