Testimony Tuesday: Purpose in Your Story

God Gold of the day

https://youtu.be/g9Meo2Jztwo

Each experience you go through, good and bad, God is designing your story. These experiences you’re having, God is not only changing you, but He’s setting up future moments where God’s hand in your story will change someone’s else’s story forever! Every moment holds a greater purpose than we could ever imagine! Step into it, live it, and point others to the One who is writing your story!!

“We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”‭‭

1 John‬ ‭1:3‬

The Need For Good News

God Gold of the day

I challenge you today with this; why is the Good News of the Gospel important to you?

It’s easy in our lives to say, “oh yeah, it’s really important,” give that surface level answer and then move on with our day, but let’s dig a little deeper with it.

Our lives without the Gospel or Jesus, what does that look like? You see, first we have to look at the bad news about us before we can understand why the GOOD NEWS of the Gospel is SOOO GOOD! The truth is without Jesus and what He’s done for us, we are stranded, like a car on a road trip that runs out of gas. We have no way to get to our destination, which is God and a life of eternity with Him, because we have no gas to get there. On our own, we just have our sin and we all know that isn’t going to help the gas situation.

So we are sitting there in our car, no way to move forward, we are STUCK and stand no chance of getting unstuck. But then, God in His great love for us sees our sin problem that has us stuck. He sees that we are out of gas and what does He do? He sends His Son to us, who goes to the gas station, pays the price for our gas, and as we sit there in our impossible situation, out of nowhere HOPE shows up. It’s JESUS!!! He’s holding a gas can filled up with fuel, He has came to us in our desperate need even when we deserved to be stranded and stuck forever. Jesus shows up and SAVES us!!!! He gives us the gas we need to drive our car again moving forward to the destination of having a relationship with God!

We can easily look at that and say ; “okay, yeah the Good News of what Jesus did is important because He saved me and now I have a ticket to Heaven.” But this fuel and life that Jesus died to give us was for more than a one moment of salvation and a ticket punched to Heaven. Every day, if you’re a human being, we still find ourselves facing the same battles we faced before we were saved, still at times finding ourselves running low on gas, stuck, with no way of moving forward. That’s where we see the GOOD NEWS being even greater than we thought when we dig deeper than surface level. Just as we needed Jesus to save our lives when we first came to know Him, we still daily need Jesus’ saving power in our lives daily! The Good News isn’t just good one day in our lives, it’s GOOD NEWS EVERYDAY!!!

Today the challenge is to think about this question; “why is the Good News of the Gospel important in my life?” Think about all the out of gas moments you have on a daily basis, open yourself up to see the GREAT NEED we have for Jesus and the fuel of the Gospel that He brings into our lives. And above all else, realize that it was God’s love and Jesus’ heroic actions that saved your life to begin with, so why would we think that ourselves or anything in this world could save us any better than Him? Be fueled by the truth of the Gospel today and it will move you forward on this journey of life towards the MORE God has for us!

‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’Romans 6:23

‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. -1 John 4:9-10

Mvmt: All About That Gospel

God Gold of the day

‘For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ‘ /John 3:17

‘In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. /1 John 4:9-10

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ /Romans 6:23

Giving Self=Giving Life: Ben Freiburger

God Gold of the day

‘By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. ‘

1 John 3:16-18 

Wanted to spend some time today and give a special shout out to a brother-in-law of mine that I’m super thankful to have in my life, Ben Freiburger. Ben’s your regular college kid, wanted to put things in perspective before I share with you why I felt the need to share why I’m writing about him today. Usually, kids that age and to be honest, I would say all of us on any given day wouldn’t take the time to serve others like Mr. Ben has done recently. Below are pictures and write up from none other than Ben himself, so you can hear from his words how awesome of a moment God aligned to serve someone that Ben didn’t even know. It’s easy to say we’d be willing to lay down our lives for our brothers, but to do it, well I’d be willing to say that something we all struggle with. It can be easy to get so caught up in our busy lives and at the end of the day get caught up in a what serves me mentality.

Today, I wanted to share with you Ben’s story to hopefully encourage you and challenge you to lift your perspective on serving others, and being so focused on others that any opportunity that arises in our lives to encourage or add value to someone else, we don’t think twice but we just faithfully do it. Jesus paved the road to this example of what it looks like to literally sacrifice our own lives for the betterment of another as she laid down His life until death to give us all a chance at life. As you read about Ben’s example here, how awesome is it to see such a Christ-like example played out. Ben, not having anything forcing him to serve in this way, was given an opportunity to serve, had every excuse not to. Traveling time and expenses, sitting through a 6 hour procedure at the hospital and to think he didn’t even know the guy he was serving. He still sacrificed himself and literally gave up part of his life, the life running red through his veins to give another a chance at life. Wow….that’s a pretty powerful display of love, a love that goes far beyond anything we could comprehend or manifest. A love that comes from Jesus and a love Jesus calls us to give to others in our lives.

Your service could look different from this of what Ben did, it could simply be speaking an encouraging word to someone, or so many other things. The big thing that I want you to see, what I’ve seen that has impacted me in huge ways, is the sacrifice of self that must take place in living out this loving service to others. It’s not about us, it’s about Him, and serving others in a way that they see Him! It’s bigger than me and you!

Hope you enjoy these words from Ben and I also hope this can raise some awareness to the opportunities to give through donating pieces of ourselves for others going through sickness and disease. If you’re interested in doing so, there will be a link below that will lead you to how to do that!

2 years ago I signed up for the Be The Match registry on campus while walking with a friend in Delta Zeta. Their sorority leads the charges on campus every year to get students to sign up. The process took 2 mins and I think I was mainly motivated because they were offering candy for anyone who signed up. I never anticipated it was a decision that would ACTUALLY lead to something like this…..

A couple months ago I was contacted as a potential match for a man suffering with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) in need of a bone marrow transplant. After a few more screenings it was confirmed I was the best match for this patient.

After weeks of anticipation and prayer, this morning I was able to successfully donate my peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) which will hopefully be injected successfully to my patient tomorrow. Hopefully ending his fight with this vicious, life threatening disease.

I am thankful for all the positive feedback and encouragement people have sent my way but I feel slightly weird receiving a lot of it. I don’t feel like I personally did anything “special”. Mainly because almost anyone who gets asked to help save someone’s life would do it without question, I was just fortunate enough to be selected.

So if you’ve made it this far, please consider signing up for the Be The Match registry. It’s so easy to register, all you have to do is send in a cheek swab and contact information and they will let you know if you are a potential match. They take care of all costs, and coordinate all your appointments. All they ask is that you give up your time. A pretty easy sacrifice if you consider the good it can do. If it happened to me why couldn’t it happen to you? Make a quick decision now that could impact someone‘s life FOREVER.

Please sign up with your friends and family this Christmas season and potentially give the best gift you can give. LIFE.

[LINK] https://join.bethematch.org/s/landing?language=en_US&gclid=Cj0KCQiA_rfvBRCPARIsANlV66PeiCO5k_eRWuk4UOGe6upaRpHkVOuYBv4dnSqFt4la8n5F3HYMxKsaAl_wEALw_wcB&ref=marrow17&utm_campaign=bone_marrow_match&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_content=bonemarrowmatch

Anyways

God Gold of the Day

Ran across this quote in a book the other day that’s called “The Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership.” When I read this I was extremely convicted because I could recognize how self-centered I can be at times when it comes to how I treat others and also how I can use the first lines as excuses not to treat someone in the way God called us to and the ways that may impact their lives and others forever. We can make excuses because of someone else’s shortcomings or if we’re focused too much on self but at the end of the day God’s Word is clear on how we are to treat others.

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” – 1 John 4:19-21

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” – John 13:34

So I am challenging you and myself today to live an “ANYWAYS”  lifestyle. No matter what someone does to you, how they act, or how rough the circumstances are, love ANYWAYS!!! Let’s put aside all the outside stuff that we can’t control that we use as excuses daily and focus in on what we can control and that’s love, doing good, and encouraging others anyways!!!! You never know how those little acts of doing what’s right anyways can impact someone’s life and the lives around them!!!

“People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”