In Need of a Faith Booster

It's that time again! Summer has ended. School has started. Flu season is coming soon, and my faith has run dry.

I don't know about you, but things have been though for me lately. Life has run me through the ringer and sadly I have come out worse for the wear. During the summer things seemed to be going so great! We did vacation Bible school at our church and we had a great turnout. We then took our youth on their hardest mission trip yet and I was do proud to see how they served God in the inner city and how they let God speak to them. Then we started getting ready for school and everything went crazy! I hit a spiritual dry patch. Students stopped coming to church. People I thought were my friends turned around and betrayed me. Jimmy and I found out that even after another abnormally long cycle, we were STILL not pregnant! What else could go wrong?!

All this stuff left me more than a little wanting in my walk with God. Then as I was running around doing errands this week, I saw that Walgreens is already advertising their flu shots. It made me stop and think... "Boy, I wish I could just go in and get a spiritual and emotional booster shot!" Why isn't there a quick and easy fix for the way I am feeling?

The honest answer is...THERE IS! The problem is believing that it is the answer.

Rejoicing in the Lord and believing in His plan for my life are just the booster shots I need. However, rejoicing in the Lord when you don't feel like there is anything to rejoice about is a lot easier said than done. Also, it's easier to believe that God doesn't have a plan or doesn't care than to believe that He planned for me to go through these things and feel this way. But He does and He promises that He will work all these things for the good of those who glorify Him.

Well...I haven't been able to truly take these Spiritual and Emotional boosters yet, but I am working on it. I hope this will help you to take heart if you too are feeling more than a little spiritually dry and emotionally drained. There's hope! You're not dead yet!

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" Philippians 4:4

Daughters of the King Pt 4: Application

Hello, Ladies! This is the final installment of the Daughter of the Kings Bible studies. I hope that you have enjoyed our time studying what it means being a daughter of the King. So let’s just jump right in!

Daughters of the King Pt. 4: Application

I believe that every good lesson should have application. I know that not all parts of this lesson have had application sections, and now you know the reason. Today I want to take a look at one final section of scripture and bring everything we have talked about thus far together in one conclusion.

Read Psalm 45

For space I won’t include all of Psalm 45, but I will include the verses we are going to highlight. However, I greatly encourage you to read the entire chapter. There are so many good and encouraging things in this chapter.

Focusing In:
Psalm 45:9 “Daughters of kings are among your honored women; at your right hand is the royal bride in gold of Ophir.”
Remember that according to 1 John 3:1 (How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.) we, as Christians, are all Daughters of the King! This simply goes to prove that these verses are talking about us. They are relevant to us. We should pay attention to what they are saying about us and to us.

Psalm 45:11 “The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor Him, for He is your lord.”
The King is enthralled by your beauty! Imagine it! God is enthralled by your beauty. Enthralled means captivated or charmed and is synonymous with Enchanted. God is captivated by your beauty. God is charmed by your beauty. God is enchanted by YOUR beauty! How amazing is that! God sees you as perfect and beautiful just the way you are. If God is enchanted and captivated by the women He has created us to be then why do we spend so much time focusing on the negative things we see in ourselves?
Psalm 45:13 “All glorious is the princess within her chamber ; her gown is interwoven with gold.”
I want to take a moment to focus on one word—glorious. Glorious means delightful; wonderful; completely enjoyable. God completely enjoys us and the way He created us. He didn’t make a mistake. He made us delightful. He made us wonderful. He made us completely enjoyable!

Princess Lessons:


Take a moment to think about the movie Princess Diaries. If you haven’t seen it then I hope you take the time to watch it. Anyway, before Mia found out she was the Princess of Genovia, she was clumsy and didn’t see many good things in her life. Even after Mia started having princess lessons with her grandmother she still broke glasses, wreaked havoc on meals with dignitaries, and had many other embarrassing disasters. Her life didn’t really change overnight.

What really caused Mia’s transformation?
I believe her transformation started when she truly accepted that she was indeed the Princess of Genovia. This is when she started accepting her responsibilities and who she was born to be. She also began to have confidence in her heritage. She believed in the woman that her father saw in her as a young child.

Was Mia perfect from this point on?
No way! Mia still had incidents when she performed less than perfectly. If you don’t believe me all you have to do is watch the second movie. Mia also continued to have moments of self-doubt. None of us have perfect records when it comes to believing in ourselves. We all have days when our jeans don’t fit or our faces are broken out with tremendous amounts of acne and we wonder why anyone would ever believe in us. It’s what you do when you have the moments of doubt that truly counts. I love the quote from Mia’s letter from her father. In this letter he writes, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” If you can’t find the courage to rise above your fear that you aren’t good enough then you will never truly recognize your heritage as a Daughter of the King.

My Princess Lessons:

Lesson #1: Have the courage to believe God and accept that I am a true Daughter of the King.

Lesson #2: Start believing that God created me to be beautiful and that He sees me that way at this very moment.
God has never lied to you before. Why would He start lying to you now? Think about it. The Bible is 100% truth and it says you are beautiful. To say you are not beautiful is to call the Bible a lie!

Lesson #3: Train my mind, my heart, and my body to believe I am God’s Princess and to behave like I am God’s Princess.
Memorize scriptures that will remind you how God sees you. Do things, such as exercising and eating right that will help reinforce a positive self-image and help you to feel good about yourself. These things can’t be your self-worth but they are very helpful tools in enhancing a positive self-image. I know I feel better about myself when I have taken time to eat right and exercising. Maybe you will too!

Lesson #4: Make a conscious effort to STOP saying negative things about myself.
This is possibly the hardest of all the application lessons. Your negative thoughts about who you are are the biggest obstacles standing between how you see yourself and how God sees you. If you consciously make an effort to stop being negative about yourself you make room for you to see the positive things in yourself that God sees in you all the time. If you are constantly telling yourself you are fat, ugly, or stupid then it’s no wonder you think you are fat, ugly, and stupid!

Lesson #5: START recognizing the positive areas in my life!
Are you a talented artist or musician, tell yourself about it. Share your talents with others. Are you an avid reader, keep track of all the books you have read and tell yourself you have done a great job in pushing your mind to read all of them.

Lesson #6: Work on the things that need improvement instead of using them to beat myself down all the time.
I hate it when people sit around and complain about their problems but never do anything to fix them. Yet, when it comes to my problems of self-image I often do the exact same thing. Instead of whining and complaining about being overweight and then telling myself how stupid I am for being overweight, I should use half that energy to go for a walk! I would have walked a lot by now in my life!

Daughters of the King Pt 3: Identification

Sorry that it took so long to get this one out to you wonderful ladies. I have had a lot going on this week. I have also been having some issues with my back that have only made things more complicated.

So why wait any longer? Let’s get down to business! But first a quick review. In part one, we learned that in general most women are critical and negative about themselves. In part two, we learned that we are willing to accept princesses for who they should be and are not critical about them—generally speaking. Next we are going to look at who God is and who we are in relation to Him.

Daughters of the King Pt 3: Identification

Who is God?

When I say, “Who is God?” I am not asking the obvious—god is God. In this situation, I am specifically asking for some of the names of God. I want to know His identity based on the names He is given in scripture.

Names of God:
First of all, there are many, many names of God. I want to take the time to focus on just a few of these names. If you would like a more complete list of the names of God, please feel free to visit the following websites:

http://christianity.about.com/od/biblestudyresources/qt/namesofgodjesus.htm

http://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/name_god.cfm

http://bible.org/article/names-god

• Almighty - Revelation 1:8
• Everlasting Father - Isaiah 9:6
• God - John 1:1
• Glory of God - Isaiah 60:1
• Jehovah - Psalm 83:18
• King of Israel - Matthew 27:42
• King of Kings - 1 Timothy 6:15; Revelation 19:16
• Lord of Lords - 1 Timothy 6:15; Revelation 19:16
• Master - Matthew 23:8
• Messiah - John 1:41
• Prince of Peace - Isaiah 9:6
• Savior - 2 Samuel 22:47; Luke 1:47
• Word – John 1:1

Let’s boil it down. According to scripture God is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, Master, and Savior. God is the original version of royalty. Not only that--He is the perfect royalty! All the good things we talked about last time that apply to Princesses could be applied to God. He is beautiful. He is good. He is kind. He is just. I think you get the picture. Next I want to look at who we are in relation to God.

Who am I?
I don’t know how many times I have heard myself ask the question, “Who am I?” I wear so many different hats and have so many different responsibilities that I find it easy to lose myself. I want you to realize that I am still learning that I am who God has made me to be. God is still working on me and perfecting me to be the perfect version of me, but I am already His. He created me. That means only He really truly knows who I am. So I guess I should be asking, “Who does God say I am?” Let’s check it out.

Who Does God Say I Am:

I am a child of God.
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” 1 John 3:1

“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” John 1:12

“because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father."” Romans 8:14-15

“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,” Galatians 3:26

I am bought with a price/sought after.
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

I am chosen.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.” Ephesians 1:3-8

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” John 15:16

If you would like to find out more about who you are in Christ check out this link: http://encouragingbiblequotes.com/verses2a.html

In Summary

I believe these scriptures make it very clear that we are God’s children. We are children of the King! That makes us true royalty. We are Princesses! I love the stories of Gigi by Sheila Walsh. If you have never read them you should!

Gigi is a tenacious little girl, around eight years old. She knows she is a princess and she lives like it—even to the point of treating her best friend as a commoner. However, Gigi doesn’t quite understand why she is a princess. In her first book, “Gigi, God’s Princess” Sheila Walsh shows how Gigi first comes to understand that she is a Princess because she is a daughter of God who is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Join Gigi as she learns what it really means to be God’s Princess.

For more information or to purchase “Gigi, God’s Princess” click here.

Tune in next time to learn more about your true identity as a Daughter of the King!

Daughters of the King Pt 2: Comparison

Let’s take a minute and review what we talked about last time. The first thing we did was to evaluate how we view ourselves. In general, the majority of females see themselves as more negative than positive. Now let’s look at the next part of our Daughters of the King lesson.

Daughters of the King Pt 2: Comparison

How do you view princesses?

Remember, each of the girls was given a sticky note pad with markers. Again they were asked to write one word or phrase, describing what they thought about when thinking about princesses, per sticky note. Since our world isn’t overly full of real royalty, I encouraged the girls to include their ideas of literary princesses and Disney/movie princesses. When everyone was finished the sticky notes were collected and sorted.

So what did I find…

Positive.

Considering that most young women dream about growing up to be princesses I assumed there would be many positive attributes listed. My assumption proved to be correct.

Friendly                            Beautiful
Pretty Singers                   Pursued
Pure                                 Regal
Sought After                     Fought for
Kind                                Happy
Gentle                              Elegant
Thin                                 Perfect
Looked up to                   Adored
Fair                                  Loyal

Many of the girls had the same or similar to the things listed above so I have simplified.

Negative.
I wasn’t sure what kinds of things were going to be listed here. I was sure that there would be far less than there were in the positive column.

Spoiled                            Demanding
Stubborn                         Selfish
Ditsy                               Doesn’t Listen
Self-centered                   Proud

In truth, I think these girls thought about more negatives than I would have been able to think of on my own.

In Summary
It seems that most of us still want to live the charmed lives of princesses. We see in them all the things that we lack in ourselves. We also see greater amounts of positives than negatives. Let’s compare this to what we learned last time about how we see ourselves.

Time to Compare
As women, most of us see more negatives in ourselves than we do positives. However, we see more positives in princesses than we do negatives. We so desperately want to see ourselves as princesses. After all princesses have no problems and are seemingly perfect in every way! Why wouldn’t we want to be princesses? Here’s the surprise….we are princesses!

Tune in next time to learn more about your true identity as a Daughter of the King!