Muy Importante Anuncio!! (Very Important Announcement!!)

So, the past few days, I have seen and heard more bad news than I have in several months.  On account of this, I have been praying especially hard for our country as well as some specific people that are very close to my heart and are going through an awful time.

The truth is, in all of this bad news, such as with the case with Baltimore, I have realized that people don't value life anymore.  They don't value their own lives, and they most certainly don't value the lives of others.  I believe this is because they lack one basic truth:  YOU MATTER.

You matter.  That's a truth that so many of us forget as we go throughout our lives.  It's why so many people commit suicide and why others don't even flinch when harming or even killing other people.  As a society, we have forgotten that each life is important.  We have forgotten that simple, but true concept of "I am important."

I don't think we can really understand how much we matter until we turn our eyes to the cross.  You see, the God of the universe, the One who made the sun, moon, stars, even the very air you are breathing in right this very moment, came to die for YOU.  He didn't have to do that.  There are a million other ways He could have saved us.  I mean, think about it.  Why on earth would the Ruler of everything step down from His throne to save a bunch of sinful, awful human beings when He could have just sent an angel or two to do it for Him?  It's because you MATTER.

Don't ever let anybody tell you differently.  You are so, so worth every moment that Christ spent on that cross.  Every painful, agonizing moment of pain and humiliation.  If you weren't, He would have never come down to save you.

Believe it.  Cast out every thought and mindset that would try to make you believe that you aren't important.  Because that is the biggest lie you will ever hear in your entire life.

So what is my important announcement?  YOU MATTER!!  You are beautiful.  You are loved, no matter your circumstances and in spite of your faults and mistakes.  You are amazing.  And there is Someone who cares about you,  who thinks about you every second of every day.  Don't ever forget that.

"For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son..."--John 3:16 (KJV)

Short Story: Like Pieces of Glass

     “What should I wear?”  I knew that I should feel less concerned about my appearance than with my conversation with Alec.  There were many things that still needed to be resolved between us.  Yet, I couldn’t help but dressing up in my nicest dark denim skirt and turquoise tunic and fixing my hair in a neat French braid.

     There was still a good half hour before he was supposed to be here, so I decided to straighten the downstairs.  Alec had never been inside this house before and I couldn’t let him see the pile of beer cans that my mother had left in the kitchen.  Or inhale the stench they left, for that matter.  Luckily, in the front closet, there was a half-full can of air freshener.  I covered the house in the smell until not a trace of the alcohol odor was detectable.  Replacing it on the shelf, my head turned slightly to see that James’ car was in the driveway.  I opened up the door and peeked outside.

     “That’s weird,” I thought.  James, my mother’s boyfriend, wasn’t anywhere in sight, yet his car was in the driveway.  I checked in the kitchen.  Nothing.  Next, I went into the living room.  Nada.  Finally, I decided he was probably in mom’s bedroom, where he spent most of his time, even when mom wasn’t home.  Of course, now I wondered what he found so interesting in that room when she wasn’t there.  After all, mom didn’t have a TV in her room and James wasn’t into reading.  Surely, he wasn’t sleeping all that time, was he?

     There was only one thing to do: find out why he spent so much time in that room.  My feet crept quietly up the stairs, careful not to spook him.  I just had to know what he found so interesting.  As my hand silently turned the knob, I nearly threw the door open in anticipation.  “Whoops,” I whispered as I slipped in only to realize James wasn’t in there.  “Where on earth could he be?”

     Walking around carefully as to leave my presence untraceable, I searched the room, looking for something, anything to solve the mystery of James’ absence.  As I neared the closet, a stream of light from the floor caught my eye.  I remembered the door between here and Charity’s room.  Without thinking, I crawled through the open door and tumbled into Charity’s closet.

     “Do we really have to do this again?  We just did it two days ago.”  I heard the small, timid voice of my baby sister.

     “Yes, I already told you that.  If you don’t do exactly as I tell you, I’m going to tell everyone what a filthy little slut you are.  Now, take off your clothes.”  He said, scrutinizing her careful movements.

     It suddenly all made sense.  James spending the majority of his time at our house, “napping” in our mother’s bedroom.  Charity’s withdrawn and abnormal behavior.  Her reluctance to let me even come into her bedroom.   All this time I thought she was just upset about our parents’ divorce.  Obviously I was wrong.

     Untamed fury overtook me.  I marched up to the creep and found a baseball bat from Charity’s closet in my hands.  I struck him once on the back and felt a small release of my anger.  Suddenly, the anger that had collected since my parents’ divorce rose to the surface.  All the hurt and the pain seemed to dull with each blow.  “Don’t you ever do that to my sister again!”  The bat hit him in the leg twice, then on the arm and I continued to strike him as hard as I could.

      “You’re hurting me,” he shouted as he cowered on the carpet floor.  Blood began appearing in random places on his body.

     “I don’t care,” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

     “Faith, you’re going to kill him,” Charity’s eyes met with mine for a brief moment, but I continued to hit him.

     The door slammed open.  “What is going on in here?”  I heard a familiar voice say, but I didn’t look up.  Before I could realize what was happening, I felt a man’s arms around my waist, pulling me away from James.

     “Let me go!” I flailed and tried to escape the firm grip.

     “Stop it, Faith.  You’re going to kill him if you don’t.”  Alec’s firm, nonstuttering voice was enough to stop me in my tracks.

     “You don’t understand, Alec.  He hurt Charity.  This creep has been raping my baby sister.  He doesn’t deserve to live!”  I meant it with all my heart, yet the fierce anger in my heart was enough to even scare me.

     “I know, but you’ll only hurt yourself by doing this.”  His hard grip on me loosened as the bat fell to the floor.  Carefully, examining the now unconscious body of my mother’s boyfriend, I realized that blood covered his arms and legs.  Alec had probably just saved me from committing a murder I would regret later in life.

     “I’ll call an ambulance,” Alec exited the room, leaving me alone with my sister.

     Guilt and shame quickly replaced the anger.  All these months, I just thought my sister was upset about our parents’ divorce.  I’d been so wrapped up in myself that I never knew she was secretly being raped by my mother’s creep of a boyfriend.  Nearly running to her side, I wrapped my arms tightly around her and sobbed.  “Charity, I’m sorry.  Sissy, I’m so sorry I let this happen to you.”

     My shirt quickly became wet with the mingled tears of mine and my sister’s.  “That’s okay, Faith.  It’s my fault for not telling you.”

     I pulled away from her slightly so as to look her in the eyes.  “No, this was not your fault at all.  I want you to understand that.  Nothing that James did to you is your fault, you understand?”  She gave a partial nod and I embraced her once again.  We were still like this when the paramedics barged in.  They asked us to exit the room and I gladly followed their orders.  It was becoming difficult to look and the unconscious man in my sister’s room without feeling like crying over my sister.

     Alec and a middle-aged police officer with a slightly protruding belly were standing downstairs in the living room.  Apprehension threatened to overwhelm me as I thoughts about the possible consequences of my actions.  Would I go to jail?  Would they put me on probation?  What if I could never leave the house again?  Thoughts began to race along with my heart.

     “Hello, Miss Johnson.  Alec here was just explaining the situation to me.  Right now we’ll take your sister to the hospital to get examined, but afterwards we’ll need you both to come down to the station and answer some questions, okay?”  He smiled and patted my shoulder as if to reassure me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would soon be suffering the consequences of my unchecked anger.

© 2015 Hannah Rollett

Viewpoints from the Opposite Sex

I recently attended a youth conference at Calvary Tabernacle in Indianapolis.  While we were there, the preacher said something that really stuck with me.  He said "Apostolic girls get discouraged when Apostolic boys flirt with girls outside of the church."  I know from experience that this is true.  When Christian guys start flirting with girls that don't love God and dress immodestly, it makes us feel as though we need to act the same way to get a guy's attention.  What I never thought about before was if guys feel the same way when we flirt with others who don't love the truth and are living ungodly lives.

This whole thing got me thinking...how do guys view godly girls?  And what do the majority of girls think about godly guys?  So I decided to search it out for myself.  Now I want to share my findings with you.

Now, obviously I have the perspective of the female covered.  I'm a female myself, not to mention I am surrounded by them constantly through my home, work, and even my church.  So I think I speak for many of us godly girls when I write this.

When I see a guy worshiping with passion and I can tell he loves God immensely, there's something inside of me that feels a hundred times more attracted to him.  It has nothing to do with how he's dressed, how his hair looks, or whether he's tall and muscular.  No, it is super attractive when a guy can come into God's presence with confidence and doesn't worry about what others think of him, but is more concerned about what God thinks about him.

So, in case you're wondering, guys, godly girls will not be so much concerned with how you look (although I wouldn't recommend looking like a complete slob because that does throw off the attraction a bit) as they will be with your heart for Jesus.  Don't worry about looking "cool" during service because the right kind of girl will love you for your confidence in being yourself when you worship God.

Okay, so now for the interesting part (mainly because I'm guessing the majority of readers on this blog are female).  To get the male perspective, I had to ask one of my guy friends, Kris Grepke, who, in my opinion, is one of the godliest teenage guys I've ever met.  If I'm being honest, his response kind of shocked me.

"It is more than just her dressing, and having a relationship with God. It's about her knowing that God made her beautiful, it's about her knowing that she doesn't need make up, or need to show off her body..." He continued on to say that he believes confidence and happiness with yourself can only come from a relationship with God. When girls do not have a relationship with God, they do not have confidence in themselves so they dress immodestly and try to make themselves up to get attention so they can feel good about themselves. But a godly guy does not want that.

A godly guy will love you for who you are in Christ.  Girls, you don't need to deck yourself to be beautiful and attractive to the opposite sex.  As shown by my friend's response, a godly guy would rather have someone who has a relationship with God and, because of that relationship, is confident in her identity.

I don't really have an ending for this, so I'll just close the post out with a quote...
"But when God is there it is obvious, because He grants and blesses us with confidence in ourselves. And that's a beautiful thing." --Kristopher Grepke

It is Finished

For anyone who has read the story of Jesus' crucifixion, we know those famous last words in the book of John.  We know that, in that moment, God bought our salvation and redeemed us.

I don't think, however, we realize the impact of those words.

When Jesus stated those words, "It is finished," He wasn't just talking about our salvation.  He was also talking about every single battle we will ever face in our entire.  Every addiction, every hurt, everything that we will ever struggle with was covered in that moment.  Those words mean that we don't have to worry about our struggles because Jesus has already taken care of them for us.  Your battle is over.  It's been won by the God of the universe.

So, what are you facing today?  Are you struggling to overcome an addiction?  Or perhaps there's a situation in your life that seems hopeless.  I want to encourage you to keep on going.  Don't give up.  It's only a matter of time before you see the manifestation of the victory He has won for you.

In the meantime, praise God for that victory.  Your battle?  It is finished!!!

A Difficult Decision...College!

Okay, in case you haven't guessed it already, I'm a teenager.  In fact, I'm a high school senior right now.  A very, very stressed out high school senior.

You see, I applied to seven different universities and colleges.  At first, I was only going to apply to four and then the number grew as I was filling out applications (it doesn't help when every college offers you a "preferred student" application).  So then I ended up with seven.  After getting accepted into all seven of them, the narrowing process finally began.

Every week, I get asked twice, give or take a few times, if I know where I'm going to college.  Now, don't get me wrong, I appreciate everyone taking an interest in my life, but it does kind of stress me out.  I think it's because I feel pressured to figure everything out right now and everyone is pulling me in a different direction.  I have my mom pushing me to stay close at home, my dad thinks it would be go for me to live on campus, and then there are all of the other people in my life who say what they think I should do (ironically, those people tell my parents instead of me).  Honestly, I really, really, REALLY don't want to be rude, but they make me want to scream and cry at the same time.

Then, comes the most important part.  Above all, I want to please God.  Yes, I do care what other people think, but He comes above everyone else.  So, I am learning to shut the voices out and listen to what He is trying to tell me.  This is very difficult for me, considering I'm a people pleaser (not to an extreme, but you know what I mean).

Logically, it probably be best for me to go to USI and live with my grandparents and only pay a few thousand per year.  But I'm not sure if that God's will for me and quite frankly, I'm not sure that it's His will for me to stay at home, where I would live comfortably at my home and never have to venture out of my comfort zone.  I went to visit a college today, which is a little over an hour from home.  While it is expensive and I would have to live on campus in a town where I don't know anyone, I did feel at home there.  In fact, it was my absolute favorite out of all of the colleges I've visited, despite the price.  Unfortunately, I will probably get a lot of resistance from some people if I choose to go there.

Why am I telling you all of this?  I honestly don't know...maybe just to vent or something.  Either way, I could really use your prayers as this is a very, very difficult decision to make!

The Skin I'm In

About a month ago, I was diagnosed with a rare skin disorder called dermographic uticaria.  It's not a serious disorder (just really, really irritating!!) and only 2-5% of the population have been diagnosed with it.  There is no known cause and there isn't a cure for it either.  So I was stuck with taking two antihistamine medicines to relieve the irritation and told to avoid triggers (which is hard to do when you don't know what those triggers are).

In case you are wondering what dermographic uticaria is, let me explain it to you a little bit.  Huge, red welts or hives will appear on a random spot on my body for no apparent reason.  They are massively itchy, but when I scratch it causes the rash to worsen.  If you're still wondering, yes, it is so annoying and sometimes even painful (try scratching until you bleed).

The weird (and kind of cool!) thing about this disorder is that you can write on your skin.  Yeah, you can write on your skin!  See, dermographism (another name for the disorder) causes a rash to appear on places that you have touched.  So if I gently run my fingernail across my arm and write my initials, within a few minutes it looks a tattoo stamped on my arm.

Now, I don't tell you all of this so you can feel sorry for me or thing I'm proud of this crazy skin disorder.  I tell you this because I want you to be a witness.  A witness to what?  I want you to be a witness of this...

As I told you earlier, this disorder is hugely irritating.  From what I've read, it usually goes away in 5-10 years.  But I don't plan on living with it that long.  I am believing that God is going to heal me of dermographic uticaria.  It doesn't matter if it's in 1 month or 1 year, I have full faith that God is going to use this for His glory.  This is what I want you to be a witness to.  I want everyone of you who reads this to know that, when this disorder goes away, it will be by God's healing hand alone.

But for right now, I will wait on Him and live in this crazy skin I'm in.  Peace out! :)

We Need to Talk About...Sex?

Okay, so I just finish Dannah Gresh's What Are You Waiting For: The One Thing About Sex No One Ever Tells You About Sex.  It was incredible!  My whole perspective about sex and marriage has been changed forever.  And I thought I'd share some of what I learned with you.

For those of you that know me, your mouth has probably dropped to the floor by now.  I've always been the type of girl who couldn't even say the word sex aloud, much less talk about the subject.  Now I'm the type of girl that thinks every teenager should hear about sex...from a biblical perspective.  After all, parents, pastors and youth pastors, if you don't tell them, who will?  The world will, that's who.  And their perspective on this precious gift is a bit...well, screwed up.

So, here I go.

The first thing I learned (and probably the most powerful) is that sex is not just about a husband and wife coming together.  Sex was designed as a representative of the intimacy God desires for us.  Some of you are probably like "I knew that!" while some of you are saying "What?!"  Well, just to give you an example...

Did you know that the Hebrew word for sex is yada?  Yeah, the word we use when something is boring or dull is actually talking about intimacy.  However, did you also know that that same word is used when talking about knowing God?  Take these two verses for instance:

Adam knew [yada] his wife; and she conceived...Genesis 4:1

Be still and know [yada] that I am God...Psalm 46:10

Yada is actually translated as: to know, to be known, to be deeply respected.  So, in the same way that a husband and wife "know" each in their marriage bed, that's the same way we should be with God.  Completely transparent and open before Him.  Receiving a love that totally trumps human love any day. 

Next, I learned exactly why sex before marriage is a bad idea.  I mean, we all (by "we" I mean those who have grown up in a Christian home) have been told that we can't have sex before marriage.  When we asked why, the answer was most likely something like "Because the Bible says so" or "God wants you to save yourself for your husband".  But have you ever wondered why?  Why the Bible tells us it's wrong?  Why God wants us to wait for our husbands?  Well, this book gave me the a-ha! moment I needed to answer that one pesky little W-word.

Did you know that you can actually get addicted to a person?  Yep!  There is a chemical that washes over your brain called dopamine, which is responsible for giving you a feeling of pleasure.  Whether it's from chocolate, meth or sex, that chemical washes over your brain and makes you want more.  So, when you have sex with a person, that feeling washes over you and you become attached to that person whether you intend to or not.  So how do you think it feels when this relationship ends or when that person no longer wants to have relations with you?  It hurts.  A lot.

This kind of sex is shakab, meaning a counterfeit.  It's something we pursue to fill an emptiness (which can be filled with the divine love of our Savior) Just to give you an idea of what kind of sex this is, you should know that the word shakab is used in the passage where Lot's daughters have sex with him to preserve seed (Can you say gross?!).  Now that you know that, does having shakab sound appealing at all?

Finally (and you're probably thinking "Thank God!"), I learned that you can start over.  Unfortunately, many people are going into marriage nowadays with shame or ties to other people because of sexual sins in their past.  But just because you go into it with shame doesn't mean it has to stay that way.  God offers forgiveness and healing in ways that may seem impossible to you.

If you or someone you know if struggling with the past, know that there is hope.  Find an older, godly woman (or man, if you're a guy) and confess the past.  It's going to be painful, yes, but it will be worth it.  After that, fast and pray that God will release you from your shame and break the ties you have to the people from your past.  It will be a process, but you will be free.  You don't have to live bound with shame and regrets.

Okay, so that's a lot of information (and that was just scratching the surface!).  I wish I could tell you everything that I learned, but that would be a much, much longer blog post.  You'll just have to read the book yourself. :-)