Being Less Prideful

     Deuteronomy 8:17-18; You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth...  Oh, I aught myself doing something like this yesterday. I was talking to my mom and I said that I had done really well at something and as I said that, I realized that it was not because of me that that had happened but because of God. I don't even remember what it was about I just remember having that realization.
     I have to tell you, being on the Daniel Fast has definitely brought me to have a closer relationship with God. It is so wonderful and I am overwhelmingly happy. I encourage you -my readers- to do this fast as well because I want you to be as happy as I am. It is hard work, but it is so worth it. I also feeling like God is telling me more often when I need to be less prideful. It is really nice to have someone helping me to be a better person. Especially when it is God and he says things perfectly and you can't really argue with God or say something like, "You're not the boss of me."
     I pray that God would bless you in all you do. Have a great day my friends.

~Daughter of the Light

Faithfulness

     1 Samuel 26:23; The Lord rewards everyone for their righteousness and faithfulness. 
     After my long, desperate prayer with God Sunday night, I was excited to see my friend on Monday. When I went to audition for a play, I met up with her there. We sat in the hall and waited to be called in to audition. I was so happy to be there with her and talk to her and encourage her. 
     According to dictionary.com, faithfulness is: steady in allegiance or affection; loyal; constant. 
I wanted to get my audition done as soon as possible, so I auditioned long before her, but I was faithful and stayed by her side in the hall until she was ready to go. When she finally felt determined enough to go, I encouraged her to go and when she came out I tried to be kind and loving. Then, I didn't want to leave her there because she was going to call her mom to get picked up, so my mom and I took her home.
    I love that girl and I am so glad God gave me a great chance to practice my faithfulness with her.
    There are so many ways a person can be faithful. A student could be faithful to do his homework, parents can be faithful to love their children... The thing I am going to try and be faithful about this week particularly would be to go to my studio and talk with God every day. Every time I walk out of there after talking with him I feel so happy. It is so beautiful. When I talk to him I feel so much happier and content.

~Daughter of the Light

God will Fight for Us

     Deuteronomy 1:29-30; "Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. 30 The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you..." God will fight for us, we just have to ask him.
     I had the most beautiful experience last night that I feel like I really must share with you. The other night, I broke into tears because a friend of mine has been struggling. I was almost angry that my life is so beautiful and hers is so messed up. I went to our studio so that it could just be me and God. I told God what was on my mid and how it really hurt me. I told him that my friend had been having such a difficult time with life that she had actually made herself ill.
    For about a half an hour I cried and cried pouring out my hear to him. (that is not something I do very often, but my mom had told me to go out there and talk to him) I am not going to hide from you that I looked horrible. I had snot all over myself when I had finished. I tell you that not to gross you out, but to explain how distraught and broken I was. After my tear for half an hour, I thought that I should listen to God and see if I could hear him reply.
    Now, exactly a month before this, a girl had spoken at my church about how daily we should spend time listening to God. We may not hear God or anything at all, but getting into a habit of listening to God for a hour every day was important. She told us to get a stick in order to keep out mind on God and not get distracted with life in the silence. My stick that I had thought of that day was, "God is compassionate." I'm not really sure why that came to me, but it did. When I sat down and tried to just listen to God, when I though of something off topic, I would go back to that and think, "God is compassionate." Then at church, I had felt like that wasn't really a good stick. I felt like I needed to come up with something better, but that one kept coming back to me.
     Last night, as I lay on my knees, that stick came to me. "God is compassionate." I burst into tears again because I realized that God had really heard me prayer. He was compassionate and had listened to a small female with snot pouring all over herself at nine o'clock at night in a cold studio begging him to save her best friend's life.
    Proverbs 3:5-6; Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make you paths straight. 
     That really touched me and I felt complete peace after that. I knew God would fight this fight for me.
     Please pray for me. I am going to see this friend of mine today and I really want God to speak through me so I can be an encouragement to her. I don't want to speak out of my own free will because I am positive I will say something wrong. Only God can tell me what the right thing to say is.

~Daughter of the Light

     Mark 12:30-31; Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”  

Prayer

     Mark 9:28-29;  After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn't we drive [the demon] out?”  29 He replied, "This kind can come out only by prayer."
     By saying this, Jesus was implying that prayer is the most powerful weapon. Prayer is something I struggle with, big time. I mean, you're just talking. They're just words. How could that be more powerful than actions? Don't actions speak louder than words? I'm a doer. I like making things happen with my own two hands.
      Prayer is such a beautiful thing because when you pray for someone else, you are asking God to do something you can't do. You are using your words to humbly ask him to make an action, and his actions will be so much better and more successful than ours. The reason I struggle with prayer is because it requires humility. If I was to pray for someone, I would be admitting that I cannot solve my problem on my own.
     Now, the only time you can talk to God is certainly not when you only need something. I talk to him often about being thankful for random things... like my hairbrush. I'm not sure what I would do without my hairbrush; or peanut butter, I am in love with peanut butter. I thank God for those kind of things all the time, and sometimes  I tell him about my day, but often I don't want to sound repetitive. After all, he knows what I did; he knows what I'm going to do. God really wants us to treat him like our friend though. Often my friends tell me the same thing that happened in their life over and over again because they forgot they already told me, but I still sit there and listen because I love talking to them.
     I often underestimate God's power, and I try to do things on my own. After I reach the point of no return (or at least I think I've messed up really badly), then I go to him and ask for help. The truth is, I need to humble myself and know that he is God and I am not. Philippians 4:13; I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It doesn't say I can do all things by myself.
     Perhaps I should challenge myself to pray extra on a certain day of the week so that I really get talking to God more often. Let's start with today. Thursday. On every Thursday, I challenge myself to spend extra time with God. I am certainly not less busy on Thursday than I am other days, but God is more important to me than anything else. I really do want to grow in him. You can absolutely challenge yourself too. I know some people that already do this, and I highly admire them. If you are one of those people who spends lots of time praying to God, thank you for being a good influence on the people around you. As for me, I shall be working on that.

~Daughter of the Light

1 Corinthians 13

     1 Corinthians 13; If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

     4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

     8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes,what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

     13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

     This reminded me that I need to be kind and have love when I am being good. :)

Psalm 43:5

Psalm 43:5

Why, my soul, are you downcast?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

for I will yet praise him,

my Savior and my God.

Goodness

     Yesterday I realized that the challenge week for kindness was over and this week I was going to practice goodness. What is goodness and how is it different than kindness? The two seemed very similar to me, so I looked them up on dictionary.com.   Kindness is the state or quality of being kind. Friendly feeling; liking. A kind act; favor. Goodness is the state or quality of being good. Generous. A kind act; favor.    So they are similar, but I think being kind is more of being a servant and being good is more of being moral and upright.
     Personally, I am a very black and white person and I get very passionate about what I believe. I don't think I need to work so much on the standing up for what is moral or being just, but I do need to work on being good in a kind way. That is what I am going to work on this week. Feel free to alter the challenge of practicing a particular fruit of the spirit a week to fit you and what would actually be a challenge for you.

~Daughter of the Light

Judging

     Mark 7:15; Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.  There are several things people can get out of this verse, but for me, the first thing that comes to mind is, do not to judge others. They may wear weird clothes or have a personality that at first glance seems really annoying, but don't assume you know what they are like just from a few minutes of observation.
     I really need to work on this. Yesterday, I had to hang out with a lot of people, and there were these two teenagers that had strange clothes, their hair was messy, and one of them was just... strange... weird... annoying. I judged them in like, five seconds. Why do I do that? I don't know, but it is a habit that I need to brake. Any advice on how I could brake that?

~Daughter of the Light

What if You Didn't Know It Was Wrong?

     Numbers 15:27; But if just one person sins unintentionally, he must bring a year-old female goat for a sin offering. I have had many conversations with my mom where I asked her over and over again, 'How is it just to punish someone if they didn't know what they were doing was wrong?' I would get very passionate about this, so when I read scriptures like this in the Bible, I would get upset. Yesterday I saw a picture on Facebook of something that was in the paper, and I realized why it was so important for people to be disciplined even if they did not know that they were doing something wrong.

     It is hard to read stuff like that in the paper or for that matter, anywhere. It made me sick. When you live in a corrupt world where people do not follow the rules God gives us to follow, it becomes easier to see why it is so important to follow those rules.

     Numbers 14:18; The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. This is a reason why it is so important to discipline children. My parents spanked me until I was ten, and I am so happy they did. If they had not disciplined me for what I did wrong, I would have never known what was right and what was wrong.

     Even when God's rules don't make sense, we should still obey them because the truth is, he knows a lot more than we do. He can see the big picture and we can only see part of it. That is why it is so important to trust him.

~Daughter of the Light

Moses was Humble

     Numbers 12:3; (Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.) What was it that made Moses so humble? He was not afraid to complain to God. Numbers 11:11; Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of all these people on me? It was not that he was perfect. So, what made him so humble? Maybe it was because he had so much faith in God. He did as the Lord commanded him because he knew the Lord knew best. In the blog Hannah's Cupboard, she very wisely points out that God saw Moses, not for what he did, but for who he was.

     Hebrews 13:8; Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. If he is the same as he was in the past, he still sees us for who we are and not what we do. The more I contemplate that, the more I see it can be a good or bad thing. 1 Corinthians 13:3; If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. God can see if we do good because it is really in our hearts to do so or if it is only because we want to look good.

     Personally, I have this problem a bit. It is my spiritual gift to serve, so it does come naturally, but sometimes I say certain things about what I do so that others can hear it and think well of me. It is a very selfish way to do things, I know, and I have tried to humble myself and not say such things, but it is difficult. I have asked God to humble me, because I cannot change my bad habits without his help, and he is. I may not like it, but the more my pride gets knocked down, and the more embarrassed I become will hopefully train me not to say cocky things.

     This week, try to be like Moses. I don't mean mean the things he did, but who he was. Try to be humble like Moses was. I shall be working on this as well. We're all in this together! 

~Daughter of the Light

Psalm 27

Psalm 27

The Lord is my light and my salvation—

whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life—

of whom shall I be afraid?

2 When the wicked advance against me

to devour me,

it is my enemies and my foes

who will stumble and fall.

3 Though an army besiege me,

my heart will not fear;

though war break out against me,

even then I will be confident.

4 One thing I ask from the Lord,

this only do I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze on the beauty of the Lord

and to seek him in his temple.

5 For in the day of trouble

he will keep me safe in his dwelling;

he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent

and set me high upon a rock.

6 Then my head will be exalted

above the enemies who surround me;

at his sacred tent I will sacrifice with shouts of joy;

I will sing and make music to the Lord.

7 Hear my voice when I call, Lord;

be merciful to me and answer me.

8 My heart says of you, “Seek his face!”

Your face, Lord, I will seek.

9 Do not hide your face from me,

do not turn your servant away in anger;

you have been my helper.

Do not reject me or forsake me,

God my Savior.

10 Though my father and mother forsake me,

the Lord will receive me.

11 Teach me your way, Lord;

    lead me in a straight path

    because of my oppressors.

12 Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes,

    for false witnesses rise up against me,

    spouting malicious accusations.

13 I remain confident of this:

    I will see the goodness of the Lord

    in the land of the living.

14 Wait for the Lord;

    be strong and take heart

    and wait for the Lord.

Prayer

Acts 28:26-27;

“You will be ever hearing but never understanding;

you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.”

27 For this people’s heart has become calloused;

they hardly hear with their ears,

and they have closed their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes,

hear with their ears,

understand with their hearts

and turn, and I would heal them.”

     Dear Jesus,
          Please forgive me for being rebellious. Please teach me to listen to you. Help me not to stray away. I really do want to be healed, and I really do want to please you. I want to follow what you tell me to do. I want to be bold and courageous, but I'm not sure how. Please God, fill me with the understanding so that I many hear you, with the power to see what you want me to do, and with the strength to do what you say. Thank you Lord.

Amen.

~Daughter of the Light

Why God Sends Hurricanes

     Acts 27:14-15; Before very long, a wind of hurricane force,called the Northeaster, swept down from the island. 15 The ship was caught by the storm and could not head into the wind; so we gave way to it and were driven along.  God sent a hurricane. WHY? Why would he do something like that or let something like that happen?
     Acts 27:21-25; After they had gone a long time without food, Paul stood up before them and said: “Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. 22 But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. 23 Last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me 24 and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’25 So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me.  The hurricane came. Yes it caused a lot of damage, but because none of them died and Paul was obedient to say what the angel had told him to say, the men that had been on the ship believed in God.
     God takes the bad and makes it into good. The hurricane was actually helpful and if it had not been for the hurricane, most of them men who were on that ship would have gone to hell. It is a hard thing to admit that even when bad things happen God is still in control. We so often want to say, 'God! What are you doing with my life? Give me back the pen and I shall write my own story. I don't like the way yours is turning out.' The truth is, God created us. He knows us so much better than we could ever imagine. He wants what is best for us. We have to trust him though. Paul was arrested and put in prison so many times, but because he trusted God and continued to obey him, God blessed him and thousandths of people came to know God. People still come to know God because of Paul. People read about him in the Bible and are changed because of him. His obedience to God created a legacy that no one could ever create without God. We need to trust in him as hard and painful as that might sound. He really does know what is best for us.
     We all have had hurricanes in our lives. They aren't always literal, but they hurt just as much. When we have those times, God wants us to turn to him. He wants you to tall him what is going on and how you need him. We all like knowing that someone needs us. Not like, needs needs, like hangs on and drains all the energy out of us... But we all want to know that we are important and have not been left behind or forgotten. God wants us to have faith that he will take care of us like he promised over and over. It is not like bad things don't happen. If they didn't, we would not need God! Then we would get cocky and rebellious and say, 'God I don't need you. I can live on my own.' We all have seen someone who was rebellious and did not like it. It could have been a little kid throwing a fit in a store, but we all have seen something like that. Rebellion is wrong. We are all sinners. We all need God. We all need to trust God. Put your trust in him and you will not be disappointed. He will always be faithful.

~Daughter of the Light

Why Did Paul Appeal to Caesar?

     Acts 25; 10-11; I have not done any wrong to the Jews, as you yourself know very well. 11 If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die. But if the charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!” 
     I was reading this chapter in my bible this morning and I was wondering, why exactly did Paul appeal to Caesar? He said he was not afraid to die, as he had stared before, and he trusted God to take care of him. So, was he just tired of staying in prison and felt like that would be a good move to get him out. The I was thinking, well maybe it was because he wanted to testify to Caesar. It was not because he was afraid of death or being cooped up in a cell, it was so he could tell others, whom he could not normally reach, about Christ. See how God turned something not so good into something excellent. Paul had to stay in prison for a couple years even though he did nothing wrong -reminds me of Joseph-, but God used it for good.
     Luke 12:11; When you are brought before a ruler, do not worry about how you will defend yourself or what you will say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say. Perhaps this was another reason Paul appealed to Caesar. It was because the Holy Spirit was speaking through Paul.
     This thought is really comforting to me to know that if I ever was brought somewhere important to speak, I could trust the Holy Spirit to speak because I would totally mess it up. I would need it to speak for me. Some say that they have been a situation like that, where they had to speak to important people, and they said that the Holy Spirit did not tell them anything. LISTEN! I'm sure the Holy Spirit was talking, but they would not really listen. Perhaps they had ignored the Holy Spirit so many times before they could not hear it.
     Thank you God that you send your Holy Spirit to us to tell us the wise things to say. Please help me to listen, accept, and obey what I am told by you. I really do want to do your will, but I am a sinner. I make mistakes and mess up. You are perfect. Please help me to be more like you.
Amen.

~Daughter of the Light

Kindness

     Ephesians 4:32; Be kind and tender to one another. Forgive each other, just as God forgave you because of what Christ has done.   It is now time to practice kindness. I have been thinking about this recently, probably because I was eager to get done with patience. I don't know about you, but it really seemed like God was telling me to slow down this last week. My guitar teacher was telling me to slow down and practice as slowly as possible with the metronome. Anyway, I have already tried to work at kindness. I have let others take the seat that I wanted and could have had. I have not made anyone feel guilty because they are eating sugar in front of me when I cannot have it. (because I'm on the Daniel Fast) I think kindness, when I think about it, is not really hard. My best friend just got her wisdom teeth pulled out yesterday, so I went and bought her ice cream, wrote her a nice card, and dropped it off at her house. Boy was she surprised!

     Kindness is such a great thing because you feel the benefits yourself. When I saw my friend smile, it made my day. Things like having peace and showing patience, you do not always see the benefits, but the truth it, you could have gotten into a really big fight that hurt a relationship if you had not been patient. I don't know. Kindness is so beautiful, and you don't have to do anything big, but just a little something to make someone feel special. Something I am working on that I know is going to take me all week, I am writing an adjective for each letter of all my friends names that are on Facebook. That includes people who never get on Facebook, people I hardly know, and my best friends. That is a lot of people! But I know that it will make them happy when they look at their Facebook page a see a bunch of encouraging, positive things that I see in them.

     Try and do something kind this week, something you know will touch someone's heart. It could be making a meal for a sick friend, writing a letter, spending more time with a sibling... the choices are endless. We just have to be bold and step out an make those things happen.

~Daughter of the Light

Are You Ready to Die?

     Acts 21:10-14; After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11 Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, "The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles."

     12 When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. 13 Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” 14 When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”

     The Lord sent Agabus to Paul to test him. He was testing whether Paul would trust God to handle everything or run away to safety. Paul chose to trust God because he was not in love with life. He did not complain about living, but he also was perfectly fine with death. He would do anything God asked of because he loved God so much. He knew that when he died, he would go to heaven.

    I was talking to a friend of mine recently about the topic of death. I was expressing to her that I would never want someone to like jump in front of a car or anything to save my life because I really don't mind if I die. I told her that if someone walked in this room right now and shot me, I would be perfectly okay with that. Then I explained myself. I see life like this: God made everyone for a purpose. If my purpose has not been completed, then he won't let me die. God will protect me. If my purpose is finished, I don't want to be on this earth any longer than I have to. I'd be eager to die because I would be free of this corrupt world and in heaven. Nevertheless, I do believe that committing suicide is wrong, and you will not go to heaven if you kill yourself. Think about it. Satan wants to destroy as many people as possible. He tries to make us stumble. If he is encouraging us to kill ourselves, that means he wants us to die because he knows then he will have us. He would not want us to die if we were going to go to heaven.

     My friend did not really agree with my look on life, and that is okay with me. Personally, I don't really understand why anyone would want to cling onto life here when they can be saved and go to heaven. It is totally fine with me that she disagrees. I still love her just as much if not more. It would be hard for me to have a friend that always agreed with me.

    What is your look on life? If God asked you to go somewhere you would be chained and beat, would you trust him to take care of you?

~Daughter of the Light

Favortism and Tattoos

     Leviticus 19:15; Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. I struggle with this. When I teach a children's class at my church I always pick favorites. I try not to treat them differently because I really do love them all, but sometimes I let the ones that I extra like get away with a little more than they should or I choose them to do special things. I justify myself by saying something like, 'Well they have proven themselves worthy, so I can put my trust in them.' That is really not fair though. If the other kids only can come to church 2 a month, they don't have a chance quite as often to prove themselves. This is obviously something I need to work on.
     Leviticus 19:28; Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I have no problems with cutting my body for the dead. Just reading that kinda creeps me out, but I actually have some friends that did cut themselves -not for the dead- but because it took their minds off of the pain in their life. Feeling a different kind of pain was nice for them, but now talking to those friends, all of them say that they regret it.
     Tattoos on the other hand... When I was younger, I knew tattoos were wrong and I would always say something like: 'I just don't understand why someone would pay to have himself permanently scared.' And... well... I don't really see it like that. I sort-of want a tattoo, but it says in the Bible not to. I read this scripture and wonder to myself, 'Perhaps he meant don't tattoo yourself for the dead. That wouldn't be a problem for me. I would be tattooing myself for myself because I think it looks cool. Now that I say that I realize how selfish I sound. Hmm, maybe another reason I want a tattoo is so I can show it to my friends and prove that I'm not a little perfect angel, I do cool things too. What's up with that? Seriously, that is me being drawn into the crowd and doing what the world says I should. I need to work on doing what God wants me to and not my own desires.
     I told you earlier about how I want to stop abortion. Well, I'm doing the Daniel Fast so that I can draw closer to God and know really how it is that he wants me to do this. I invite you to join me in fasting. I am only eating the list of foods they tell me to in the book -but I did add protein shakes and chicken and beef broth like my naturopathic doctor told me to. As a teenager I still need to have protien so I can think clearly and get me homework done.
     May God bless you in everything you do.

~Daughter of the Light

Sodomy

     Leviticus 18:22-28; “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.

23 “Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

24 “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. 25 Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the foreigners residing among you must not do any of these detestable things, 27 for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. 28 And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.

     In the Old Testament, homosexuality was called sodomy. It was when a man slept with a man or a woman slept with a woman. It was wrong then and is wrong now. It states pretty clearly that that is not okay, but people nowadays tend to think that it is okay. Let me tell you. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. What he said was wrong and detestable in his sight before will always be that.

     Now, I have some friends who are homosexuals, or sodomites, and it is hard to know how to act around them sometimes. It also says in the Bible that, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  Matthew 9:12. It would not seem right to shun someone just because he sins differently that you. I am friends with those kind of people because they are people just like you and me and I hope to be an example of Christ in their lives. That doesn't mean you should agree with their choices. You should not. That is what Phil Robertson has been talking about.  Don't compromise your rights. James 4:17; So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. You also should not make them your best friends because then they are more likely to influence you more than you influence them. Jesus did not make tax-collectors and murderers his best friends, but he still loved and cared for them. Be wise in all you do.

~Daughter of the Light

Don't Stay Silent

     Leviticus 5:1; If anyone sins because they do not speak up when they hear a public charge to testify regarding something they have seen or learned about, they will be held responsible. Wow. So it is not safe to just say nothing. Standing up for yourself and one another are important things to do. Every little bit of evidence needs to be spoken, because otherwise, it would be possible one is condemning an innocent man. This verse puts me into perspective  a little bit. It blankly states what is black and what is white. It just stood out to me as I read my devotions and I thought I would share it with you.

~Daughter of the Light

Leviticus

     Leviticus... oh Leviticus. In my daily reading I am reading in Leviticus. It is hard to care about what you are reading when you are reading about thirty different ways to make a sacrifice or burnt offering. To keep myself from skipping a month's worth of reading, I have decided that every three years I will read Leviticus thoroughly and the other two I will skim it but read another Bible focused book. Presently, I'm reading Hinds' Feet on High Places. I am enjoying it. For me, this is really hard because I do not like reading, but I think this is really good for me.
     Have any of you readers ever done the 30 day challenge to listen to only Christian music? I have heard about people doing that, so I'm trying to do that. It is interesting though when you have siblings that listen to non-Christian music.
    This New Year is an interesting one. Yesterday was crazy. I pray that you are all drawing closer to God. When hard things happen to me I always draw closer to God.

~Daughter of the Light

Challenge Yourself

Psalm 15:2-5;

2 The one whose walk is blameless,

who does what is righteous,

who speaks the truth from their heart;

3 whose tongue utters no slander,

who does no wrong to a neighbor,

and casts no slur on others;

4 who despises a vile person

but honors those who fear the Lord;

who keeps an oath even when it hurts,

and does not change their mind;

5 who lends money to the poor without interest;

who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.

Whoever does these things

will never be shaken.

     When I was younger I read this and thought of it this way: 

"If you are perfect, you will never be defeated."

     I was reading this today and I saw it as a challenge. The new yea has started. Make an effort to be more blameless, more truthful, less prideful, more encouraging, and more innocent. 

    Also, being a peace maker. That is the fruit of the spirit I am on. It is not working out so well, but I shall still Do Hard Things and try more and more to be a peace maker.

   HAPPY NEW YEAR! Challenge yourself to do something hard this year too. Don't give up just because we all mess up. Do Hard Things.

   I was talking with my mom the other day about being on fire for Christ. I asked her what she thought the next generation of Christians were going to be like. She said that they would be stronger than the last because they would have to be. To survive in a world that is decaying and becoming more and more corrupt, we have to stand up and make a difference. We cannot just wait for the next person to do it. We need to stand up. We need to speak up. This is not just something one person does. We need to work together as a team.

   I have been talking with some friends and organizations about helping stop abortions and sexually exploited girls, but it is hard. I have talked with a couple people and researched for hours. The results have not exactly been positive, but don't worry, I'm not giving up. I'm doing something hard and I am not just going to give up once it gets harder.

~Daughter of the Light