Trusting in the Lord is something I’m not quite sure we’re ever done learning, and the odds are, you don’t quite realize just how much you don’t trust in the Lord until someone points out how blatantly independent you are from the Lord. But this weekend, I was listening to someone else’s testimony about how the Lord used a season of poverty to teach him dependence on the Lord, and he said something that hit me right between the eyes.

The true key to real success in our health, work, schooling, relationships– you name it– is nurturing our souls by giving them over to our Savior each and everyday. This key verse challenges us and reveals to us that a person who meditates in Jesus daily will have a life removed from shame, sadness, and fears. When we submit to God, we find true purpose, clarity, and ultimate joy. This is the challenge we wake up to each and every morning. The way we face this challenge we have in our souls influences every other part of our life.

Anyone ever felt forgotten by the Lord? Don’t worry, if you're sitting there with both hands and a foot in the air, I’m right there with you. And so was David. David felt forgotten by God. He felt like God had completely withdrawn from him; like no matter how long or loud he cried out for the Lord to hear him, he was still met with dead silence. David had been without God’s counsel for so long that he felt like he had to start turning to himself for answers, which only resulted in more sorrow in his heart.

What is the first thing you think when you walk into the gym? Is it “I’m incapable,” or “I’m not fit at all compared to all these other people?” Do you compare yourself to everyone else in the room or feed yourself unmotivating lies? The same exhaustion and self-deprecation that follow us around in life tends to follow us into the gym too, and most times, they tend to scream even louder. The enemy loves to get ahold of our insecurities and inflate them like a balloon as he sees us struggle, being afraid of the gym doors or the thought of even stepping on a treadmill. These are moments that the devil lives for, but also moments that do not have to be our reality.

Since Megan is in a body image series, I wanted to stay in the same vein this week: the body. Not just our body, but the body we are made in the image of– Jesus. If you skipped today's key verse, please go back and read it– no judgment, we all do it from time to time– and meditate on it. Really think about what it means; it’s multi-pointed.

One of my biggest struggles that God has grown me in over the years is learning to have a healthy outlook on my body. As a child, I was a bigger kid and I was very insecure about my weight. When I went to middle school I thinned out very quickly and my mindset from then on was “I have to stay this way”. Since then I have been pretty consistent in the gym all of high school and college. My main struggle has been having a healthy outlook about going to the gym and being healthy as well as controlling the number on the scale. It is a hard but vital struggle to learn to see your health as God sees it.

Think back to a time as a child when you desperately wanted something from your parents. Possibly a toy, an outing, maybe a piece of candy from the checkout or an ice cream cone from the ice cream truck. Have it in mind? Did you promise anything to your parent at that moment? Possibly bribe them through good behavior or even the assurance of future good behavior? Think back on that moment, or any moment where you exchanged the promise of compliance for something you wanted from someone else. At that time, what do you think the motive behind your obedience was?

As a youth leader, sometimes you think that the young adults you spend every Friday night with miss it. It’s easy to think that you’re not reaching them because they don’t always verbalize or visibly respond to the Jesus you’re always trying to pour into them. And then, sometimes, they come out with some amazing one-liner that makes you feel like the student and them the teacher.

Hey Pops, I want to be more constantly aware of you. For too long, I’ve let personal drama get in the way of consistently pursuing you. I’ve let people and situations distract me from what really matters: sitting at your feet and putting my mind on you. Forgive my short-sightedness. Forgive my selfish heart. Forgive my scattered focus and for allowing my attention to be stolen so easily.

When we enter into a relationship with God, we truly learn about ourselves. Being in union with our creator forces us to be self-aware and allows us to evolve into our true identity each and every day. In this process, we sometimes face a lot of hard truths about who we are and how we can act. We see the ugly that lies within us.

Dear Lord, I thank you for who you are each and every second, minute, and day that you continue to prove yourself through. You are an unchanging God who loves me in every heart-condition and I am unbelievably blessed. You fight for me when I cannot bear to face things myself and you come to my defense when I cannot even bring myself to stand. You are always at my right hand ready to teach me, love me, and show me how to persevere.

How often do we limit our capacity to worship Jesus? Let me be more specific: how often do we categorize worship neatly into a box for Sunday morning church service or a special playlist on our phones? In all reality, worship goes much farther than ambient music or beautiful lyrics. Worship is a lifestyle. It is something that should be fully integrated into Christian life.

When I was a little girl, my grandma had this bookshelf with a series of short story books on it. I remember I loved to look at them, the spines straight like soldiers in a row, all the same color, all the same size, and lined from one end of the shelf to the other, yet all incredibly different on the inside.

“It’s not a holiday. It’s a day of chocolate bunnies and eggs.” Those were the real-life words that came out of a coworkers mouth in my office this week. It was one of those things that pulled my mind straight out of what it was doing and into the world happening around me.

There’s a lot of things we all crave to be in this life. We all want to be successful and feel accomplished. Maybe we even have a small timeline in your heads of where we want to be and when. Even though we do our best to trust in Jesus and in his plan, we also have little hopes and dreams within our minds and hearts. We almost all want to achieve perfection in all these areas of our lives. But there is one thing I never want to be, and that is the “Perfect Christian”.

No matter how long you’ve been a Christian– whether you’re on day one or decades from the starting line– everyone that has ever followed Jesus is unified by at least this fact: none of us have ever graduated from the point of salvation. Because no matter how long your spiritual resume is, it is unavoidable that you will struggle with your own tendency towards sin until the day you die. Maybe that’s blunt or depressing, but it’s true. There will never be a point in this life where you will be able to think, “Well, that’s it. I’ve done it. I’ve obtained a wholly righteous and upright lifestyle. I will no longer struggle with sin.”