Christ is in Me. I am enough!!

Speaking good thoughts. Speaking love. Speak Life. It’s things that we should be doing and we may be showing these things...however are we actually speaking these things? Now speaking these things to someone else is something completely different from speaking them to ourselves. We are more likely to give compliments, show love, and provide encouragement to others and least likely to speak these to ourselves. I’m very guilty of this. I show love, provide encouragement, and speak life to those around me but I’m very quick to not give myself the pep talks or the silent sermons.

Now you may be asking yourself what is a silent sermon. A silent sermon is what we do as opposed to what we say. It’s the actions we do towards others without saying anything. That's a silent sermon. It’s how we handle situations that don’t go our way or we’re uncomfortable with but are still able to provide a loving action without words. I first learned about silent sermons from Steven Furtick at Elevation Church. He spoke on silent sermons as the final message in his 6 part series called Bars & Battles. (I spoke about this series in a previous post and highly recommend you check out all 6 sermons. It's all on YouTube and I'll attach it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztTJgIYoHJc&list=PLFrHDxoEf4t077kjLpZvaqpcJur2EkHaC). Now let's rewind to last weekend and how I gave myself a horrible silent sermon and allowed my negative feelings to plague my experience.

Over thanksgiving weekend I had the privilege to go to Niagara Falls for the wedding of one of my longest friends. She is my longest ‘school’ friendship (28 years and going strong) and our families are connected from 2 generations previous as our grandmothers were best friends when they were our age. It was such an honor for me to receive an invitation to her wedding. This was my first vacation/trip completely by myself and I was so excited. Flying, driving, hotel, eating and exploring Niagara all by myself. I had a blast! I walked to the falls, got soaked from standing next to the falls (if you go to Niagara definitely do Journey Behind the Falls...so worth it!!), ate by myself for the first time in my life, and drove around Ontario by myself. Now I should say that the day of the wedding I spent with one of my other friends who was invited to the wedding as well, and I made two more friends that day too (YAY!!). It was liberating, exciting and freeing...until Saturday hit.

So the wedding was Friday and I was heading home Saturday late in the evening. I woke up Saturday, had breakfast, checked out of my hotel and started on my adventure. I got to the first stop (outlet mall...yay!!) and as I started shopping I was doing well, finding deals and just feeling good. As the day went on, it hit me that my friend was married. She was married!!! It was a crazy thought but then my thoughts then immediately went to feeling sorry for myself. I started giving myself silent sermons however they were the wrong silent sermons. I was having a pity party for myself. I allowed the devil to infiltrate my mind and plague it with thoughts of how I was not going to get married. I’m no where near getting married...it’ll never happen! The devil kept me in a loop for the whole day. I allowed myself to have a bad day and just wanted nothing more than to go home and crawl into bed.

I spent the day listening to the thoughts that were going through my head as opposed to preaching good thoughts, speaking life, speaking love to myself. I let myself have a bad day. As singles (or for anyone going through a different season of waiting...but I’m going to be specific to singles) when we don’t see the promise that God has for us we forget our purpose. We tend to allow ourselves to wallow in our sadness, have a pity party and sometimes if we’re not careful others can tell how we’re feeling by the actions we are doing or the emotions on our faces. We are allowing our actions and emotions to defeat the purpose God has for us. We roll back to the “why me?”, “I’m never going to meet someone.”, “why is God making me wait?”. When I was having my pity party I completely forgot Psalm 19:14. “May the words of my mouth and the mediation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

He is my rock. He is my redeemer. His word works. I’m going to quote Steven Furtick because when I first heard this I reminded me of how I felt and acted on that Saturday. “It’s the silent sermon that you preach to yourself that determines whether you continue to live in a place of regret and resentment, or your step forward into your tomorrow believing that God will use all things for the good of those who love Him and called according to His purpose.” I encourage you to preach to yourself the silent sermons of love, hope, trust in knowing that God has a purpose for you. His plans and purposes are more than we can ever imagine and we as His children need to look at ourselves as he looks at us. We are all made in His image and perfect. He would not allow us to have a unfulfilled life of despair or trials. It's our job to speak to ourselves the positive words to encourage ourselves and know He's got us. He never said the road would be easy, but as long as we trust in Him and know he will provide the promise at the right time we can live a full life. When you're feeling down and find it hard to speak positive thoughts just say the following to yourself. "Christ is in me. I am enough!"