Dear Life Church,

The biggest and most important thing I want to do is express is my sincerest thanks. Thank you for being a church that doesn't give up and doesn't compromise. Thank you for being a church that will do anything to see people find Christ. Thank you for putting Jesus first and seeking His guidance in everything. Thank you for doing all you can to provide an atmosphere for people to come seek and experience Jesus no matter where they are in their walk. Thank you for always always always preaching the Gospel and preaching it as it is. And finally, thank you for being a church that cares about every single person that walks in the door no matter what.

Recently, I've been through one of the hardest seasons in my entire life. It was one that honestly came out of nowhere, I didn't really do anything to initiate, and absolutely broke me down to the lowest place I've ever been. Throughout these few months, I've felt the sincerest love and care from the members of Life Church. Whether it was a simple "Hey how are you doing?", an offer for prayer or just a text to say I was being thought of, I knew that when I was in that church or around those people I was cared for and loved. I hit rock bottom over Christmas, and I lost my will to do pretty much anything. But I knew if I could just get into church on Sunday, I would be able to experience Jesus and be around people that loved me.

What's more is I've only been at this church since April and the people of this church have treated me like I've been there for years. Here you don't have to earn your way in; you just belong. Many churches put it in their mission that they "love people" and to an extent they do, but I've never seen such love as I have seen here.

None of this is by accident. First and foremost, the credit goes to the Spirit of the Lord in each one of the members that loves the way Christ loves. But I think it's worth noting that this attitude comes from and is nurtured from the very top. The leadership at Life Church makes it an extreme priority to make sure that people are loved and cared for. This is evident from everything to the sincere greeting I get when I walk in, to the huge movements within the church such as the recent movement to give away 1200+ bikes to kids in schools in the community. This church will stop at nothing to make sure that someone can experience the love of Christ regardless of how it's delivered.

Today I was at the new Sheetz off of Ashton Avenue in Manassas and I was waiting in line for 15 minutes to get gas. As I was waiting, I looked around and saw one of the cars had the illustrious "leaf" on their car. I see this often especially in Manassas so I noted it and moved on. Then as I was pumping gas, I noticed that a man was helping a lady push a car off to the side. As I was leaving, I saw that car that was being pushed was off to the side and the car behind it was the car I noticed earlier with the leaf. I thought to myself how well that exemplified my church: people loving others no matter what it costs; just like Christ.

When I walked into Life Church for the first time, the thing I noticed most about this place was how alive people were here. And as it should be honestly! We serve a living God shouldn't His people, who have His Spirit burning within them, be alive as well?

All of this is not to brag on how awesome my church is to other people (although it is awesome) but rather to share how my church has impacted me and express my extreme thanks for it. The majority of the New Testament deals with instructions on how to run the church and it's because it's not easy! As such, there is all the more reason to recognize the good work being done. God has blessed me with this church as I know He has blessed each and every other person there, but as a result, I believe God is blessing this church and it will continue to thrive and grow. I am so thankful that this is my home and I can't wait to continue to see (and play a part in) how God uses the Life Church in other people's lives.

I've always hated math. And it's not an exaggeration when I say hate; I literally cannot stand it. Mostly it's because throughout school it was always something that I was really bad at. But the one part of math that I didn't completely loathe was Algebra and I think it was largely due to the fact that Algebra is just a bunch of formulas and processes; you plug in the numbers and do the function and the answer comes out perfectly; there is little to no work involved. But when there were no formulas and it required a lot of thinking: I was done for.

Over the past few months God has really been revealing a lot to me about myself and one of the things I've realized is: I always look for the formulas in life. One of the things I struggle with is comparing myself to other people; I will look at how God is working in other peoples' lives and automatically try to figure out how that fits in to my life. I look for the formula, "If x=______ then y=________." Plug in the numbers and the answer comes out perfectly. If it's working for them it has to work that way for me! But here's the silly mistake I often don't calculate which leads me to the wrong answer: I'm not them. Today it also really hit me that another component to this that I didn't keep in mind is that God doesn't work in formulas. A relationship and walk with God is not an algebraic formula.

Now, this is not to say that God doesn't work similarly with many things in many people's lives. He does! Because His character is unchanging and He gives all of His heirs the same certain things that are irrevocable gifts and promises, and sometimes the way it plays out looks very much the same. But I also think that it would be silly to say that He works in formulas because that would mean that He made every person the same and what He has specifically designed for one person He has designed for everyone. And when you get down to the specifics, that isn't the case. As I was thinking about this I was reminded of four people in the Bible with similar situations: Abraham and Sarah, and Elizabeth and Zechariah. Both of these couples had been promised a child, but were not able to conceive because they were barren. Their promise was the same, but the way that it was fulfilled looked a lot differently. God had Abraham and Sarah conceive to populate an entire nation, and He had Elizabeth and Zechariah conceive to have John the Baptist who would make way for the coming of the Lord. Both were promised the same promise of a child, but each promise was fulfilled a lot differently. What if Elizabeth and Zechariah tried to plug in their numbers into the Abraham and Sarah's formula? I mean I don't know, John the Baptist is a pretty big piece in God's plan for the salvation of the world! Their promise and process was no less important because it didn't look the same as Abraham and Sarah's!

Here's my point: we need to stop trying to plug our lives into other people's formulas. Even if our promise is the same, what gets one person from point A to point B may not be our method of transportation from point A to point B. God has got a huge plan for each one of our lives that you and I are designed specifically to fill. Don't lose that crucial truth. We were not made to live a copy of someone else's life; you and I need to stop comparing ourselves to other people. God may work similarly in your or my life as He did in someone else's life, but let's leave that up to Him.

I think Steven Furtick put it really well in his book, Crash the Chatterbox, when he said, "The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes to someone else's highlight reel." We look at everyone else and their successes and think, "Wow they're successful and that worked for them, I want to be like them so I'll do that!" But we don't realize what went on behind the scenes that we didn't hear about. I'd say we (and I say we because this is such a challenge to me as well) need to start seeking God in our process and not hang on what He's done for other people in their process as our guarantee but rather what He's done in our process.

As far as creepy-crawly things go, I don't mind bugs. I don't even really mind snakes, but the one thing I cannot stand and that creep me out are things that jump. So, when my apartment became infested with camel crickets I was more than irritated. They started appearing everywhere and one day I stepped into the shower and lo and behold one was sitting there. If you haven't seen these things, just google them. They aren't harmful, but they are HUGE. So obviously, I'm not going to take a shower with this huge cricket looming in the tub, and the logical thing to do is to drown it. The problem is, it wouldn't drown. I kept pouring water over it and it continued to hop everywhere other than where I wanted to go: the drain. Finally, it went down the drain and I could continue on with life in peace. However, recently as I've been getting into the shower, I turn the knob to make the water hotter and this sound comes out that sounds like a chirp. Now, there is a 100% chance it's not the dead cricket I killed long before then because 1. There's no way it's still alive after like 2 months and 2. Camel crickets can't even chirp! But what do I think it is every time those pipes creak? The cricket.

Unfortunately, that's the mildest irrational fear I have. So many other fears in my life, and I imagine the lives of many others, are completely irrational but feel and seem so real. Why do we run although we know it's not real? Why do we dwell when we know there's no truth in it at all? I believe Soloman had the answer to this in Proverbs when he said,

"The wicked run away when no one is chasing them, but the godly are as bold as lions." - Proverbs 28:1 (NLT)

We run because that's our instinct. When something scares us, no matter what it is or how rational it is, our instinct is to run. But that's not what the verse suggests we as Christians should do; that's what the verse suggests that the wicked do. Why? Because they don't have the Lord to run to. The verse suggests that as believers we should be bold as lions because we have the hope and protection of our God.

So I can stop my blog post here right? Easy enough? You guys got it right?

Wrong. I know from firsthand experience that this is so much more complicated that that.

We read that verse and we see the comparison to a lion and think, "Well duh yeah! Lions aren't scared of anything!" I don't believe that to be true either. If you were to perform a quick youtube search I'm sure you could find multiple instances from nature where lions have been seen to be fearful and run from something. But what I want to focus on right now is a specific character and that's the cowardly lion.

In "The Wizard of Oz", the cowardly lion acts as his own walking oxymoron. As the audience we find him intriguing and quite honestly comical because, "He's a lion he's not supposed to be scared of anything! How ridiculous is he?!" Isn't that how we sometimes treat Christians? We see Christians huddled over in extreme fear over something and to us it looks ridiculous because, "They're a Christian, they're not supposed to be scared of anything!" but instead of helping and walking through it with them, we patronize them for their lack of faith.

So ok. Does that make us as believers wicked if we run from something that we fear? I don't think so. I think it makes us confused and that leads us to one culprit: the enemy.

One of the enemy's biggest ploys is confusion and it's one he does well. The enemy will plant and twist and pervert so much that you get to the point where you can no longer see reality in your irrational fear because a lot of times his claims are lies but have a small thread of truth in them that we entertain and ponder.

So why aren't we able to claim victory? Why can't we just rebuke them and walk away? Why is it so hard? I think one huge reason for this struggle is that the enemy attacks our identity and makes us forget who we are.

I think even Jesus faced this when He was being tempted in the desert.

"During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” - Matthew 4:3-4 (NLT)[emphasis added]

What is the first thing he says before he even delivers his suggestion? "If you are the Son of God."

The devil will ALWAYS question your character, your calling, and who you are in Christ. And he's sneaky because he will do it when your irrational fear becomes so real that you can no longer see or know who you are.

But luckily, Jesus was fully human but also fully God and He knew how to combat it. Yes He replaced and debunked Satan's lie with scripture, but it was effective because He was confident in who He was.

This is where our boldness comes in from Proverbs. If we go back to the cowardly lion, we see that at the end he becomes courageous when he realizes who he is. Lions in nature are the most confident when they know that they are able to devour whatever threatens them. And Jesus, our true Lion, was able to stand up to the ploys of the enemy when He was confident in who He was and what God called Him to do.

So I won't be the one to suggest that you should just try to be more confident and hope for the best. No. Pray to the Lord and ask Him to help you remember who you are, what He's called you to do, and who you are in Him. Then, as you start to understand that, write it down, own it, and enter into the boldness that the Lord intended for those that love Him.