Do you ever find yourself wondering how do we live at peace with others in a world that is so hell-bent on destroying peace in the name of fighting for peace? I think I may have found the answer in Proverbs 16:7.
This verse is referring back to King Jehoshaphat. Read 2 Chronicles 17-20 to see how the Lord honored King Jehoshaphat’s work of bringing his people back to the Lord by causing his enemies to live at peace with him. King Jehoshaphat wouldn’t have been successful at that time if he hadn’t been obedient and faithful to seek the Lord in all that he did. The key is that our focus is on living a life that is pleasing to the Lord.
Living a life that is pleasing to the Lord means actually doing the things that are of the Lord. Meeting the needs of the orphans, the poor, the widows, the grieving, the sick, the refugee, the unloved, the forgotten, the misunderstood, and the lost. It would mean having the grace and empathy to walk beside someone knowing you cannot fully understand the hurt they have experienced because you have not walked in their shoes nor have they walked in yours. But, you can love them because Jesus loves them and He loved the broken vessel of your life that is now whole. When we work at living a life that is pleasing to the Lord and that is all that matters then the rest will fade away.
Yes, we will still be disturbed by the things we see and hear going on in our world but rather than boiling over with anger, we will overflow with compassion and see it as another call to action to take the Gospel to the hurting. Because underneath all the anger and hate spewing forth is hidden hurts longing to be healed. And we know Who can heal those deep hurts. The only One who can bind that wound is the One who was wounded for our transgressions, the One who was bruised for our iniquities, the One who was punished so that we could know peace, and that One is Jesus, and it is only by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).
I know I have fallen short of the mark many times but I am thankful for a fresh start and the opportunity to set my eyes, once again, on the Lord. I am going to allow Him to set my focus and not worry about the next trending issue on Facebook. I already know several of my first priorities – Love God and Love Others.
So, please excuse me, but the Lord has some work to do in me …
I love you all!
As many of you know, Joey and I became engaged on Monday night but the majority of you found yourselves saying, “Wait? What?! I didn’t even know (insert Melody or Joey’s name here) was dating someone!” Well, there’s a good reason for that it’s because we didn’t post our relationship all over social media. Joey has been the most unexpected blessing and the sweetest gift of my life, second to my salvation in Christ. We found ourselves simply wanting to savor our time together and get to know one another away from the social media spotlight.
Joey came into my life after a season of deep surrender, obedience, and acceptance of the Lord’s will for my life. Now, I am by no means saying that if someone does this then the Lord will bring the one they have been waiting for into their life … this is just what has happened to me. The key was that Joey was going through something similar in his life. I have had different times of surrender and acceptance over the years and periods where I was walking in disobedience as did Joey. We have discovered several times in the last few years that our paths crossed but we didn’t meet. I truly believe it’s because one may have been ready but the other wasn’t. However, once we were both ready then the Lord allowed our paths to cross at our church through our pastor! We have been on a whirlwind adventure ever since. I love my singing, gentle giant, who has a heart for the hurting, a deep love for the Lord and a precious love for me.
I decided to tell part of my story through pictures. I started with this one as I felt it was an accurate depiction of how serious I have been about singing over the years. That or it shows that I have always loved eating. I prefer to go with the former rather than the latter. 🙂 Music and food really do go well together and I am so grateful to be a Southern Baptist … hello, potlucks and singings!
cheerleader but I was. And I was even captain of the squad! (Mainly, because my family would be at every game since my brother played for the team.) I had fun cheering but I couldn’t do cartwheels, handstands or toe touches. I was a base for all of our stunts. I was in the fourth grade when I cheered and I remember realizing that my body was different from the other girls. I wasn’t as petite as them. I filled out my uniform differently. I came to the conclusion that I was fat. I look at myself now and wonder how I ever thought that then but I did. Something changed inside of me and I started measuring myself to other people’s standards. My parents had never placed importance on physical appearance beyond looking nice for church and being presentable for school. There were no obsessive conversations about being thin, working out or going on a diet around our house while I was growing up. There also wasn’t a huge celebration over our looks. It just wasn’t important. But somewhere, at some point, a message contrary to what I was being taught settled into my heart. I was fat and I wasn’t pretty.
I never dated in HS (I did in my 20s) and I shared with the girls that Sunday how I understand when you go through a break up what that rejection feels like … however, there is a special kind of rejection that comes from never being chosen. You wonder if you are even seen. There were some nods in the room on that one. So what do you do? Well, I went to junior prom by myself and then my brother asked a college friend to take me to my senior prom. My brother happened to be going with a friend of mine at the time so that’s why he’s in this picture. He was not my date. I repeat, my brother was not my date! 🙂 I was so out of touch on the typical prom things a girl was supposed to do. I did my own hair and makeup. I had a shawl made for me by a sweet woman in my church because I was not about to show off my chunky arms and I borrowed the dress from a friend! But, I had a blast and even though I felt huge that night, I wouldn’t mind being that size again as well as would love to introduce myself to some bronzer. Hahaha.
compare myself to others. It was then that when I finally found freedom. And it was three weeks ago, in my car, that I realized I am a complete woman in Christ because that is who He made me be. It’s not in having sex, a baby or being married that makes me a woman. It’s not in a hormonal right of passage at some pre-teen age. I am a woman because that is who God created me to be and I am complete because of the finished work He did on the cross. Everything else is just icing on the cake. Once, I recognized who I was in Him everything else in my life completely shifted. I told the girls if I could do one thing for them it would be to help them understand this now instead of at 33. As well as to know that they are worth far more than what this world offers them. No amount of selfies will ever fill the void that Christ can. Marriage to the perfect mate will not fill that void. Nothing can show you your worth in Christ like the cross and the empty the tomb. And Satan has tried for 24 years to distract me from seeing myself as who I am in Christ.
It’s not like I am walking around looking at myself in the mirror and singing, “you’re so pretty, oh so pretty …” Hardly. Ha. But there is a deep peace in knowing Who’s I am and slowly the lies that I have believed about myself over the years are starting to fade away. I now work to hold every negative thought captive and call on the name of the Lord when I am tempted to belittle myself. A funny side effect to this is that as I am working on my emotional and mental health my physical health is falling into place as well. Go figure. 🙂 When you are no longer worried about what other’s think about you but instead focus on how God sees you and how you feel health wise things just sort of click. Willpower isn’t an issue anymore because it isn’t about a size, a weight or a standard. It’s all starting to fade because it just doesn’t matter anymore. I belong to Christ and I am kept by Him. I am complete in Him. Everything else is just an added blessing.
These last 11 weeks have been some of the hardest weeks of my life. I am not kidding. I didn’t know if I was going to make it through the first few weeks. I didn’t like myself on the medicine but I hated myself off the medicine. I was feeling 
A funny thing happens every May, I find myself feeling a bit nostalgic and remembering my senior year of High School. Not in an Uncle Rico/Napoleon Dynamite way but more so as a Bethel moment in my life. In Genesis 35 we see where God told Jacob to go “to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.” (Genesis 35:1-3)
encouraged to do something about that. I just smiled and said something like, “People are going to think that no matter what I do but I’m not going to change who I am.” I think I got that title because I asked someone to stop cussing around me. LOL. In many ways, I am in awe of my courage back then because I thought I was weak. I know I came off as a holier-than-thou know-it-all at times and truly regret that as I was simply in a place of figuring out how to walk with and live for Christ.
So, yes, I go back in my memories to my senior year and remember the girl that probably would have charged Hell with a water pistol. I remember those moments when the Word of God became the living Word to me. I remember that moment on the sandy beach when Satan lost that foothold in my life that caused me to question my salvation because from that moment on I was walking with the Lord. I remember the girl who stopped letting the words of the world define her but instead listened to the words of her Savior. I go back to give thanks, to remind Satan of where I’ve been and to hold my feet to the fire when the words of the world drown out the words of my Savior.
Today, I was called back to John 10 through a friend. The verses describing Jesus as the Good Shepherd have really been resonating in my life over the last 5 months. I am not ignoring that. I believe it is for many reasons with one being that there are wolves all around us inside the Church. Friends, we have got to be on guard. I am linking this blog from The Gospel Coalition entitled 
Anyway, until then just know that I am in this place where the Lord is completely emptying me of myself so that I have no other choice but to fill myself up with Him. Because when given a choice, I will fill myself up with other things … well meaning things but stuff that simply cannot satisfy like Jesus can. I am in a place of ministry that I never desired to be in and have had to draw much deeper from the well than before because I wasn’t prepared for what was placed before me. I wasn’t ready for what would be asked of me. So I have had to dig deeper and study more. Boy, am I thankful!
