{Be Real} Giving it All

Beep.

My alarm goes off and I roll in my bed. Maybe if I delay getting up I won’t have to think about all the tasks ahead of me.

The emails to answer. The bills to pay. The contracts. Thousands of photographs to cull and edit. The lunch appointment. And that’s just work – there’s also friends and family, people who ask for our time and energy.

Sometimes life can feel like a mess of things we have to keep up with, and like a hamster on a wheel, it can be exhausting. It can feel like we are doing everything just to stay afloat. And we’re tired.

To be honest, sweet sister, putting my fingers to this keyboard at this very instant is me in a tired place. But this is the best place to write to you from, raw. I know faithfulness because every day, I’m faced with the same choice to remain faithful.

I’ve lived my life for several years as a business owner working out of my own home and living a daily life that nobody ever really sees, except for me and God. I have no co-workers; it’s me alone sitting at a desk and in front of a screen. I’m aware that in a business that is all about image, our lives can look so glamorous on the outside on our Instagram and Facebook. And sometimes, we want to think of our lives as glamorous too, and show people that it is. We post images of beautiful sunsets and perfectly styled tables while looking at papers piling up in our office. And I get it…I do that too.

But let’s remember that the beauty of our lives isn’t in the glamorous things we do. The beauty of our lives, as we become the women God calls us to, lies inside of the daily acts of faithfulness. In the nitty gritty details that nobody will ever see. It lies inside the secret things and the promises that take place between you and God.

Maybe today you just need to know that God sees you. Sweet girl, right now He sees all of the things that nobody else sees. What God is looking at, His gaze – is not in the details or the emails. He is looking through them, straight to your heart.

“For the LORD does not see as man sees;
for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

– 1 Samuel 16:7

This brings so much freedom, when we realize that all God is ever after isn’t our performance, perfection, or the way things look, but at our hearts. We can exhale deeply into His grace.

From this place of grace, let’s look into our lives and ask ourselves these questions:

What do your daily actions show about your heart, and what it wants?

What do they show about your love for God, your care for His heart and what He wants for you?

Our love for God has everything to do with how faithful we are to Him and His call on our lives.

Because the hard truth is that being faithful demands sacrifice.

Faithfulness gives us this choice: will we give it all, holding nothing back?

Daily, we are given thousands of opportunities to give it all for the One who gave everything for us.

To be faithful to anyone, or anything…the question is simple. What will we love enough to sacrifice for? Will we love God more and more, so that in every detail and task, we see them as another chance to love Him with our lives?

When we get weary, as I am tempted to feel today, let’s look to the Cross. The Cross shows us how faithfulness is sacrifice, and how Jesus chose to give it all. God sent Jesus onto this earth with a purpose: to redeem us. That sounds great and pretty, but nothing, no detail, about Jesus’ death was pretty. It was gritty and ugly and the hardest thing He would ever face. And He did it for us. He was faithful to God, for us.

Now we can live in a freedom that Jesus purchased for us; a freedom that enables us to live faithfully for Him. All because of love.

Why wouldn’t we want to give it all for such a love as this?

This month, dear sister, as we explore faithfulness together, I pray these things: that in whatever lies front of you, you can walk in the freedom that comes from the Lord, focused on the purpose that lies ahead, grounded in God’s love for you and led by your love for Him.

Details are never just details. Now is the time to be faithful.

Let’s give it all we’ve got.

 

“Fear the LORD, and serve Him in truth with all your heart;
for consider what great things He has done for you.”

-1 Samuel 12:24

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,
and with all your strength.”

-Deuteronomy 6:5