Just Johanna

If you cannot appropriately replace his name with “love is patient, love is kind…” then he is not worth your time. He will either focus on getting you to Heaven or getting your clothes off. If you are convinced that the latter is true, run. You are firstly a soul and secondly a body, and if he really loved you he would wait with patience to connect to the second component of your being. You are sustained by your Creator, not His creation. Therefore no one will complete you; only compliment you. When a woman is truly loved her light shines brighter than before. If you feel suppressed, if he doesn’t remind you of your radiance and invite you to flourish, then what are you doing with him? You are a child of God. A boy should have introduced himself to both your Heavenly Father and your earthly father before winning your affections. Don’t make the same mistakes I did, baby girl.

Abba, I belong to You.

“God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.”

Prayer should be the natural outflow of the soul: you should pray because you must pray, not because the set time for praying has arrived, but because your heart must cry unto your Lord.

There is no doubt that it is by praying that we learn to pray, and that the more we pray, the better our prayers will be. People who pray in spurts are never likely to attain the kind of prayer described in the Scriptures as ‘powerful and effective’ (James 5:16).

Visit many good books, but live in the Bible.

There are days or weeks or even months when I read the Bible and there are no grand epiphanies. There are whole seasons of Sundays when I sing praise and feel nothing. There are times of prayer where the silence kills me. There are great Christian books and podcasts that I eat up which don’t budge my spiritual life. There are too many times when I doubt the very existence of God and the sending of His Son. It can all feel like a crazy lie. I’m probably being too honest — but I’ve found that I’m not the only one who feels this way. It’s in those times that I ask myself, “Am I out of love with God somehow? Am I losing my faith here? How do I get back to where I used to be?” But I keep reading my Bible. I keep singing on Sundays. I keep praying. I soak in books and sermons. I serve. I enjoy the company of mature Christians. I enjoy the fellowship of the broken. And you know what? Sometimes the clouds part and God comes through and His love squeezes my heart and I fall to my knees remembering how good He is. Then I read Scripture and can’t stop weeping and I turn on Christian songs in my car full blast and sing loud enough to scare the traffic. I serve with shaking hands and get convicted by those sermons and soak in God’s goodness all over again. So I’ve learned over time: I wasn’t really out of love with God. I’m just a fragile human being who changes as much as the weather. I was setting a ridiculous standard for myself that can’t be defined by self-pressuring parameters. I was tricked by the enemy into judging my flesh. My faith is based on His grace and not my feelings. And I think I need to relax.