move

So you are getting two for the price of one with this one!  I am sharing with you something that I love and inspires me and a few things that I have learned during my time in this space!

Photo:  CrossPointe Community Church Facebook Page

So this is a picture of Sunday Am worship at my church - CrossPointe Community Church in Laurel, MS.  It's amazing!  It really is a family, and our pastor brings messages of truth to the context of our lives.  If you are local, and don't have a church please come check us out!  

Now for a few things I have learned while attending CPCC - most of the lessons I have ever learned have come from this place so I will limit it to just this week!

1.  Worldly peace is the absence of conflict.  Godly peace is the quiet control of the soul regardless of circumstances!  Now, stop and reread that!  With God, you do not have to be conflict free because let's face the fact that we rarely are.  Instead the peace He offers is one that exists even in the midst of the worse of our circumstances!  Can we get up and run around about that?  I did!

2.  Move - Get up, GO!  Do whatever it is God is stirring in your heart to do!  Most often I tend to run from these things, but moving is an act of obedience!  So I stopped running, and am moving towards God!

3.  Have confidence in the person God created you to be and the movement He inspires in you!!!  He loves you and has given you the gifts and talents you have - use them confidently for Him!!!  Nobody else can be the person He created you to be!

Okay so that was quick and painless!  I pray you move and that you find peace!  Have a blessed week!

Much Love,

Colie

everyday beauty

Okay friends, it is time for another weekly installment of things that I love and provide inspiration!  And this week's feature is - 

This is our balcony on our apartment - specifically the view from inside the apartment at around 7:15 this morning!  Yes, I, Nicole Beaty, was up and taking pictures with my phone at that time in the morning!  

I must say this self-given assignment has been really good for me - I have been searching for inspiration in everything!  There are times when it just hits me, but sometimes it is nice to look for the beauty in the everyday!  Now why is this balcony inspiring?  Well, it is colorful and cheerful - full of happy colors.  Also, I love being outside, I love having the ability to open a door and be able to comfortably enjoy the outdoors, and I love that it feels like we are bringing the outside in! Being outside especially during the spring and fall are usually very inspiring to me  - I am in awe of God's masterpiece!  I sometimes feel like He paints a canvas just for me each day in the beauty of trees (you know I have this thing about trees!), flowers(hello, my grandmothers were named Daisy and Rose), and the light(sunlight is quickly becoming one of my favorite things)!

So I hope you find beauty in the everyday!

Much Love,

Colie

money and me

"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."

Matthew 6:24 NASB

I can tell you that I have read this verse many times, and I have heard many messages from different pastors involving this passage.  However, like so many other things in my life, I never REALLY understood its meaning until I experienced it.  Everything in this world, tells us hold on to our money with all our might especially now that times are hard, but everything I have come across dealing with authentic Christ-following behavior commands giving - tithing, offering, etc.  Tithing is considered  a part of one's worship of God, and a part that I must admit was a struggle for me.  I have this mentality that I hate to run out of something - we have went through some difficult times where we didn't know if/when/how we would get to replace something if it ran out.  

So I suppose giving away money when I know it will be another month before we get another paycheck is difficult for me, but I have been SO VERY convicted of this lately.  It's part of this entire being-a-better-steward thing that I have been trying to do this year.  I have been praying, studying the Word, keeping a prayer journal all in the goal of aligning my life and my heart with God's heart and Word.  Through this has come this extreme dislike for money and the idea of being tied to money.  The more I  love God and the more I know about Him, the more I dislike money.  I felt like I was almost defining myself by the money I had or letting money dictate my life.  To be quite honest, I hated the idea that I allowed money to have that much power over me.  Malachi 3 was the punch in the gut that confirmed what I knew - I needed to tithe.

8“Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. 9“You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you! 10“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the LORDof hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows. 11“Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of the ground; nor will your vine in the field cast its grapes,” says the LORD of hosts. 12“All the nations will call you blessed, for you shall be a delightful land,” says the LORD of hosts."

So Candace (my sister/best friend/accountability partner) and I just decided that we didn't care what the numbers said or our fears of not having enough money for the month - we stepped out on faith and gave.  And I can't tell you all the blessings we have received in just the short time since we did.  I believe the main thing for me though was feeling like I had let go of something that God had been commanding me to put down - it was a break-through for me.  To know that even though I make mistakes and even though I fail every day, I am moving in the right direction makes all the difference in the world.  It felt wonderful to trust God to be my Jehovah-Jireh - my provider!  

He is true to His Word and is my Provider!  I am in awe of His love and His grace when I think of how He has blessed us.  I pray that you know God and that you trust Him to be your Provider.  I don't know what He may be asking you to trust Him in, but I pray that you do.  I just can't find sufficient words to describe how amazing God is and has been and continues to be to my family.

Much Love,

Colie

stop.

So I must say that I love all these blogs that have a weekly post involving a theme, and I have even attempted one - anyone remember "accessories monday?"  I didn't think so - which is why I pondered what I could do as a weekly post.  I think I have found an idea - I want to provide you with a little inspiration through a photo of something that I love and inspires me.  I promise to do my best to keep this up.

Okay so here it goes...

It's Confederate Jasmine from my parent's front yard.  It has the most amazing smell and you can smell it the minute you turn down their driveway.  The vine itself is now huge and completely covers an arbor with a walkway going underneath.  The smell is spring time to me and makes me think of my mom and home and planting flowers!  It's one of our favorite things for the jasmine to bloom - in fact, my mother's exact words to me at Sunday lunch were, "you have to come smell the jasmine."  Roses are fine - a little overrated for my taste, but jasmine blooming in spring is worth stopping and taking a deep, beautifully floral breath in.

I hope you will stop and smell the Jasmine and find a little Spring inspiration while you are at it!

Much Love,

Colie

OTH and words to live by

Take a look at yourself in the mirror.  Who do you see looking back?  Is it the person you want to be?  Or is there someone else you were meant to be?  The person you should have been but just fell short of. Is someone telling that you can't, or you won't?  Because you can.

Believe that love is out there.  And believe that dreams come true ever day, because they do.Sometimes happiness doesn't come from money or fame or power.  Sometimes happiness comes from good friends and family, and from the quiet nobility of leading a good life.

Believe that dreams come true every day, because they do.  
So take a look in that mirror and remind yourself to be happy, because you deserve to be.  Believe that.
And believe that dreams come true every day, because they do. 

This quote comes from One Tree Hill - a show that gave words and pictures and stories to past experiences throughout my life.  So I would like to give you some of the tidbits that I learned during my journey - perhaps give a few words to some of the experiences you are going through!.

Life is beautiful - a thing not to be confused with perfect.  

Sometimes bad things happen, but I think most of the time those things are there for the building of our character.  It's okay to fail - it's what you do after the failing that makes the most profound difference.  

Courage is not the absence of failure but it's getting up after failing and moving on!  

I believe happiness is in the "quiet nobility of living a good life."

Don't overlook the quiet moments.

Grace, joy, love, peace, and class are not the little things - they are most certainly the life-altering things!

There is a plan for you - God loves you, created you for a purpose so be confident in that!

So for today and all of your tomorrows, live that quietly noble life with the people you love for a purpose so much bigger than anything we could ever dream of...

Much Love,

Colie

   

greatness

"When better is possible, good enough is unacceptable."

- Dr. Mark Taylor, Jones County Junior College

Dr. Taylor was the choir director for JCJC when I was in school there, and this quote was ingrained into our brains.  I am pretty sure it was even on our choir t-shirts.  As a 19 year-old kid sitting in a choir room with 70 plus other 19 year old kids, this statement pretty much rocked my world as much of my life I had just been good enough!  I was reminded of this saying this past Sunday during church - our pastor has been going through Judges on a mission to show us what not to do through seeing the cycle of disobedience.  I know you are thinking, Judges? Really?  But honestly, it has been a very insightful and life-changing series.  I think sometimes seeing others mistakes and cycles of bad decisions can help us recognize our own cycles and bad decisions.  So this Sunday we looked at the life of Samson, and one of the things that Samson was guilty of, that led to his demise was replacing something great for something good.  Samson was a Judge - a man chosen by God to deliver the people of Israel, and he threw it all away.

I know that I have been quite guilty of this especially recently.  I have been praying for God to lead me and guide me - to make my paths straight as to which direction my life should go.  Through Bible study and reading and searching, I felt God stirring my heart down a particular path.  Instead, I became greedy and hard-headed which just lead to disappointment and discouragement.  Oh how often I fail Him, how often I choose not to use this life to bring glory to Him.  It breaks my heart, because through all of my struggles and all of our trials I want this life to bring glory to God.  Sunday I was confronted with these failures and sins, and it is with a heavy heart and spirit that I beg forgiveness.  God gifted me with very specific talents and abilities, and I must take those to Him and allow Him to use them first.  I also must submit to His calling and plan instead of trying to make it my plan and my calling.

You may be wondering why in the world I would share this with all of you, but to be honest I am not exactly sure.  I feel like once it has been typed and published, it could serve as some accountability to stay on this path He has made straight.  It is so much like me to finally get what I had prayed and pleaded for and to dismiss it!!!  

"True Greatness is using your talents and abilities to bring glory to God (my paraphrase)."

- John Stockstill, CrossPointe Community Church

So perhaps I put these two statements together to make sense of these ramblings.  Better is possible, greatness is possible when I do not replace bringing glory to God with attempting to bring glory to myself.  I want so much to leave a mark on this world - I want people to look at my life and see that it was totally and completely dependent on God and that it was used to give a correct estimate of God!  

May your life be great!

Much Love,

Colie