Over the course of my life people have asked me what’s different about me.  But now, in the last 5 years I can honestly tell you I know the answer to that question is this:

I took my Bible off the shelf, opened it up and started reading it DAILY.

See here’s the truth: We ALL need Jesus.

Now I get that some of you will not accept this truth & keep on scrolling (or stop reading if you’re on my blog).   But some of you will know in your heart this is true, because the Holy Spirit is working in you right now with all that’s going on in this world. You, like millions of people are wondering “What is the meaning of life?”

Let’s cue Miley Cyrus’ “Nobody’s Perfect” for a minute: “Everybody makes mistakes, Everybody has those days... Nobody's perfect..”   Ok, you have the song in your head now right?  hahaha sorry about that. Yes, she is right… nobody is perfect. We are all born sinners. Romans 3:23 says:  “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  

With the fall of man in Genesis 3, we are eternally separated from God by sin & ultimately death.  Romans 6:23 says: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Now I’ll share a little about my life.  I was the “church” kid.  I grew up in a family that loved the Lord, went to church and was very involved in church multiple times a week. I have one brother who lived that life with me, and we had a pretty normal life up until about when I was the age of 10 and we found out our dad had a brain tumor.  It changed the course of our lives forever.  I blogged about that whole story a while back so I won’t go through the details again… but it wasn’t the typical home life because of that.  My dad survived the surgery and even though he was never really the same,  he was able to provide for his family while we were growing up, and for that we are very thankful.  I didn’t rebel or stray away from my faith, but I do look back now and see that my childhood did have an impact on my life, spiritually.  I think I needed to be the “good girl” and follow the rules so I went through the motions of a Christian life, but I’m not sure now that I was living a life that was ALL IN for Christ.  I believed every word of the Bible and I went to church every Sunday, but I see now that I was still living my life for me… and not fully for Jesus.  I wanted MY will to be done in my life… and it wasn’t until much later in life that I truly let go of the reigns and said “Yes, Lord… I want Your will to be done in my life.” I wanted a RELATIONSHIP with my Father in Heaven.

Here’s a photo my brother sent me the other day for National Siblings Day:

That didn’t happen until around 2015.  When I started opening the Bible… at home, not just on Sundays at church.  

I remember having a conversation with a friend in Italy actually around this time.  I was sharing about God with him on a drive to the airport and he was asking questions about Adam and Eve and sin.  I think that day made me really think about my life in the context of what I believed and why I was afraid to share, or more rightly so… didn’t feel like I could explain what I believed accurately!  I had always listened, accepted and believed what the pastors had told me, but did I really KNOW from a personal knowledge, WHY I believed?  I remember telling him God didn’t create robots so we would all just follow Him and believe… but that God desired for us to come to Him out of love for what He has done for us! This was a day I will always remember because I think the Lord was showing me it was time for me to wake up.  He was saying to me:   “Laura… What do YOU believe?  WHO do you say I AM? I am so thankful for that stirring of the Holy Spirit in my life!

See God created us & this world out of LOVE. He didn’t create us to be robots so we would follow Him by remote control. He desired that love be a two way street!

God demonstrated His own love toward us, in this way: Romans 5:8 it says: “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Friends, He made a way! Yes, nobody’s perfect. All you have to do is look at a baby who’s learning to walk to prove this theory. I love babies, but they certainly think of their needs above others, they want their way above all else, & they live for their own desires. Like us adults do, right? And no matter how hard we try to be perfect, get it right, work harder, make atonement, we can’t be perfect on our own. 

But here’s the GOOD NEWS! God is still wanting a right relationship of love with us. His love for us didn’t end when Adam & Eve sinned. He still loved all of humanity. So He showed His LOVE yet again, by the death & resurrection of Jesus Christ, so that YOU can have this right relationship with Him!

How you ask? 

The Bible says in Romans 10:9-10: “that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

There’s no big philosophy here, no long course to take or some existential crisis to go through...  Jesus made it simple! It’s not about what you did, it’s what He did for YOU. 

John 3:16-17 says: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Now also around 2015 a thing called “Bible Journaling” came into my life.  I saw the first ever post on Pinterest where someone had taken all their scrapbooking supplies and put them to use IN THEIR BIBLE!  I was blown away… literally I got CHILLS when I saw this!  It was something that moved me so deeply because I saw this as a way to combine my love for Jesus and my love of art and being creative.  It’s what propelled me to change my retreats in Italy from just creative retreats to Art & Faith retreats.  And as I delved deeper into the Bible and learned more about God’s Word, the Holy Spirit came alive in my life like never before. After I started learning and being creative IN Gods Word, GOD became more real and I began to understand the relationship that Jesus wants to have with us on a daily basis. 

The Bible is pretty amazing, isn’t it!  It’s a living, breathing book that says: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever!” (Hebrews 13:8) And even though the Bible is broken up into Books and Chapters spanning thousands of years, the whole entire book, leads and points to one person who is the answer: Jesus.  And it had to power to CHANGE lives! It’s actually INCREDIBLE if you think about it. God gave you and I this “map” of sorts, so that we would see His great love for us is still available! Right here, today.  He is still waiting and desiring that NO ONE would perish! That NO ONE would not know that He loves them.  And He wants YOU to see His great plan for YOUR LIFE is right there in His Book too.  

I know you most likely have a Bible somewhere in your home. I would encourage you to go get it and sit down with it in your lap.  You can start at the very beginning in Genesis, or start in the book of John in the New Testament where Jesus is talking to the people about why God sent Him to die on the cross for us!

Look, we have a lot of time on our hands right now. Our kids are asking the tough questions in life. We are asking them too. What’s the reason you are here? To just live, be happy, be sad, have a job, make money, get old... and then die??

I want to share with you that YOU are here for SO MUCH MORE! 

You were created for relationship. First with the God who created you. Then with the people He put in your life, and then to the world around you.  Created to share Gods love with the world in creative ways only YOU were designed for!  A purpose He knew before you were even born, and that would point people back to Him and His great love and power! Just read Job 10:10-12 or Psalm 139:13-16 or Ephesians 2:10  and see what great LOVE God has for you and me and it started before we were even born!

I truly pray this goes from your mind, to your heart, to your soul and today becomes a life changing day for you, like it did for me!  

I’ll end with this story I LOVE in Luke 19:38-40 where everyone is rejoicing at Jesus’ triumphal entry on a colt into Jerusalem and as the people are rejoicing “Blessed IS the King who comes in the name of the Lord” the Pharisees call for the crowd to stop. But Jesus replies and says: “I tell you that if these (people) should keep silent, even the STONES would cry out!” 

That is what God can do! 

Take a minute to listen to this beautiful song by Hillsong United:

Maybe you haven’t accepted this whole Jesus thing yet.  Maybe it’s just not on your list of priorities.  Maybe having a relationship with Jesus sounds so foreign to you.  But I will tell you that you will find God is calling out to you right now. You may not realize it, but He is there.  And He will be there when you are on the mountaintop or in the dessert or in your house all alone.  It says that the ROCKS will call out that He is LORD.  There is no place you can be where God’s love isn’t there for you friend. If you ever have questions or just want to talk, please know that you can leave a comment on here or email me directly and I would love to share more of what God has done in my life and can do in yours too!

I hope and pray you are changed this Easter weekend! I’d encourage you to find a good Bible Church to watch online this Sunday.

Here’s the link to ours: Calvary Church and here’s a link to Greg Laurie’s church: Harvest Church

Have a GREAT day!

Hugs,

Laura McCollough