Tag: Opinion

Not Your Responsibility

There’s a common misconception, especially amongst Christians, that it is our responsibility to make sure our family and loved ones change for the better. That is not your responsibility; the two most important things for us to do as humans is to love God and love people. Obviously, if you’re not a Christian you will automatically think that this doesn’t apply to you, but bear with me.

Unless you are living under a rock we are all aware of what’s going on both in our country and around the world. We might not know all the details of every situation happening, but we can see chaos left and right. Have you noticed what’s missing? Love.

The love for people has gone down the trash and some might say, “well I can’t love this person or that person because they are horrible individuals,” and I agree that some people lack respect, lack love, and don’t seem worthy of our genuine friendship, but have you ever seen someone’s character change and realize that they truly are someone worth befriending?

We all want to see change, we all want to see things get better, but in order for that to happen is for us to stop trying to take responsibility in making other people change and start to change things internally. Let’s work on our character, let’s work on our respect, let’s work on our love and just watch how the people around you begin to react. It’s easier said than done, yes, I understand that, but if we want to leave a legacy for our children and our younger family members to live in a more caring and loving society, we have to fix ourselves first.

It is not your responsibility to change your neighbor, it is not your responsibility to change your family, but it is your responsibility to seek God and love people. Let’s have a conversation, even if you disagree with me or others, let’s work on understanding why instead of simply giving the cold shoulder.

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Community: A Necessity

As an introvert, I really enjoy my time alone and doing things by myself. At one point before God came into my life and shook it up, I had the mentality of: “I don’t need anyone, I got this on my own,” and while that mentality still crosses my mind from time to time, I’ve learned that it has a lot to do with the pride within me.

I have a difficult time asking for help even when people are offering it but as I get older I understand the need for community and that need to surround yourself with others. Aside from feeling like you belong somewhere when you have a community of people around you, that community begins to be a reason of why you push yourself to be a better version of you. The community you surround yourself with also brings perspective to your life; the type of perspective you were probably oblivious to because you only have your own way of looking at life.

Overall, surrounding yourself with a community will help in your growth process because you’ll see the areas you need work on as well as the type of people you need in your life. And don’t be afraid when your community changes! Some people who’ve been in your community for more than 10 years can unfortunately leave or fade away, so don’t feel threatened when other people start jumping in to your community.

Community is a necessity, it may not have to be large but we still need to surround ourselves with at least a handful of people we can do life with.

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Relationships

As I get older I realize the importance of the relationships we build in life. Not necessarily about the relationship you have with your future spouse, but relationships with friends, even family.We were created to live in community and every person we meet plays a crucial role in our life. Unfortunately, some of those relationships end up breaking us in some sort of way but we grow from it. While the majority of the relationships we keep are the ones that contribute to the person we continue to grow into.

There will be people we meet who are meant to walk with us in life for only short periods of time and there are others who need to be part of our life until this life is over. Regardless of what category a person falls in, we need to cherish and appreciate the opportunity God has given us to encounter this person. We can easily be here today and minutes later we can be taking our last breath on this earth.

Think about your relationships and ask yourself, “why am I in this persons life? Why is this person in my life?” It’s time for us to appreciate one another, to build each other up and encourage one another. The better the relationships we build, the better this world becomes. Without relationships and without that care for one another, everything in the world turns to chaos.

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Frustration

We all face it at one point or another. It can be over the smallest thing and if we’re not careful, we end up letting that little frustration control the rest of the day.

Have you ever gotten frustrated when you’re writing super neatly on a paper but all of a sudden you either smudge the paper or one letter in a word comes out crooked so it throws off everything? Yeah, that frustration makes you grab the paper, crumble it and start over again and now you’re frustrated because you can’t believe you’re fussing over something so small.

Now think about life, I’m sure you’ve had plenty of moments of frustration that you can’t even count them in your hands. Guess what? I don’t have a solution for you but all I have is a suggestion; BREATHE! Your attitude about any situation you are encountering right now is going to determine how you deal with these type of situations. If you continue to stay focused on how crappy things continue to go, your sight will be clouded and it will make it that much more difficult to overcome that situation.

Ultimately, I will always encourage you to go to God and pray. Pray for peace, for understanding, for clarity and just watch God move. Don’t believe me? Try it. Still don’t believe, well then, BREATHE. As you breathe, your mind clears up and you can focus once again. But when you pray and go to God, not only will you have that clarity that breathing can provide, but you learn to lean on God rather than yourself. As you lean on God and His strength you can learn to deal with similar situations better. Stay focused, keep going, and don’t let the frustrations control the outcome of your day.

Blessings!

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I Respectfully Disagree…

That’s a phrase I haven’t really heard in a while. For these past couple weeks I’ve wanted to blast my opinion on my page and leave it here for anyone who would stumble upon it to see, but I wanted to hold off until I processed everything, I wanted to look at how everything has been playing out and all I kept seeing is CHAOS!

I deactivated my Instagram and Facebook accounts about 8 months ago, I was getting frustrated at how much of a distraction it was becoming as well as getting frustrated at things people would post. I would agree with some things and disagree with others, occasionally I would voice my opinion but I would cease to do so if it went from being a friendly disagreement to an outright attack. Since I’ve been off those platforms, I’ve regained peace. The only platforms I currently use are Snapchat and Twitter, which I still try to avoid but as everyone knows, it’s easy to get caught up scrolling and retweeting.

I can still tell people are throwing jabs and punches from both sides of the aisle, and it’s sometimes heartbreaking. We see the abortion debates, immigration debates, gun debates, and all these other issues going back and forth. As a conservative (yes, I’m a conservative but please continue reading), it would be easy for me to say that conservatives know how to keep their cool and those on the extreme left are blowing things out of proportion, but in reality at this point I have to take a step back and look at the big picture. Some conservatives know how to keep their cool, as I’m sure some liberals know how to do so as well, but it has reached a point where evil is overflowing from our hearts.

Jeremiah 17:9 already tells us that the heart is deceitful, and with so much access to social media these days it becomes that much easier to see what comes out of our hearts. I don’t want to end this post by being negative and pointing out all the bad that is going on, but rather to focus on becoming better individuals. I will always stand firm and say that God is the one who can transform our lives and how we respond to the world, but if you don’t believe in God (or even if you do) I will ask this, what good comes from the anger you hold against someone you disagree with? Don’t get me wrong, we will definitely disagree with people throughout our life, but what’s the point of staying angry or even attacking someone verbally/physically because you disagree on an issue? We gain absolutely nothing. Let’s work on learning to disagree; it’s ok if someone doesn’t believe what you believe. Your goal should not be to convince people to believe as you do, share your view and let others share theirs, if you disagree then do so in kindness.

Lastly, some Christians will probably come at me and say, “but Lin, we’re supposed to go make disciples and share the word of God so how can you say our goal shouldn’t be to convince people about God?” Guess what, we’re not supposed to convince anybody to believe in our faith, first we are to live it out and we are to share it, we are not responsible for changing people, that’s what God is in charge of. So again, it’s ok to disagree but don’t build up anger if people don’t see how you see.

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