Matthew 6:33

Everything you do, every person you love, every place you go, no matter how beautiful, how alluring, or how satisfying it may seem, will always fall short of fulfilling your heart and soul. You were created for God. Crafted with a loving hand, filled with the breath of life and created with purpose. We're only satisfied when we love God. But these other things we spend our time chasing? They're not wrong. They're beautiful. They do satisfy us to some extent. But when we find our rest fully in God is when these things BECOME beautiful. Everything has a lot more life in it when we're not squeezing it for everything it's worth, trying to gain life FROM it. Learn to love God. Let him fill you and satisfy you. Then everything else becomes an extension of that. Everything else falls into it's rightful place as secondary. As embellishments on an already sound foundation. I'm telling you.. Being selfish and bitter and trying to squeeze the life out of people and places and things will never get you farther than a few miles passed frustrated and unfulfilled. Choose Jesus. Choose LIFE, and you will find life to be a much more fulfilling and satisfying place to live.

Don't you see how freeing it is? When your heart is secure inside the love of Jesus, then everything else is free to be whatever it wants to be. Your career, although meaningful and important, doesn't define you. It holds weight with who you are but it doesn't anchor you. Your relationships are free to grow and change and bend because your heart is connected to the source of true love, and it enables you to love and forgive in a way that is life-giving. And it doesn't matter where you go because nothing can separate you from the love of God. I'm not saying don't pursue love or your dreams or travel or whatever you're searching for in this life, I'm just saying pursue God first and let him give TRUE meaning to your pursuits. It's so simple. You can chase after your dreams and get everything you ever wanted and still come up empty handed, or you can chase after God and give him everything you've got in your hands and watch him make your dreams come true. Not because he's a magic genie who grants our every wish, but because he's our loving father who created us and it brings him joy to see our hearts fulfilled. But he knows that we are only truly fulfilled BY him. And that's the beautiful thing. Once you get God, you've already got everything. But then he goes and adds blessing to abundance.

"But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." -Matthew 6:33

"For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, wether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him" -Colossians 1:16

"For this reason I bow my knees before the father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith- that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. " -Ephesians 3:14-21

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" -Romans 8:38-39