Words4Wonder Blog

Mark 1:11 “And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” A couple months ago, I had a friend say to me “God is proud of you” and I nearly broke down in tears. How could five words impact me so much? Never hearing or honestly believing it, my perspective changed on a lot of things. We all are our worst critic, and with that comes being very hard on ourselves. Living lives aiming to be perfect, yet sometimes we miss how detrimental that can be: associating our value in our pursuit. I think at times we treat God as a form of teacher or boss: in the sense that if we provide something, whether it’s a high grade or a substantial amount of work, we are deserving of validation. In our lives, this may look like praying a certain number of times, maybe it’s fasting for a couple more hours, or even reading an extra chapter of the bible. Whatever it is, I think we are all guilty of thinking that if we do more, that somehow God’s love for us will be cor...

Proverbs 24: 16   “For the righteous man falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in time of disaster and collapse”   When we think of strength the first thing that comes to mind is probably muscles : you go to the gym, you lift some weights , you’re in pain , but once you recover your muscles grow stronger. I don’t think there’s a major distinction between ph ysical strength and spiritual strength. Thinking about strength practically , I’m not a ssociating the strength that is found in the gym but found in the lives we live day to day. The same way lifting weights cause initial pain, I think at times the heavy load of life can too, but with every setback allows an opportunity to grow stronger.    I think t his world has perverted what true strength actually is . We associate strength with the mindset of “I can do it myself” or “I don’t need anyone”: pairing strength with self-sufficiency. In the same light, we associate weakness with the n...

Matthew 16:25   “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it ”   Honestly this past week has been quite hard, and if you’re a consistent reader of this blog, you’re probably saying in the back of your mind “well what’s new ? ” . Despite the difficulty of this week, I came to a realisation: a realisation that I think we should all adopt in our lives. Our lives are a sequence of struggles: not always bad , some worse than others, but something seems to be always going on. It’s very easy to dwell on those issues and feel like you will never endure, but what’s the alternative? When we gave our lives to Christ, we made a decision : to fully devote ourselves to H im. Sometimes we forget that the decision we made wasn’t unitary: it’s a daily choice to pick up our cross. The alternative to the struggle we face as Christians is to be in the world: to dwell in a life of sin. We know that sin gives temporary pl easu...

Mark 11:25   “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses ”   If there's a singular thing guaranteed in this life is that humans will be humans. People hurt people : they may say things that hurt you, do things the hurt you and make you f eel...hurt. I think I’m getting to an age where I’m starting to see more people do things that I don’t appreciate, it can be friendships, family or people you work with whether school or in the office. With all those different people can come this internal damage called ‘ unforgiveness ’.   It’s one of those things that isn’t solely  seen internally but also produced externally. We all know someone that when a certain person walks into a room, their whole mood changes. Almost a s if that person is a trigger for anger: spar king negative emotions just based on the presence of them. For some of us, that person th...

Matthew 5:14-15   “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house ”   The past couple of weeks have been very hard for me. You know those sad montages that you get in those movies, that’s kind of how my life has been recently. It feels like I can’t do anything right and my every move is getting criticised or judged. Whether it’s my family or friends , I always feel singled out, like I don’t belong. I always feel...out of place. I don’t know if you feel the same way about yourself at times, but it’s not uncommon in this world t o feel alone. With so many isolated people, it’s ironic that we all go through the same thing.   From the verse, we see that isolation is almost an inherited trait from the Lord, not in the sense that we should feel lonely, but i n the sense th at God calls us. Isolation doesn’...