I Choose Love

I choose love. No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness. I choose love. Today I will love God & what God loves. 

It seems as though there's a lot of hate in the world.  A lot of people who need those extra prayers. A lot of people who are facing larger demons than we can even imagine. Not only with the recent shootings, though those are quite large and deserve lots of prayers, but just in my every day life. 

I made myself a promise at the beginning of the year to find the good in everything. To count things as blessings, to remind myself daily of the good that God has given me, to love people more than myself, to turn the negatives into positives, to stop someone in their tracks if they are filled with complaints, to repay bitterness with love.

I don't like to rub my Christianity in people's faces, not that I'm ashamed or not proud, I just like to wear my Christianity, to make good decisions, act as Christian, take up my cross daily, be the salt of the Earth. I never want it to be that someone finds out I'm a Christian and then says that they can't believe it, or for them to think bad of  Christians because of the way that I act.

One of the ways that I've learned throughout the years and throughout my studies, is the best way to be a Christian and to be Christ-like is to chose love, to show love, to remind even those that have harmed us that we are full of love.

All too often we become consumed with life, and its hardships and the negatives and we let it not only affect our lives but the lives of those that surround us. At the end of the day, those that are closest to us may be the ones we hurt the most. 

I'm reminded almost daily that we have to show love to our friends, our coworkers, our family, to a random person on the street. We should be so consumed with love for others that it's infectious, and overwhelming.

I'm going to be leading a group of high school girls again this school year and I couldn't be more excited. I've been thinking of some crafts that I can do for them to get the year started.

Of course this would say in high school, but thought this may be something special for them for their first night at Amplify.

I LOVE this prayer pail, something for us to use every week for prayers, but it's a little big to lug around each week.

This one I'm sure of. Each week we share highs and lows for each girl for the past week. I think this would be a great way to get all of our blessings in one place so that at the end of the year we can have lots of GREAT things to reflect on.

Hope you gals have a great start to your week!

xoxo,
Brooke