Hi everyone!! I hope you're having a lovely Valentine's Day!! In the spirit of this Valentine's Day I decided to share a faith blog post for February. I've fallen off of my "memorize one Bible verse per week" game for the past few months, but I'm trying to get back into it, so I thought I'd share my most recent memorization.
Recently I've been trying to focus some of my thoughts around Romans 12:12, which says:
"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."
It's such a simple, yet powerful verse that says a lot about how we should treat others. Something that I find fascinating about this verse is that it's almost exactly describing love, yet it doesn't say the word "love" at all.
All of these attributes - joyful, hopeful, patient, faithful, prayerful - put our trust in something that isn't known. By acting in these ways we can have a positive mindset without knowing what the future holds, which is a great (but hard) way to live! It's difficult to put our faith in an unknown future made by an invisible God in a world where we are constantly told that "we're enough". Social media is always telling us that we ourselves are everything we need and you can manifest anything you want in life. While I do believe that we need to find self confidence only in how God made us, I don't think that the "you are enough" mindset is super helpful. That self-sufficient narrative can lead to feeling like you've failed yourself when things don't work out, instead of recognizing that God has got something better in store. I guess what I'm saying is that we can be joyful, hopeful, patient, faithful, and prayerful by acknowledging that God holds the future and wants the best for us! Those attributes also can lead to loving others and ourselves.
Happy Valentine's day!! ❤️I hope this inspired you to love a little more without knowing the future, and be sure to check out the video for even more explanation!
Episode 132: https://youtu.be/FZ6lFqMS3fY
My Channel: (Edith Noble) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnXXLYRl1ImCPHpCqeFdilg