Greetings from Missouri! My name is Kaitlyn Ford and I am very blessed with this opportunity to share with you all what the Lord has been teaching me recently. I’m also very blessed to have Aidyl as a friend! She has been such an encouragement and inspiration to me, and I want to thank her for allowing me to write a guest post here! Something I have a passion for is encouraging others in their walk with the Lord, especially young women, and I love hosting “encouragement parties” to spread that. Last encouragement party, I shared some thoughts on God’s love to us and our response, and since I need to be reminded of this stuff a lot too, I wanted to share it with you!

I love how Psalm 113:5-8 says, “Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth! He raiseth the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill; That he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people.” 

This passage of Scripture leaves me in such awe, and really exemplifies how much God truly loves and cares for us. Just think about that for a minute: God, the great “I AM”, Who dwells on high, peers down on tiny little earth, focuses on even tinier us, sees our problems, loves and cares about every single tiny detail in our lives, reaches out to us, and lifts us out of our troubles. God! Our God wants to know us personally, and wants us to walk along with Him, and be with Him where He is working! (John 17:24, “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given me, be with me where I am…”) And not only that, but Jesus, the Son of God, died for YOU because He loves YOU! Wow! How can we respond that that?! Well, what does God desire from us?  Worship! 

Well, what exactly IS worship? Webster’s 1828 dictionary says this, “Worship is to honor with extravagant love and extreme submission.” So what does that mean? It means that ANYTHING we do can be worship if we do it with extravagant love and extreme submission for God! Whether that means serving your family at home, others at work, reaching out to a hurting or needy soul, or being active as an overseas missionary, you are on a mission field right now! If you are doing something that God wants you to do right now, then you are serving and working for the Creator of the Universe, the King of kings….the One who stoops down and humbles Himself to have a personal relationship with us! 

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart, your soul, and your mind. (Matthew 22:36-38) I have to ask myself, “What things in my life are pulling me away from that?” (Ouch!) But you know what? Since we have GIVEN our lives to the Lord, we should exist to glorify the God of this universe with everything we are and all we have, right!? How is that played out?

This all goes back to focusing on our response to God’s love toward us: Worship. Honoring God in extravagant love and extreme submission. Adoring Him. Knowing Him and making Him known.  We are SO BLESSED. And God wants us. He loves us. And He cares. Even when we can’t understand, He does, and He is working. All we are to do is trust and obey. And when we realize that He is working all things for our good according to His will (Romans 8:28) because He loves us, we can joyfully rest in Him, and worship Him. 

So as we go through this life, and seek to serve our Creator with everything, let us keep our focus on Him. When our focus gets off of Him, that is when the problems arise and we are prone to discouragement. 

Lastly I want to share with you all a quote from Mark Cahill, relating to us serving Him: “You don’t have to cross the sea – You just have to see the cross!”  What if we worked to see the cross in everything?  What if we worked to see the God above the heavens, that still reaches down to help us, in everything? 

Wouldn’t that change our lives?