Want to live with real courage? Choose Love instead of Hate. To hate takes little effort. To Love takes remembering you are no better than the person next to you. Seek to build one another. Pastor Daniella

The Power of Surrender As a kid, did you ever try taking on a task that was larger than you were? You decided to carry milk from the refrigerator to the table, never mind that the milk weighed more than you did. Did you jump from a height that in all reality was much taller than you thought it at first? What about deciding that you would get dressed without the aid of an adult, and upon presenting yourself you quickly learned that your shirt was inside out and backward, and your shoes were on the wrong feet? All of these are simple feats that we tried to surmount on our own, but have you ever thought how many tasks you take on as a believer that you should have offered to Jesus first? I know I am acutely aware of this very fact. Why? I don't enjoy it when life seems out of control. Okay, overstatement...but in desperation for normality and stability in my life, I have often taken on tasks that far outreach my ability to surmount them. Although John 15:5 tells me that if I try to live a life without Jesus I am nothing, I have still tried to somehow prove that I am the exception to this statement. In every attempt, my self-made solution has crumbled beneath my feet. Through this, I am learning a life lesson. We are to offer Jesus not only every situation in our life, but allow ourselves to be stretched even further by offering Him the first thought on every situation in our life. Have you ever found yourself about nine steps into trying to solve something, meeting up with a dead end, and thinking, "Well, I guess I could pray about it." I know I have. I am trying to allow myself to stop my natural thinking and instead heed what Jesus is warning me about...my efforts are not going to produce fruit if I don't first offer my initial thinking on the matter to Him. Not the easiest for a driven person to consider, but none-the-less, a lesson I am better off for learning. "Be still and know that I am God", another time in the Bible that I am told that it is better to have just waited, let God be the Lord of my situation, and then allow Him to guide me. When I first tried to start implementing this into my life, I honestly thought I was going to go stir crazy. I kept thinking, "What good does it do to wait upon the Lord, there are things that need to be done." But, as I started to see the fruit of this sacrifice I was offering Him in my life, I started to see why it is that He requests this of us. Jesus is not an egomaniac. He does not make a request of us that is somehow self-serving, instead it serves to deliver something to us. We are shown peace through surrender of every situation in our lives. We are allowed in surrender, to taste what it is that He had here on Earth with His Father in Heaven. Jesus tells us in John 5:19 that He does nothing without the Father. If we are hoping to have peace here on Earth, where evil runs rampant, then we must finally come to a position of understanding that there is power in our surrender to the Lord, not impotence. Pastor Daniella

Aren’t there times in your life when you wish you could see the entire staircase prior to taking the first step? I know that I have often wished this of life. Yet in this lifetime, we are called to start seeing with the “eyes” of the Lord long before we start seeing with our eyes. My daughter was given an acting instruction recently in her drama class. They asked her to see if she could quickly familiarize herself with a particular room and then once blindfolded be able to perform a couple of simple tasks within that space. At the completion of the exercise she said that she was taken back at how quickly her other senses had become the master control of her mind, rather than her site. I would like to use this exercise to as life application for us. We are being challenge in life to learn how to live more out of what the Bible shows us to be more trustworthy senses: Faith, Hope, His Promises to us, His Love for us…than we do the situational evidence that all is going to work out for the betterment of us. I have spoken many times of the difficulties that anxiety has inflicted in my life. When difficulties present themselves I used to go pieces over the matter. I am learning, through the Grace of God, that I don’t have to lose Peace just because I can’t SEE how a situation will in fact work out. Instead, I am learning to ignore what my sight tells me and instead trust my other senses: Faith, Hope, His Promises, His Love. Trusting well before there is evidence to the matter---not the easiest thing I have worked on in life, but I continue to strive to apply it better daily. I am learning that the less I feed my fears and anxieties, their reign within my heart dwindles. I am a work in progress, but aren’t we all. God be praised for all He does for each of us! I pray this message is anointed to help you this evening. Pastor Daniella

Yesterday I shared something that I have been learning in life concerning Peace. I spoke of the fact that so many of us have grown up believing that Peace is more situational than it is a state of allowing Christ to work in us.  

My life growing up was so utterly filled with anxiety. Anxiety was as close to me as my skin, oddly enough…almost a “trusted friend” at points.  As long as I was feeling anxiety over a matter I felt I was somehow “prepared” for what life would throw my way.  But anxiety is a leach and after a while I became mentally anemic.  I had nothing more to give to anxiety. The slightest trouble would enter into my temporary peaceful state and I would fall to pieces over it.  I became desperate for a change within me.  Broken hearted, fear filled, and uncertain where Peace would take me I decided I afford nothing less but to step out and see where it led me.

When I stepped out, I started a very slow process of adapting my thinking to coincide with Peace filled thoughts rather than anxiety driven fear.  When trouble presented itself I started to question myself if I was viewing the difficulty through Perspective or through Fear.  This questions many times allowed me the moments I needed to collect myself and in order to remind myself that I wanted Peace more than I wanted anxiety.  Once I was calmer I would literally say out loud, “Perspective, Daniella, Perspective.  What is actually going on here? See the situation for what it is rather than what your anxiety wants to build it in to.”  Perspective rendered many situations powerfulness, and prompted me to see that the more that I started to see Peace for what it is, a doorway to the love that Jesus had for me, the more found that my stability is based in Jesus and all the power that He holds, not in situations.

I found that I needed to find ways to overcome the anxiety that sought to capture the first few minutes or hour prior to a difficulty presenting itself to me. 

It was here that I started learning to apply a series of small quotes. Scriptures from the Bible that reassured me that I was never beyond the Love of Christ. Quotes that empowered me to remember nothing is beyond the Lord’s control. Because many times, when difficult times present themselves to us, we lose start letting our trust that Jesus does honestly love us, or that God isn’t really going to hold up His statement that He never gives us more than we can handle.  Finding ways to quickly harness those insecure thoughts helps greatly in the battle to against anxiety.  We can control what we allow ourselves to “digest” as valid information and when we are start to feel the onset of thoughts that tells us that God stops loving us, we need to see those for the lie they are. But the longer you allow Peace to reign within your thoughts, the more you will find it is a trusted friend like none other.  The Lord Jesus Christ seeks to lift our heads.  It is in His eyes that we see the love that we’ve all been desperate to find and it is through his love that we will finally find a Peace so utterly irresistible that anything less becomes powerless against us.

I continue in my journey with the Lord daily. His love is slowly piecing together a heart that had never truly tasted Peace, but due to His patience with me…. I can’t imagine life without Peace now. It is a daily fight to keep my eyes more focused on the Peace of Christ than anything else presenting itself in my life, but I never again want to return to the grips of anxiety.   “He that has been set Free is Free indeed” (John 8:36)  May this be of a blessing to you, my friends.  Pastor Daniella https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Peace seems an allusive friend throughout most of life, doesn’t it? What seemingly sets out to be a peaceful day seems to quickly unravel at the onset of frustrating circumstances. For years, I would live in such temporary peace. I felt as if I were on a roller coaster. As long as life’s circumstances were meeting my expectations, I felt at Peace, but the moment that a situation presented itself less than ideal, I would feel my Peace take a down turn. It took me many years to start seeing that I was living with a mindset that Peace was circumstantially based. When I first came to this reality, I almost argued with myself on the matter. I honestly didn’t see why circumstantial peace was such a bad idea. After all, when frustrating circumstances are taking place in life, aren’t we supposed to react to them? I mean, this is all that I had ever seen emulated, so to think anything less than that was a foreign thought. I then started to be led by God to see what His Peace looks like. I started to understand that Peace from Jesus wasn’t anchored in anything to do with my circumstances meeting up with my expectations, but more rather it was anchored in the love that He has for me. Tomorrow, I will speak on how I started learning to apply the Peace of Christ to the difficult situations of my life. Until then, I pray you have a blessed evening. Pastor Daniella

I feel that so many of us are faced with daily obstacles that seemingly create such an utter impasse in their presence that we start to feel the fabric of our dreams unraveling. I know even in my own life, daily bombardments of discouragement can feel an ever present stumbling block. Yet I have seen how imperative it is to fight back against these discouragements. I think that often, our inner being starts to convince us that IF we would just get in to agreement with the discouragement more than we are in agreement with our dreams that life would become easier. While this thought might give a temporary, at best, reprieve to the fight you feel within to stay positive, do you realize what you are giving up when you agree with discouragement? You leave in your wake your dreams. To live in belief that your dreams will in fact come to fruition is not easy. Honestly, it’s not. Each of us that have dreams deeply imbedded with our hearts are in a constant battle to look more at the trust that God will bring them about than our current realities. But really, when you allow yourself to step back from this struggle long enough to assess if you are truly willing to GIVE UP… I think most of us would objectively answer---“NO!” Every one of us is afforded the chance to refuse discouragement entry into our thinking. The next time you are facing discouragement, please take a minute to ask yourself if you truly want to allow the words spoken or the actions taken entry in to your thinking. Ask yourself if the statement the person made, or the action done towards you has warrant in your life or not. Ask yourself if you are honestly willing to give up on a dream that has meant so much to you in life… all for the sake of another person’s opinion over you. I think that when we allow ourselves permission to see question the true weight of the discouragement in our lives, we start understanding that we in fact aren’t willing to give up. We start seeing that we are in fact more determined to move forward. We being to give more validity to the dream than we do the discouragement. I pray this is a blessing to you in your life this evening. Pastor Daniella

For tonight, I wanted to share a scripture that I enjoy taking comfort in. I pray your evening is blessed. Pastor Daniella Here’s the scripture… Psalm 34 (New Living Translation) I will praise the Lord at all times. I will constantly speak his praises. I will boast only in the Lord; let all who are helpless take heart. Come, let us tell of the Lord’s greatness; let us exalt his name together. I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears. Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces. In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened; he saved me from all my troubles. For the angel of the Lord is a guard; he surrounds and defends all who fear him.