Wow

God is so great. I really feel like He is working in my life right now and it feels good. I'm on a roll with Joyce Meyer (God has been revealing some great things to me through her), I have been listening to her online and listening to A Marriage That Works CD set that someone bought for me at the conference. Not only is it helping me to build a better relationship with my husband, but I am learning about how I can build better relationships with anyone.
I just want to share some of what I'm learning, because if it's helping me I'm sure someone else will benefit as well! I have been really good at reading my bible and praying and doing devotions lately. I was determined to start doing that on a daily bases to make God happy. I used to think that God was disappointed with me if I would forget. I have been learning though that it makes US happier if we read our bible, not Him. He wants us to read our bible and pray so that WE are happier. God has so much love for us and we need to accept that. I need to accept that. Yes, I have always known that God loves me. Here is the difference, I always felt like I was not worthy, I needed to act a certain way and have all of my problems cleared up. So much of my life has been spent getting conditional love. If I do something right, I would be rewarded with love. That is not what God is, He is unconditional love. He loves me for who I am, I know I make mistakes, and I'm not perfect. He loves me regardless, and He wants to fill me with His love. I need that love in order to love other people.
Not only do I need His love, but I need to love myself. This is not the unbalanced love, as in I can do no wrong, I'm awesome etc. This means I need to love myself, faults and all. If I don't love myself, I can't love others. If I am insecure about something I lash out on others. It's not because of something they've done, it's because of my insecurities. Those are things that I am determined to give over to God.
I no longer want to live in my little box. I'm tired of trying to make people fit into categories, and I'm tired of getting upset over little insignificant things. I could never, never let things go. If something bothered me I felt like I had to bring it up and make that person listen to what I had to say. I was afraid to let things go because if I let it go, then that person would do it again. Well guess what!! I can't change someone, I need to work on changing myself. I need to do my part and God will change the rest. That doesn't always mean that if I pray that God will change that other person. What I've been learning is that most of the time if I allow God to work in me I will become perfectly fine with the situation.
Something else Joyce said really struck me. The Holy Spirit can't work in a situation if we are trying to do it ourselves. All in all the thing I am learning right now is to just LET IT GO and loosen up!! It's great

Just do it...

Soooooo this weekend was so amazing! I went to a Joyce Meyer Convention. The theme was relentless and it was for women only.
We left at 6:30 a.m on Friday, that's right we left before the sun came up! There were two vans full of women that headed towards St. Louis. We made a couple of pit stops along the way and then we finally made it to the Edward Jones Dome around 9ish.
The music was phenomenal. Darlene Zschech from Hillsong led the worship all week. I didn't know any of the songs, but it was still an amazing opportunity to worship God along with 18,000 other women! There were two other musical guests that played a couple of songs here and there. I recommend checking them out. One was Yolanda Adams, she was amazing. The other was Phil Wickham.
Most of our message was recieved by Joyce Meyer. I had heard some of her messages before, either through her devotional books or other people. She is truely amazing, I would listen to her everyday if I could. Her message is very clear and to the point. Pretty much a running theme throuhout her messages are you just need to do it. You can go to seminar after seminar but if you do not put what you learn into motion nothing will change in your life! That seems so simple, but it is an important lesson. I myself have been guilty of this. I listen to sermon after sermon, and amen to this amen to that. In reality if i'm not willing to change my behavior nothing is going to change in my life. How profound right? I think we all need a message like that.
She also talked about letting go of your baggage ( greed, anger, resentment, fear), not being so selfish and trusting God. I also have a cd set called A Marriage That Works, by Joyce. I started listening to it this morning and it's amazing as well. A woman from my church bought that for me (so nice right?)
We were at the conference from 10 am to about 12:30pm and then we went to eat lunch at TGI Fridays. It was an amazing meal. We had just enough time to check in our bags at the hotel and it was time to get back. With traffic and the amount of time it took to get to and from the convention and in and out of the parking garage, there was not a lot of time to do shopping or anything else. But that is okay, that' s not what we were there for! Anyways we had a another session and then we didn't get to bed until midnight. The next day we woke up at about 7 am and we did our thing some more that day. We got to listen to Lisa Bevere, and she was AMAZING as well.
We got back kind of late and I stayed up talking until about 11 or 11:30. Then yesterday I was so exhausted that I took a four hour nap!! Unbelievable that I could sleep that long in the middle of the day, but I needed it.
So if I could just sum up what I learned and what I want to share with other people from this weekend it would have to be this: Even though we are just one person, we can do so much. There is no need for an attitude that says "what can I do, I'm just little ole' me yadda yadda yadda" Everyone can make a difference, and it starts with YOU.