New Year, New Blog!

Hello everyone! I wanted to start a new blog with a clean slate. I hadn't posted on my old blog in over two years, and I've missed writing so much!

 The Lord has really put it on my heart to start sharing with you about what He has been showing me and the way He's been growing me in my faith. A lot of things have changed in the past two years. Ways that God has shown His faithfulness and mercy time and time again; through every heartache and failure, and every joy that has come my way. I think it's important that we as believers, especially in these days, lift each other up in encouragement and love. I'm not claiming to have all of the answers for the Christian life; no one will until we get to heaven, but God has been stretching my faith and growing me in ways that I never thought possible.

This past year, God really grew my ability to share my salvation testimony. I never was very willing to share my testimony even though I knew that the Lord was telling me that I needed to. In thinking that my story was too small, I only shared it with a few close friends and family members. (I'll make a separate post about my testimony soon.)  But God gave me the push that I needed, and the more that I trusted Him to give me the words to say, the easier it got. I'm still not the greatest public speaker, but that push was the way the He showed me that my story still mattered to Him and that it had the potential to change someone's life in Christ! When young girls would come to me and thank me because my testimony encouraged them, it was such a great confirmation that I was obeying what God had told me to do. I've had many opportunities to share the Word of God with younger girls in Christ, and what He's put on my heart; it has reaped so many blessings, that I am amazed! 
But there have also been times when I had to search hard to find the Lord in a valley of life. Times that I asked the question, 'why God?'; pleading Him for an answer, but not getting one right away. Fighting not being angry at Him for what I had deemed unfair and wrong, and crying tears of sorrow and pain. Though, through it all, He has shown me so many times that it's ok to ask why, it's ok to question and wonder how He could possibly be working in that certain situation that you don't understand. We are humans; sometimes it's hard to trust Him with blind faith, but we're commanded to. We're to stand still and know that He is God; He knows everything that we face in life, and He knows how it will end. We can sit around and worry ourselves to death and try to do it all in our strength, but at the end of it all, He is still a loving God waiting for us to turn everything over to Him! 
The goal for this blog is to share my life's journey, and the things that the Lord has brought or is bringing me through; so that maybe it would be an encouragement to someone out there, who might be struggling with the same things.

I hope that this blog would be an encouragement to you, and most importantly, honor the Lord in everything.

That He may be praised,

Grace Upon Grace ❤