Rooted and Built up in Christ

Psalm 23 is probably the most popular book of the bible, I'm sure even some non-christians know it by heart. Today, I was having a conversation with my mum that opened my eyes to interpret verse 1 of this psalm differently. The New Living Translation of verse 1 reads, "The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need". So as my mum and I were discussing, she says, "God is your shepherd so you lack nothing, if you ever think you lack something then you don't need it". Wow! Simple as these words were, they were still so profound because for the past few months, I've been burdened by fear, worry, and uncertainty as I've thought about my future. I'm nearing the end of my masters program so I've started job hunting and just in general planning for next steps, but because these past 5 years of my life have been so tumultuous in regards to my career progress, hitting one road block or the other due to my status as an international student, that feeli...

Last week was a very tumultuous one to say the least. From losing a high school friend to dealing with conflict in a relationship to disappointment about a performance on a test. Like me, we've all had a fair share of dealing with life's struggles, which sometimes leaves us wondering, "why me?"or "why do bad stuff happen to good people?", questions we'll probably never know the full answers to till we get to ask God face to face. However, I remember last week in the midst of everything happening, God reminded me about the story of Job  (I've linked an interesting summary of the story for your reference), a righteous man who loved and honored God. In fact, God personally described him as "blameless- a man of complete integrity" (Job 1:8). Job was a man of such high-standing before God, the devil had to take permission from God to test him because the devil believed the reason why Job was faithful to God was because of his blessings; Job was ...

The tightness in your chest, like something heavy is weighing against it. The feeling of hopelessness, unworthiness, worthlessness, frustration, confusion...Depression; it manifests itself in ways, sometimes, words can't express. We've all been there before or maybe you're even going through it right now. As much as we Christians don't like to admit it, depression is real. Many times, we confuse faith with denial. But refusing to acknowledge something isn't faith, that's fake. Furthermore, how can restoration and healing start when we live in denial? So, "what's the alternative?" you may ask. Number one is acknowledgement. Before I started writing this post, the first thing I asked myself and even researched was, "why did God give us emotions?". If it wasn't okay to feel certain emotions, why did God give them to us in the first place? Asking these questions also brought to mind something I learned from a book I read recently, which i...