Still I rise by Maya Angelou

Once in a while, a girl needs still I rise by Maya Angelou. When Haters hate, a girl needs to read this.

Still I Rise

  by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Embracing my own journey and choices

I've learnt that God is a creative God and that my season of singleness will not mirror someone else's. This is because I'm a different person and have a different personality, so even though our choices maybe rooted in our belief in God, we will not have similar results cause we're different. So instead of trying to relive someone else's season of singleness, let me live out mine in full, with my own decisions which are God led. lemme stop looking for answers from blogs but from God.

I'm happy that Jesus said no - with help from Sarah Jakes

I wanted it to happen, I prayed, I pushed I shoved but God said no... what my heart was telling me was right, it was actually a no from God. Sarah Jakes from her blog post: A letter to the lost me."Anything birthed prematurely risks complications" so basically what this means is, we know that blessings are fist like a seed in our womb. The seed is given to us by God, as a dream in our hearts. Then we plant it in prayer in our wombs and feed it to grow through faith. Then through time, they grow and we give birth to our dream, but then like a real life child, If it's birthed early it has complications. So rather wait on Gods seasoned timing rather than to give birth at your rushed timing and risk complications. God is never late.
Read Sarahs article further by clicking here

living by my mind and not heart

So Yesterday I wrote about what I learn't from Beyonces' documentary life is but a dream. Yes I found that she lives from the heart, but for me, to live for from the heart is a dangerous thing. I personally need to live from my mind, or the word of God. Emotions for me, well unbalanced emotions for me, can derail my whole life. God gave us our mind to read the word of God and apply it to our situation. I've been through that whole period of trying to figure life out through philosophy. I'd rather live through my mind from the scripture I remember. I nearly made a stupid mistake cos of listening to my heart. Through every situation, I gotta keep my emotions in check.
I think with us ladies, we become so confused by love, but like the saying says, if he loves you, you'll know, if he doesn't you'll be confused. When a man wants you, there's nothing you can do to stop him and when he wants to leave, there's nothing you can do to make him stay... A guy at work has been confusing, acting like he likes me, but never doing anything about it... then my friend told me, that her mom told her, that if a guy likes you, he'll flat out tell you. Then I looked at my situation then my friends situation. This guy is asking her out, he's a pastor, already talking about marriage, how much he loves her... so from this, whats evident, that he does love her.... my situation, he aint saying nothing... please just a side note, I have two other guys asking me out at this point in time and they're also always telling me how much they want me in their lives...so from this, is the silent guy inlove.... never that... it's so clear that the ones who risk humiliation, risk rejection, now those are the one's inlove... but sadly, when we like someone, we ignore all logic, we believe the heart and the bible clearly warns us to not follow our hearts(Jeremiah 17:9)... it's time for me to let it go now... I gotta move on, and keep my sanity.

Beyonce

I'm watching beyonces' documentary called life is but a dream and I've also watched her own interview with Oprah. What did I get from this, life is a progression of choices we've made that God has allowed cause he knew they'd be for our benefit. We have to make the choices and not wait on him to make the choices for us. That's how we experience the beauty of life, God wants us to be strong and trust ourselves. Obviously he knows whats best for us, that's how he says no or wait, but we have to make decisions. We'll sometimes run into collisions in life, but that doesn't mean that God has forgotten our dreams, we gotta keep pushing to get our dreams come true. Don't stop believing, no matter what happens, don't stop believing that your dreams will come true. No matter what what they say about men, there is a good man out there who will love you like ephesians 5 says, like how Jesus loves us, a godly love that is spiritual... the way she loves jay and how she talks about his love for her... its spiritual, it's beautiful, it's Godly, she says carrying his baby has made her love him more, love is not explainable, so many people try to explain love and write about it, but it's beyond our human thinking, no one has mastered it's meaning and how or why it comes about, isn't that the same with God (cause God is love)... I do believe that love is spiritual, cause sometimes you know what you want in a guy, but then you meet someone who's not that but you just love them still, you can't explain it. There's no recipe for it, it just happens through a spiritual connection... after all that I've been going through, I needed to watch that Beyonce docie, she's a beam of love, love from her dad, love for nephew julez, love to empower women.... learning to just live life from the heart and not from recipes or methods, doesn't it make it more exciting when it's from the heart cos that's where God lives, in our hearts.

Jeremiah 3:33-34

“I will put my law in their minds
    and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.





1 John 4:12

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Discerning Idolatry in Desire

Here's an article I found on the Desring God website by Pastor John Piper.

Most of us realize that enjoying anything other than God, from the best gift to the basest pleasure, can become idolatry. Paul says in Colossians 3:5, “Covetousness is idolatry.”

“Covetousness” means desiring something other than God in the wrong way. But what does that mean—“in the wrong way”?

The reason this matters is both vertical and horizontal. Idolatry will destroy our relationship with God. And it will destroy our relationships with people.

All human relational problems—from marriage and family to friendship to neighbors to classmates to colleagues—all of them are rooted in various forms of idolatry, that is, wanting things other than God in wrong ways.

So here is my effort to think biblically about what those wrong ways are. What makes an enjoyment idolatrous? What turns a desire into covetousness, which is idolatry?

1. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when it is forbidden by God. For example, adultery and fornication and stealing and lying are forbidden by God. Some people at some times feel that these are pleasurable, or else we would not do them. No one sins out of duty. But such pleasure is a sign of idolatry.
2. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when it is disproportionate to the worth of what is desired. Great desire for non-great things is a sign that we are beginning to make those things idols.
3. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when it is not permeated with gratitude. When our enjoyment of something tends to make us not think of God, it is moving toward idolatry. But if the enjoyment gives rise to the feeling of gratefulness to God, we are being protected from idolatry. The grateful feeling that we don’t deserve this gift or this enjoyment, but have it freely from God’s grace, is evidence that idolatry is being checked.
4. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when it does not see in God’s gift that God himself is more to be desired than the gift. If the gift is not awakening a sense that God, the Giver, is better than the gift, it is becoming an idol.
5. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when it is starting to feel like a right, and our delight is becoming a demand. It may be that the delight is right. It may be that another person ought to give you this delight. It may be right to tell them this. But when all this rises to the level of angry demands, idolatry is rising.
6. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when it draws us away from our duties. When we find ourselves spending time pursuing an enjoyment, knowing that other things, or people, should be getting our attention, we are moving into idolatry.
7. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when it awakens a sense of pride that we can experience this delight while others can’t. This is especially true of delights in religious things, like prayer and Bible reading and ministry. It is wonderful to enjoy holy things. It idolatrous to feel proud that we can.
8. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when it is oblivious or callous to the needs and desires of others. Holy enjoyment is aware of others’ needs and may temporarily leave a good pleasure to help another person have it. One might leave private prayer to be the answer to someone else’s.
9. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when it does not desire that Christ be magnified as supremely desirable through the enjoyment. Enjoying anything but Christ (like his good gifts) runs the inevitable risk of magnifying the gift over the Giver. One evidence that idolatry is not happening is the earnest desire that this not happen.
10. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when it is not working a deeper capacity for holy delight. We are sinners still. It is idolatrous to be content with sin. So we desire transformation. Some enjoyments shrink our capacities of holy joy. Others enlarge them. Some go either way, depending on how we think about them. When we don’t care if an enjoyment is making us more holy, we are moving into idolatry.
11. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when its loss ruins our trust in the goodness of God. There can be sorrow at loss without being idolatrous. But when the sorrow threatens our confidence in God, it signals that the thing lost was becoming an idol.
12. Enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when its loss paralyzes us emotionally so that we can’t relate lovingly to other people. This is the horizontal effect of losing confidence in God. Again: Great sorrow is no sure sign of idolatry. Jesus had great sorrow. But when desire is denied, and the effect is the emotional inability to do what God calls us to do, the warning signs of idolatry are flashing.

For myself and for you, I pray the admonition of 1 John 5:21, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

Desiring God-my Journey

As of late, I've realised that when I don't spend my quite time with God, like as in a well planned quite time, where I woke up earlier than what is required of me, I become grumpy, unsatisfied, edgy and not happy. God put it into my heart that It was more of me and less of him when I don't start and end my day with him. Also I'm not as happy as I used to be, there was a point in my life when my satisfaction came only from God.  I began to desire and seek other things other than Gods, basically, I had Idols. Other things replaced my desire for God and so my joy was taken away. I'm on a journey top once more desire only God, to be satisfied in him above all else.... my journey has started, there are many things God is teaching me and I'm learning, can't wait to reach that place again where I don't car bout wanting any thing but God.