Get Back to the Basics

I am currently sitting in my office listening to my worship station on shuffle and I just finished my devotional for today. By the time you are reading this, it's been a little over a week since I wrote this. I prayed to God and asked him to lay on my heart what it is he wants me to write about in this blog. Since I wrote the last blog, I haven't really had too many new ideas and felt like I was experiencing writer's block, which was making me nervous. I'm not very far in on blogging, and I already don't know what to write. Then God literally shook me and said, "Haley, get back to the basics". What does that mean? Getting back to the basics is something I tell people when they tell me they feel far from God or feel as though they lost hope. It's something I have told people just this week, yet in the midst of my anxiousness and uncertainty of not knowing what I was going to write for this blog, I didn't even consider myself to just "get back to the basics". Getting back to the basics is exactly what it sounds like. It is opening your Bible and reading God's word and talking with him. That's exactly what God told me tonight. He said, "Haley, open you're Bible and I will show you the message I want you to give your audience". A lot of people who are new the reading their bible always ask me where to start. I always encourage people to start in the gospels and read the story of Jesus. It truly is the climax I believe in the Bible. But if you are having a hard time figuring out where to start, I encourage you to pray to God to provide the message he wants you to know and he will lead you exactly where he wants you. I have learned when I stray from God if I get back to the basics and talk to God and tell him what's going on and open my Bible and start reading about the miraculous things he did in the Bible, it draws me closer to him. It provides me with more intimacy with Him. I have strayed from God, many times, but here is the good news: God is waiting with open arms for you to come back to Him. One of my favorite parables in the Bible is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. I encourage you to read it. It's in Luke 15. Just like the Father was joyful his son returned home, when we leave God or stray away from Him, he feels the same when we return back to Him. He doesn't care about the things we did while we were gone, all he cares is that you returned back to Him. And if you don't know him yet, he's waiting for you, he's looking for you as a shepherd with a lost sheep. I encourage you to read the Parable of the Lost Sheep. It is located in Matthew 18. Just like the shepherd leaves behind the ninety-nine safe sheep to go find the one lost sheep, God wants to do the same for you. I promise the best decision you will ever make is to return home to the one who created you and loves you more than any other person on this Earth. So if you're having a hard time in your Faith, or in my case feel like God's not talking to you when you want him to and giving you clear answers, get back to the basics. Open your bible and talk to God and tell him what is on your heart. I promise he's listening and he cares. <3 I pray you run to God and allow him to receive you with open arms.