christianity Archives | Page 2 of 4 | All The More: Collective Blog

Want to Know the Will of God for Your Life? Give Thanks.

November 19, 2021 Natalie Mayo 3 min read

Want to know what the will of God is for your life? Give thanks. No, don’t give thanks in order to coax God into laying out His will for you; giving thanks is God’s will for you. Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (emphasis added) 1 Thess. 5:18 So often, I focus on seeking God’s will for the “big” things in my life, but miss His will for the “small” things in my life, which aren’t really small at all. Thankfulness, for instance, is clearly Biblically part of God’s will for me and is commanded throughout the Scriptures as a key component of the Christian life. And yet, I can be so focused on seeking God to reveal the next step or direction of my life that I forget the will of God that He’s already revealed. There are […]

When Goals Become Idols

November 5, 2021 Bella Nowland 4 min read

“I want to be a teenager, cheerleader, and have braces,” I proudly stated without pause from our kitchen table in Yorktown, Virginia. I was three when my mom first asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. The youngest in my family, I was greatly influenced by my older siblings and was captivated by the idea of getting older, which meant I could hang with the older girls on the block. My plastic high heels would become leather heels, and my given age would move from toddler to teenager… What more could I have wanted? Looking back, I laugh, because my three-year-old self was successful in accomplishing her goals. Cheerleader was checked when my third-grade self had glitter cascading across her eyelids, and a silver bow equally the size of her head, on top of her high ponytail. The glitter sparkled as she experienced the effects of […]

Defense (doesn’t) win championships

October 1, 2021 Claire Raabe 4 min read

The static from the AM radio station comes through the speakers of the Chevy truck. The bumpy dirt road feels even rougher than normal with the cattle trailer pulling behind us. I am sitting in the front seat with my dad on a Saturday morning, eating breakfast tacos and listening to the football game on our way home from hauling some cattle to a sale. I feel as if I have discovered a secret time warp where I am back as a small girl, or even a teenager, driving these familiar backroads, surrounded by familiar smells, views, movements, and sounds. It feels deeply nostalgic. It feels secure. It feels really safe. When I am in the front seat of the truck with Kevo (my dad) on a Saturday morning, I don’t have to be “on” in any definition of the word. I wear crusty old boots, denim shorts, and a […]

Are these the Lord’s plans or just MY plans for my life?

September 24, 2021 Bailey Lenzen 4 min read

Earlier this year at Bible study, someone asked about this verse: “Was I fickle when I intended to do this? Or do I make my plans in a worldly manner so that in the same breath I say both “Yes, yes” and “No, no”?” 1 Corinthians 1:17 (emphasis added) She then asked, “How can we know whether the plans we’re making are the Lord’s and not ‘worldly’?” A few weeks ago, someone else shared that she feels uncertain about how to pray about what she should do with her career. Then, a third person asked me how to discern when it’s time to leave a job and go to the next one. “How would I know if it’s His will or not?,” she asked. This made me reflect on my own journey. Looking back at my past decisions, many of them seem like my own plans and not necessarily His. […]

What does it mean to live from faith to faith?

September 10, 2021 Kasie Hayes 4 min read

There have been many things that have transpired in my life I could not control and would not have chosen for myself. Likewise, there are many things I have hopes for concerning my and my family’s future. With that, I’m sure I could draw on a lot of new age spiritism (which is actually old-age) and ideals of attracting goodwill towards my life by “being good” and by speaking my desires into existence. Actually, a lot of people I have heard use this language profess to know Christ. There’s this ideal that if I speak it enough, if I think happy thoughts, if I can just conjure up enough good energy, then I can produce the things that I desire in life. There’s this notion that I am so powerful that I can alter my future by just changing my thoughts to be happy and positive. Some call it the […]

God Hasn’t Left Us

August 27, 2021 Sarah Steinmann 3 min read

person wearing silver ring on ring finger on bible

I stayed in Charleston for 10 days straight this summer, working from a hotel, exploring the town in the evenings and weekends. At the hotel, I made a friend named Greg. We ran into each other over a continental breakfast of muffins, granola bars, and microwavable waffles. We’d see each other in passing – the elevators dinging open to a chance greeting and bringing a sense of community in a new place. Greg was being treated at the hospital around the corner for cancer. He just finished a bone marrow transplant, and the staff was monitoring its success. This was his third bout with cancer – it hit him in his early twenties, and then again a few years ago, and now again in his fifties. His family lives several hours away, so he’d been at the hotel alone for three weeks – isolated and with an uncertain future. Greg […]

Having Kids is the End of Your Life

August 20, 2021 Natalie Mayo 4 min read

I’ve heard before that Austin, Texas, the city I live in and love, has more dogs than children. Needless to say, having my first kid at 25 made me weird, and now having four kids qualifies me as absolutely crazy. It’s not surprising that people often look at me and say: “I’m not ready for kids. I just don’t want to give up _______.” Often that blank is filled with “my freedom,” “my time,” “my selfishness,” “my career,” “my money,” etc. We live in a culture that is looking for life in traveling the world, drinking lattes, and happy hours (which don’t get me wrong – I love those things! Lattes are my love language), but we tend to value our enjoyment, entertainment and ease more than we value giving our lives away to the next generation. We want to live our life and then have kids. Because having kids […]

Tomorrow Is Not Promised

August 6, 2021 MJ Villatoro 3 min read

man riding black motorcycle on road between forest

If you ask most people what dealing with a worldwide pandemic has taught them, I’m sure many would say that they have learned that tomorrow is not promised. Life is so fragile, so it’s important to show love to those you care about while they are still here. Changed In An Instant They say life can change in the blink of an eye – in an instant. My family was reminded of this a few years back when my dad was involved in a terrible accident. My mom had gotten a phone call that my dad was the victim of a hit and run, and that she needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. We knew my dad had been riding his motorcycle, so we feared the worst. When we got to the hospital, they were in the middle of performing life-saving surgery on my dad. He […]

Misconception of Perfection

July 16, 2021 Rachel Guerrero 5 min read

I constantly find myself feeling that life would be better, joyful, even perfect if I just had a bigger or better house, car, calendar, meal plan, fill-in-the-blank. If I could just be better at controlling my emotions, being slow to speak, and being patient with my kids, I would be much more happy and joyful. I would finally feel content. If you’re anything like me, I so often seek to find contentment in my circumstances, not in God. No matter the season; student, single, married, full-time job or full-time stay-at-home parent, kids, no kids, it’s easy to focus on the lack in our circumstances and ourselves, instead of the blessings. We see what we wish would change and put our hope in that change of circumstances instead of in Jesus Himself. So if true, lasting joy cannot be found in our circumstances, but only in Jesus, how do we find […]

Figuring out God’s will for my life

July 9, 2021 Claire Raabe 4 min read

About a month ago, I found myself at a retreat/formational program about discernment with 70+ strangers in Kansas City. All of the other attendees were either college students, 50+ adults with children, grandchildren, and spouses, or consecrated religious women and priests. At first, I was overwhelmed by the fact there was no one else present who was in my same stage of life. This feeling of isolation quickly turned to freedom from comparison and distraction, allowing me to enter more fully into the experience Jesus was crafting. I came into the week with a litany of questions to “discern”. This list included but was not limited to: Am I supposed to continue living in College Station? Should I move to Washington DC or Denver? (I’m a sucker for mountains and museums) Am I called to marriage or single life? How long do we think it might take to answer question […]

« Previous 1 2 3 4 Next »