Following God and then some!

As a Christian, I follow Christ. I am his disciple and he is my Teacher. I committed my life to following God a long time ago, I told him I would follow him to the ends of the earth. So why is he placing this notion of following, on my heart? Well, it's because He knows I'm willing to follow Him but I'm not willing to follow the person He has assigned to lead me closer to Him...my husband... God was basically saying to me, you're not truly following me unless you follow your husband as well. Say what?!

Now, putting aside all discussions and debates on how wives should be submissive, I won't get into that here, I truly believe that God has placed husbands as head of the household, to lead and love their wives as Christ leads and loves the Church. There's no question about it, that is the husband's role, it's in the Bible! And yet, I just for the life of me...can't do it...at least not without screaming and kicking, dragging my feet with a pout on my face...

Before I go any further, let me state that I love my husband! He has the purest of hearts, is the most amazingly talented artist ever, extremely funny in the dorkiest sense, a total smarty-pants, so incredibly cute and the best part, knows and loves God!  But marriage is the scariest thing!! After 3 years, I'm sometimes surprised I said yes! Seriously! And now that I'm in it, it is the hardest thing! I don't doubt that God intended the hubs and I to be together.We are perfect for each other but that perfection is a work in progress. A long work in progress... God's intentions were so not what I had in mind.

Up until 5 years ago, I didn't think I would ever get married. I was happy being single. I loved my independence. The thought of having to care for, be considerate of and unconditionally love another person forever just sounded impossible to me. I'm all for caring, loving and be considerate of my friends and family but if I didn't like it and wanted to, I could just go home, I could move away, I could stop being friends with them, I could just stop. You can't stop with your spouse.

Anyways, back to the point, the difficulty with following the hubs probably has to do with how I was raised. Parents, church, school and society raised and taught me to be a leader, to take initiative. If you want something done, you have to do it yourself or else, gather people around you to do it for you.  I grew up with very few dependable male leaders that I could respect. I'm very independent and can make decisions for myself and others very easily, so why would I rely on someone to lead and and make decisions when I can do it faster and better?!

But God was saying to me, "Wow, are you humble much?There's more to being a leader than what you've learned from this world and while I've given you opportunities to lead with the skills I gave you, you need to work on your following skills! You need to know what it really means to follow me and be my disciple.

And as it happens, my church is spending this year focusing on God's great commission for us, to go and make disciples of all nations! But to make disciples, you need to know what it means to be a disciple yourself. So I signed up for a Discipling Group (DG).

So this blog is mainly going to be on the lessons I gleaned from DG on what it means to be a disciple of Christ and how I can apply those lessons to following my husband better! So keep reading...I can only imagine what God is going to do to humble me and refine me to be more like Christ.

The new blog

It's been almost 5 years since I last blogged. I really don't know what happened...I was so consistent for so long...perhaps not much to say or perhaps too much to say to write it all down.

I've thought about returning to blogging many times but never a thought on what to write. Why now? Just decided it was time. While I have many hesitations about blogging again, I realized as I read back on my old posts that blogging was when I was most reflective of God in my life. There were so many instances of the smallest events or situations in life that would draw me back to my relationship with God. Blogging helped me grow.

So for those who have never read my blog or haven't read in a while, I've given my blog a new title. I use to change it every so often based on what I thought the theme for my life was currently. When I first started blogging in my early 20s, my blog was titled "Live Out Loud". I was fresh out of university, I was excited about life, I wanted my faith to be lived out loud. Then in my mid-20s, my excitement for life went down, God was really challenging my trust in him so it became "Knowing God" because I had the hardest time trusting God and what I realized was that to trust God is to know God.

I have no idea what happened to my late 20s, no wait, I do. I started a relationship and then got married! I actually was secretly blogging during those years but don't think those posts will ever go public :P

Now entering my 30s, God has been putting on my heart to understand what it means to follow Him.

So hope you will journey with me as I learn and grow in Following God :)