The Be One Life

Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength together a one.

Unbreakable Marriage

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Have you ever thought about what it would be like to have an amazing marriage that would last happily ever after like the fairy tales?  

 

That kind of marriage does exist and it is no fairy tale.  

 

That unbreakable marriage is between Jesus and His church. Saying yes to Jesus and becoming his follower is like a wedding ceremony where you are becoming part of the bride of Christ, the church, and Jesus is the groom.  During His time on earth, Jesus never married in the traditional sense; however, he did commit his life to his bride, the church. Every disciple of Jesus, comes together as one in Christ to make up his bride, the church.  Ephesians 5:31-32 says,

 

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”  

 

When we confess that Jesus is Lord and submit to him, it is like saying our wedding vows, beginning the covenant of marriage. Jesus established the Lord’s supper as his marriage covenant with us at the meal with the apostles the night before he was crucified as we read in Matt 26:26-28:

 

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

 

When a believer is baptized into Christ, washed with his blood, and transformed into a new self by the Holy Spirit, it is like the Holy Spirit is the wedding officiant pronouncing the couple husband and wife, sealing the covenant, adding the believer to the church and making them one with Jesus.  Romans 6:3-4 (ESV) tells us,

 

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

 

We are no longer the same old person living with sin, but a new, complete person made whole, through the blood of Christ. Best of all, we are part of the bride of Christ, the church, sealed with a covenant the no man can break. This is a marriage of our spirit to Jesus and it is the only marriage that is sealed for eternity.  There is no ‘til death do us part; there is no divorce between Christ and the Church, we are His bride forever.

 

Now that is unconditional love.  

This is the kind of love and marriage we want everyone to experience.  May we always celebrate our spiritual marriage to Jesus through our lives, and let it reflect in our actions so that others may experience Jesus’ love.  

Be One.

Soul Care Vs. Self Care

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The idea of self care has permeated our culture. Everywhere you turn, you are encouraged to take “me time” or to “treat yourself.” There is nothing inherently wrong with self care. We do need to care for ourselves. In order to love well, we have to be physically and emotionally capable of doing so.

We know that taking time to relax, recharge, and reset are not inherently wrong. But what happens when the usual tools of self care are not enough?

What happens after you spend time alone (or with friends)? After the vacation? The manicure/pedicure? After the shopping trip? The gym? The yoga class?

What happens when you practice self care but you still feel a hollow place of longing from deep within?

Let me introduce you to soul care.

But first, let’s explore some differences between self care and soul care.

 

Self Care vs. Soul Care

Focus: Me Focus: God, the Source
Purpose: Disconnect to recharge, restore, reset Purpose: Connect to the Source of all that is good & beautiful
Result: Quick, temporary results; usually external Result: Intentional, multi-dimensional internal change

 

What is the soul? The soul is that place of deep longing. It is the life and light within you that needs to connect to the Source of all light and life. It is the part of you that knows that there is something more–that there are greater depths to explore and more meaning than what we see.

Why soul care? When you begin a practice of soul care, you are jumping into the deep and wide river of the Source’s love. You are choosing to continuously connect and reconnect to the Source. You realize that the focus is not yourself, but you will change. You are committing to slow down and pay attention to what is happening in your inner world.

A few soul care practices that we use at Be One Yoga are Meditation, Silence, Prayer, and Storying.  You owe it to yourself to not only practice self care, but to practice soul care to connect your soul to the Source, the only answer for the longings of the soul.

How to Protect Your Marriage From Holiday Stress

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‘Tis the season. Bells are ringing. Lights are twinkling. All is merry and bright–or is it? How is your marriage? Are you and your spouse struggling with the effects of holiday stress? For many couples, the holidays are full of extra events, extra commitments, and extra people. All of this “extra” can lead to feelings of overwhelm.

Stop for a moment. Notice your breath–is it shallow and up in your chest? Do your shoulders and neck ache? Is your chest tight? Do you have a dull headache or feel overly anxious?

Instead of enjoying this time of celebration and excitement, are you and your spouse snappy and high strung? It doesn’t have to be this way. With the right perspective, you can take care of your marriage and even grow closer during this holiday season. It all starts with a little marriage soul care.

Here are some simple, yet impactful ways to protect your marriage from holiday stress.

  1. Choose your priorities! Want to relieve stress and cut it off before it starts? Then focus on what matters most. Spend a few moments in silence and ask God to show you what is necessary to focus on during this time of year for your family. From here, begin to think about your priorities and choose 3 areas of importance for this Christmas season. Perhaps you want to focus on connecting with the Creator, remembering Jesus’ birth, or even just enjoying the season with your family. Whatever your priorities are, write them down and focus your time and energy on them as a couple.
  2. Release Expectations. This is the hardest right? It’s not saying that we cannot have expectations, but we do need to hold them loosely. Grasping at our expectations too tightly is a surefire way to end up anxious and disappointed. Instead of focusing on all the things people say the “perfect holiday” entails, how about looking around at what is actually happening in the moment. Be present to what you are currently doing and allow yourself to engage with whatever is in front of you. You see, anxiety comes when we are preoccupied with the future. It is our ego’s way of trying to control things that we have no control over. When holiday stress and anxiety rear their ugly heads (and they will) ask yourselves: What is happening now? What beauty is here? How can we fully engage this moment?
  3. Read God’s Word together. Spend a few minutes each day (you can start with 5) reading the Word. Time spent in God’s word tunes our heart to His and reminds us of what is important. Read a few verses together and have a quick chat on how it can be used to shape your marriage.
  4. Pray together. We all know we need to pray together, but are we actually doing it. Sure, you may pray for your spouse, but are we praying with them? Praying together helps you to grow in oneness because you are seeking the heart of the Father as a unit. You can share you deep needs, desires, hurts, and joys as one. When you pray together, you, your spouse, and God are all in communion in a way that doesn’t happen when you pray separately. Use this short time to not only speak to God, but to invite a few moments of silence in for listening.
  5. Keep regular couple time. Make it a regular practice during the holidays to make time for each other. Whether it is a date night at home or a shopping date, spend some time with just two of you. During this season when everyone and everything is vying for your time, make your relationship a priority. Spend quality time together often.

The holidays are often a time of stress and strain. But they don’t have to be. Choosing soul care for our marriage can keep us focus on what and Who matter most. May you walk through this season of Advent hand in hand and eyes toward heaven.

Be One, Beloved!

 

Gratitude- Life Debt to Jesus

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Have you ever read a book or seen a movie where the hero saves someone’s life, and then in gratitude the saved person dedicates her life to serving the hero? This life debt concept is highlighted in many stories, including Star Wars and Harry Potter to name a couple. The greatest story ever told also has the life debt concept, but what sets it apart from other stories is that it is our story and it’s True. The redemption story features Jesus as the greatest hero to ever live. God loved this world so much that he sent Jesus to save the world by taking the punishment for the world’s sin. Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice to God for us all. If anyone has reason to be grateful, it is us.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus, used this same type of life debt concept when describing the relationship those who follow Jesus have with Him in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15. He says, “Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive this new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.” Those who believe in Jesus are given a second chance with a new life free of the guilt of sin. How great is that?! Does knowing you are forgiven of every wrong thing you have done in your life make you feel grateful?

As followers of Jesus, we live in service to God out of gratitude to Him for his love, mercy, and grace. We are not working to earn our salvation, but because we are already saved by Jesus’ sacrifice. Romans 8:7-11 gives an excellent explanation of how God’s love, mercy, and grace produces gratitude in everyone who believes in Jesus.

“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.”

Our gratitude for God and desire to spend our lives serving him stems from the love God first showed us. Through our restored relationship, we can rejoice and gratefully give God all the glory. This month, join us as we explore what the Bible says about living in gratitude and how it flows into our relationships with our spouse, children, extended family, and friends.

Be One, Beloved

All Things Work Together For the Good

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IMG_1017“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” –Romans 8:28 (NLT)
How many of us love this verse? This portion of God’s love letter speaks to our souls because it reminds us of the big picture. It is easy to misinterpret God’s message to us here and make it all about us. Let us say it plainly friend, it is not about us.

This verse is about God.

Often we make this verse mean that everything will work out the way we want it. Our desired outcomes become the only ones that matter. We start to think “if I do this, then I can make x happen.” We get lost in the details of our lives and take the focus from God to us.

But our amazing Creator is too big for that box. When we shift our focus from us to Him, we see that “the good” is something that will always draw our souls closer to our Creator. When we are focused on only our own good, we often choose things move us in the opposite direction. Putting the focus back on God reminds us that even when horrible things happen, God will use them for His glory and to draw us into deeper relationship with Him through Jesus.

Scripture tells us in James 1:17 that “every good and perfect gift comes from above.” We must remember that all good things come from God. In the Kingdom of God, many things that Jesus considers good (suffering, humility, dying to self) are seen as exactly the opposite in our fallen world.

This month’s theme is goodness. Let’s open God’s word together and explore what it says about this fruit of the Spirit. As we grow together in goodness, we can reflect more and more of God’s light into the world.

Joy – Rainbow After the Storm

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joyHave you ever watched a child experience something for the first time? Think of the way their face lights up. That initial light is inevitably followed by a smile, maybe even laughter. Childlike awe is so precious and infectious; it makes you want to smile and laugh right along with them. It’s amazing to us how children keep that awe even with things they get to see over and over again.

Jesus said that if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven we must be like little children. Could He mean that we should approach God with humble, childlike awe? One of the things that brings joy to our daughters is spotting a rainbow. We search the sky to see who can point it out to everyone. You can see their faces light up when they spot it. Joy is that rainbow after the storm.

We all go through storms in our lives. With God, we can endure those storms and look forward to the rainbow that He has promised us. It is because of the great joy that was ahead of him that Jesus suffered the shame and endured the cross. (Hebrews 12:2) We can look to Jesus as our example as we eagerly wait for the Joy that is to come. Jesus teaches us in John 15:9-11 that if we remain in his love and follow his teaching, we will be filled with His joy and our joy will overflow! What can be better than that?

When we have the overflowing joy that comes from Jesus conquering death and giving us the hope of eternal life, no circumstance can steal that joy away from us because it is based on an unchanging promise. Join us as we focus on living with joy and approaching each day with childlike awe for all God is doing. 

Love and Be Loved

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LovejesuThis is real love—not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. -1 John 4:10 (NLT)

Last month we explored our identity by looking at whose we are. As children of our Creator, our Heavenly Father, we can also learn our purpose in light of God. We all struggle to find purpose in this life. We all ask the question, “Why am I here?” Our Creator planted this question in our minds and souls so that we would seek Him out to find the answer. What an amazing answer it is! Dear friends, our Creator has all the answers to all of your life questions. He teaches us in His Word that we are His children, and as His children, we are called to LOVE and BE LOVED. Yes that’s right, God created us to love us. Does it get any better than that? Each one of us were uniquely and specifically created by our Heavenly Father so that He could love us.

Like a loving father, God not only tells He loves us, He consistently shows it. His lavish and consistent love for us helps us learn how to love and be a reflection of it. God so intricately designed us with feelings,thoughts, desires, and free will, so that we could not only experience His love, but also fully love Him in return. God defines love, but love is not the only definition of God; He is so much more! He gifts a piece of Himself to us in the form of Love.

Our Eternal God displayed the highest form of love in sending Jesus to earth to take on all the wrongs of this world and die for us. Jesus said that there is no greater love than to die for your friends and He did just that for us! We look to Jesus as our example of how we should love God and each other. Love is not embodied by the symbol of a heart but rather by a cross. True love requires sacrifice of self for those we love. So let us love like Jesus, through our words AND actions.

This month’s theme is Love – God and Us. We will focus on what God says about His love for us, our love for him, our love for ourselves, and our love for each other. Understanding and accepting God’s love for us allows us to fully love and be loved from a place of wholeness. Love is not a feeling, but an action and it guides our lives toward oneness with our Creator God and in our marriage.

So join us in our journey to love and be loved as the Eternal created us to be.
#thebeonelife #love #Godislove

Whose You Are…Identity

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Identity2017Happy New Year! Many blessings as you unwrap the gift of a new year.

Who are you? This is such a loaded question. Often, when someone asks us who we are, we respond with our name, our job, the family we belong to, and perhaps even some activities we like to do. After we answer, though, many of us are never quite satisfied with the answer. It feels incomplete somehow.

That’s because it is.

The truth is we can never quite answer the question of WHO we are until we understand WHOSE we are. You see, our Eternal God made us in His very own image; we are HIS. Just like the moon reflects the light of the sun, for it cannot create its own light, we also reflect the light of the Son.

God has many names for us, but none of them include the things on our usual list. To God, you are His child, His beloved, a co-heir with Christ, a friend of Jesus, a saint, and many other beautiful descriptors.

The most interesting thing about this list is that they all begin with being His. We cannot fully grasp our identity until we realize that it all begins and ends with the Eternal.

So chosen child of God, journey with us throughout the month of January as we explore what God’s love letter says about our identity.

Gratitude

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gratitudeLet all that I am praise the Lord. O Lord my God, how great you are! You are robed with honor and majesty. -Psalms 104:1 (NLT)

How great is our God! He is the Creator and sustainer of this world and everything in it. He spoke it all into existence, without having to left a finger. He is eternal and has infinite wisdom. He carefully crafted each one if us, and knows us right down to the hairs on our head. The best part? We are his most prized creation because He made us in his own image.

How can we not be grateful for such a wonderful creator? We are good because he made us good.

We are blessed because He left his place in heaven to come to earth to rescue us from yourselves, from our sins. We are blessed because Christ has set us free from our sins to live a life of gratitude in worship to him. Every day that we wake up, breathe, and move is a day to be thankful to God.

The beautiful thing about being in the kingdom of God is that we don’t have to work for our salvation. Our salvation is a gift–through grace by faith. For that reason alone, we get to be grateful to God. That’s right, friend, our gratitude is a “get to.”

If you are in a dark place right now and are finding it difficult to be thankful, remember this: the Lord our God is faithful and He will never leave you. There is NO place that His light cannot reach. There is nothing powerful enough to separate us from God’s love. Stay connected to him through prayer and His word–it will light your path out of the darkness. You are redeemed, and are set free.

This month our focus will be on gratitude. So let each of us live daily with thankful hearts for our Creator. Instead of working to earn the salvation that God freely gives, let’s serve Him and one another wholeheartedly.

Discipleship

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Discipleship“If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison–our father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters-yes, even our own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.” -Jesus (Luke 14:26-27 NLT)

In our “Jesus is only love” society, this is a hard pill to swallow, no? A difficult teaching to understand from a God/man who has been painted as a “we are the world”, hippie type. But let’s not forget that Jesus is God. He is man. He is the word. He is just. And He is love.

Because of His great love for us, Jesus came to earth to establish a kingdom where he will reign forever. Jesus graciously forgives and brings all who believe in Him and dedicate their lives to Him into His kingdom. This is where a disciple’s walk behind and towards Jesus begins. Imagine God’s kingdom as a circle. When we, as Jesus’s disciples, first step into the Kingdom of God, we are are on the fringe and Jesus sits on a throne in the center. Each day that we follow Jesus, study his word, and live by his teachings, the love in our hearts for Him and others grows. We begin to take baby steps closer to him. As we grow in faith and in our relationship with Jesus throughout our lives, the blurry image of him at a distance comes into focus, and the light of His glory shines brightly through us. Jesus extends this free gift of grace to all of us, but this grace came at a cost.

The grace that God extends to us through Jesus was not cheap. It cost Jesus his life. It cost Jesus His place in heaven for a time. It cost God his Son.

Grace is costly and we continuously cheapen it.

In the verses following our key verse, Jesus goes on to say that we must count the cost of following Him. Our relationships with our families are important, our lives are important, our jobs are important; but they all pale in comparison to WHO should have the place of ultimate importance in our lives. Before we become disciples of Christ, he asks us to count this cost.

He MUST come BEFORE everything else.

To be a disciple of Jesus, you must choose Christ. If the choice is between your mother and Jesus, you choose Jesus. There is no comparison in the life of a disciple, Jesus is always first.

Like I said, hard pill to swallow, Amen?

What does this look like on a daily basis? How do we count the cost and still choose Jesus over all things. How do we make him preeminent over all things? What does it look like to put Jesus first, for real and not just as advice to graduates and newlyweds?

This month, we will be exploring discipleship. We will be looking at what it truly means to be a disciple of Jesus, to follow him wholeheartedly as Lord of our lives. We will look at some common mistakes that we make, and how His word tells us to follow him. Most of all, we will be encouraging and challenging ourselves to follow him more fully, to more fully count the cost.

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The Be One Life

The Be One Life

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