Welcome to a Life of JoyIvy

A genuine question I hear a lot from godly unmarried people goes something like this, “If we are to abstain before marriage how will I know if we are sexually compatible?” …Why this a thought of concern confuses me but I get it.  When a healthy baby is born, he/she is born with legs, hands, eyes, and so on. For the sake of this post I’d focus on legs. Babies are born with legs but don’t come out of their mother’s uterus walking, they learn to walk just as they learn to use every other parts of their body. No one is born sexually compatible to anyone. Sex at its core is biology and if and when God calls you to marriage your spouse and yourself will and should learn how to serve and please each other sexually. Sexual compatibility will be a fruit of your service to each other. I believe that in a godly marriage selflessly submitting one to another through acts of service is and should be one foundation on which everything is built and this selfless service extends to sexual intercour...

While talking with my sisterhood I was finally able to articulate this feeling I had carried for months. Although I wasn’t completely clueless to how I felt, the gift of being able to fully capture it in words was really liberating. THERE IT IS! Though still fatigued, I’m once again reminded: JUDE 24 - Now to him who is able TO KEEP you(me) from stumbling and to present you(me) blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. So if Jesus does the keeping and presenting which is basically all the heavy lifting, why then is my spirit man so fatigued? Better put what nurtured seed turned into a tree is producing this fruit, fatigue?  Moments of introspection led me to weariness. Weariness birthed from the struggles that come with living in this world but specifically the one birthed from the reality of my flesh. I’m not oblivious to the weakness and depth of wickedness that my flesh is capable of but I’m also aware that the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives i...

This past weeks have been filled with thoughts of me questioning what the heck I’m doing with my life, especially in my spiritual life. I’ve borderline been joyless and I mean joy that only God can give. With little to no zeal to pursue or seek God’s face talk less of tarrying in his presence, all I have genuinely desired and enjoyed is pleasing my flesh (Netflix, random Youtube videos, mindlessly scrolling through Instagram) but in the midst of all that I’ve somehow disciplined myself to study my bible and pray. The main theme of my prayer being “UPHOLD ME WITH A WILLING SPIRIT”. I knew my spirit was willing but my flesh was so weak. In that same vein, I was enjoying a show on Netflix tonight when my spirit began to nudge me to seek God, I initially resisted but soon found myself asking to be upheld. I was soon led to Jude 24 which with all humility I have lost count of how many times I’ve read it. I in fact started a study guide on the book of Jude a week ago. But I followed the spir...

Is God difficult to talk to or are we just talking to our idols as God? I’ll guess your definition of prayer is the same as mine, which at its core is simply a communication between God and man. But how exactly does one communicate with a King Spirit? Just when I thought I had finally locked down the act of praying, the Holysprit exposed my idolatry. The issue wasn’t the act but the how I was praying. A brief insight into my typical prayer schedule : Worship, thanksgiving, bible study & prayer(in my knowledge and in the holyghost). Seems solid right? So I thought.  All of those expression above consisted of one theme, my genuine desire to reverence God based off my gained knowledge and understanding of him which I honestly don’t think is wrong. But when my prayer life begins to depend solely on my knowledge of Christ, the whole purpose of prayer is missed. In Matthew 6:9-13, when Jesus taught us to pray, the focus of his gaze was solely on the father from the beginning of the p...

I think one reason why we sometimes stumble or struggle through a dry or difficult season is because we are impatient. The feeling of dryness, weariness or temptations isn’t necessarily shocking or at least it shouldn’t be because the Bible does tell us that our possibility of walking through the valley of the shadow of death is high, but that same verse tells us that he will be with us and comfort us. Why then don’t we, at least I feel comforted? Why do these temptations seem to sometimes have me in a chokehold?  Isaiah 40:29-31 :                29 - He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.             30 - Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted;    31 - but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. Some oth...

Since the fall of the first Adam, the consistency in the desperate wickedness of man have proven over and over again that without Jesus man cannot function effectively. If you read through the books of the Bible, it’s easy to spot the fruits of wickedness of man. None of the prevalent sins fighting our world today are new. Recycled and rebranded? Yes. We’ve done a good job giving new names to the different forms of sins that plague our society but these sins aren’t new they are ancient.  Our world is searching for answers in everything but the one who made everything. Things like our ancestors, ourselves, the universe, man made gods, money, creatures, animals etc. What baffles me is that those things only came to be because the one who made everything made them be, yet we worship anything but the creator himself. The good news is, the creator who existed before the fall of man and still existing is ANCIENT BUT VERY RELEVANT and is the answer we need. It’s saddening that a lot of pe...

  Google says home is the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household, but that changed for me at the age of 16. I had to leave the people, places and the very things that I called home. Joy filled my heart at the prospect of being able to get a higher education, I packed my bags with things that would remind me of home in hopes to mask the pain my heart was also feeling. Hours later. Here I was in a foreign land, my new home. A new continent, country, state, city, culture, people, food, and a new climate. Months turned to years and this foreign land become my home. The people my people, the culture my culture, the city my city. I made friends that became family. The city became a beauty I looked forward to beholding. I looked forward to the different season the weather had to offer, and I soak them all in. Despite the challenges that came with leaving my home country, I was able to make home of this new city.   Minnesota is known for its...

A process as simple as fixing my gaze on Jesus in the place of prayer can become a battle when my mind is fixed on everything but Jesus. Remember when Paul said in Romans 7:15b "for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate"? he was referring to me, because that's the only way I can make it make sense. The more I choose daily to die to myself the more I just want to be out of this flesh and be in my glorified body because this flesh is not it at all. (Don't worry I'm fine) You ever start praying and your mind start parading different thought with the mission to distract you from praying. I was praying the other day and the only thing on my mind was the Quaker Oats I was going to eat after praying, may I also add that, that's my least favorite meal. So, why was that the main thing on my mind at such a time? this flesh!  That's one of many temptation of what a life of daily dying to flesh can look like. Although, in moments like that his streng...

 HAPPY NEW YEAR FAMILY! I have spent days thinking of how to write on this topic and I still don't feel like I have my thoughts organized but I want to stop postponing, so I'll try my best to articulate my thoughts. So here we go. What is Sadness? Leonard Holmes definition best describes my thoughts, " Sadness is an emotional state characterized by feelings of unhappiness and low mood. It is considered one of the basic human emotions.  It is a normal response to situations that are upsetting, painful, or disappointing. Sometimes these feelings can feel more intense, while in other cases they might be fairly mild." Growing up, expressing sadness was frowned on and often seen as weakness. Some people even went as far as using part of the Bible they deemed fit to prove their point or some use bible verses that can yes encourage in those moments of sadness but in this context is used to show you that you are not christian enough for allowing yourself feel sad. The fact th...