God wants me to blog

Does that sound weird to you? It sure sounds weird to me. I wrote, in a previous post, that I felt that God had put this on my heart and since then I have really questioned that. Is God really leading me to put the struggles and triumphs of life and my walk with Him out there for others to read or am I just hopping on the blog band wagon? I honestly don't know if God thinks this is a wise use of my time, but here is what I do know:

1. God wants me to share His love with others.
2. At this point in my life, I can't just walk up to someone and say, "Let me tell you about Jesus...".
3. I have been comforted and inspired while reading other blogs, specifically As We Are and The Ingram Gang.
4. I am encouraged when I hear that other believers struggle with the same doubts and fears that I do.

And here is what I hope:

1. Reading about my struggles might encourage someone in their own walk.
2. Blogging will allow me to get to a place where I feel comfortable talking about my faith in person.
3. God will be pleased with my 21st century way of spreading the good news of His love and grace.
   

Yikes!

I received my first comment to a post (Thanks for the warm welcome, Tamara) so now it hits home that people might actually be reading my blog. I guess that's the goal in blogging, but all of a sudden I'm worrying what people might think: she's boring, she's clueless, she rambles... Basically, it boils down to my lifelong fear of being judged. Why do I care so much what others think? What does it matter what people think about my house, my clothes, my weight, my blog... What's important is what's in my heart. I know this and yet I struggle with my irrational fear of judgment in some way or another almost every day. I guess what I really fear is judgment that leads to isolation and rejection. A couple of weeks ago, our pastor challenged us to fear God's disappointment more than man's disapproval. So I pray: God, give me the wisdom to fear what I should.

I love Jesus!!!

Why am I starting a blog when I said that a week ago I thought I had nothing to say? Well, a while back, I fell in love with Jesus and when you are passionate about someone you naturally want to talk about that someone. I don't feel like I have anyone in my life that wants to hear me go on about how head over heals I am for my savior so I have been praying that God would bring such people into my life. I am still waiting for the answer to this prayer, but in the meantime I feel like God put this on my heart because all of a sudden I have this intense desire to blog and I feel like I have a lot to say. The problem is going to be organizing all these thoughts. It may take me a while to get organized, so please forgive me if my posts seem very random.

Here goes...

A week ago, if you had asked me if I would like to start a blog, I would have said, "No way! I have no time and nothing to say." So what happened? I'm not exactly sure. I've never been interested in blogging or reading other people's blogs, but through Facebook, I stumbled onto a couple of blogs that really made me think. These two bloggers often write about their walks with God and I enjoy reading what they write, but they are both much more mature in their faith than I am. I am a relatively new believer and consider myself a "toddler" in my walk with God and as a toddler I stumble a lot and a little over two years ago I fell flat on my face and am just recently picking myself up and making progress again. Yesterday, I woke up and felt like God had put it on my heart to blog about my walk, stumbles and all. So I'm going to give it a try.