Yom Kippur

Blog #3

On Friday, I had the amazing opportunity to celebrate Yom Kippur. Afterwards, as I was contemplating on the events of the day, I realized just how amazingly blessed we are to have the real living God in our hearts, lives. When we look at the world, what do we see? Hurt, pain, broken families, lack of joy, high rates of suicide. And then I look at the amazing life we have with Jesus in our hearts and I realized that we are incredibly, incredibly, INCREDIBLY BLESSED!!! We have His joy (Psalm 4:7), His strength (Psalm 18:32), His peace (Psalm 29:11), His love (Psalm 13:5). We have His amazing mercy and grace. Sure we have our moments of struggles and pain. We are humans who live on a corruptible earth, but how great is it to know that through all of our struggles we have amazing God who walks us through the struggles and through it all forms us into better, stronger, men and women of faith!

Real Identity

Over the last couple of months God has given me the amazing opportunity to travel and spread His love all around the world. Throughout my traveling, my eyes were opened to different cultures and the fact that although we are all so different, we're all the same in God's eyes. When I came back to the States, I began to notice my Ukrainian language slipping a little bit. Growing up in the US has made me feel more like an American than a Ukrainian, but there is still that Ukrainian part in me that will never depart. So this got me to thinking about who I really am and between my love for the cultures that I experienced during my travels, my own Ukrainian heritage, and the American culture that I grew up in and have become so accustomed to, I realized that more than anything I want to be identified as being part of God culture than any other culture on earth.

The world is promoting identity right. Independence has become key and many people fall into this idea and begin to question who they are in this world and what exactly is their identity. Sadly, I must admit that I myself have also fallen into this trap. But the truth of the matter is that no matter what culture we were born into, our identity is not in that culture but in who we are in Christ. The more we find ourselves in God culture, the more we will grow in our relationship with God, the more open we will become for Him to use us for His glory, and ultimately this will lead us to living out His perfect will for our lives.

My prayer is that everyone will become consumed in God culture and truly find their identity in Christ Himself.