Welcome to The Heart Blog! 
Praying you find some love, truth, and Heart encouragements!

Additional Resources over on HeartsFromGod.com

trust issues

Overcoming Anxiety and Overwhelm: Emotional Intelligence, Trust, Resilience as a Person of Faith

In this blog post, the author shares about a personal experience of feeling like giving up and how they discovered a different perspective through personal development. They discuss the importance of worshiping in our worry, trusting in God's character, and developing resilience through faith. Readers are invited to join the conversation on emotional intelligence, trust, resilience, and faith through a provided link.

This blog post explores the author's journey of learning to overcome moments of doubt and uncertainty. By shifting their focus to worship and trusting in God, they experienced growth and maturity in their faith. The post encourages readers to embrace emotional intelligence, trust, and resilience in their own lives.
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Are You Afraid to Love? Learn to Trust Again

Why are we so afraid of Love? I am a Lover and a Dreamer by nature. My Mom says I was born wearing Rose Colored Glasses! And yet, anxiety and insecurity were shields about me for most of my life. While I could see Love and give Love freely and abundantly, this was a gift given, not freely received. 

Have you ever given Love only to feel like it wasn’t enough? Or maybe it was ignored? Or maybe it was always taken but never reciprocated and you felt invisible or irrelevant?

There is so much written on Love and what it is, what it means, how it looks and behaves. For Believers, the most well known passage is the Love Chapter-I Corinthians 13, often read at weddings. Love is first and foremost a Person, Jesus Christ. Love is also a feeling, emotion and a commitment.

So what are we so afraid of? Aside from any experience we have had, I believe it's the fear of rejection. If you have been betrayed or hurt in your past, it’s not be easy to love the next time. We build a wall of protection around our heart to make sure that next time, the level of pain will be less. Our skin gets thicker and thicker for self-preservation's sake until we either rebel and give up on ever loving again or you become so guarded that you almost cannot feel love again. I lived a loooong time in that place.

But God! 

God’s Love is so sweet and generous, unconditional, tangible, exciting, fun, adventurous, forgiving and accepting us where we are, picking us up when we fall, our strength in weakness, catching and wiping away all the tears that fall, holding us when we are scared, lonely or sad, lovingly correcting our attitudes, guiding and protecting us from the enemy. God is the first One to celebrate our victories and cheer us on to the next one. He is our Father, Friend, Healer, Savior and Redeeming King, Lord over All. This is True Love.

Love grows where trust is the soil.

Trust is a main ingredient to grow love. As we learn to let our wall down, may our trust and dependence be placed in the plans and purposes of God first and above all others. Trusting God to lead us in our love for others, and allowing them to Love us too, as He first loved us. 

Does it means everyone has access to our deepest places? No. But we lead in our relationships with Love, for Love, in the Name of Love. 

People will be led into our hearts for a moment, a season or a lifetime. Here are a few tips as you learn to let Love in:

  • Pray for those the Lord brings into your life. Pray for God to show you the plans He has for love to be exchanged. How will you love them and let them love you?
  • Start small with trusting conversations. Get to know each other on deeper levels. When you don’t trust, you don’t share. Many relationships, be it marriage or friendships, are ministry opportunities. They all begin with a Day 1.
  • Remember the enemy will always be after heart connections that stir each other in Jesus Name, so pray over your connections for covering, always clearly edifying and guarding. 
  • Miscommunications happen and feelings do get hurt. Pray and talk these out. Pridefulness has no place in Love.
Love is a beautiful Gift. May you choose to give and receive it, unafraid!

If today's encouragement hugged your HEART today, let me know in the comments or meet me over
 in my Facebook Sisterhood Community! Feel free to share this blog with a friend who needs a heart hug too!
This is how YOU get to hug my HEART back!

Heart Hugs and Blessings,
Michele

Why Good Friends are Important (Especially if You're an Introvert)

Why Good Friends are Important (Especially if You're an Introvert)
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Do we really need friends?!? I didn’t used to think so. Jesus was enough of a BFF for me, so I thought. Then I wondered why I felt unseen and unbelonging. 

As an Introvert, we keep a little more tucked in than those extroverted souls in our life, making the establishment of friendships like finding a needle in a haystack. Sure, we can make Virtual Friends who feel real world to us, and it’s so fun, but there's something different and special about physically close, in person, feel your energy, pray together connections. 

Friendships take a lot of trust and energy and if I was honest, I just didn’t have either one to give.

Once I opened my heart to trusting God’s plan of community living, understanding the importance of iron sharpening iron, Titus 2 relationships, I began to pray for like-minded, spiritually bound, authentic relationships. These are thrilling but still scary prayers when you invite someone into the sacred space of your heart. You fear judgment, betrayal and rejection which is why not having friends seems safer. 

This is the twisted truth the enemy would like you to believe.

Truth is, we were built for community and instructed to serve as one part to the many. Will everyone enter the chambers of your inner heart circle? No. You filter through prayer asking God to show you who is meant to be there for such a time as this.

Friends are important because they are the few who reach into the daily grind of life and spotlight the things in our world, calling us out in the good, and sometimes not so good. Without them, where does our heart release it’s joys and sorrows? How are we sharpened if there is no other iron? 

Friends help us navigate seasons of life. A Good Friend will armor up to fight alongside you. They will sit with us beside still waters and remind us to be still and know God is near when our world feels chaotic. They share in our victories and help us laugh when we just want to cry.

Near hearted friends touch us with love and pray for us in the knowing and seeing. Genuine Sister Friends sharpen our dull edges and buff out the rough ones. 

Let’s be real here too. It is work, and hurt happens. The enemy will always come against covenant connections. Keeping Christ at the center and simply being aware and honest about it guards, restores and continually binds the cord of 3 strands, not easily broken. 

Good Friends are gifts from God and this requires your choosing to get out into the real world so your heart can connect with real love. Let not your heart be troubled my Introvert Sister. Let your walls down to the ones God brings into your life. You will recognize her by her boots and shovels ready to dig in, coffee and soft blankets for quiet moments, as she walks in through doors prayer opened with her love in her hand and His Love in her heart. 

May this new year bring you the blessing of community and good friends! Pray for the energy and trust to not be scared or shy. It’s essential you do!

“Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5:11,19

If today's encouragement hugged your HEART today, let me know in the comments or meet me over
 in my Facebook Sisterhood Community! Feel free to share this blog with a friend who needs a heart hug too!
This is how YOU get to hug my HEART back!

Heart Hugs and Blessings,
Michele
I am so glad (and honored) you are here! I have been blogging since 2009 as a way to journal out my thoughts as I pray God would use these story shares as practical heart encouragements for YOU TOO! We all need to recall and share those Living Stone moments.
Feel free to look around and make yourself at home! 

If you're looking for Journals & Books, check these out over on HeartsFromGod.com too!!

If you are looking for an Online Sister Community 
?Are you an Introvert Rising?!? If you are looking for a Community of HEART Centered, Jesus Lovin' Sisters ready to rise up over their insecurities and seek after the Heart of God?!?  Meet us here! 

I share encouragement over on the Facebooks on my personal profile as well as the Encouragement Page Livin’ Where Faith Is on too.

I have two free resources for you: 
1.) If you'd like some help sharing YOUR story or testimony, here's a link to grab the fill in the blank PDF I created to help you get started sharing YOUR heart with others! There's a video that goes with it over in the But God Sister Squad Community on Facebook.

2.) www.CreatingSpaceforGrace.com is PDF I share the things I have done (and do) the help guard my peace on the daily!!! I get asked about this all the time, this is my practical resource guide!

Heart Hugs and Blessings,

Michele"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
Ephesians 3:14-21 ESV


Pssst...by Law, I have to share there are affiliate links in here where I earn money from your purchase when you make a purchase! it's affiliate marketing and I love not having to sell stuff! And you know me, I am not gonna sell anything, but I will share everything! I love it! 

A Little About My Heart

 
Born and raised in the church, a Christ Follower, Kingdom Encourager, Wife, Mama, and an Overcomer! GLORY TO GOD!!

I lived most of my life fearful, anxious, and insecure.. I found myself always hiding but serving, striving for perfection in my less-thanness, as a way to earn my worth to self, God and others, sacrificing in the name of serving, hospitality and humility...putting others needs before my own from a place of hiding in my lack, and trying to earn value rather than serving in the space of grace, confident faith and overflowing love. 

Never attaining, only to lead a life of more insecurity, overwhelm, anxiety, and panic, screaming to break free from this bondage, to be that actual strong, courageous Christian Woman everyone else seemed to be, but me. 

BUT GOD.

In 2009, Where Faith Is was born as a blog, learning my voice behind the safety of a keyboard, building courage to speak my truth behind the screen...and here all these years later, Little by little, God is expanding my heart boundaries as He reveals more of His to me. I am so excited to share so freely! 

I especially love being an encourager to other encouragers in the faith who know they are called to encourage yet they themselves struggle with their value and ability. Isn't that how the enemy works? He tries to disqualify us in the same area we are called to shine! What an irony!  

I believe if more people let go of fear and insecurity, surrendered to grace and BELIEVED their value, their spark for life will return to a roaring fire that lights up wet wood! 

When women choose to walk courageous and strong in body, mind and spirit...they step out of the boat and walk on water as Peter did, part the waters like Moses and set more people FREE in His name through their Divine purpose to the Glory of GOD! We are each a Light House of Strength on the shorelines of Grace . 

Friend, you may not believe it, but you are meant for more than eat/sleep/work/repeat. You are also equipped with good works to serve and bless the Kingdom Body, and the world with His Love, through YOU! You've got to surrender your fear and let Him lead you.

You are more able than you think you are and most likely, the thing you feel is the weakest part of you is the strongest thing about you!

If you are an introvert too and want to be a part of our newly launching online community, we are here for you!! Let's Connect! It's an honor to encourage the Encouragers.

I am H.I.S. (Heart In Surrender & Service).

Hugs & Blessings, 
Michele

"So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." Philippians 2:1-4

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