Hi Luvv God family,
My name is Stephanie Nyota and I have been granted the opportunity to start sharing my writings within this community - praise God!
Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:37 (NLT): “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.”
With this in mind, I’ve been pondering on how to give form to this task of sharing my faith through words and how vulnerable this actually feels to me.
God’s Word has been my literal lifeline, in the sense that it saved me from a very dark space.
Through writing, God revealed His grace and began speaking more life into my mind. Little did I know that this love language between me and the Lord would one day become something I would share with others.
Return to your first love.
These past couple of months, however, I’ve felt distant from God. My writing hasn’t been flowing as usual, and life has been letting me down left and right. To be very honest, it has been hard for me to stay hopeful, and it has caused my heart to grow a bit cold toward the Lord and His Word.
But even in the midst of that, God still arranged for me to be here, sharing words rooted in faith. This reminded me that God’s love is truly unwavering, especially in our doubt. And I told God I will always have faith, regardless of what comes my way.
Yet I had to ask myself: how much of that faith is actually being shown in action? How have I been practically showing God that I love Him, even when life feels heavy?
I think many of us are familiar with the phrase “return to your first love.” When I thought of this, I was instantly drawn back to writing because for me, writing is the practice that helps me bring my heart, soul, and mind before God, so the Holy Spirit can transform and redirect them back to Him.
So what does it look like to love God practically?
Loving God with all my heart means surrendering my desires.
Loving Him with all my soul means allowing Him to heal my brokenness.
Loving Him with all my mind means inviting Him into my thoughts and letting Him renew them.
And as I share this with you, I’d love to invite you into reflection as well: Where are the desires of your heart, the issues of your soul, or the thoughts in your mind that need to be surrendered back to your first love?
And what practice could you (re)partake in to make space for the Holy Spirit to redirect you? Is it reading the Word, journaling, drawing, singing, going on a walk or just simply being still before God.
It could be anything, as long as you are inviting God to be at the center of it and allowing Him to work through in all honesty!
It is in doing so that we can wholeheartedly live out the second commandment Jesus gave us in Matthew 22:39 (NLT), which is equally important: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” And we can only love each other because “He first loved us” (1 John 4:19, NLT).
Selah!
Much love and blessings,
Stephanie Nyota
Luvv God Team <3
A Little Poetry Prayer
Glory be to my Creator,
Whose hands have crafted me elegantly,
Whose hands have guided me steadily,
Whose hands have provided me sanity.
Glory be to my Creator,
Even when I feel so blatantly,
Even when I feel lost endlessly,
Even when I feel forgotten constantly.
Glory be to my Creator,
Who keeps reminding me of Who made her,
Who keeps redirecting me on my ways and,
Who keeps providing me wisdom and safety - always.
Glory be to our Creator <3