The Art Of Personal Conviction : Embracing The Power Of Faith

In a world filled with diverse ideologies and beliefs, personal conviction serves as a guiding force that shapes our character, choices, and purpose. As a Christian, I have discovered the remarkable influence of personal conviction in deepening my faith and transforming my life. In this blog post, I invite you to explore the concept of personal conviction from a Christian perspective and discover the transformative power it holds.

What is Personal Conviction?

Personal conviction can be described as a deeply held belief that guides our thoughts, actions, and decisions. It arises from the core of our being, shaped by our values, experiences, and the principles we hold dear. In the context of Christianity, personal conviction is an unwavering commitment to live out God's truth, aligning our lives with His teachings and commandments.

The Source of Conviction: God's Word

As Christians, our personal convictions are rooted in the unchanging and timeless Word of God, the Bible. It serves as our ultimate source of truth, wisdom, and guidance, revealing God's character and His plan for humanity. Through the Scriptures, we gain insights into moral standards, purpose, and the values that shape our convictions. It is through the study and application of God's Word that our personal convictions are refined and strengthened.

The Role of the Holy Spirit

In addition to the Bible, the Holy Spirit plays a vital role in shaping our personal convictions. When we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and invite the Holy Spirit into our lives, we are granted a divine counselor and guide. The Holy Spirit illuminates God's Word, provides discernment, and empowers us to live out our convictions. Through prayer, meditation, and cultivating a relationship with the Holy Spirit, our convictions become further anchored and fortified.

Living Out Our Convictions

Personal conviction should never be mere words or abstract beliefs; it demands action. As Christians, our faith compels us to live out our convictions with integrity and authenticity. It calls us to be salt and light in the world, demonstrating God's love, mercy, and justice in our interactions and endeavors. Our personal convictions should shape our relationships, work ethics, and societal contributions, reflecting the transformative power of Christ within us.

Challenges and Resilience

As we seek to live out our personal convictions, we may encounter challenges and opposition. The world may question or ridicule our beliefs, and we may face difficulty remaining steadfast in the face of adversity. However, personal conviction nurtures resilience, allowing us to stand firm in our faith. It fuels us to persevere, even when the path gets tough, knowing that our convictions are grounded in God's unchanging truth and love.

The Transformative Power of Conviction

When personal convictions are formed and lived out in alignment with God's Word, they can be transformative, not only in our own lives but in the lives of those around us as well. Our unwavering commitment to truth and righteousness can inspire and challenge others to seek a deeper relationship with God. Our actions and choices rooted in conviction become a testimony of God's power at work within us, leading to change and transformation in the lives of others.

Conclusion

Personal conviction holds profound significance for Christians, shaping our character, choices, and purpose. Grounded in God's Word and empowered by the Holy Spirit, personal conviction compels us to live out our faith authentically and impactfully. 

It empowers us to navigate challenges with resilience and embrace the transformative power of God's truth. As we embody our convictions, we become vessels of God's love, mercy, and grace, touching the lives of those around us and reflecting the beauty of a life devoted to Christ.

Embrace your personal conviction, and let it be a guiding force that propels you to live a life pleasing to God and impactful to others.

Move From Moving On To Moving Forward

Moving on and moving forward,

 they are the same thing, right?

Well actually no.

Once you have chosen to see life as seasonal and started chasing fulfilment rather than happiness, the next step toward success is moving on from moving on.

Let me explain.

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Moving on gives the impression you’ve buried the past and now you're going to build something new on its grave and pretend it never happened. Moving forward is acknowledging the past, for what it is , learning what you can, and then deciding that it doesn’t define you and your still going to move forward with your dreams and in life because nothing can hold you back. You won’t give anything permission to do so. Good on you!

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You can move on from things and still not be over it, but hiding from your feelings is not going to help you. If you bury half-open wounds then poison will fester beneath your scars. You gotta make sure that you’re not running from your yourself. Trust me it’s exhausting and only leads to making laps around the same old mountains over and over again and those scars won’t fully heal. If you build on the grave of a wound such as this,then zombies from the past may grab your heels and pull you down. 

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I know it can be hard to face certain things that lurk back there, but you don’t have to do it alone and in the long run, dealing with and owning your stuff will be good for you. Even if you decide that what lurks back there is gone now or too painful and you're not going to give it much thought beyond forgiving all that need it, including yourself, giving it to a higher power and being more aware of the good things in your life and letting time do its work. It’s still important to make the decision and at least let yourself know what you have decided. If you feel the need to reach out to someone, then do it. There is no shame in asking for help, it’s actually really brave and a very loving thing to do for yourself.

Once you have done this, you will be ready to move forward in life and that is awesome on so many levels!

So then let’s get you on to another level with a plan!

Today you get a little bit of homework

Firstly, have a look in your heart and see that you have not buried your past alive, no one wants to get chased by zombies! 

Secondly, write down your dreams, even if they seem completely unrealistically possible. 

Write them down anyway or better yet, why not make a vision board? If you can visually see the goals you're shooting for, then it gives you motivation to actually do the work to get there.Pinterest is perfect for this.

If you're into the idea of self help, then here's a couple of really cool bits and pieces that may also help you move forward, not just move on from where you are right now. I can not recommend the first highly enough! Game changer!

The other two are just useful and nice to have, and it doesn't help that they are super cute! With the third one, those stickers are so adorable, I have so many and use mine all the time, but the idea is that happy planner stickers is what I recommending, they help me stay motivated and I am sure they can help you get stuff done too! Quick reminder the below are affiliate links, I may make a small commission with no extra cost to you if you decide to buy any of the things I recommend. 

The Five Minute Journal: A Happier You in 5 Minutes a Day
(Again,can not recommend highly enough)

Motivational Gallon Water Bottle  - especially good for helping you to keep on track with your fitness goals.

Paper House Planner, Journal, Dairy, Notebook Assorted Colours - highly recommend journal stickers in general, doesn't have to be these ones but these are adorable and so sweet!


That's about it today.

Got a complaint or a comment? Let me know below and let's all together grow! 

Move From Stuck To Seasonal

There is so much pain holding the walls up, in a rut.

There’s the pain of what could have been or should be. 

There's the pain of confusion, not knowing how to get up, or for that matter which way is up. 

There’s the pain of feeling like a burden to friends and family, the pain of guilt, the pain of apathy and so on.

 In short being in a rut = pain.

 Being in a rut is one thing, but feeling stuck in that rut is a whole other level of pain, confusion and generally unpleasant emotions.

If you’re reading this and I just described you, then you likely don’t feel awake enough do too much reading today, so I will keep this short and get straight to the point.

You may be in a rut but you don’t have to stay there.

You may feel stuck, but that doesn’t mean you are. 

The fact is rubbish times happen to everyone, we all go through stages where we wish things would move a little bit faster like life is not being fair and the world seems to be against us, this is a normal part of the human experience. 

Granted, some of us go through harder things than others, and there are other elements to consider when looking at this whole topic (like tragedy, mental illness and emotional makeup)but generally, what it all boils down to is life sucks sometimes and when It does, it’s really easy to get stuck in a rut and feel like there is no way out but our feelings lie.

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I hope you are ready for this because I am about to hand you a key that may just change your life.

The number one secret to getting out of a rut is to stop seeing yourself as stuck and start seeing yourself as just in a tough season. 

Seasons change, life moves and we all grow older with time. If you are convinced you are stuck you won’t see the way out even if it is offered to you so change that thinking right now.

Yes, it really is as easy as deciding to change your mind on this.  Believe me, it will change your life, just like it did mine. 

I know when you're feeling low it's easy to feel like nothing will work, and even if you do change your mind the feeling may not catch up right away, but this is all about doing the right thing for your despite your feelings. 

Don't let yourself make justifiable excuses because you are not the only person that will hurt. The next articles (which are free for you to read, but a lot of work for me to prepare I might add) here are designed to help you get your life moving in a direction that will satisfy you, but I needn't bother if you won’t first just make this change.

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Use your logic. 

Even if you're in the depths of a really dark depression, you can still manage one tiny little thing to help get yourself moving out of your rut, you are not stuck, you’re just in a tough season and wiggling your little finger may be all you can manage right now but just wiggle anyway, because it will give you the confidence to wiggle your other fingers, then your hand then maybe in a few days this will lead to using those fingers to pick up the phone and call someone to help you move forward with your dream. 

The fact you are reading this right now tells me you still got some fight in you, so give yourself a pat on the back. You can get up, even if it is one tiny step at a time.

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You are not stuck, you’re shuffling, you’re shifting, you’re moving.

You are navigating through a season right now. If it is raining in your life, the sun will come out sooner or later and the sun always shines brighter after the storm.

See you next post,

Love Hayley

xXx

Move From Happiness To Fulfillment

People that chase happiness will never be happy for very long because it's more about the chase than the object in question.

Happiness is an emotion, it comes and goes because life is up and down. 

Chasing happiness usually leads to unhealthy people with dead dreams and more debt then they know what to do with!

I am not suggesting that the desire to be happy or even the pursuit of happiness is wrong .

What I am against is, the idea that life is all about happiness, that we should be aiming for it in every area of our lives and if we don't somehow that makes us a failure and if we can't hold on to happiness, well then that is even worse!

Happiness is an emotion, it is fleeting, I like to think of it like a butterfly, here one moment, gone the next.

 

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Chasing happiness will never bring fulfilment, it will lead to frustration. 

You would be much better of chasing fulfilment. It is possible to be  fulfilled but not happy. Chasing fulfilment requires work, sweat, and tears but it is an attainable goal that it is possible to hold on to, unlike happiness. 

Even if you are fulfilled in a job or relationship, you are still going to get your down days, but that deep knowing that what you are chasing is right for you, regardless of how you feel right now, will help you to stick it through the rough patches and make it to the mountaintop. 

Yes life still throws stuff at us, but from personal experience I have learned that I am happy a lot more of the time by living this way because I am doing the things I love and I have no doubt if you started to chase fulfilment too, you would be happy a lot more by default too.

Chasing Happiness is a rabbit hole, it can be a seemingly bottomless pit. Working on things that will fulfill you is like building a house on strong foundations. It may take a while and require more of you but in the long run, it's far more worth it.

Concepts We Build On - How To Jive with life!

Hey hey beautiful, welcome back!

Today we are going to put together all of the concepts we have talked about so far and then we get to start off sharing our first bit of encouraging advice to help you get started with this simple temple living the joy way thing we were talking about.

Let's get started!

Okay, so quick reminder the 4 pillars we built our site on are joy, integrity, vibrancy, and encouragement. We love acronyms and these 4 together create the acronym J.I.V.E

We mentioned in our introductory post that this is a nod to old fashioned family values, and all things vintage because we are all about that.

Again if you're not that's cool, you can stick around if you want to, as long as we can all be respectful here, or else maybe this blog just isn't for you, in which case thanks for trying us out, and we wish you the very best for the future.

Anyway, those of you still here,  let's get back to where we were.

So yes, old fashioned family values.

Here's the thing guys some people need to be focused on family values because without a basic standard, there is nothing to jump off from into whatever other lifestyle you so choose.

We have no problem with people with different views or lifestyles to our own, in fact, we encourage them to share their views with us because it takes all sorts to make a world, and you never know when you will learn something valuable if you stay teachable.

That said, we aim to be a safe place for people who have chosen to lead a life that lines up with what the basics of what Christian faith teaches is God's original plan for mankind.

That is that the man was created first and woman are created to be his help-mate. We are created differently, but still equally valuable. The home works best when families work together leaning into God's original plan, loving and learning together.

Women are answers not problems. 

Men are leaders not lounge-abouts. 

Children can reveal more of the heart of God, then us adults sometimes, due to their simple faith.

All life is precious, but beyond that, we don't comment on peoples' choices for themselves and their own families.

We don't do debates, it takes away from the joy-centered vibrant vibe we are aiming for but we are also not afraid to stand up for what we believe in, right here are the start of this new project. 

Anyway like I said J.I.V.E is multilayered in meaning. 

That's the old fashioned family values bit done, another meaning for the phase J.I.V.E is the art of learning to dance with life. 

Last post I hinted at  our mascot Lambi-lambs. 

This is her time to shine! 

Lambi-lambs, or Lambi for short, is lovely drawn by our house artist Alex Bax. (You can check out his Dievent Art profile here) She and her friends are not Alex's normal art style but that just goes to show he is not a one-trick pony. ( or should that be gentle-colt, where are my bronies at??)

Lambi waving at you because she thinks it's awesome you are here. 

Lambi is our blog mascot and she and her friends help us to give a little clarity and fun to our articles. Lambi loves cheering you on as you learn how to jive with life, and she is the perfect embodiment of what  Hayls, the writer, is all about. 

Life can hit hard sometimes, and so it's really important to learn how to manage changes, especially the ones we didn't see coming. We will be sharing our signature art of change management method in an up and coming post, but for now, it's enough to say that we are really good at handling a variety of changes life throws at us, and we will be sharing what we have learnt with you shortly. 

To give you a little taster of the kind of content you can expect moving forward here's a little piece of an article that will come out shortly. 

Look out for How To move from stuck to seasonal, coming out soon. 

You may be in a rut but you don’t have to stay there.

You may feel stuck, but that doesn’t mean you are. The fact is rubbish times happen to everyone, we all go through stages where we wish things would move a little bit faster like life is not being fair and the world seems to be against us, this is a normal part of the human experience. 

Granted, some of us go through harder things than others, and there are other elements to consider when looking at this whole topic (like tragedy, mental illness and emotional makeup)but generally, what it all boils down to is life sucks sometimes and when It does, it’s really easy to get stuck in a rut and feel like there is no way out but our feelings lie.

I hope you are ready for this because I am about to hand you a key that may just change your life.
The number one secret to getting out of a rut is to stop seeing yourself as stuck and start seeing yourself as just in a tough season. Seasons change, life moves and we all grow older...

There are more meanings to jive but I will leave it to your imagination for now. 

That's about it today guys.

See you next post

Concepts We Build On - J.I.V.E (Joy, Integrity, Vibrancy, Encouragement)

Hey awesome reader, thanks for coming back.

Today we would like to introduce the pillars we built our foundations on. If you have read are introductions post then you will know we love acronyms around here, and our blogs' pillars are based on this.

So to do this, we are now going to look at each word and what it means in the context we use it. Then we will look at a few other little things that tie up what we build our blog on.

The Pillar of Joy

Our first word is Joy, we did say that this could be an acronym of its own we will get to that in a moment.

Joy to us is about chasing fulfillment not happiness. We need it to be our strength when things are not going so well, it is not just a feeling it is a lifestyle.

We haven't made it a secret that Christian faith-based elements will be incorporated into this blog from time to time and the concept of joy for us is the faith-based pillar we build on. 

Building on the concept of simple temple living we talked about the last post, joy represents the spiritual element of our pillars. We put Jesus first, then the fun stuff can follow.

Joy as an acronym stands for

 Jesus

  Others

You

We put Jesus first, and so we take care of others, but in order to do this we need to take care of ourselves so we are able to handle taking care of others.

You have to take care of yourself or else you won't be effective at caring for others or building a relationship with/serving Jesus. 

Rest is super important and this element allows us to build our little blogger house in a state of calm.

The Piller of Integrity.

In an age when super polished youtube videos and crazy- profitable blogging is a thing, it can be easy for people to lie about pretty much anything for money.

That will never be us.

If you sell your integrity, how exactly are people suppose to trust you?

Even when we do bring out products, do collaborations or encourage you to follow an affiliate link, we will do our best to get you a super sweet deal from an individual or business we actually trust ourselves.

If they do something to lose our trust more than once, we will no longer support them because we want to take extra special care of our awesome readers and to be honest, anything less wouldn't feel right to us.

We believe in transparency and authenticity is a dying art, we don't want to contribute to making it extinct online.

This is the soul element and pillar of our little blogger house.

The Piller of Vibrancy

So as is probably obvious, this is the body element of our little blogger house.

If you think about it though, this doesn't just cover our physical body, but the environment we live in also.

Everything we do on this site is going to have a fun, vibrant vibe to it.

Why?

Well, we happen to think that fun can be injected into just about anything, and life throws us enough hardships without us adding to our own sorrows by not choosing to see the glass half full.

Going back again to simple temple living, this does also mean that we will be recommending fun self-care, products, and quirky fun items for your home and wardrobe. 

Expect to see cosplay, blind bags and lots of other happy vibe items recommended here for the young and young at heart. ( age is just a number to us remember)

Also on this note, this would be a really great place to let you know that Lambi-Lambs is our blog mascot. She and her friends will be hanging out here to help us explain our points in various posts and to be your personal cheerleader as you learn to dance with life, but more on this later.

Right now we need to move onto the 4th pillar. of little blog house.

The Pillar of Encouragement

So we have already covered body, soul and spirit in our simple temple living pillars, so what could possibly be left?

Tone.

As we hinted at just a moment ago, our goal is to be your personal cheers leaders as you learn to dance with life. I, (Hayls) am a born encourager.

Nothing comes more naturally to be then complimenting others and helping them to see how awesome they are.

 In the name of authenticity and because being kind can go along way in this world, everything we share with you will be done with a tone of encouragement because we believe that you are worth it.

We don't take for granted the fact that you are choosing to spend some time with us, so we make it our mission to make you feel really special for as long as you choose to follow our work. 

Encouragement is the pillar that holds the other 3 in place and together these 4 pillars lead to the final concept we need to talk about.

It's time to put it all together, it's time to J.I.V.E....next post. 

See you then guys!