Hi everyone! My name’s Virginia Farlow, and Caroline is one of my dearest friends from Alabama. Caroline has been with me throughout so much of my journey with the Lord and has encouraged me to keep pursuing truth and living out the gospel throughout that whole journey. I can’t tell y’all how much I have loved seeing the Lord speak through her in this blog and how much she has let Him completely take it all over. It is truly all of Him and none of Caroline. One night while I was having one of many sleepless nights (night shift problems), I was reflecting with Jesus on where all He had taken me and how unique my journey has been with Him. Right then and there is when He told me I needed to share that with people because there are people out there who could relate. Not long after that, He gave me a vision of Caroline’s blog as an outlet to share this- so here I am :) Disclaimer #1- when I was first praying for this post, “raw” is the word Jesus kept telling me. I’m doing my best to share with you my heart uncensored so that you can see the real transformation Jesus has made in my life. Very scary for me to be this vulnerable, but I pray for your heart and that you’re able to see where exactly I am coming from. Disclaimer #2- I am in no way a writer of any kind (I’m a nurse so actually the complete opposite of anything creative) so bear with me and my run on sentences...

Let me just start off by saying that I just teared up while I was thinking of my journey with Jesus. HE IS SO STEADFAST YALL. Every time I think of His overwhelming love I just cry. I never want it to be something I take for granted. So here we go...My journey with Jesus started off in junior high when I was saved at a church retreat. I had such a loose grasp on what exactly that meant, and I spent my entire junior high and high school years trying to earn Jesus’s love by being a “good girl” and leading church retreats and bible studies. It wasn’t until college when I learned what it truly meant to live as a disciple of Jesus. My idea of living as a Christian shifted to living in a relationship with Jesus. But I graduated college still not living a day to day relationship with Him. I had so much of what I needed but I knew something was missing. I was so desperate to feel on fire for Jesus and be in constant communication with Him. I would pray night after night to feel the way I would hear others felt. They talked to Jesus all the time. He told them things. They were on fire to tell people about Him. I wanted so bad to be like that but I just wasn’t there. And then it finally hit me- you cannot be in love with someone that you don’t know. Reading a short devotion every morning or a couple bible verses a day is not a way to learn about Jesus. It’s hard for me to think of a specific time where it all hit me, but I do know that Lysa TerKerst’s book Uninvited painted such a clear picture of Christ’s love for me specifically.

It showed me how much He loves me individually, and it gave me such a craving to reciprocate that love for Him by learning about Him.

Yes I had learned so much about Jesus throughout years of Bible study and church, but I had rarely taken the time to be intimate with Him and just sit and learn His teachings. Getting to know Jesus takes discipline. It’s not always something you’re going to want to do. It’s hard sometimes. I think that’s where our society can paint this picture in a different light. It can seem at times that you’re not a faithful servant when you aren’t 100% on fire to go to church at 8 am or bible study at 7pm after a long day of work. But that’s just not true. Jesus refers to our walk with Him all throughout the Bible as being hard and taking discipline. But I can promise you with 100% confidence that the more you get to know Him, the more you’ll WANT to get to know Him. I found myself eager to listen to the next Passion City Church or Buckhead Church service podcast. The more you realize who Jesus really is and His character, the more you realize your dependency on Him. The more you realize His love for you, the more you’ll realize how different living life embracing His love is. Living life loved as a beautiful son or daughter of Christ is a game changer. It shifts from trying to earn His love to just basking in His love. You can’t earn it. It’s meant to just be embraced. It’s a relationship. Jesus has an opinion on every aspect of our life.

Here’s what I struggle with- basking in Jesus’s love and being a disciple doesn’t look like anything specifically. There isn’t one specific thing that you do/say that will guarantee you’re doing it all right and you’re right on track. It looks different for everyone. It’s a personal relationship with Jesus and no one can see this intimate relationship with Him.I struggle with this in the sense that I like organization and check lists. I like confirmation numbers and assurance. However, when you follow Jesus, your life serves as confirmation of His love for us. The transformation from death to life is confirmation. It’s not one small thing- it’s everything. It’s involving Him and actively inviting Him into every aspect of your life. It’s setting free all of the limits of Him this Earth puts on Him. There is nothing too small or insignificant for Him. How cool is that?? He wants to be in our day to day mundane life. He is so jealous for our love and affection. He knows no limits!!

If we expect and pray for Him to take over our lives, He will show up. That is a guarantee.

If you’ve been following Jesus for a period of time, you know His timing and the circumstances He puts us in can be so hard to understand and confusing at times. I can testify to this by being on night shift in a new city. I was very lucky to be able to move to day shift at my first nursing job so quickly. I only had to be on night shift for 4 months before moving to day shift. I did not get that lucky in my second job in Atlanta. I had to be on night shift for what will be a year (I go to days next month). If you know me you know I have a day shift personality. This was very hard for me. I could write pages about the circumstances and why it was so hard for me but that is off topic- just trust me on this one. I found myself dreading going to work and sometimes tearing up when thinking about it. I didn’t understand why the Lord would put me in circumstances where I felt like doing nothing more than being negative and not sharing His love with others. This is where Uninvited started changing my heart (if you haven’t read this you’ve GOT TO...Lysa is so raw and the whole book is straight from the Spirit. She takes no credit for her wisdom and gives it all to Jesus...it’s truly amazing to read, but anyways....). One night when I was digging in to the beginning of the book after a long stretch of night shifts, Jesus met me exactly where I was and broke me down.

I was listening to my Spotify worship playlist and the Lord broke down all barriers and began to romance me through the worship music. As I was feeling so overwhelmed by His love, “When I Lost My Heart To You” began playing and I immediately broke down. He began to teach me about His love for me and how dependent I am on Him. The next songs were “Lord, I Need You,” “We Dance,” “I Love You Lord,” and “You Are Good.” He is so alive. Our God meets us in our beds at 1:00 in the morning with a book and a Spotify playlist. He breaks down all of our preconceived notions that say that we have to be in a church with hundreds of other people in order to hear from Him. That is such a lie from the enemy.

He is a God of intimacy. He is a God of romance. We worship a living God. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us.

It all started to make sense. If things weren’t rough and our circumstances were always perfect, we wouldn’t need a savior. We could be our own savior. We could plan out our own lives. Who wants that?? We need these times in our lives to be broken down to where He is all we have. There were nights when I felt so discouraged and alone that all I could do was grasp onto Him for dear life. He was the only thing that could get me through 3 straight weekend shift nights. “But he said to me,

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

— 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

What an interesting and different way of thinking about our circumstances?? That is the opposite mindset our society provides to us. We live in a society where we are “fine” and don’t like sharing with people the hardships we’re going through. The last way we’d view a hard time in our life would be considered beautiful. Here is an excerpt from Uninvited that rocked my world-

“If God is good and God is good to me, then I must fill in the gaps of all the unknowns of my life with a resounding statement of trust: God is good at being God. I don’t have to figure my present circumstances out...I don’t have to know all the whys and what-ifs. All I have to do is trust. So in quiet humility and without a personal agenda, I make the decision to let God sort it all out. I sit quietly in His presence and simply say, “God, I want Your truth to be the loudest voice in my life. Correct me. Comfort me. Come closer still. And I will trust. God, You are good at being God.”

How beautiful is that?? This is such an easier thing to write out than to practice but I promise the more I dived into His word and teachings before work, the more I saw Him at work. He didn’t go anywhere. It’s not like He all the sudden showed up. He was there the entire time. It was my heart that had the issue. If we aren’t viewing this world as a place full of opportunities to share Jesus, then it’s not going to seem like that. Do I still have crappy nights? Of course. It’s never going to be perfect because we still have the battle between our flesh and the Holy Spirit living inside of us. But what does change is our ability to take hold of our flesh and proclaim truth over it. I can say with 100% confidence that I have a Father who has a plan for my entire life. He always has my best interest in mind. I know He will challenge me and stretch me as far and wide as I am capable. But that’s where we grow. That’s how we get to be warriors for Jesus. We believe the truth we know in times when it seems as there is no truth and He is torturing us. When we don’t get into the grad school we thought was for us. He never promises an easy road with a lack of tears. But what He does promise is a fulfilled life serving the One who paid the biggest sacrifice of them all. Who paid for every sin we did last year, we are doing today, and what we’ll do in 50 years. It’s all about our mindset and the way we view our circumstances. Our circumstances do NOT define us. That is of the enemy and is one of the easiest ways he can take control of our hearts. He has changed my heart, and I know that He can change yours too.

He loves us so much that He gives us the freedom to choose how we want to live. But He will never stop pursuing us and putting people specifically in our lives to point us towards Him. I want to be a testament towards Jesus’s never ending pursuit for us. It doesn’t always look like an overnight salvation. That is how it looks for some people but not all of us. It can be a gradual journey that takes time and self discipline. You are never too out of reach or uninteresting for a relationship with Jesus. He cares about our day to day lives. He cares about our career, our spouse, our friends, where we live, who we live with, the books we read, and so much more! I just encourage all of you to invite Jesus into every aspect of your lives and trust that He will show up IN HIS TIMING. Pray to align your heart with His. Pray to see people the way He does. Pray to live basking in His love and I promise you’ll see things start to change.

If you’ve made it this far that means you’ve somehow managed to read through my brain dump of a blog post. I hope that at least one thing the Spirit said through me touched your heart and at least planted a seed. I pray that you are all about to pursue Jesus the way He is pursing you because it is truly the most fulfilling way to live. You will feel an overwhelming sense of peace that nothing in this world can provide. Thanks for reading- I love you all!!

If you want some podcasts to get started...here are some of my personal favorites. These are great because you can listen to them in your commute to work, during a workout, or while you’re getting ready to go somewhere.

-DEATH - - - LIFE (Passion City Church) by Ben Stuart

-Nowhere to Go but Up (Passion City Church) by Levi Lusko

-The American in the Mirror (Buckhead Church) by Andy Stanley