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Love is expressed and not confessed only. You can’t just tell a person you love him/her , you have to show it as well. Back your words with sincere actions from the heart. It is wicked to tell someone ‘' I love you’’ but your actions are contrary.Love requires a sincere expression.For God so love the world that He gave his only son. God’s offering of Jesus was the expression of His love for the world.Likewise, Man’s obedience to the word of God is an expression of his love for God.(John 14:27) A person who loves God, expresses his love for God by obeying His will.. I pray, may your love for God be expressed with all your heart. Jehovah Shammah ( The Lord is there)!!!

Hey guys! I wanted to come on here today and see if anyone else on here can relate to what I've gone through. My parents are what the Bible would call "unequally yoked". My mom is a strong Christian and my dad is a strong athiest. It's a really long and complicated story of why the situation is like it is, but I'll try to give you the quick version. My parents met at church. At the time when they got married, they were both committed Christians who prayed together and wanted to raise their kids in a Christian home. My dad was still a Christian when I was born. A few years after my birth, however, things started to change. My dad started to have questions about the Bible and if God really existed. He started to read books on evolution and other similar scientific topics and he began to lose his faith. He did tons and tons of research and came to the conclustion that there was no God. This was when I was about five and my brother was about three. My dad told my mom that he would no longer attend church and he told her that if she let my brother and I go to church, then he would talk to me and my brother about how he didn't believe in God and evolution. My mom couldn't bear the thought of me and my brother being confused like that at such a young age and so she decided that we just wouldn't go to church. Saying all of this, my dad is a great guy. He has morals and is a good person. He just isn't a Christian and my mom is and it's made my family a bit dysfunctional. So, I went for years wihout ever being taught about God or faith or anything. Even though my mom was a Chrisitan, she couldn't talk to us about God because then my dad would talk to us about being an athiest and it would be confusing for us. I grew up not being allowed to read the Bible and not ever having anyone say a bedtime prayer with me. One of my cousins gave me a children's Bible for Christmas when I was in elementary school and I remember my dad taking it away from me. I remember going to my best friend's house as a little girl and playing a video game that had a Christian theme and having my friend's mom come up to me and say that I needed to stop playing the game because my dad wouldn't approve of it. My family NEVER talked about religion and after a while it got to the point where I was terrified of even saying the word God in my own house because I didn't want things to be uncomfortable. I wanted to be a Christian when I was little because the school I went to was a Christian school and so I knew about it from that exposure. But it had to be a secret desire because I wasn't allowed to be one. When I was about 10 or 11, my dad was still a strong atheist but he decided that it would be okay if my mom started taking my brother and I to church. It was then that I was exposed to Christianity even more and I felt more comfortable with the idea that I was allowed to be a Christian. Of course, my dad didn't go with us but at least my mom was able to go now. My family still never talked about church or God. In my high school years I was mostly uncomfortable with talking to my mom about God too because it just seemed weird to me. I remember asking my mom to not pray for us at Thanksgiving one year before the meal just because it made me so uncomfortable with my dad around. I've been going to church ever since then. I'm 19 now and I also go to a Christian university where I feel like I am growing in my faith a lot. My family still doesn't tallk about God and I've never talked about the situation with my dad before or hardly anyone else. I still feel a lot of pain from the situation with my dad. It bothers me that my mom is in a marriage with someone who isn't a Christian. She can't share her faith with her husband and she wasn't able to share it with her children as much as she would have liked. Don't get me wrong, my parents love each other and are committed to each other. They don't arugue often. But there is a distance between them and I feel that much of it has to do with this issue. My mom has told me that she loves my dad but that she had no idea that this situation was going to happen when she married him. She wanted to be with someone that she could share her faith with. Apparently my dad used to pray with her when he still believed. I can't even imagine that now AT ALL. It's difficult because I feel that because of my dad's atheism I can't be as close to him as I would like to be. I grieve that he has lost his faith because I know that he has to feel alone all the time. I wish that I could have had a Dad that told me how much God loved me and that I am God's princess. But I didn't and I know that it has made my rely on God more and has made me stronger as a person. I still wish with everything that I have that things could have been different for my family though. Now that both my brother and I are in college, I feel really bad for my mom going to church and sitting alone there. I've heard that when one person in a marriage is a Christian and the other isn't that it is called being "spiritually single". I feel that this term definitely applies to my mom. I just still have trouble dealing with this and the pain that it has caused my family. I hope and pray that this doesn't happen to my future marriage. I am afraid that when I get married someday that my husband will start out being a knight in shining armor and then later change his personality and his whole belief system just like what my dad did to my mom. I also have trouble believing that men really can be strong Christians because I have lacked that influence in my life for many years. My mom tells me that she hates how this situation is but that I shouldn't worry about it too much. But it's just that to me it is a huge deal because if you are a Christian then your whole life should be about God and when that lifestyle is repressed for so long it becomes difficult. I guess it bothers me because my mom wouldn't have married my dad if she had known this was going to happen. Sorry this was so long. I just have been really curious to talk to anyone else who has gone through this or something similar to this??? Your sister in Christ, R.M. <3

I was seven when my little sister was born. And to be honest, I saw nothing but a crying and pooping machine. However, that moment, when she held my finger with her tiny hand... something came up inside me. "This little thing needs me... Well, I guess I have to say goodbye to my Gameboy for a while." And here we are until today. There are conflicts between us, of course, since seven years really make a huge age-gap, but we're always there for each other when needed. There was a time when I hung out with friends until 11:00PM, and it's a rule in my house to get home before 9:30PM. When I got home, I was sure that I would be dead for sure, but to my surprise she had been sitting there, wating for me to come home. "Where have you been, big brother? I thought you would never come home" and then cried a good deal. The other time was when we joined a contest for siblings. We were a great team, yet I remember that we had had a fight two hours before the contest started. That's all I can tell you. There are also lots of precious moments that might take me an eternity to write them out. What about you? Do you have any unforgettable memories with your siblings? If you do, please share.

Unfortunately, My mom and I got into a really bad fight and now she wants absolutely nothing to do with me and says she hates me. I know I did wrong but I don't know how to fix and stop the things I did that caused this dilemma and also, how I can show I am different and changing and how I can make it up to her. Any ideas? Please I am so very very very DESPERATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My brother is very devoted to this woman he's going to marry. Due to some abuse at her place (not physical...emotional and mental abuse where her mother would call her a 'lazy, fat cow' even though she works hard and is too skinny for her own good), she lives with my brother in the basement suite that my brother has been renovating. They are of age, and they started having safe sex after they were engaged to each other. They are both wonderful Christians. She was in the nursery to help take care of the kids (responsible and a joy to be around), and both of them were in the Worship group for Sunday service. My parents have been accepting of it, and they are Baptist Christians. We all went to the same church. But, I recently found out that the church banned them from joining in the worship team, babysitting, or anything like that! They basically turned their backs on them, and now they're left looking for a new church. The two love each other a LOT, and they are devoted to each other. I guarantee you, knowing my brother, that the relationship isn't going to end until one of them DIES. I used to go to the church, and I had some nice friends there with kids as well (I have a toddler son), but now I'm wondering if we should just look for a new church. I'm very hurt by what the church did, and frankly, the pastor has hurt me in the past when I was going through an identity crisis (I have borderline, and my gender at one point was in question in my mind so strongly, I finally called myself bigender, but not bisexual). He wanted me to change so I was perfectly a girl, even though that's NEVER been the case with me my whole life because of my mental disorder. I just need someone to help me out with this. I'm torn, because I want to stay where there were some good friends, but at the same time, I want to stay loyal to my family and do what I feel is RIGHT. Is it possible to still have ties with those families outside the church without being awkward? Or, will it be too strange for me to go to another church while being on my brother's side when I want to still be friends? I'm a young mother (23 this year, married for three years) with a wonderful Christian husband, and he says that we should look for another church. HE feels that they're being too close-minded. We can't even find anywhere in the Bible that distinctly says not to live together before marriage. (Remember that the mother actually goes to that church too, and they probably wouldn't believe my brother if he told them what she says to his fiancee). This is more of a rant to get the feeling out, but I am curious to hear what young people now-a-days are thinking. After all, there's different ways of being married all over the world. Heck, you can be common-law and not technically married in this country, and that's legal and legit. But, what do the rest of you think?

This post is going to end up being really long; I appologize in advance for that. I hate to ramble, but I really could use some advice right now and I was hoping maybe someone on here could help me. Okay, so the situtation started several years back (I was 12 then). My uncle who lived in NC (my family and I lived in PA at the time) was in an accident at work and was seriously injured. Well, to help out my aunt, who was trying to deal with her husband being in the hospital, her teenage son, raising her two grandkids, and still trying to make a living, my mom went down to help her out. This went on for several months - my mom would go down and stay for weeks to a month at a time to help them out. My uncle was in and out of hospitals for quite awhile, but even after he was discharged, he still needed constant help and a guardian. So my family and I decided we couldn't keep spending weeks/months apart, but we couldn't just stop helping either. So we picked up and moved in next door to them in NC. We stayed there for a few years, my mom being the second main care-giver for my uncle for quite some time. But as my unlce got better, and my mom wasn't needed to help take care of him, we pretty much weren't wanted by them anymore either. Through a series of events, my mom and my aunt had a few fall-outs (quite a few of which was because of my aunt lying to my mom). It got the point where relationships between our families were so straied that we don't even get along at all anymore. Especially after we had picked up our entire lives and moved for them. I mean, don't get me wrong, we didn't move expecting a reward for helping them or anything. But we did expect to be treated with a little bit of respect. My mom had a job she loved, my dad had been working at his job for over twenty years, we had a house. We left our family, friends, and lives behind to help them. And then we ended up being repayed with lies, betrayal, and hurtful words. So we decided, to avoid the stress and upset of continuing to live in that situation, it would be better for our family to move. So we ended up renting a place from my mom's boss (the two of them had become friends over the past year). So we lived next door to them for about seven months. That following summer my grandma, who lived in Pennsylvania, had a stroke. She came through it without too many difficulties, but she still needed help around the house. And, admitably, we were all thrown and deicided that we wanted to go back to be with our family and spend time with them before it was too late. We stayed there for 6-7 months. In the course of that time, it was just the same pattern as the first move. We were appreciated when we first got there, and everyone seemed so happy to have us there. Then a few months later, we were essentialy thrown aside again. Again, more lies, more betrayal. We were no longer needed, so again, no longer wanted. It got to the point my family and I just felt trapped. We hated living in Pennsylvania, we missed our lives that we had just started to build in NC, and we were hurt by being treated like that by our family again. So we started talking about moving; we knew, with all the previous moves, we couldn't afford to move again. Not without help. My mom's old friend/boss offered to let us stay with him (the house we had previously rented was being rented by someone else) and my sister offered her place. We were trying to decide what to do when my sister and my 3 neices were in a car accident. They were okay, aside from cuts and scrapes and a good scare. So, obviously, after such a scare we wanted to be close to them. And my sister was really shaken up and needed some comfort/help (Her husband is in the Army and away at training), so we picked up and moved again. And like always, it didn't last. And while things didn't go as bad with our others moves, we discovered living with my sister weren't going to work either. She and my mom have always had trouble getting along if under the same roof too long. And my sister and I (as much I love her dearly) are so different, that it was becoming difficult for us too. And after a while she started taking advantage of our being there. So we decided before our relationship was lost, like had happened with so much of our family lately, it was best to move before it got so bad. And at the time we were discussing this, my mom's old boss/friend got in touch with her and asked what it would take to get her to move back and work for him. So we moved nearby and both she and my dad started working for him. And a couple months ago, after the other family moved out, we moved back into our old house we had rented. And now, AGAIN. Things are getting to the point of our moving. We caught our friend in lie, which strained thing enough. And then, lately, he's been taking out all his ill feelings on both my mom and dad. Not anyone else who works with them. Just the two of them.And he's been pretty much treating them, excuse my language, like crap. So now, we're planning on moving. At first we thought of moving back down towards my sister, so we could live closer to them. We mentioned this to her, because we would need a place to stay for a couple of months until we could afford rent somewhere. But we were basically just shot down by her. She's been giving excuses for us not staying there, but my mom is pretty sure it's more than she doesn't want us there. And, with some of things my sister has said, I'm inclined to agree. And I complelty understand her wanting just time with her own family and etc. Totally understandable. But she can't even tell us the truth about it. And on top of that, one of the things she's said is that "Everytime we need help we run to her." We went there one time. And it was mutual. Not to mention, there were several occasions before that that my sister stayed with us, or we helped her out because she needed it. Again, we never expected a reward for helping and we've never, EVER held the things like that over her or anyone else in the family. We went because they needed us and we wanted to help them - nothing was ever expected in return. However, whenever we need help, it seems none of them are willing. And the help we've shown them is thrown back in our face. I'm just so confused right now. I could really use some other people opinions here. Is it us? Are we doing wrong? Are we asking to much? Please, if we are in the wrong, point it out to me. I've prayed over this situation again and again, I have full faith that everything will work out for the better in the end. I trust God will take us where ever we need to be. But at the same time, I can't help how I feel. I feel tired and frustrated and confused. I'm tired of moving and being jerked around. I'm tired of this constant 'up in the air' feeling, never knowing where we'll end up. And I'm tired of feeling hurt by family. And, in this current situation, I just feel so frustrated with everything, I could yell. I just want to be settled somewhere where we are wanted. Some place to call home where I can put down some roots. Is that too much to ask? I understand God has a plan for my family and I, and I trust His will and I will go. I just feel so confused. I don't know what to do. And I don't know where to go anymore.

Sorry for being so vague but here goes. My family is having some isues and yeah there's money problems but that's not what I'm talking about. Arguing, resentment and such. There's is a history of violence and depression, a couple threatened suicides. There is a lot of medical problems both physical and mental going around and a lot of stress. Certan people should not be under said stress as it may worsen or aggravate medical conditions. There is also spiritual lacking spreading like wild fire which is very frustrating I think I have a good relationship with God but emotionally and spiritually I'm not always being given an example to follow by a lot of people I feel I should be. I know it will help me grow and I'll be a stronger person for it but somehow I don't think my family falling apart (not that they dont love each other we are very close and do love each other a lot)is Gods plan or good for me so I would apreciate if you guys would pray for us. And thanks for reading this:)

i have had no contact with my biological father in about 9 years. He was always drunk and abusive, and showed no real compassion for me, his son. when given the opportunity, he signed away all of his legal rights over me. The other day while on the internet i accidentally stumbled across his account on the site wordmachinist.com. this is his actual profile page http://www.wordmachinist.com/apps/profile/44870116/ It would appear that he had turned Pagan about a year or two after i did. I am wondering what i should do now that i have found him. Do any of you have any ideas?