Hayley DiMarco - The God Girl Journey. A 30-Day Guide to a Deeper Faith

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

Day 1: Growth Requires Change

Day 2: Natural vs. Supernatural

Day 3: The Purpose of the Fruit

Love

Day 4: Love Hurts

Day 5: The Opposite of Love

Day 6: What Is Love?

Joy

Day 7: To Rejoice Is to Say Something

Day 8: The Opposite of Joy

Day 9: The Purpose of Suffering

Peace

Day 10: Peace with God

Day 11: The Peace of God

Day 12: Peace with Others

Patience

Day 13: What Is Patience?

Day 14: What Is Impatience?

Day 15: Finding Patience

Kindness

Day 16: What Is Kindness?

Day 17: Kindness Killers

Day 18: Become a Grace Giver

Goodness

Day 19: What Is Goodness?

Day 20: Why Is It So Hard to Be Good?

Day 21: Finding Goodness

Faithfulness

Day 22: Faithfulness Does What Is True

Day 23: Faithfulness Doesnt Overreact

Day 24: Finding Faithfulness

Gentleness

Day 25: Gentleness Trusts God

Day 26: The Opposite of Gentleness Is Pride

Day 27: Gentleness Is Selfless

Self-Control

Day 28: Self-Control Denies Self

Day 29: Controlling Yourself

Day 30: Wrapping Up the Fruit

Dictionary

Verse List

About the Author

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Back Cover

The God Girl is forever on a journey with her Maker, her Father, her Friend. She doesnt walk alone but travels with her forever companion, God, who is the very giver of life and who never leaves her and always protects her. For the God Girl, life is all about him: his will, his mind, his Word. Everything she does is driven by the fact that she wants to love him with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength (see Mark 12:30). She wants what he wants, and she wants what we all want: a life filled with love, joy, and peace. She wants the patience to wait for life to rain down on her, showering her with the gifts of God. She sees that kindness and goodness are part of his nature and therefore knows they must be a part of her nature. All that is found in him, she wants poured into her life.

She has hopes and dreams like every other girl. She sometimes hates the things she does and does the things she hates (see Rom. 7), but she knows that he forgives it all. She is well aware of his kindness toward her in the form of grace, and she embraces it with passion as she daily fights the good fight, though she sometimes stumbles and falls.

But what makes her different from other girls is the Spirit by which she lives. See, the God Girl draws on the life of the Spirit that filled her when she said I do to the God of heavenwhen she surrendered her life to him and began to see him as ruler of her comings and goings. The God Girl is built to travel this world not alone but in continual contact with her God. When life seems to be more than she can bear, God is more than she needs. Of this she is certain.

The God Girl, then, is the girl who knows her life is Gods, her plans are Gods, and her journey is Gods. Because of that she takes her first step each day in his direction. And that is the purpose of this little book: to help you to walk with God on the journey of life. The word journey is a good one to describe the walk of the God Girl because journey refers to traveling on a long and sometimes difficult path of change and growth. You may have a destination in mind, but it is the journeythe day-by-day progressionthat is the life of faith.

This journey that you are on will take you up and it will take you down. There will be days that seem perfect, but just as often, if not more, there will be days of testing and even suffering. The thing you must remember, if you want the pain to count for anything, is that Gods goal isnt to make you happy, its to make you holy. Happiness is a cheap goal for life; it implies that your journey should be easy, but that would make it ineffective. Because when life is easy, you have no need for growth or change but much room for distraction and amusement. But spiritual growth, strength, and success are found in the difficulties of life. Thats why God can say, My brothers and sisters, be very happy when you are tested in different ways. You know that such testing of your faith produces endurance. Endure until your testing is over. Then you will be mature and complete, and you wont need anything (James 1:24 GW).

Can you imagine not needing anything but instead being mature and complete? That can be the description of your life, and it will be. In this life you will have trouble, its guaranteed, but the God Girl can take heart because Christ has overcome the world, and through him she can overcome as well (see John 16:33). When your life is completely identified with the life and the Spirit of Christ, then the world may attack, but you will smile. Your heart will find rest and peace, and your joy will be complete.

So lets take this journey together into the life of faith, into the life of the God Girl. On this 30-day trip you will devote each day to finding out more about God and his presence in your life.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

John 12:24

W hen a seed is planted, it is placed into a deep, dark hole and covered with earth. In this tomb of total darkness, the seed begins to die. It must die in order to grow. As death overtakes the seed, a new life starts to sprout from it. This sprout, knowing it must find the light, struggles upward, piercing the soil and breaking through to the glorious sun. As soon as it finds the sun, it begins to drink of it. It takes that sun and turns it into food, which in turn helps it to reach higher and higher. Over time the rain falls, the seasons change, and the little seed grows into a wispy sapling. As the sapling stretches its branches out to worship the source of its life, it grows stronger and bigger. And over time a mighty tree is formed.

So goes the process of a life developing in complete reliance on a source outside of itself in order to see growth within itself. And so goes the life grown in the Spirit. As a God Girl, your life is the result of a similar death and new birth. The death is rejecting your self in favor of the Father, saying, I cant do this life on my own. I need a truer source. This is the symbolic burial in the dirt that leads to new life. In faith you put off your old self, which was broken and dirty, and you put on the new self, which lives by the power of the Son through the gift of the Holy Spirit (see Eph. 4:2223). At the point when you recognized God as Lord of your life (see Rom. 10:9) and stopped trying to do it all on your own, you were given the gift of the Holy Spirit to counsel you, to comfort you, and to help you grow. This is the growth that we will be experiencing over the next 30 days: growth through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the sun to your seed, to your sapling, and to your mighty tree. No matter where you are in the growth process, you are growing if you are Gods. And part of that growth is change. The seed that does not change does not grow but rots. So it goes that if God isnt changing you, then he hasnt saved you . For the God Girl, each day gives the hope of a new sprout, a new leaf, a new branch. And each day of growth makes you more like the image of the risen Christthat is, each day is a step toward your perfection. And in that perfection is grown the fruit of the Spirit of God who lives in the believer. The fruit of the Spirit is the overflowing nature of the Holy Spirit within you, his very nature pouring out of you into the lives of those around you in the form of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (see Gal. 5:2223).