Wow, I first need to apologize for the fact that I completely missed my blog post to end out my blog tour for my brand new book, “Worth it All.” It totally slipped my mind on Sunday and the past few days have been crazy so I just have not had the time to sit down and write. I am so sorry! I hope you still enjoy this blog post anyway, as late as it may be. :)
I want to give a huge “thank you!!” to the 5 blogs and young ladies who so willingly participated in the “Worth it All” blog tour. It was an honor to be featured on each of your blogs and I had so much fun reading each post, as I hope you all did! So thank you, girls, from the bottom of my heart! ♥ I didn’t have exactly set in my mind what I wanted to include in this post so I have just decided to share about the journey God has led me on as I have written and published my third book, Worth it All: Running the Race of a Lifetime. When I first began my Bible Bee journey in January 2011, the day I first signed up to be a contestant during the 2011 season, I had absolutely no clue I would stand here today. I had no clue the challenges, excitement, joy, and difficulty along the journey to come. It was going to be the greatest adventure of my life and I had no way of knowing it on that snowy January night when I visited www.biblebee.org for the very first time. Choosing to spend my teenage years in the study and memorization of the Word of God was the greatest thing I have ever made the commitment to do. Not only because it changed my teenage years, but also because it changed my life to come. In the years to come I have determined to never give up memorizing, but to keep going. Even to set the goal to memorize the entire New Testament. During Nationals 2013, I saw God do incredible things. Just the fact that I got to Nationals was His miracle. Because of this, I yearned to declare His goodness. I wanted to shout to the world that everything else about my life was loss compared to knowing Jesus Christ more. Nothing else about the Bible Bee, as amazing as it was, could ever be compared to the greatness of knowing Jesus deeper. Because I had learned this during my studies in 2013 and the miracles He gave me, I decided I was going to write a book and I was going to call it, “Everything as Loss,” with the theme of Philippians 3:7-11. I began the book but didn’t even get past the first chapter really, I just wasn’t sure how to write down everything I wanted to say. And in my heart, I felt God’s leading to put the book on hold. I knew He was asking me to wait to write this book until I aged out of Bible Bee and became alumni. I didn’t know what else He was gonna teach me or what else I was going to learn, but I knew whatever was to come I wanted to write it in a book too. So I put my Bible Bee book on hold and began to work harder on my first published book, I Dare You: Finding Your Passion and Lighting Your World. As I lived through my 2014 and 2015 Bible Bee journeys I was amazed by what God taught me and what I learned. I was blown away by the miracles He did, by the dreams He fulfilled. And Nationals 2015 was like the culmination of my entire Bible Bee race as God granted my name to be called as a 2015 Senior Semi-finalist, my dream come true. Leaving the JW Marriott hotel in San Antonio, TX that November day in 2015 was the day I became alumni of the Bible Bee. And the first thing I did was start my Bible Bee book… I had renamed the book to Worth it All and it took so many times of rewriting the first chapter before I finally had a first chapter I liked. :) And as each chapter went by it was like writing out a story of God’s faithfulness that He had written with my life. I still can’t believe after all this time that I sit here typing with my book, Worth it All sitting next to me. This book is so dear to my heart, it is about the greatest race God ever asked me to run. My prayer is that as you read the pages of this book, you will be encouraged by the faithfulness of God. You will come to the realization that if God can do miracles in the life of an ordinary teenage girl like me, He can surely do them in your life too and He will if you will let Him. My prayer is that you will be challenged to run your race of knowing Jesus well and that you will give up everything to make Him your first Love. Love Him well because He loved you best. Thank you all for reading. Thank you all for your support. May God bless each of you richly. Never stop running.
6 Comments
Olivia Bell
11/10/2016 02:40:45 pm
This was wonderful, Bella! I really enjoyed it! I can't wait to read your book, I know it's going to be amazing! :D
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Bella Morganthal
11/10/2016 09:14:00 pm
Thank you so much, Livy! That means a lot! :)
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Bella Morganthal
11/10/2016 09:14:15 pm
Thanks so much Beth! :)
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Hello Isabella!
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Bella Morganthal
11/23/2016 01:09:54 pm
Hi Hannah! Thanks so much for commenting! And thank you for your interest in my book! Congratulations on being a contestant! If you want to fill out the contact form here on my blog and send me your email address, I will get back in touch with you about all the details :)
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