So it's really starting to hit me that I'll be in another country in a little over a month. It's scary for me. I've never been in another country before (unless you count Canada... and that was like for an hour) and I've never flown before. I'm really grateful that God isn't calling me to a country that speaks a completely different language... at least not this trip. I don't think the culture shock will be bad at all. The time difference will be tough, but I'll adjust. I'm praying that God will keep me strong through all of this. I've already been getting emotional about it for the past few weeks. Sometimes I'll be fine and then it'll hit me out of no where.
Rob leaves for New Staff Training around the 16th or 17th of June.... and that starts our two month separation, which SUCKS. I'm not looking forward to that at all. I know God is going to use it to help our personal relationships with Him and I really hope that getting closer to God will bring us closer together, regardless of the distance. God knows what He's doing but it's really hard when I can't see what my life will look like in 2.5 months. I know we are supposed to have faith in things that are not seen, but applying that is hard, especially when it comes to a boyfriend! But, I know it'll be ok and this experience will only make me stronger in the end, no matter what happens.
Anywhos... I feel a little better now that I got all that out. Keep me in your prayers, my avid readers. ;-)
Looooove.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Romans 3 & 4
Romans 3
I didn't get a whole lot out of Romans 3. The main thing I got out of it was verse 3 & 4.
"What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God's faithfulness? Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written:
'So that you may be proved right when you speak
and prevail when you judge' ".
I guess verse 3 is comforting to me because no matter what, my lack of faith will never hurt God. My lack of faith can really only hurt me in the long run. God doesn't go anywhere, we're the ones that wonder off. He is always there.
Romans 4
Romans 4 goes on to talk about Abraham's faith. The end of the chapter is what caught me the most, mostly because it seemed straight to the point and went along with what I have been feeling lately.
Verse 18 - 25
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief [he did not worry] regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why "it was credited to him as righteousness." The words "it was credited to him" were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
I really love Abraham's story. His faith is really inspiring. In the natural, he knew that it was impossible that he and Sarah could not have a baby, but nothing is impossible with God. God can do whatever He wants. He can give and He can take away. And through it all, Abraham did not worry, he did not sway in his faith when it came to what God promised him, he knew that God had the power! I wish my faith was that strong all the time. My faith tends to be like a leaf being blown by the wind instead of a strong tree. Some things are easier to have faith about. Some things are hard to let go and let God deal with. If God promises us something, He's going to do it! Isn't that exciting? It's not like human promises that people can break at any minute... God is faithful. We can always trust that He's got our best interest in mind and He'll take care of us even when He puts us through scary things. I'm almost afraid to ask God for faith like Abraham's because I know He'll test me. haha. But I really do want faith like that...
I didn't get a whole lot out of Romans 3. The main thing I got out of it was verse 3 & 4.
"What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God's faithfulness? Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written:
'So that you may be proved right when you speak
and prevail when you judge' ".
I guess verse 3 is comforting to me because no matter what, my lack of faith will never hurt God. My lack of faith can really only hurt me in the long run. God doesn't go anywhere, we're the ones that wonder off. He is always there.
Romans 4
Romans 4 goes on to talk about Abraham's faith. The end of the chapter is what caught me the most, mostly because it seemed straight to the point and went along with what I have been feeling lately.
Verse 18 - 25
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief [he did not worry] regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why "it was credited to him as righteousness." The words "it was credited to him" were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
I really love Abraham's story. His faith is really inspiring. In the natural, he knew that it was impossible that he and Sarah could not have a baby, but nothing is impossible with God. God can do whatever He wants. He can give and He can take away. And through it all, Abraham did not worry, he did not sway in his faith when it came to what God promised him, he knew that God had the power! I wish my faith was that strong all the time. My faith tends to be like a leaf being blown by the wind instead of a strong tree. Some things are easier to have faith about. Some things are hard to let go and let God deal with. If God promises us something, He's going to do it! Isn't that exciting? It's not like human promises that people can break at any minute... God is faithful. We can always trust that He's got our best interest in mind and He'll take care of us even when He puts us through scary things. I'm almost afraid to ask God for faith like Abraham's because I know He'll test me. haha. But I really do want faith like that...
Friday, May 23, 2008
Romans 1 & 2
So I've wanted to go through Romans for about 6 months now, so I decided to buckle down and take on the book. I was planning on only doing one chapter a day but when I finished chapter one it left on a cliffhanger, so I went on to chapter two -- so who knows how the rest will work out.
First of all, I'd like to say... holy crap Paul makes me feel SO convicted! haha. I guess technically it's God that's making me convicting, but Paul meant business.
Chapter 1:
After Paul's greeting in the beginning the subtitle is "Paul's Longing to Visit Rome". In verse 11 & 12 he says "I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith". This definitley reminded me that I need to encourage and be encouraged by other people's faith -- Paul longed to see these people so that they could feed off of each other. A lot of my friends that I've emailed or talked to since the end of the semester seem to be in spiritual ruts, mostly because the fellowship is gone that we all because so used to during the school year. I know it's been especially hard on me because I'm stuck in Mt. Pleasant, where there are not a whole lot of people I know around and even when I do go back to Mayville, I don't really have a lot of fellowship opportunities outside of the church because I'm basically the only college aged one there. I can't wait for Australia because it will be Jesus 24/7 and I'll be living with 17 other believers that seemed pretty fired up for Christ.
Moving on... the second thing that caught my eye in this sections was verse 17 "For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith." The last 6 words really hit me for some reason... the righteous live by faith. That little statement is loaded with all kind of ideas, the main one for me being that this walk on the straight and narrow is hard... so hard that we have to live/walk by faith. We aren't always going to see where we are going and we have to let God lead us at His pace otherwise we might get lost.
The next section is labeled God's Wrath Against Mankind. Going into this section I knew it was going to be intense. I was fairly familiar with it because I wrote a paper this past semester on homosexuality and verse 26 & 27 deal with that.
The first passage that jumped out at me was verses 20-21: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened". Holy crap is that convicting or what? We are without excuse... sometimes even though we know God will don't glorify him, we don't give thanks to Him for all that He has done (the cross is kinda a big deal and I think we all take that for granted more than we'd like to admit) and our thoughts are so bad at times I know I wouldn't want people being able to read mine. How scary is that? We have no excuse and we deliberately spit in God's face.
The context of this scripture was obviously to the Romans during a time of very illicit behaviors around 60 a.d. (or pretty close to that). I think this section still applies today even though this is address to people a little under 2,000 years ago. Verse 24 & 25 say: "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen". I read that last sentence and tears started to fall. We still see this happening and as Christians do this... we take the easier road at times and do things our way and when we do that we buy into a lie. We exchange the TRUTH OF GOD for a pitiful lie and worship things that do not even matter! Paul goes on to describe how God gave them over to these things... God gives us free will and can only control so much. We choose so many things that lead to unnecessary pain and set-backs. I am by no stretch of the imagination saying that the Christian walk is easy and painless, but God lets things happen for a reason. When we "take control" and run things into the ground, it makes everything worse. "(28)Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he [God] gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. (29)They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, (30) slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; (31) they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (32) Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." I do not think we are better off than they were on this one. I know we have all done something that we knew God wasn't going to like but we did it anyways. And since all sin is equal, that doesn't make us much different than the people of 60 a.d.
Chapter 2
So after Paul unload all of this on us, he tells us that we have no excuse to judge people because when we judge them, we are condemning ourselves as well. It's that whole "when you point a finger at someone you have three pointing right back at you" idea. Basically to sum up what I got from Chapter two: Repent. Do not judge others. God knows you hearts, so you can't fool him. It's all about what is on the inside. I didn't get as much out of Chapter 2 as I did in chapter 1, but it was good basic stuff that was nice to review.
That is all. :-)
First of all, I'd like to say... holy crap Paul makes me feel SO convicted! haha. I guess technically it's God that's making me convicting, but Paul meant business.
Chapter 1:
After Paul's greeting in the beginning the subtitle is "Paul's Longing to Visit Rome". In verse 11 & 12 he says "I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith". This definitley reminded me that I need to encourage and be encouraged by other people's faith -- Paul longed to see these people so that they could feed off of each other. A lot of my friends that I've emailed or talked to since the end of the semester seem to be in spiritual ruts, mostly because the fellowship is gone that we all because so used to during the school year. I know it's been especially hard on me because I'm stuck in Mt. Pleasant, where there are not a whole lot of people I know around and even when I do go back to Mayville, I don't really have a lot of fellowship opportunities outside of the church because I'm basically the only college aged one there. I can't wait for Australia because it will be Jesus 24/7 and I'll be living with 17 other believers that seemed pretty fired up for Christ.
Moving on... the second thing that caught my eye in this sections was verse 17 "For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith." The last 6 words really hit me for some reason... the righteous live by faith. That little statement is loaded with all kind of ideas, the main one for me being that this walk on the straight and narrow is hard... so hard that we have to live/walk by faith. We aren't always going to see where we are going and we have to let God lead us at His pace otherwise we might get lost.
The next section is labeled God's Wrath Against Mankind. Going into this section I knew it was going to be intense. I was fairly familiar with it because I wrote a paper this past semester on homosexuality and verse 26 & 27 deal with that.
The first passage that jumped out at me was verses 20-21: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened". Holy crap is that convicting or what? We are without excuse... sometimes even though we know God will don't glorify him, we don't give thanks to Him for all that He has done (the cross is kinda a big deal and I think we all take that for granted more than we'd like to admit) and our thoughts are so bad at times I know I wouldn't want people being able to read mine. How scary is that? We have no excuse and we deliberately spit in God's face.
The context of this scripture was obviously to the Romans during a time of very illicit behaviors around 60 a.d. (or pretty close to that). I think this section still applies today even though this is address to people a little under 2,000 years ago. Verse 24 & 25 say: "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen". I read that last sentence and tears started to fall. We still see this happening and as Christians do this... we take the easier road at times and do things our way and when we do that we buy into a lie. We exchange the TRUTH OF GOD for a pitiful lie and worship things that do not even matter! Paul goes on to describe how God gave them over to these things... God gives us free will and can only control so much. We choose so many things that lead to unnecessary pain and set-backs. I am by no stretch of the imagination saying that the Christian walk is easy and painless, but God lets things happen for a reason. When we "take control" and run things into the ground, it makes everything worse. "(28)Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he [God] gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. (29)They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, (30) slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; (31) they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (32) Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." I do not think we are better off than they were on this one. I know we have all done something that we knew God wasn't going to like but we did it anyways. And since all sin is equal, that doesn't make us much different than the people of 60 a.d.
Chapter 2
So after Paul unload all of this on us, he tells us that we have no excuse to judge people because when we judge them, we are condemning ourselves as well. It's that whole "when you point a finger at someone you have three pointing right back at you" idea. Basically to sum up what I got from Chapter two: Repent. Do not judge others. God knows you hearts, so you can't fool him. It's all about what is on the inside. I didn't get as much out of Chapter 2 as I did in chapter 1, but it was good basic stuff that was nice to review.
That is all. :-)
Bloggidy, blog, blog, blog...
So I have a blog on Myspace, but I wanted a new one that people could access easier. That and I just wanted a fresh start. :-) I also wanted to start recording my quiet time thoughts somewhere... I hate hand-writing a journal, so at least until I go to Australia, I will be writing my thought down on whatever I am studying... I think this will kind of keep me accountable too, because if I skip a few days, it's right in front of my face when I log in. Haha.
Before I start my quiet time stuff (which will be a separate post, just to keep things a little organized) I wanna talk (type?) about a few other things. First of all, I have all the support raised for me trip not including the $500.00 for my domestic flight! My project director messed with the budget and knocked off $500.00, which I thought was pretty awesome of him! I sent out a few more letters about a week ago and I really hope I over raise so I can 1) pay back my parents for the flight and 2) hopefully help someone else on my team! I would really love to bless someone else! It's really hard for me to watch some of my friends go on summer projects too and not be able to help them because I do not have a job, so hopefully God helps me over raise and I can bless maybe a couple people on my team. The support raising process has gone so fast for me, it's like it didn't happen... I don't know if that makes sense, but God just completely took care of it and it's amazing. I had so many doubts and fears about it before I started raising, but He definitley showed off!
Second, I'm 2/3 the way done with my summer class. I took my mid-term today and got a 66%... yeah, not good. I really hate when there are only a mid-term and a final because I have no idea how the test is going to look or what to study. The study guide did not help at all, because almost 80% of the stuff on the study guide was not on the test... and the prof had so many questions about random facts that nobody really cares about that I just did not know. Hopefully I can redeem myself on the final now that I know what his testing style is like... it's just really disappointing.
Third, Rob is now officially out of Mt. Pleasant, which is rather depressing for me, but something I'll need to get used too. For at least the next two years (if things keep going :-P) it's going to be a long-distance relationship. I've done this before but it really does not make things much easier the second time around. We'll be separated for two months because his staff training and my trip to Australia overlaps, so that'll definitely be a challenge. I'm trying my best to completely trust God with our relationship and keeps us together and closer than ever if it's His will. Things are pretty good with Rob overall. :-)
I don't think there is really much else right now... soooo yeah.
Laterz.
Before I start my quiet time stuff (which will be a separate post, just to keep things a little organized) I wanna talk (type?) about a few other things. First of all, I have all the support raised for me trip not including the $500.00 for my domestic flight! My project director messed with the budget and knocked off $500.00, which I thought was pretty awesome of him! I sent out a few more letters about a week ago and I really hope I over raise so I can 1) pay back my parents for the flight and 2) hopefully help someone else on my team! I would really love to bless someone else! It's really hard for me to watch some of my friends go on summer projects too and not be able to help them because I do not have a job, so hopefully God helps me over raise and I can bless maybe a couple people on my team. The support raising process has gone so fast for me, it's like it didn't happen... I don't know if that makes sense, but God just completely took care of it and it's amazing. I had so many doubts and fears about it before I started raising, but He definitley showed off!
Second, I'm 2/3 the way done with my summer class. I took my mid-term today and got a 66%... yeah, not good. I really hate when there are only a mid-term and a final because I have no idea how the test is going to look or what to study. The study guide did not help at all, because almost 80% of the stuff on the study guide was not on the test... and the prof had so many questions about random facts that nobody really cares about that I just did not know. Hopefully I can redeem myself on the final now that I know what his testing style is like... it's just really disappointing.
Third, Rob is now officially out of Mt. Pleasant, which is rather depressing for me, but something I'll need to get used too. For at least the next two years (if things keep going :-P) it's going to be a long-distance relationship. I've done this before but it really does not make things much easier the second time around. We'll be separated for two months because his staff training and my trip to Australia overlaps, so that'll definitely be a challenge. I'm trying my best to completely trust God with our relationship and keeps us together and closer than ever if it's His will. Things are pretty good with Rob overall. :-)
I don't think there is really much else right now... soooo yeah.
Laterz.
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