Oh you know, the devil’s just creepin around the corner…

Last night, I was talking to my mom and we were discussing drama that’s been going on recently and the upset that has followed the drama (even if most upset is below the surface, it’s still there).  Well Susann made a very valid statement,

“Our God isn’t a god of upset and unease. He’s a god of peace.”

So often we get caught up in everything that is going on and completely forget to open our eyes and see God.  God loves us and wants no pain for us.  All conflict, disagreement, and pain caused by drama, or anything else, is attack from Satan. Especially when people are trying to do something great, something that Christ has called them to do, the devil will attack.  All throughout the Bible there are stories, as well as personal experiences we each have, that show this.  So during these times that the devil is sneaking in and causing trouble, we need to remember this,

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition,

with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,

will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:6-7

I realized today that I keep forgetting something that is very important. There may not be peace in a situation at this particular moment, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t be at peace.  I should never lose sight of the fact that Christ is continuously working and I can be at peace simply because I know that everything will work out how He wants it to, even if that isn’t what I had wanted, because He wants the best for me. I’ll leave you with this passage, Colossians 3:12-17, in The Message translation to think about:

” ^12-14So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

^15-17Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.”

This passage has humble me and changed my heart.  I hope it has the same effect on you!

Let the Word of Christ have the run of the house!

Short and Sweet

This week I’ve learned the importance of being still and spending time alone with God.  There have been more moments in these past two weeks, then I can ever remember, where I was so frustrated or stressed that I literally couldn’t do anything.  I’m very laid back so I don’t usually stress or if I do it’s not much.  However, I’ve learned that instead of getting stressed out externally, I just shut down and can’t get anything done and then I get aggravated because I don’t know what to do to be able to get stuff done.

I’ve been praying for Christ to make me broken and fully reliant on him.  I think that this has been how he’s been doing that.  Last night I was so close to being finished but I just could not figure out what to do or how to do it and I was in rare form because I was so frustrated, you can ask Shannon or my mom if you don’t believe me.  My mom told me that maybe even if I had already had my quiet time, which I had, that I should take some time to just be still and pray.  Since I wasn’t getting anything done, I took her advice. As I sat on my floor, I prayed and asked Christ to give me motivation to be able to finish and to give me peace and make me calm.  Not even ten minutes later, I was finally working and getting everything finished.  It’s funny how stubborn and set in my ways I am, that God has to almost push me to the edge so that I remember that I can’t do it on my own.

YoungLife

I’ll admit it. I am a Younglifer. I love everything about it. People that haven’t ever gone to Younglife or haven’t even heard of it before just can’t understand it.  Honestly, it’s almost like a different culture. You can act crazy and nobody thinks twice about it because everyone else is acting crazy too.  All of the Younglife people I’ve ever known have been real and genuine.  They truly care about other and their mission in life is to love people.

I’ve been working on my portfolio that I have to submit to get into the teacher ed program and one of the sections we have to do is a personal section.  For my personal section I knew I was going to do my family for one of the two things I put, but I just couldn’t figure out what to do for the second.  When I thought about it, I realized that I basically needed to include Younglife for my second thing.  So my portfolio is going to be awesome because I just made two videos with iphoto and imovie.  One with pictures of my family and the other with pictures from when I did work crew, summer staff, and from Wyldlife this year.  As I was working on this, I started to miss everyone that I’ve met and worked with over the years.  I’ve been so blessed to meet so many amazing Godly people.  Plus, YL people are just cool; I think you have to be cool to do it.

It was when I did work crew, the summer before I came to Anderson, that it finally clicked and I understood for the first time what it meant to truly know Jesus and have a relationship with Him.  The people that I’ve met through YL have shown me Christ’s love and how share at times when I really needed encouragement/had no idea what I was doing.  So YL isn’t just your normal ministry, it’s people, mostly college students, who give up hours and hours of their time to go out into the community sharing God’s love and then sticking around to keep pursuing those teenagers.   So next time you wonder why I spend so much time at McCants or over at Clemson for Younglife/Wyldlife, you’ll know why I do it.  I want to show Christ’s love to those crazy middle schoolers and be there for them and if that means going to McCants and sitting through 4 or 5 lunches with them and putting myself out there and fighting past the intimidation, yes middle schoolers can be intimidating, then that’s what I’ll do.

Yes, I do follow the crowd.

Yes, I’ve given in.  Everyone else has been blogging so I’ve decided to give it a try.

This week has been hard, to say the least.  This semester I have been ridiculously unmotivated, which is abnormal for me.  Usually I do really well with school and I may not like it but I get everything done eventually.  This semester there really hasn’t been anything that I’ve disliked more than school, basically I hate it.  I love Anderson minus the actual school work part. (Yes, woe is Pinkie)  So the other day I was more frustrated and angry than I’ve been since I don’t even remember how long ago.  I was doing homework and feeling extremely overwhelmed.  My mom called and I told her that I didn’t even know if I should be an education major (we’ll see how that part turns out.)  While I was talking to her, she asked if I’d had my quiet time yet. Well I hadn’t. So I got off the phone and took a break from working on my portfolio and starting reading My Utmost For His Highest.  Literally I was so frustrated that after I finished reading Utmost I could not read my Bible.  I just laid on my bed and had a little conversation with God. Yes, I was still aggravated afterwards but I felt more at peace with the enormous work load I’m facing until the end of the semester. Shortly after all of this I was checking out everyones’ blogs, it’s my replacement for FML since AU blocked it, and discovered where Matt had written a blog about exactly that, being still and spending time with God.  It was encouraging to read that so good job Matt Brammer! Also late Friday night @shadrocks and I had a very refreshing and encouraging convo, it was good for my heart!

As I said earlier, I’m having doubts about whether or not I should stick with majoring in education.  It’s just been a ton of work lately and I haven’t enjoyed my classes. This could all simply be due to my lack of motivation and frustration.  When I was reading My Utmost For His Highest, I read it every day or at least I try to so a lot of references may be made to the book, today’s was about not questioning what God calls us to do.

Oswald Chambers writes,

“I know when instructions have come from God because of their quiet persistance.  But when I begin to weigh the pros and cons, and doubt and debate enter my mind, I am bringing in an element that is not of God. This will only result in my concluding that his instructions to me were not right. Many of us are faithful to our ideas about Jesus Christ, but how many are faithful to Jesus himself? Faithfulness to Jesus means I must step out even when and where I can’t see anything. But faithfulness to my own ideas means that I first clear the way mentally. Faith, however, is not intellectual understanding; faith is is a diliberate committment to the Person of Jesus Christ, even when I can’t see the way ahead.”

I know that this was exactly what I needed to read this morning and it’s definitely one way that God’s showing me what to do. I still don’t entirely know what to do so now I’ll just be praying waiting for Him to continue to reveal his will to me and to see if there are any changes in major to be coming.