Senior Year Take II: the end of one chapter the beginning of the next

I am amazed and in awe of how fast this life goes. I blink and it is gone!! I remember sitting down 9 months ago to write of what the Lord had done in providing for me to finish school; and now here we are at the end of that same year and in 9 days, I will be walking across the stage and finishing my undergraduate degree. The Lord has done so much in my life and in the lives of those of my friends and family within that breath of but a school year. From things such as a family member passing away, to spiritual warfare, to a boyfriend, to leading a missions team, to injuries, life is full of surprises. And however much life seems like one rollercoaster after another, there is one thing that has remained consistent: the Living God.

God has been so good and so consistent. He never changes and He continues to work in the lives and hearts of His children as they seek to follow Him more closely. If you were to talk with some of my closest friends they would tell you I am not the same person I was 9 months ago, I am not even the same person I was 2 months ago. That is how powerful God is! He changes people from the inside out. Radically and amazingly!! This indeed is our God!! This is our hope!!

As I look back over the past 5 years of attending one college or another, it amazes me how so much our society looks at life as the next thrill, the next vacation, if only I could get through this situation. And if life were just about the easy side where would growth happen? Where would change happen? I heard a quote once by Charles Spurgeon: "Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of." I think this is so true. It is in the midst of the unexpected and hardships of life that show us who we are. It is in those moments, when we stop slow down for once and realize that life isn't about seeking the next vacation or the next break. Life is lived in the moment. In the breaths that you take. In the relationships you have. You came into the world with nothing and you will leave with nothing. Makes the things of the world seem rather trivial and pointless doesn't it? The things of this world can't satisfy and don't last forever. Everything of this world will be gone and in 5 years no one will care whether you got summa cum laude or cum laude. No one. Now I am not saying slacking off is ok. Because ultimately it isn't about the honors, it's the principle behind it. The real question is: Were you faithful? Were you consistent to complete the tasks and responsibilities that the Lord gave? Were you faithful to persevere to the end? Were you faithful in the relationships that you built? Were you faithful to your Savior and God? What motives your desires? Are you so consumed with school that you have to get a 4.0? Are you finding your satisfaction in your GPA? Ultimately life is bigger than that.

So my encouragement to you friends who are still in school is this:
1) be faithful in all things that the Lord has given you responsibility over.
2) rest in the Lord- if you are a control person like me, who has to have their hand in every cookie jar so to speak- reliance on the Lord is critical. otherwise you end of trying to do everything on your own and you WILL fail. You need the Lord's strength and have an attitude of humility about it (recognize that you can't do it on your own and pray for the Lord's strength and grace to help you).
3) Take time investing in solid quality friends that will help you grow in the Lord. These are the friendships you will most likely keep for a lifetime so make the most of it! And invest in the lives of those who are younger than you who can learn from your mistakes and your victories.
4) most important- remember God. He is the one who gives you breath and food and time and friends. He is the one who provided for you to get an education and He is the one who gives you strength and grace for the day to get the job done. It is all about Him and who He is. He should be our ultimate goal, to become more like Him in our walk and in our actions and in the way we treat and react to those around us.

Senior Year Take I: the beginning of the end

Well school has been in session almost a month and I must say it has been one wild ride thus far! Not a full two days had past since last posting did God answer prayer. I received an email stating I had received the scholarship! The following days, were full of frantically fitting the next nine months of my life in two duffle bags, saying the last farwells to friends, jumping on a plane just in time for SLS Retreat. And the rest is history.
Over the last few weeks God has teaching me a few things. Where to start?
1. My God will provide (Matt 6)
Upon receiving the scholarship to return to school, my next question was: how am I going to survive? I have enough money for rent and tuition for the next 9 months, but what about that small little detail that has to do with putting fuel (food) in the engine (my stomach), 'cause the engine can't run on empty. God too has show exceeding kindness towards me in providing me with a cash job (4-6 hours a week) in the cafeteria. Now this is definitely NOT what I want to do for the rest of my life, and it took a certain amount of humbling to swallow my pride and take the job. Well in the act of taking the job God blessed me in ways I never thought. Not only did He provide an enjoyable work environment that was easy and short, he also provided for my physical needs as well. And for a college student who doesn't really have the time to plan out meals and cook every day this too came to be a blessing in disguise. And I get paid, so whatever money I make gets put aside for weekly breakfast and lunch groceries along with other possible expenses that might come up and God has indeed blessed me exceedlingly.
2. His grace is sufficient
Coming into the semester, I was absolutely terrified. It was the first time in my entire life that I was dreading the first day of school. Taking 15 units a semester is a good size load on it's own, but then add to the mix working 24-26 hours a week, and Leadership duties ontop of that would make any person attending Master's want to run screaming in the opposite direction. The coursework being much more demanding than your average community college or even private college makes anyone queasy. It was one I was actually dreading, wondering if I had bitten off more than I could chew.
However, even in times like this God has been exceeding kind towards me. Although Mondays consist of 12 hours days (8-9 class; 9-10:30 chapel; 10:30-1 class; 1-5 work study; 5:30-8 cash job 8p-whenever I get my homework done); it has been God's consistent faithfulness and strength that get me through, moment by moment of every day. God has really been working in my heart and mind, daily reminding me that I dare not do anything in my own strength and commiting my heart to rely on Him and Him alone and not even take the glory for my own. For it is by the exceeding outpouring of His grace that I am able to do as much as I am and not get burnt out. Every day is a conscience release of my pride and self dependence and a consistent admission that I am unable to do anything on my own. God continues to remind me of my own frailty and physical limits, that without him I would die from how intense this schedule is. But through this, He has given me a better idea of what it means to be humble. It is the act of recognizing where you stand before God, surrendering your pride and understanding that you are weak, blind, and deaf before a holy and perfect God. I could explain it further but I'll save that for another day.
3. Taste and see that the Lord our God is good
Through all of this, my God has become every sweet to my lips, ever closer to my heart. Not a day goes by without a reminder of just how desperately I need Him and how vast His lovingkindness and grace for me is. One of my heart verses for the last couple of years has been one from Psalm 34:8:
"O taste and see that the Lord is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!"
Pride is one of humanities biggest downfalls and it is something that each of us struggle with each and every day. The laying aside of pride and remembering our stance before a holy God. Pride will flee, we must fight! The victory is ours! Christ has already won!! "You will not be tempted beyond what you are able" I Cor 10;13. Know that His love is ever sweeter than honey and ever better than we could possibly imagine. We must leave our pride at the cross and follow this great and amazing God!! Who has bigger and better plans than we could possibly imagine. Be encouraged, take heart! Our God is good, His lovingkindness endures forever, he is our help and our stronghold (Psalm 19; 34). This is our God and we are His people!

Summer Musings

Summer is almost over, and the last few months have been good time to think through some things and really to spend more time with my Savior. This summer, God gave me the opportunity to stretch my faith even further. All summer I was waiting to hear back about a scholarship I was waiting for, and if I do not get the scholarship I can't go back to school and alot of other things fall apart. Needless to say, it has been a challenge to be patient when it comes to trusting God. Now it is August, I am supposed to leave on Sunday for the Leadership retreat, and I still have not heard. However with all the waiting and praying and asking others to pray, I feel in my heart that God will provide. He is not One to leave things unfinished and it is one thing that I would be most disappointed in is not finishing school. I had however come to the point of resigning to the fact that I might not go back to school, and had to come to a place where I was content where ever God decided I should go. Ironically enough I found out that they had never received my letter in the first place, so the next few days will be a scramble, but I know that God will provide.

The hardest question that I have had to ask myself is what am I going to do with myself when school is finished? Other than doing something with people and going overseas I have no idea. No "career" at this point has me interested, and I don't like to commit to something unless I have had the opportunity to try it. Regardless I suppose that many of these are questions asked by college students all over the country, I just pray that within the next few months, doors will be opened and the path made clear. But one thing I know, God remains faithful, God always right, and has a glorious plan prepared for the righteous. It will not be the easiest or the most appealing path but it is a journey that is meant to be run hard. One thought I realized is I want to go to heaven exhausted and having had "not a long life but a full one" (Jim Elliot). it is the choices we make and our attitude in life that really makes a difference.

Here is a quote by missioanry Jim Elliot when he was writing to his future wife betty:
"Is it not, for all its sting, a wonderful way to live, Betty? To dream, and want and pray, almost savagely; then to commit and wait and see Him quietly pile all dreams aside and replace them with what we could not dream, the realized Will?

We have an advocate

Well it has been a while since last posting as things continue to be crazy and live never does seem to slow down. I am finding the older I get the faster it flies which is quite interesting. I recently heard from a family member that the older you get the harder life gets and I wonder if this is true, which it very well could be. God never gives us more than we can handle through His strength and he gives us experiences that prepare us for times further in life. I think that if we knew everything that would happen in each of our own lifetimes and saw every detail, we would run in the opposite direction in sheer terror, because really you don't know how to handle something until your in it.
God's been teaching me an important lesson the last couple of weeks. That really he is the only one who can understand what we are going through. I know that sounds really cliche and like I said before it becomes one of those things that you can't really understand until you've been through it. Especially when the realities of life hit you full force and you don't really understand why, and yet the Holy Spirit is the one who leads and says, "Yes I know. I know what your going through, I know what your feeling, I know the pain. I too was human. I became flesh and felt everything that you could ever feel and more so. I can vouch for you." Because He is both God and man.
By being both God and man, Christ took on every aspect of man. The limitations, the pain, the suffering, the emotions, the hardships; even the joys, the happy times, the memories, etc. And yet with all this He also still maintained all the complexities of God that we could never possibly wish to understand. This is our God.
Much of this has come out of one of the classes I am taking on the book of Job, which continues to prove that God is right. He is always right. We don't have to know why because God is being glorified in the heavenly courtroom. Because somehow through whatever situation He is putting you through it brings Him more glory than if you hadn't gone through it. Heaven is watching, life is kind of like a matrix in a sense (if any of you have seen the matrix ) There are many things that we can't understand and don't know why, but God never does things with no rhyme or reason to it. There is always a purpose, we are just not always given the information.
So take heart those of you who are going through areas that you don't understand why, just know this. God is right and He knows exactly what He doing.

Contentment

Well hello my friends once again. It’s been a couple of weeks and I just finished the first week of school. Already I can see God working within my life through my classes and through the lives of people. One topic that has been on my mind as of late is the topic of contentment. I have been wrestling with this idea a lot the last year or so, especially with last semester-aka Fall. When most young Christian college women hear someone say contentment, they are thinking more along the lines of “relationships.” Well this post is infact about a different kind of contentment and goes very close with thankfulness.

During Truth & Life Conference, one of the Home Economics professors gave a presentation on contentment. At first my pride started talking me out of it, saying why do you need to go. You’ve got this one figured out, but then I looked back over the past semester and realized how much I had struggled with this idea, along with security. We all have our comfort bubbles. I personally like to know what I am going to do with my life, and within the past year, it has been so turned inside out and upside down that now I don’t have a clue what God has for me after college. There is always dreams, but that is completely different than reality. Over the past year God has taught me so much about how I am not in control and really it is a reliance and dependence on Him that shows the true test of faith. That whole question of “Do you trust Me?” Oh that one’s a tough one for me. I want to be self-reliant and say “Yes Lord, of course I trust you.” But honestly if He looked directly into my eyes, my very soul, honestly would I have the same answer? Could I say, “yes Lord, I trust You completely in every area of my life, and have surrendered complete control and lordship to You.” To be honest I would have to say probably not. I couldn’t do it, because deep within, I know the truth. Deep inside there is still this fleshly human fear that lies to us, saying that God doesn’t know what is best and I should stay with the safe and comfortable. This fear that God will not keep His promises. We want control, we are still fighting the flesh that desires to make ourselves god and suppress the truth. It is this fear that we will be completely and utterly out of control that terrifies us to death. We fool ourselves into thinking that we know what is best for us when it is God who really knows what is best.

So how does this relate back to contentment? For me it was a matter of trust and control of if I really believe what God has said in His Word and His promises. That He is the way and the truth. That He is the one true God, and God alone. Holy and righteous and Christ will come again as conquering King. For me in order to be content, it was a matter of me surrendering what control I had in my life in order to leave it with Christ. It is amazing how so many heart issues we deal with can interrelate so much to each other. So for those of you who were not there, there are some of the key notes that were given on contentment:

Developing A Heart of Contentment
Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.” –Philippians 4:11-12

If I could change anything about my life I would….

“When you get what you want, do you want what you get?”

Contentment is something that has to be learned. It is something that takes work, a total revamp of one’s mindset and perspective.

Those who are content are those who are thankful. They thank God more than they ask of God.

One thing that was an eye opener was she mentioned that: “discontentment is a sin because it is a characteristic of someone who doubts the goodness of God”. This was news to me as I never had thought about this before.

I will leave you with this list of reminders that she gave us to think about. It definitely puts things in perspective for me.

1. Never allow yourself to complain about anything
2. Never picture yourself anywhere else
3. Never compare yourself with others
4. Never allow yourself to wish this or that
5. Never dwell on tomorrow→ tomorrow is God’s

So Long '09, Hello 2010

So over the last couple of days I have been presented with some ideas: the importance of prayer, how I have spent my time over Christmas break, and recently how I stand with my relationship with God.

This last week and a half or so I have had the opportunity to get involved a bit in my friend's church. Being the first Sunday of the New Year there is always this sense of hope and excitement to see where God will lead this particular church in the coming year. How the church will grow, how God will work within the lives of the people. What kinds of great things will He do in the coming year? It is a time of reflection and honesty and frankly it was quite an encouragement to me to be with a church that I would only be attending for a couple of weeks and still see their hearts, to see that they too, like me, wanted to serve God to the best of their ability and like me we all had the same goal: to glorify God in every area of our lives. There is something about this unity, the fellowship, and commonality about being in one in Christ that is like it doesn't matter whether your in Fresno, LA or anywhere else in the world we share one thing: we are all saved sinners by the blood of Christ and His resurrection. Wow. And that commonality makes you come to a point where we are all one before God. Amazing! Those differences in behavior or personality don't matter so much anymore. Rather they amplify the creativity of our great God and how He has made each of them different but can work in each one in order that we all worship Him.

Getting off of the rabbit trail, the church began what they called a PrayerFocus where the first week of the year 6am-10pm or so, everyday the church was set up for people to come and prayer, using the ACTS model. Now if you haven't heard of it, please don't take it as the "formula" for prayer. It is merely a way to help one put things in perspective and not be as self-focused in our prayer before God. This model won't get us any more brownie points than repeating the Lord's Prayer or Psalm 23 and not knowing what it means.

A- Adoration (praising God for who He is and what He has done ex. Psalm 8)

C- Confession (telling God our sins and how they do not line up with His Word I John 1:9)

T- Thanksgiving (thanking Him for what He has done for us )

S- Supplication (coming to God with our requests)

I had the opportunity to go to one of the prayer meetings, specifically for the college students and those who were in it. It helped me think more about why we prayer and how desperate we are for God. Prayer is how we can communicate with God and is part of the relationship we can have with Him. When we don’t pray, I think many times it is because we are too proud or arrogant to spend time with our Creator and not only that our Savior. It is almost like we go “Lord, I think I’ve got today covered. I don’t really need Your help, thanks anyway.” To summarize: when we don’t pray we fool ourselves into thinking that we are alright and that we don’t need God. We have all had this attitude whether we will admit it or not, and we need a reminder of who God really is. What always humbles me is I ask myself: who woke you up this morning? Who gave you the ability to open your eyes and roll back over? Scrat that. Who gave you that breath, and that one? Who is the one who gave you recall to remember what you’ve studied (or not) for that final? If you need more convincing read Job 38-41.

We are so completely and utterly dependent upon God it isn’t even funny. We can’t pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps so let’s not lie to ourselves that we can. I could go on but you get the picture.

With this, it made me realized how little time I was spending at the feet of Jesus. What makes me think that I can know Jesus without ever spending time with?

And when I do pray, a lot of times it is about “Lord do this” or “Lord can you do that”. It has become so about me and not about Him, and it sickens me to think about. I disgust myself at times. And yet “it” is all about Him. The Bible, it isn’t about you, it’s about HIM and what HE did and what HE has done and will do! We look at the cross and go “thank you Jesus for saving me from sin” and it stops there. If that is all we see, we are jipping ourselves because there is so much more! We miss the big picture! It’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s about God and His glory.

I could go on but I will stop there and wrap this up.

Thinking about all of this, made me ask myself how do I want to spend my time in the year 2010? What needs to change in my life that maybe isn’t necessarily wrong, but isn’t helping me grow in my relationship with God either? How can I be a better steward of the time that God has given me? If this be my last day, what is there to show that is of eternal value? Is it a day well spent for the Kingdom?

More thoughts to come later, but this will hopefully at least get you started.

Welcome

So for some time I have been wanting to start a blog but haven't really gotten around to do it. Then it dawned on me that I actually have the time to do so right now! Go figure. Needless to say, welcome to my blog and I hope through this, you all may be encouraged and delighted in hopefully some intelligent and thought provoking rambles.

May the adventure begin...