Pure Awesomeness

Thank you Matt!!!!
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Circles

Try as hard as I might, that feeling keeps creeping back in. I feel empty. My Lord, Jesus Christ is there, but that feeling, you know, the one everyone tells you goes away, yeah that one...that's gone. It's so so easy for me to be a lukewarm Christian. That is a natural place for me. I'm not a hardcore rebel, but I make and want to make choice that aren't QUITE right. I start friendships and am perfectly happy not taking them into the spiritual part of my life. Letting them be really close friends, of me, the person.

How did I get there from where I started...?

But honestly I think it's a control issue this time. Last time it was a security issue, this time control. I want control. I want to know that I can change it (don't you love pronouns with no nouns to refer to). I want to know that it (there is that pronoun again) won't be able to tell me what to do.

The "it" is many things. My attitude, my friendships, my hardships, my temptations, my parents, my state laws, my Lord. Ranging from could be good could be bad, to, "stealing control from that is signing a death warrent".

I want assurance that I'm not some gullible puppet on a string, that I have a say in my life. Even if it's as simple as the ability to drive myself down to Jackson to see my loves. I feel like even the "it's" that I have claimed control over, really have control over me. I'm in bondage to having control over them. Does that make sense?

This very well could be an endless circle that makes no sense to anyone but me...

But if so, this is my circle, "and I'm stinkin to it." Literally, I'm stuck in it. Asking the Lord to get me out!

Other than that lingering, underlying feeling, I'm loving life.

I feel like sometimes the Lord is up there just holding a blessing for me in his hands. He tells the angels, "watch, she's going to doubt me again." They all chime in with, "no way." "after what you did for her last time, she's must be a fool." etc. Then when I do, he laughs in the warmest, friendliest laugh you've ever heard. (Think Santa, now less creepy, and more real, and heavenly, oh nevermind...not worth trying to go there) He gently tosses the blessing DIRECTLY in my path and I run into it. After I check my nose for broken bones, I realize he just blessed me after I doubted and hit myself in my already bruised nose with the "duh" sign. Now the whole heavenly realm is laughing with me and God as I laugh at myself for being so rediculous. Then 3 steps later I've forgotten all over again and it all happens again.

Ever feel like no matter what is going on in your life you are only running in circles?

I'm totally there...

Well, getting ready for company in a couple days! Goodnight, God bless!

brrr

It's so cold now, I'm spending more time inside. You'd think that would mean that I would actually remember to post. And it's not like I haven't been on blogger. I just don't ever feel like whatever it is that I would have to say would really be worth actually saying.
You see, life, it's begun to take on a routine that is rather mundane. Each day I have a set of things I do, then I go to bed, don't sleep enough, kill my back, and wake up the next day to feel worse. (That's my back that feels worse, me personally not always. :))

But, I've decided to bore you with my ramblings anyway, because I can't and won't hold them in any longer.

Okay, so right now I'm in the Library, in the computer portion. There is definitely this guy directly in front of me who I SWEAR hasn't blinked ONCE. He's playing some computer game and he's so stinkin intent on that game that he hasn't looked away or even blinked. I think a bomb could go off and he wouldn't even notice.

People like that crack me up, just so different. There is so much more to do than stare at a screen. I love people watching. I love multitasking. And I love love love real life. But I also love technology and computers. But it's different. Everything in moderation. I have to admit, here at school I spend most of my time online, but a I said, I love multitasking. So, yeah, moderation.

Yeah, so that's not too much of a rant, and it really doesn't mean anything...so here you go...and here's to being better at posting more often....

Feasting On God

My grandpa (happens to be my Sunday school teacher) brought this a couple weeks ago. How does it affect you?

Feasting on God’s Word
by George Mueller

…The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.
…Now I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, whilst meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental, communion with the Lord…

The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon his precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that thought I did not, as it were give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it; but still continually keeping before me, that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation. The result of this is, that there is always a good deal of confession , thanksgiving, supplication, or intercession mingled with my meditation, and that my inner man almost invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart. Thus also the Lord is pleased to communicate unto me that which, very soon after, I have found to become food for other believers, though it was not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word that I gave myself to meditation, but for the profit of my own inner man.

The difference between my former practice and my present one is this. Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the time. At all events I almost invariable began with prayer…But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.; and often after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray.

I scarcely ever suffer now in this way. For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental fellowship with God, I speak to my Father, and to my Friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it) about the things that He has brought before me in his precious Word.

…

As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time, except we take food, and as this is one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man. We should take food for that, as everyone must allow. What is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God, so that it not only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts…

Intentions

I had every intention on writing a great fantastic blog post today.

Instead I spent hours on theknot.com

Now don't get all excited, no, I'm not getting married, I'm simply being a girl.

So instead I'll leave you with that and a word about tonight

We started the community youth group tonight. (We being parents from my church, my parents, and me.) We really had a nice size group there too. As my dad's daughter, and having already seen him in many different roles over the years, I am so thrilled about seeing him in the role of youth ministry. I love my dad! The Lord blessed him with many talents, and it's such a cool role to see him in. There are times when I just sure my dad was made to work with families, from grandparents and great grandparents all the way down to nursery babies (they quit crying almost instantly once he has them). Tonight was one of them. To steal the line from one of the boys who quietly came up to him and talked to him one-on-one, "You can do anything!" Back to youth group. I'm just so excited. No matter how much I feel like I'm not old enough to be a "leader" in the youth group, I'm excited that I get to be there. Whether the teens get anything out of what my dad says and what they discuss in their small groups is entirely up to them and their attitude. But me, I will definitely get real good soul food out of Wednesday nights. I'm home for a reason...