prayer

Do not waste your walk through life today.
Open your spiritual eyes.
Prayer is needed everywhere.
Anywhere you walk today I can and will order your steps, if you will let Me.
Pray while you're driving, while you're cooking, while you're doing laundry and running errands.
Of all the weapons in the world, prayer is your most powerful resource.
Don't let the day begin or end without letting your prayers to Me pave the way in all you do.
Wherever you go, remember that part of your royal privilege is raising your voice to heaven.
So hold on to the promises that are yours and pray!

"Pray at all times and on every occasion in the power of the holy spirit. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all christians everywhere." Ephesians 6:18

This is a page from the book His Princess: Love Letters From Your King. Just wanted to sharee =)

belize

I'M GOING TO BELIZE!! This summer I've been given the amazing opportunity to go on a mission trip with a group of senior high students and some other great people. I am so excited! It was such a last minute thing and I'm not totally sure what we will be doing down there, but I do know that God will do some amazing things. I am so excited about this, and I would just ask that anyone reading this could pray that God will prepare my heart and also that I would be able to figure out all the financial aspects of it. Bahhhhh I'm so pumppped! =)

humbled

Well, one thing that I've struggled with a lot throughout most of my life is pride. I am incredibly prideful in a few different ways. One example of my pridefulness is shown when I do something wrong. It takes a lot for me to own up to my mistakes and admit that I was wrong; I hate doing it. Another time where I'm very prideful is when I feel like I'm doing something good in my life. It's almost as thought I put myself on a pedastal and look down upon everyone who isn't doing what I'm doing. I've recently become extremely passionate for the Lord. I've gotten to a place in my life where everything is just coming together and it's been awesome! But my pride was really getting the best of me. Two days ago I was really convicted of this. I was gossiping..eww i know..and I just had it on my heart that I wasn't getting the big picture. When we're passionate about the Lord, it can only go so far without following our passions with action of compassion. Basically this means that we should do something about how we feel, we should live it out and share it, but do it in a loving way. I don't know how, but I thought I was doing this. Psshh, yeah right..I for sure wasn't doing this. I was talking about people I knew and just being so judgmental. This is really embarrassing and humbling to admit, but I honestly thought I was better than some people. I thought that since I was so passionate, other people who didn't act the way I did weren't as good as me. Pause for a minute.

How wrong is this thinking? How off were my thoughts? Wayyyy wrong and wayyy off. I was convicted of my judgment on others hardcore and I just sat back and thought about it. Yesterday before I read James chapter 4, I wrote in my journal.

"Before I read this, I just want to own up to something I've been struggling with. I am so prideful and self-righteous. I honestly think that I'm better than a lot of people. But that fact is...I'm not. Humble me Lord. I pray that you destory the pride inside of me. It disgusts me."

I opened up James and these are what I read..
verse 6 "...God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble and oppressed."
verse 8 "...Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded."
verse 10 "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will life you up."
verse 11 "Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it."

It was pretty cool to see that God was just showing me that what I was doing wasn't how he wanted it. He wants us to be passionate, but also be compassionate towards others. We'll never get it right if we can't love on others the way we love and are loved by the Lord.

I'm walking through the bright white gates
Breathing in and out Your grace
All around me melodies rise
That echo with the joy inside
So I start to sing
But I can't sing loud enough
I can't sing loud enough
When I'm singing for you my God
No, I can't sing loud enough
I can't sing loud enough
When I'm singing for you my God

With a thunder roll and a brilliant light
Your glory boasts and the heavens shine
The saints and angels stand in awe
captured by the beauty of it all
So I fall to my knees
But I can't bow low enough
I can't bow low enough
At the vision of You my God
I can't bow low enough
I can't bow low enough
At the vision of You my God

I can't hold it all inside
I'm reaching for the One who brought me out of death and into life
But I can't lift my hands high enough
Life my hands high enough
When I'm reaching for You my God

I love this song. I just wanted to share how great it is. I get such a great image in my head of how beautiful our Lord is. My favorite line is "captured by the beauty of it all." Wow, that really makes me think about what heaven will be like and what it will be like when we are finally face to face with him. fj kewl; ajk cool. =)

consistency

Well, February has been a pretty busy month already, and from the looks of my calendar...it isn't going to slow down. I have training this weekend for my mission trip to Belize on Friday and all day Saturday. I work all day on Valentine's Day =/. Major studying all next week. FCA retreat the weekend after next (SO PUMPED). THREE midterm exams the week after the retreat. Gross. Then it's my birthday weekend after that.

I honestly feel pretty overwhelmed with the stuff I have going on, but I am real excited about most of the stuff coming up in my life. Although it can get a little stressful being busy, I still like it. The only thing that I've been struggling with this week is making time for the Lord. Even though I've been on this amazing spiritual high these past few months, I've realized how important it is for my faith to continuously be seeking out the Lord and devoting my time-my life even-to him every single day. It isn't something that I can do just once and be set after that. Reading my bible on Monday will definitly not get me through the week. Praise gathering on Wednesday doesn't even get me through Thursday sometimes. For my faith, I need it every day. And it isn't even so much about needing it, but I want it. I want to know more about who God is, I want to learn things about myself and seek out what God's plan is for my life so that I can follow that. I'm a super nerd when it comes to school.. I really like it. And this is going to sound realllly stupid but please don't judge.. I honestly love to learn, and what could be better than learning about our Lord. There's so much that not only do we not know, but things that we can't even fathom. THAT'S AMAZING TO ME!!

I don't know what else to write.. I just got super tired all of a sudden. Goodnight.

p.s. Megan helped me come up with the amazing title of this blog, in case anyone was wondering. hahah =)

facebook

I gave up facebook last night until summer, with a potential week of reactivating it during spring break. As embarrassing as this is, I find myself going to my former book mark at the top of my internet browser and being extremely disappointed when I remember that it isn't there.

I'm in class right now and the guy in front of me is on facebook... uggghhhhhhh.

No more cafe world, no more farmville, no more statuses, no more funny comments, no more music videos, and no more facebook chat. The worst part about it all is not being able to message people. My groups of friends and I all have a giant message that has been going on since we started planning stuff for the weekend we all came home for our high school's homecoming. Ever since then, we message each other almost daily about updates in our lives and just share funny stories. It sucks that I won't be able to read that anymore for a while.

The good part about giving up facebook, however, outweighs the things that I have to give up. Today I have done more homework than I have all semester. As most people are, I'm a huge creep and I find that I gossip wayy more because of things I read or see on facebook, so that sin that I struggle with will be much easier now. Also, I have never paid so much attention in class.

I'm hoping that this helps me academically the most. =/Here's to hoping...haha

moment of weakness

Last night I was thinking about a ton of stuff and, to be completely honest, I was bawling. I had thought that everything in my life was going pretty good. I was finally full-fledged following (whoa lots of f's) the Lord and doing his will. But yesterday I had one thing go wrong, and the rest of my day just went downhill. After I calmed down and got a hold of myself, I thought about what had just happened. Everything was and is going great in my life, but in my moment of weakness, I was attacked. So to jump right in to the point of this blog...

The devil uses our moments of weakness to his advantage. I always find that when I'm frustrated about one small thing or I'm just struggling and having a bad day, he attacks me with so much more. Every person has those certain things that they always struggle with. For me, feeling inadequate has been huge. Along with probably 90% of other girls, I sometimes feel like I'm not pretty enough, or skinny enough, or good enough blah blah blah. You get the picture. Anyways, the devil uses my moments of frustration to really attack me with these feelings of worthlessness. On a normal day, I don't really feel anything negative about myself. I'm happy with who I am and who God has created me to be, but oh man... when I'm in that negative mood.. the devil realllly knows how to get to me. That's what made me just lose it last night. Everything going on in my life was magnified by about 4982 and it almost felt like the world was endinng and I had no way to solve my "problems."

The point I'm trying to make is that this is crap. It's so stupid that the devil can take advantage of us like this. It's frustrating that he is SOO good at what he does. And of course we can't always expect him, but as Christians we have our wonderful Savior on our side. We can prepare ourselves and build our faiths up so that when we are faced with difficulties, we are ready to stand against the devil with the Lord with us and succeed. The question isn't about if we're going to face trials in our lives, that's pretty much a given, but it's about when we will face trials. And the difference in those who can conquer and grow in their faiths through persecution and those who give up lies in how much we prepare ourselves and how ready we are to face what the devil has to throw at us. We need to always be in prayer, always be seeking to know God more, always be trying to better ourselves. It's so important. It's not just some random opportunity that God has given us just for fun, he has given us the chance to live a christ-like life that will lead to only good things. Trust in that.