Strength

The last few days have been completely chaotic. SO many things were crammed in and I am completely exhausted, yet completely strengthened. It is so true that when we are weak, He is strong. I have felt very peaceful the last few days and despite our busy schedule, I have been able to connect with friends that have been so encouraging. Praise God for those relationships in life!!!

Wrestling with Worry

"Worry is a mild form of ATHEISM."

As you all probably know, my biggest sin I am working through is my worry. I have many verses posted around my house that remind me to simply trust, yet it is a daily struggle. When I was younger it was really bad. I went through waves of worry so intense that I was crippled by them. I wouldn't eat or sleep for fear of choking or dying. I was so terrified of germs I'd wash my hands until they bled. With God's guidance and through the amazing and persistent efforts of my parents, I was able to beat those extreme tendencies. I remember the day I got so nervous in church that I started to pass out. I had to sit down. My mom grabbed me by the arm and marched me to the youth pastor's office. She pulled out the biggest concordance I'd seen and she watched me write out verse upon verse about worry, fear, and peace. I kept those scraps of papers for years, such a comfort to pull out and refer to. Recently Matt and I have been really praying for our futures and where God would like us to be. Because of the unknown factor, my worries have resurfaced. I am at a much better place in my life and my relationship with MY GOD now that I am older, yet this afternoon I needed to do the same thing that my mom had me do as a ten year old kid. I looked up those verses. Many have been committed to memory by now, yet I wanted to see them, to actually look at the words and claim them. I turned on my pandora station and my ears were flooded with the encouraging words of Chris Rice, Kari Jobe, Selah, Fernando Ortega, Watermark, Keith and Kristyn Getty, Jadon Lavik, etc. As I sang along to the truths in their lyrics, I searched the Bible for those verses of promise. Praying and seeking Him, I found peace this afternoon. Now in a matter of moments I am sure a worry will resurface, and I will remind myself of His control and guiding hand on my life. I will seek out those verses and be reminded of those promises. During my pondering and praying I thought of all the mental images I get when I consider peace. So many images flashed in my mind's eye, laughter, images of a child with her Father. After a few minutes on google, I found the many images I had pictured. In a few quiet minutes I produced a collage on my computer to be my new background, a constant reminder of the peace I find in my Father.



May I keep my eyes on HIM and not the worries around me.

Devotional Distress

Does anyone else ever get overwhelmed with the notion of personal devotions and prayer? Recently I have been making a point to have quality time with God, yet each day I feel like I have not done enough, or sometimes I feel like I did too much and feel frustrated and overloaded. Don't get me wrong, I am learning a lot and feel a greater peace and unity with my Father, yet it seems my attention is pulled in so many directions. Let me explain...

I am in a Bible Study at my church that is currently working through The Pursuit of Godliness. It is the sequel to the book The Pursuit of Holiness. I honestly liked the first book better, although I am not sure why. Perhaps holiness is more easily defined in my brain rather than the broad concept of godliness, although both seem so unattainable. Anyway, that is something that I am wrestling through. Also, I am currently reading the book Calm My Anxious Heart. This book hits home with each paragraph I read. My personality is prone to worry, to focus on the future, or the things out of my control and each chapter convicts and encourages me in a new way. Throughout the week, I spend the bulk of my quiet time working through this book. I underline, mark it up, and do the weekly challenges the book suggests. Currently I am drafting my personal purpose statement. Never have I thought about that concept yet the author Linda Dillow encourages the reader to incorporate verses and quotes to create a life mission statement, an anchor to fall back on when life seems out of control. I have decided on a few items I'd like to include in my statement, yet I don't have it fully ironed out. When I went off to college my aunt gave me a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt and although it is not a Biblically based quote, I love the words. I want to use it as a framework as I begin my early drafting. The quote reads, "The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience." Now like I said, the quote leaves God completely out of the picture so I am working to weave various Biblical truths into the phrase.
Something like...
"The purpose of life is to live it, to spend every moment in the moment seeking to know Him more and bring all glory to His name. To taste the positive and seemingly negative experiences of life with gratitude, humility, and a teachable spirit. To reach out with open eyes, heart, and hands desiring to put others' needs before mine. To eagerly and without fear seek to place one foot in front of the other following in my Father's guiding footsteps."
Like I said, still a work in progress....

Anyway, I am working through those two very different books as well as reading through the book of James. Throughout my life I have had good devotional spurts and then months with very little devotional time invested. Usually I find closeness with my Savior through Christian books and prayer. Now, there is nothing wrong with using books to guide you, but recently a friend encouraged me to really spend time reading the Bible. At Bible college I spent so much time in the Word that I tended to take it for granted. It has been very good, but now I feel like I am spending so much energy trying to work on so many different aspects of my life. Each avenue is convicting me and challenging me.

Not only do I think devotional time and learning more from God and about God are important, I truly enjoy the aspect of a prayer relationship with God. There is nothing as comforting as a conversation with the Creator of the Universe; the one that holds my very being in His hand and close to His heart. My seven year old sister and I were talking about prayer the other day. We were visiting my parents and she crawled into bed with me one morning. We were just talking about life and laughing when she told me that she prays every night before she goes to bed. We talked about the things that she prays for and I was so convicted by her honest and pure faith. She truly is a prayer warrior. A funny comment she made at the end of the conversation really summed up my feelings sometimes. In all seriousness she looked me in the eye and said, "Jess, sometimes I am just so tired at night but I still want to talk to God. I just close my eyes and say, 'Dear God, PRAY! Amen.' Cuz He knows the things that I usually pray about and then He can take care of them." I laughed when she said it and we talked briefly about how awesome it is that God knows our hearts, then the conversation turned. I thought about that a lot on the way back to our house. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by all the things I should be praying about and people I should be praying for. Life gets so busy and there are so many hurting people. I want my prayer time to be completely meaningful, yet I get overwhelmed. I want to pray for each of my students by name, all of my family members, my future children, my friends, my husband, the list continues...Growing up, my family had family devotions each night and we had a distinct method for praying: Monday-Missionaries, Tuesday-Teachers, Wednesday-Whoever, Whatever, Thursday-Thanksgiving, Friday-Friends and Family. Perhaps Matt and I should adopt that same system of praying together, then I might not get so overwhelmed by it all. Despite my feelings, it is nice to know that my God already knows the future and while I think it is important to carry specific needs to God, it truly is a comfort to know that he knows our hearts! Thank you for that little reminder, Juliana!!! Romans 8:26-27 says, "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God."

I want my devotional time to be more passionate and relational not as "list driven." I don't want to worry about if I read enough or prayed for enough people. I want to be challenged, yet don't want to feel completely frustrated and overwhelmed. Maybe this is God breaking down my confident view of myself to see that there are MANY things that I can work on. Perhaps I need to simply chew on things longer rather than take such large bites each day. I'm just learning along the way...

What are you learning?

Results of the Facebook Fast

1. I was able to spend a LOT more time reading the Bible, Christian books, and praying.
2. I did more housework and did not let the dishes accumulate for longer than one day!
3. I really missed seeing what friends were up to and wanted to email a few of them when I realized I didn't even know their email addresses!!!

Moral of the story: It was REALLY hard but good. I learned that I need to limit myself not turn myself off from facebook because it can be a useful tool to connect with and encourage others.

It is my goal to be more purposeful in my facebooking. I already went through and deleted a lot of "quasi-friends." Sounds bad but I need to be building into a reasonable amount of people and I want those people to build into me. I learned in my psychology grad class that there are about 20 people in the world that you can truly have a close, intimate relationship with. Also, our brains max out at about 150 friends and acquaintances. Meaning: There are about 150 people that we could have a meaningful conversation with if we bumped into each other at the grocery store. There could be countless "quasi-friends" that we may see in a grocery store that cause us to turn down a random aisle to avoid an awkward encounter, yet we keep them as facebook friends just for the sake of knowing what they are doing in life.

So, how many real "friends" do you have on facebook?