My room-mates, Justina and Angie, and I have really enjoyed the olympics. We are begining training for the next winter games. I was hoping to post the video of us in action, but I can't figure out how to...yet....

Times are a' changing

Ever feel like there is so much going on and the tidal wave has not even hit yet?? Well, life has been busy but I want to tell you of God's provisions in my life, even if they are silly.

My job ended last December and I have been looking and stressing over finding a new one. I have also been struggling though the disciplines that God calls our obedience out on the carpet. I have been fighting authority and ignorance, what I feel is injustice, and trying to grasp why God works in such peculiar ways. Well, I was sharing with my friend Lindsey that I needed a job but my availability is hectic. Her mom is sick and she had taken on a hefty load this semester and felt engorged by her responsibilities and was looking to lighten the load: her job; on campus; 10 hrs a week. Well, things were working out, I actually prayed about it instead of just saying that I did, and I went in to get my hours scheduled. They realized they didn't have enough money in the budget and they were sorry, but nada por mi! I was sad, but at this point I tried to just be content, and in "okay God" mode.
I began to fast, not only for the job but for other things. In my discipleship group, we have been looking at the disciplines of following Christ. God cares that my friend had to leave school this semester, one month into it, because he didn't have the money, one friend had kidney stones and another friend had a lump in her breast. So I am awful at fasting because I get too hungry or cranky and ka-put! But I just felt like there were so many things that, even beyond that list, were heavy on my heart. Beginning fasting from sugar, baby steps, I have spent the last week trying to catch glimpses of God in the day. Well, they called me back and realized they really needed some help and so I started work on Friday. My friends lump in her breast was not cancerous and my friend who had to leave school is doing a lot better.
On my way to class today, the freezing air forced me to get things moving in my head and start the blood flow earlier than usual. I don't think that God worked things out with the job and all those people just so he could stop hearing my nagging prayers and that I would be pleased. As I walk closer to sanctification, I believe that prayer is not for God, but to change us followers. i am learning to trust and be disciplined. I also saw End of the Spear this week and it was a painful reminder of how my value of my life is excessive;it's not just how much I need to father to accomplish his rule reign and authority through me, not me relaying a message, but bringing peace to those who have no understanding of it. Because really, if we all understood God, our unbelief would be cured and we'd be obedient. I was really sad that those followers were murdered. Their wives were left to sleep alone, children fatherless. But really, those followers grasped something bigger than themselves, and died. God will never let his word return void or empty, like the snow falls from heaven and water replenishes the dry earth, this theme of dying is recourse (Is 55). Times are a' changing and I can't wait to be look back, but for now, this is where I am.

For all the artists...and those who don't know they are...

IS YOUR HOPE IN GOD FAINT AND DYING?
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose imagination is stayed on Thee." Isaiah 26:3 (R. V. marg.)

Is your imagination stayed on God or is it starved? The starvation of the imagination is one of the most fruitful sources of exhaustion and sapping in a worker's life. If you have never used your imagination to put yourself before God, begin to do it now. It is no use waiting for God to come; you must put your imagination away from the face of idols and look unto Him and be saved. Imagination is the greatest gift God has given us and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him. If you have been bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, it will be one of the greatest assets to faith when the time of trial comes, because your faith and the Spirit of God will work together. Learn to associate ideas worthy of God with all that happens in Nature - the sunrises and the sunsets, the sun and the stars, the changing seasons, and your imagination will never be at the mercy of your impulses, but will always be at the service of God.

"We have sinned with our fathers; . . . and have forgotten" - then put a stiletto in the place where you have gone to sleep. "God is not talking to me just now," but He ought to be. Remember Whose you are and Whom you serve. Provoke yourself by recollection, and your affection for God will increase tenfold; your imagination will not be starved any longer, but will be quick and enthusiastic, and your hope will be inexpressibly bright.

Oswald Chambers writings are definitely a overflowing and glimpse of our creater. Lord, may we all learn to die and be resurrected to live beyond oursleves.

This is my brother Scott, who is now 15, using his imagination. At this point, I know God has to laugh at his children experimenting with explosive bodily functions. It's nature, right??

FOUR!

It was Matt's birthday and so I took the boy out for some mini golf. He beat me by 1 stroke! Good thing it was his birthday...This is his celebration dance.

Lately I have been praying that God would capture me. I have found that 5% is partly in taking care of myself, but the majority of repair has taken place in believing who God is. Amazingly enough, I have had new ideas about how to love those that he has placed in my life, simply by asking him to supply me with love. It feels like, I am falling for the first time, falling into life and love. I love my Jesus and not even death can take that away, even my own death. For the first time in my walk with him, I finally understand that "take up your cross" is like "take up your electric chair." I am still searching for what exactly my "cross" is, what I am called to let go, but it's a process right?

Pray for Matt's mom Heidi, as she is having surgery to remove breast cancer on Monday. Pray for my room mate Angie as her world is crashing. Pray for the world, that God might change you to love it. I have to be careful because when I pray like that I'm never the same.

"It is one thing to go on the lonely way with dignified heroism, but quite another thing if the line mapped out for you by God means being a door-mat under other people's feet. Suppose God wants to teach you to say, "I know how to be abased" - are you ready to be offered up like that? Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket - to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister? Some saints cannot do menial work and remain saints because it is beneath their dignity." Oswald Chambers