Priorities

Went home this weekend. My mom is doing really well. I can't begin to tell everyone how much I appreciate your prayers. They really worked. She's limited to what she can do, but she can get up and move around and such. I'm so happy. I was so scared. Plus, the doctor's think that they removed what was hurting her all the time so she should feel a lot better once she's healed. God really does answer prayers...
Speaking of prayers, I've been feeling really selfish when it has come to my relationship with God recently. I've been asking Him for all kinds of things, and I'm not really giving back to Him the way that I should. I have been spending little or no quiet time with Him. I am so far behind on reading my Bible it's ridiculous.
I always say I'm going to put a certain amount of time aside to spend with God, and then something comes up; sleep, food, t.v., the Internet. Stupid things of this world that consume my world way too much. I need to learn more self discipline. I need to reprioritize my life.
At Chi Alpha last week Mario was talking about how if we really want to see a revolution on campus then we have to start making sacrifices. One of the sacrifices he mentioned was time. Sacrificing 30 min or an hour every morning, instead of sleep, to spend in prayer and in His presence. Time with God should be the most important thing to me. Instead, I pray when it is convenient and I read my Bible when I "can find the time". It's pathetic and it's not how I want to live my life.
I want my life to reflect Christ. And that can't happen unless I know Him, His word, and His will for my life. I'm done putting petty things before my God.

Arms High and Heart Abandoned

So today I came to discover that Hillsong United is coming to Jacksonville in April.
There are no words to express how excited I am. It's going to be a night like no other. I know it.
Just thinking about it makes me long for the day that I will finally be able to worship my God in heaven, face to face, with all of my Christian brothers and sisters for all eternity. I can't even imagine. It blows my mind.... I can't wait!

Psalm 84:2
2 My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God

Isaiah 26:8-9
8 Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws,
we wait for you;
your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts.
9 My soul yearns for you in the night;
in the morning my spirit longs for you.

Psalm 42: 1-2
1 As the deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for you, O God.
2 I thirst for God, the living God.
When can I go and stand before him?

Psalm 63:1
1 O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water.

I Don't Want To Waste Anymore Time

So a lot of things have gotten me thinking... We have so little time here on this Earth so show people our love, but more importantly the love of Christ.
There are so many people in my life that I don't say "I love you" to enough. I don't want to take my friends for granted. You don't know how long you have with them. I want/need to start cherishing every moment with them, every conversation, every laugh, everything. My friends and family mean the world to me and I don't ever want to give them a reason to feel otherwise. I'm going to try my hardest to not sweat the small things anymore. To not turn things that aren't a big deal into a big deal. I don't want to lose a friendship over it. That would break my heart.
This past week has also caused me to realize that I'm not sharing Christ with my friends like I should be. Many times when I feel like I could share or just say "I'm praying for you" or "Pray about it" or "It's all in God's hands", I don't because I'm scared about their reaction. And I shouldn't be. I shouldn't be too scared about telling people about Jesus. I need to be telling everyone. I want to live radically for Christ... but at the same time I'm scared of the repercussions. I wish I could only care about what God thinks about my life and that I could care less about what this world thought. I'm praying that God will change that in me. He's the only one who can.
It makes me sad that most unbelievers don't see Christians as loving. The really sad thing is that they don't have much reason to think otherwise. I know many Christians who are so conservative that they lose sight of our purpose: to live like Christ. Jesus didn't sit down with the righteous and he was constantly seeking out everyone the "believers" looked down on. Why should we do anything less?
Awhile ago Lance and Shaun both posted blogs about loving people. Shaun talked in his blog about how Jesus was the ultimate personification of love and how in the end those He loved betrayed and killed Him. He asked if we are willing to love people to our own deaths? My response was "I think we shouldn't’t be scared to love others. What others do with the love we show them is their business. I want God to look at my life and see that I loved others in spite the possibility of me getting hurt in the end, in spite of how others use the love I give. Jesus knew his end. He knew that those He loved would betray Him. And He loved in spite of us all. Our goal should be to love others like Jesus. No matter what the consequences."
And I still feel that way. What do we have to lose? ...Our lives? Think about what we gain.
Heaven. Eternity with our Lord. See my "I Don't Want To Be Lukewarm" blog for full details on what we gain.
I don't live out a lot of what I've said in this blog. I'm not very outgoing when it comes to meeting new people and like I said, I don't share my faith with others like I should. But I'm trying. I think that's all we can do.. Try our hardest and let God make up for our weaknesses.

Who needs a boyfriend when you have boy friends??

So today turned out to be so much better than I thought. I didn't have to deal with a bunch of sappy couples. I didn't really see any.
I got to spend some time catching up with my Bible reading. I'm way to far behind on that. I need to start being more diligent about that. It's so important and I put way too many things before my quiet time.
To summarize the rest of the night [sorry this is brief but i'm tired]
Donald came over, Jenny came over, went on a crazy hunt for Donald's car (ask about it! it's a good story), three of us plus Shaun and Lance went to Los Compadres for dinner, then to Lance's to watch a movie, then home.
Tonight was so much fun! Like I said in my previous blog, my friends are awesome. My Valentine, Miss Jenny Davis, gave me some delicious chocolates. yay!
I also got chocolates from Donald and a rose, a bear, and M&Ms from Lance. Hence the title of this blog. Having good guy friends when you're single on Valentine's day makes it so much better. You guys rock!
Oh! And shout out to Jenny for letting me borrow her computer. You're my favorite!<3
So this was pretty much my best Valentine's Day ever!

February 14, 2007

**Disclaimer: I'm feeling emo. (This is my blog so deal with it. :)


So today is Valentine's Day. The day for everyone to deck themselves out in reds and pinks and eat ridiculous amounts of candy. The day for obscenely large "i love you" balloons and bouquet after bouquet after bouquet of roses.
But I'm not bitter. Noooo way. Helping out my friend bake 7 dozen cookies and a two-layer cake for her boyfriend didn't effect me in the least bit. I'm great!
I wish I could say that is true. I wish it didn't bother me that I've been single for the past 18 years of my life. I wish I could be satisfied knowing that God has an amazing guy out there for me and be okay with waiting for the day I finally meet him.
I'd be okay with all of it if it weren't for all of the "almosts" I've had to go through. Those are the worst. The one's where you think you have found someone you think something could happen with, and then just when you're really interested.... they disappear or you find out that they never felt the same way or you have no explanation for why that just blew up in your face. Those are fun.
I hate being emo like this but sometimes you just can't help it. I think today I'm just gunna try to make up for some lost time with my Savior. The only one who never disappoints.

Today

So for an update....

Church was once again AWESOME yesterday. While the sermon was slightly more uncomfortable than the previous one, it made me realize that it shouldn't have been uncomfortable(if that makes sense). Like Pastor Brian said, the two places sex should be talked about are in church and in the home. And to that i say "Right on!" The Church and the home are the two places that kids should learn about sex. Not school or the t.v. Children, and even people my age, have such a distorted view of sex and sexuality and I completely agree that it is time for the Church to stand up and say something.

Went to the FSU basketball game. Slightly disappointing. Our guys played really well but the refs were just terrible. We lost by one in the last few seconds.
Afterwards I made my way to where else- Lance's. I caught the end of the documentary they made while passing out fliers a couple weeks ago for BestSexEver.org. HUGE props to Donald. The documentary looks great!
Argued about where to eat for about an hour, finally went to Chili's, then delicious Cold Stone (Jenny you rock!), and then back to Lance's. It was a fun night. I could hang out with those people 24/7. They're pretty much the coolest. If you're not friends with them you're missing out.

Today was ok. I'm without a computer for a few days because my stupid AC adaptor stopped working and for some reason they can't just give me a new one and be done with it. As my AP Bio teacher would call them, "Communists". So I am on my roommates computer and I will be dependent on her and the library for my computadorial (yes, i made that word up) needs. Grr...

There were campus preachers in the union once again today. I had never seen a crowd gather like they did around this guy today. (It's probably because the preacher was having to compete with people who were reading from "The Origin of Species".) I didn't really hear what he had to say but i know he was shouting something that was condemning homosexuality and something about crackheads. I don't know. All I know is that they make me so upset. Nothing makes me more upset than someone distorting my religion and making my God look hateful instead of loving. I talked to Mark and Alex about it after the last campus preachers were here and they basically told me that we don't know what God's purpose for them being on campus is and that these preachers don't make students turn away from God, the students decide that on their own. And I understand that but the whole situation still bothers me. I can see how upset and angered people are and I am so afraid that what these preachers are saying is going to further students' desires to live for themselves and not know God. And it hurts my heart. Especially when I want more than anything for these people to know the love of Christ. And while I don't know if it is true, I just feel that these people are doing more harm than good.
But not only does my heart hurt for the students who are angered and turned off by Christians and Christianity, my heart hurts for the preachers. I don't know what their relationship with God is, but I feel like they must have some distorted view of God and the Gospel. I mean, the last preachers who were here, Jeremiah and Frank, I sat and talked with for awhile and found out Jeremiah really knows the Bible. He can quote the Bible more than most Christians I know, but I feel that if he knows the Bible so well then he should know that it tells us to share Christ through our love, not through condemnation and anger. But Jeremiah says that he believes yelling at college students is God's will for his life. And I can't say that he's not telling the truth. I don't know God's plan and what His purpose for all of this is.
I don't know...I'm so confused and upset by all of it.

I'm Done

I'm done.
I'm done pretending.
I'm done looking too far into things.
I'm done kidding myself.
I'm done trying so hard to then have everything blow up in my face.
I'm done with wearing my heart on my sleeve.
I'm done with trying to make something out of nothing.
I'm done believing the lies.
I'm done searching.
I'm done pretending.
I'm done trying to do this on my own.
I'm done with not giving all of my life over to God.
I'm done thinking that there is one part of my life I can control.
I'm done.