God really has been putting a lot of challenging things on my heart recently. There are two main things I kinda want to talk about here.
1) The "Future"
I'm at a point in my school career in which I have to start to seriously plan for my post-grad plans. Many of the "next-steps" that my degree can lead to require me to starting thinking and planning NOW, and honestly it's stressful. It's stressful because I like to be in control of my life (working on it! ;) and I know that the future isn't something that I can control. Regardless, God has been very good to me recently on this front. For the longest time I had felt kind of lost/drifting and was praying for God to give me a passion that I can form a goal around and work towards. Through the past several weeks/months, God has slowly been closing doors and also turning me back to my childhood dreams and revealing to me the passion I had tried to suppress for so long due to fear. It's still a scary time for me because for once in my life, I have no back-up plan! It really is all or nothing, and I know that if I get into my program of choice it'll be all to the glory of God; I will be unable to take an ounce of credit for it. Praise God!
2) Singleness
To be perfectly honest, I've never really thought very hard about the state of being single or having a significant other. Oh sure, I've cooed over romantic dramas/comedies on TV and sighed over stories shared by girlfriends about the sweet things their boyfriends do for them, but if I had to think long and hard about the past several years (i.e., late high school and university; my hormone-addled middle school years do not count LOL) I honestly never gave much thought to boys and future relationships. Is that strange? In the past months God has been slowly but surely revealing to me areas of my life in which I need to repent and be healed from, and I know that these things are part of the reason why I've never been in a serious relationship before. Maybe in the back of my head I've wondered whether something was wrong with me in that I never seemed to be able to like the same guy for very long. I see now that this, too, was one of God's tender mercies to me. How can I be in a Christ-centered relationship with any guy if I'm not in a right relationship with Christ first? Knowing this in my head and actually understanding this in my heart after being made aware of certain things about myself are two completely different things. With that said, I don't know how long this season of singleness will last. With this new career path I feel that God is leading me towards, this season may be even more prolonged than I had originally hoped. What I do believe is that I am the way I currently am and the things I am currently struggling through are for my good; as the psalmist says, "...the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!" (Psalm 84:11-12; emphasis mine). God is good and faithful, and I must trust in that.
I know I've been sharing this song around the Internet like no one's business, but it has truly been encouraging to me over the past several days. I hope it will bless you like it has blessed me.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
lots of musings :|
Recent(-ish) musings......
I had been intending to write about Urbana12, but somehow I don't really many words for it. As with all similar events there was good and bad and it's hard to write everything down in one sitting. I'm probably not going to do a whole good-bad-ugly kind of post about it, but things I've learned/thought were useful will probably pop up here and there.
1) Loving my home church - I remember that around this time last year I was quite determined to leave my home church and go church-hunting during the summer. I remember being so disillusioned by the lack of desire to really know and worship the God of the Bible and the prevalent worldliness I saw that I really dreaded going to church on Sundays. Recently, however, I feel like God has burdened my heart for this church. The truth is, I love this church and the people in it. My heart yearns to see revival and the turning of our eyes toward Christ and things above. I have especially been burdened by a desire to see the youth of this church come to truly know God and deny their own sinful flesh as a example to the rest of the congregation. I am very encouraged by a lot of my younger brothers and sisters who really do desire to know God more, but I can see that there is an extreme shortage of committed leadership and the godly leadership that is there is stretched really thing. It seems like no one is willing to invest in this next generation, and that breaks my heart. I also had a bit of an awful time on the worship team during the summer b/c I felt like it wasn't always Spirit-led and I don't know whether it's me or the system, which leads me to.....
2) Spiritual discipline of worship - I remember being very convicted about this during Urbana. I was very uncomfortable at the beginning of Urbana b/c the style of worship was so very different than what I was used to at church and CCF. I rmbr praying all through the first session that God would work through the conference to reveal to me things that I needed to change in my life and to bring me to uncomfortable places if He needed to, and worship was definitely one of these areas; I think I'd never realized before that my worship was quite self-indulgent and I really didn't have a very high view of God in my worship. It wasn't even an issue of pride that a lot of worship leaders struggle with - it was the fact that my worship to God didn't reflect that He truly is the God of all creation and of all nations and I was very focused on some aspects of God while completely ignoring other aspects. I was also very set in my ways in that there was one good and comfortable way of worship and that was it. How deluded we truly are until God deigns to open our eyes! I've just been really convicted to study the Bible and see what biblical worship looks like and discern from that how I am to lead worship and also what kind of "worship music" I should listen to/lead. And from this point I can generalize further to......
3) Doctrine and theology - I know nothing about doctrine. Absolutely nothing. I believe that the Bible is God-breathed and should be our only guide/standard, but that doesn't mean I know a thing about how to study and interpret it correctly. I guess a lot of people that I know are getting in doctrine and theology and throw around a lot of buzzwords and schools of thought and people are always saying so-and-so's preaching isn't correct or so-and-so's teaching is super legit and I'm just completely bewildered because I have no idea what it all means and I don't want to be swayed by a teaching just because it sounds good and Biblical. So much discernment to be prayed for ;____; I don't know how we think we can get anything done without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And that barb was directed entirely at myself (sigh).
In essence this is a strange kind of period in my life. I am unsure about many things and wanting to learn many things, but don't know how/where to start.
Recent reminders-to-self:
"For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous." (Romans 2:13)
"For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:13-14)
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:4)
"If we are faithless, he remains faithful - for he cannot deny himself." (2 Timothy 2:13)
I had been intending to write about Urbana12, but somehow I don't really many words for it. As with all similar events there was good and bad and it's hard to write everything down in one sitting. I'm probably not going to do a whole good-bad-ugly kind of post about it, but things I've learned/thought were useful will probably pop up here and there.
1) Loving my home church - I remember that around this time last year I was quite determined to leave my home church and go church-hunting during the summer. I remember being so disillusioned by the lack of desire to really know and worship the God of the Bible and the prevalent worldliness I saw that I really dreaded going to church on Sundays. Recently, however, I feel like God has burdened my heart for this church. The truth is, I love this church and the people in it. My heart yearns to see revival and the turning of our eyes toward Christ and things above. I have especially been burdened by a desire to see the youth of this church come to truly know God and deny their own sinful flesh as a example to the rest of the congregation. I am very encouraged by a lot of my younger brothers and sisters who really do desire to know God more, but I can see that there is an extreme shortage of committed leadership and the godly leadership that is there is stretched really thing. It seems like no one is willing to invest in this next generation, and that breaks my heart. I also had a bit of an awful time on the worship team during the summer b/c I felt like it wasn't always Spirit-led and I don't know whether it's me or the system, which leads me to.....
2) Spiritual discipline of worship - I remember being very convicted about this during Urbana. I was very uncomfortable at the beginning of Urbana b/c the style of worship was so very different than what I was used to at church and CCF. I rmbr praying all through the first session that God would work through the conference to reveal to me things that I needed to change in my life and to bring me to uncomfortable places if He needed to, and worship was definitely one of these areas; I think I'd never realized before that my worship was quite self-indulgent and I really didn't have a very high view of God in my worship. It wasn't even an issue of pride that a lot of worship leaders struggle with - it was the fact that my worship to God didn't reflect that He truly is the God of all creation and of all nations and I was very focused on some aspects of God while completely ignoring other aspects. I was also very set in my ways in that there was one good and comfortable way of worship and that was it. How deluded we truly are until God deigns to open our eyes! I've just been really convicted to study the Bible and see what biblical worship looks like and discern from that how I am to lead worship and also what kind of "worship music" I should listen to/lead. And from this point I can generalize further to......
3) Doctrine and theology - I know nothing about doctrine. Absolutely nothing. I believe that the Bible is God-breathed and should be our only guide/standard, but that doesn't mean I know a thing about how to study and interpret it correctly. I guess a lot of people that I know are getting in doctrine and theology and throw around a lot of buzzwords and schools of thought and people are always saying so-and-so's preaching isn't correct or so-and-so's teaching is super legit and I'm just completely bewildered because I have no idea what it all means and I don't want to be swayed by a teaching just because it sounds good and Biblical. So much discernment to be prayed for ;____; I don't know how we think we can get anything done without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And that barb was directed entirely at myself (sigh).
In essence this is a strange kind of period in my life. I am unsure about many things and wanting to learn many things, but don't know how/where to start.
Recent reminders-to-self:
"For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous." (Romans 2:13)
"For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:13-14)
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:4)
"If we are faithless, he remains faithful - for he cannot deny himself." (2 Timothy 2:13)
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