I've been learning lately that God's will isn't some mysterious plan that we have to desperately search out and agonize over every life choice we make. (Ephesians 1:8-9 “… In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed.”)
It doesn't really matter what we do in our lives (who we marry, what school to go to, what job to take, what to buy...), all He wants for us is to love Him (by keeping his commands) and to love others. He wants us to become like Him, and it doesn't really matter what our job description is. (1 Thessalonians 4:1,3 “Finally then, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us instruction as to how you out to walk and please God, that you excel still more… For this is the will of God, your sanctification.”)
I didn't feel "called" to work at the restaurant or to choose the schools I did... I just did it. Did I miss out on "God's plan for my life" by going to Belhaven instead of somewhere else? Why wouldn't He want us to do things we enjoy doing and are good at? Why are we afraid that God won’t want us to do something that we want to do? Why wouldn’t He want us to be happy? It’s a freeing thing to learn.
“God hasn’t called us to put ourselves through the misery of over-spiritualizing every decision. As you aim to please Him, let God be mysterious without insisting that every decision you make has to be infused with mind-boggling mystery. Move forward by focusing on who God is rather than delaying and demanding that He first assure you that His plan for your life is risk-free and hurt-free.
Step out in faith rather than waiting for “signs” or impressions to confirm what God wants you to do. You should never take instances of special revelation and make them normative for our Christian experience today unless God tells us to expect that.
Be filled with the Holy Spirit and immerse yourself in the word of God. His guidance is less specific and empirical and more personal and transformational. His will is for us to become mature men and women of God! We have to rely on His word, being renewed by it, pray, and step out trusting the Holy Spirit to guide us.” (church bulletin)
I do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know the hope of His calling, the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe… that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the fullness of God. (Ephesians 1:16-19, 3:14-19)
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
So right now I'm working on this statement of purpose for an internship... what, can't you tell?! Okay so maybe I told myself if I got this out of the way I could be more focused on that. We'll see. :-P
Also, I've been playing piano a little bit the past couple days and I like it! Well... I wish the piano was in the house cuz then I'd probably play more, which would let me practice the songs I wanna relearn, and then I would actually sound good! :-D (Those 10 years of lessons haven't completely gone to waste!)
I'm gonna sign up today to take the GRE, hopefully in the next week and a half (before we go to MI the second weekend in October!). Yikes. I feel like I'm not ready, but I don't think I'll ever be. So we'll see what happens...
It's been cooler the past few days (well, since yesterday really) but I'm loving it so far! I'm ready for fall. Big blankets, jeans and sweatshirts, hot chocolate, preparing for winter! Yay!
Okay... I guess I'll get back to working on this thing. I wanna have it done so I can apply either the end of this week or the beginning of next so my references will have enough time to send in their letters before the deadline of the 15th. Yikes!
Much love!
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Exposing my thoughts to the world...
Yikes! :-P An-y-ways... I just have random things to say tonight.
1. I was gonna write a post after vacation talking about life and wondering what everyone will be doing in a year from now and blah blah blah... but I didn't, so that doesn't interest me as much anymore. :-P Except to say this, you are in control of your destiny and if you're unsatisfied with where you are in life...I believe you can change it if you try. I certainly am!
B. On vacation I got to go to the Hudsonville fair a lot! If you're unaware, I did 4-H for a few years in highschool with my goaty goat Aud and it was so much fun. Staying there all week to get ready for the show and hanging out with friends and going to the other livestock shows... good times! I got to go pretty much twice a day for 3 days... a couple chore runs with Mrs. N and Marie, the two days of goat show, and catching the end of Supershowmanship and hanging out the last night. It was kind of weird going back... there were a lot of new people I didn't know and most of my crowd has been long gone... but there were a few people around I recognized. With them it was like I'd never been gone haha... "Oh hey you're here, how's it going?" It was really great spending time there, everything was basically the same as when I used to show (except for the 2 day goat show... I liked it all in one day better). But I'm kinda glad I didn't have to be there... I think I've moved on from that phase of life... but Laura and I talked about starting a 4-H club in many years if I move back up there and have a family. :-D
3. I love the beach! Drew and I went one afternoon and it was so nice. The sun and sand was hot and the water was refreshingly cool. However I seem to have gotten no color from the sun whatsoever, and we laid out there for about an hour. Oh well! At least I didn't get too much sun! I can't really remember the last time I really got sunburn though. Weird.
D. WAKE UP LISA, I'M TYPING THIS FOR YOU. Drew, if you're reading this you might want to skip over the next part. Or not, but you've been warned. :-P
5. Last night I was watching Say Yes to the Dress and on the commercials I was flipping to this show on BBC America entitled My Small Breasts and I. The title is a bit self-explanatory and it highlighted three women (in England) and their struggles with their bodies. One was afraid to even leave the house. At the end though only one of the women tried to change the way she looked (... you probably don't want to know how). Another did this phototherapy session (which actually sounds like a really cool technique for women with body image issues) and gained the confidence she lacked. The other considered implant surgery but after she openly talked about the way she looked with people she didn't feel the need anymore. Anyways it just struck me the lengths women would go to to make themselves more attractive to men and how it affects their self-images since I've never really had that particular issue *ahem*.
F. Drew, you can keep reading now. :-P
7. I've started reading this series by Lynn Austin called The Chronicles of the Kings. It's fiction based on King Hezekiah's reign (2 Chron. 29, among other places). Now... I'm wary of fiction based on the Bible but I really like these books. They're well written and as far as I can tell, pretty Biblically accurate. It's really cool because it really gives a new perspective and personalizes the things that happened during that time. It's one thing to read in the Bible about the cleansing of the temple and ridding the country of idolatry and preparing for invasions and everything... but sometimes it doesn't really sink in that these were people with struggles and doubts and lives and really the magnitude of what they had to accomplish. It also puts some of the prophesies of Isaiah and Hosea into a context (not sure if it's the exact contexts...) that really makes them real and really shows that they were people to listen to, because what they (well, really God) said was gonna happen!
H. Sometimes I just need to stop talking and trying to fix things and just give it all up to God! He's the only one who can change our hearts if we let Him.
9. Also, I'm halfway through the first season of Alias and I like it so far... it's interesting especially because she's a double agent along with her father... and crazy things just happen!
I. This has just been the weekend of weird eye-imagery... Elizabeth texted me a sentence in her book... "His eyes were the shade of blue on the Windows 95 screen." (Somehow I missed that when I read that book! haha...) and then today in my book I read "He slammed his eyes shut." I don't even wanna know how that works. :-P
I think that's everything of interest I had to say. You can go to bed now Lisa. :-D
1. I was gonna write a post after vacation talking about life and wondering what everyone will be doing in a year from now and blah blah blah... but I didn't, so that doesn't interest me as much anymore. :-P Except to say this, you are in control of your destiny and if you're unsatisfied with where you are in life...I believe you can change it if you try. I certainly am!
B. On vacation I got to go to the Hudsonville fair a lot! If you're unaware, I did 4-H for a few years in highschool with my goaty goat Aud and it was so much fun. Staying there all week to get ready for the show and hanging out with friends and going to the other livestock shows... good times! I got to go pretty much twice a day for 3 days... a couple chore runs with Mrs. N and Marie, the two days of goat show, and catching the end of Supershowmanship and hanging out the last night. It was kind of weird going back... there were a lot of new people I didn't know and most of my crowd has been long gone... but there were a few people around I recognized. With them it was like I'd never been gone haha... "Oh hey you're here, how's it going?" It was really great spending time there, everything was basically the same as when I used to show (except for the 2 day goat show... I liked it all in one day better). But I'm kinda glad I didn't have to be there... I think I've moved on from that phase of life... but Laura and I talked about starting a 4-H club in many years if I move back up there and have a family. :-D
3. I love the beach! Drew and I went one afternoon and it was so nice. The sun and sand was hot and the water was refreshingly cool. However I seem to have gotten no color from the sun whatsoever, and we laid out there for about an hour. Oh well! At least I didn't get too much sun! I can't really remember the last time I really got sunburn though. Weird.
D. WAKE UP LISA, I'M TYPING THIS FOR YOU. Drew, if you're reading this you might want to skip over the next part. Or not, but you've been warned. :-P
5. Last night I was watching Say Yes to the Dress and on the commercials I was flipping to this show on BBC America entitled My Small Breasts and I. The title is a bit self-explanatory and it highlighted three women (in England) and their struggles with their bodies. One was afraid to even leave the house. At the end though only one of the women tried to change the way she looked (... you probably don't want to know how). Another did this phototherapy session (which actually sounds like a really cool technique for women with body image issues) and gained the confidence she lacked. The other considered implant surgery but after she openly talked about the way she looked with people she didn't feel the need anymore. Anyways it just struck me the lengths women would go to to make themselves more attractive to men and how it affects their self-images since I've never really had that particular issue *ahem*.
F. Drew, you can keep reading now. :-P
7. I've started reading this series by Lynn Austin called The Chronicles of the Kings. It's fiction based on King Hezekiah's reign (2 Chron. 29, among other places). Now... I'm wary of fiction based on the Bible but I really like these books. They're well written and as far as I can tell, pretty Biblically accurate. It's really cool because it really gives a new perspective and personalizes the things that happened during that time. It's one thing to read in the Bible about the cleansing of the temple and ridding the country of idolatry and preparing for invasions and everything... but sometimes it doesn't really sink in that these were people with struggles and doubts and lives and really the magnitude of what they had to accomplish. It also puts some of the prophesies of Isaiah and Hosea into a context (not sure if it's the exact contexts...) that really makes them real and really shows that they were people to listen to, because what they (well, really God) said was gonna happen!
H. Sometimes I just need to stop talking and trying to fix things and just give it all up to God! He's the only one who can change our hearts if we let Him.
9. Also, I'm halfway through the first season of Alias and I like it so far... it's interesting especially because she's a double agent along with her father... and crazy things just happen!
I. This has just been the weekend of weird eye-imagery... Elizabeth texted me a sentence in her book... "His eyes were the shade of blue on the Windows 95 screen." (Somehow I missed that when I read that book! haha...) and then today in my book I read "He slammed his eyes shut." I don't even wanna know how that works. :-P
I think that's everything of interest I had to say. You can go to bed now Lisa. :-D
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)