So, I have been trying to read a daily devotional every morning out of the book My Utmost For His Highest.  This is a great book, and it’s a book which gets me thinking, which I really like.  Anywho, this morning’s entry really struck me, and has been running around my mind all day.  Here it is: (btw, my version is the “updated” version of the book, so I don’t know how different it is from the original)

August 22

I Indeed…But He

“I indeed baptize you with water…but He…will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” Matt 3:11

Have I ever come to the point in my life where I can say, “I indeed…but He…”?  Until that moment comes, I will never know what the baptism of the Holy Spirit means.  I indeed am at the end, and I cannot do anything more–but He begins right there–He does the things that no one else can ever do.  Am I prepared for His coming?  Jesus cannot come and do His work in me as long as there is anything blocking the way, whether it is something good or bad.  When He comes to me, am I prepared for Him to drag every wrong thing I have ever done into the light?  That is exactly where He comes.  Wherever I know I am unclean is where He will put His feet and stand, and wherever I think I am clean is where He will remove His feet and walk away.

Repentance does not cause a sense of sin–it causes a sense of inexpressible unworthiness.  When I repent, I realize that I am absolutely helpless, and I know that through and through I am not worthy even to carry His sandals.  Have I repented like that, or do I have a lingering thought of possibly trying to defend my actions?  The reason God cannot come into my life is that I am not at the point of complete repentance. 

“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  John is not speaking here of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as an experience, but as a work performed by Jesus Christ.  “He will baptize you…” The only experience that those who are baptized with the Holy Spirit are ever concious of is the experience of sensing their absolute unworthiness.

“I indeed” was this in the past, “but He” came and something miraculous happened.  Get to the end of yourself where you can do nothing, but where He does everything.

 Chambers, Oswald. “My Utmost For His Highest” 

What are your thoughts? 

Hey guys,

 I just finished my first 3 weeks of being a teacher, and man, am I having a blast!  I am so glad that I chose this profession, and even more glad that I stuck it out, and achhieved my goal of being here. 

 I was thinking the other day about how this is the first time I can remember that I have set a big goal like this, worked hard for it, and then achieved it.  I’ve set smaller goals in my life.  I’ve set big goals that really weren’t a lot of work.  I’ve set big goals and given up on them.  But this time, I set a big goal, I worked by butt off, I was ready to give up so many times and didn’t, and, with a LOT of help, I made it.  It feels so good. 

So, as you may guess, my encouragement to you is this:  Set goals, big goals, and work hard at them.  It is so worth it!

 For the first few weeks of school, the Desert Sky staff decided it would be a good idea to teach on some life-topics.  One of the lessons that I got to teach my students was goal-setting.  For the lesson, we read part of the goal-setting section of 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.  It was good stuff!  It was helpful, and it made sense, and it talked about how to set goals, and achieve them.  I’m not going to do into all of that detail here, but if you want some help setting goals, come talk to be, or find that book in the library.  BTW, I haven’t read the whole book, but the parts of it I have read make me think that the whole thing is pretty good.  Might be worth a read. 

Happy goal-setting and happier goal-achieving!!

Today was Student Ministries Sunday, so if you were at church this morning, you know that we went over to ‘Big Church.’  They are currently doing a series in Ecclesiastes, and Mike taught about finding balance in our lives.  He talked about God giving us a time for everything in our lives, whether it be laughing and dancing, or weeping and mourning.  God makes everything beautiful in it’s time. 

I felt that this was a good message for me right now.  I really liked when Mike was talking about enjoying the season of life that we are currently in, instead of spending so much time looking towards the next thing.  Like Mike said, there are times when I am so unhappy about the way things are, and I can’t wait until God changes my current situation.  And there are other times when I am really enjoying life, and I don’t want God to change things.  But, in either case, God ultimately has control, and He knows best.  Life can’t always be easy, and life won’t always be difficult, and I trust God to balance those aspects in my life. 

God knows me so well. He knows my heart, He knows my strengths and weaknesses, He knows my future.  He knows what I am struggling with.  God knows how to bring out the absolute best in me, and how to form me into the person He wants me to be.  He specifically puts me in certain situations, and brings certain seasons in my life to make that happen.  Who am I to disagree or complain?

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Romans 12:9-21.  It is just a huge list of commands that Paul gives to Christians, about how they should be acting and what they should be doing.  You should give it a read. 

I like this list because it is challenging.  Every time I read it, it’s like a gut check.  It never fails that there is something or other on this list that I have been doing very poorly.  The bluntness makes the passage very effective.   

I like this list because it is powerful.  I can’t exactly pinpoint what it is, but when I read this passage, I can just sense the authority and the potency behind the words. 

Last night, in my small group, my girls spent some time evaluating ourselves on the commands in this list.  We decided, as a group, what our bottom 8 were:

Do not be proud.

Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil.

Do not take revenge. 

Bless, and do not curse. 

Honor one another above yourselves.

Be willing to associate with people of low position. 

Be patient in affliction.

We prayed about these commands, and challenged ourselves to focus on following them this next week.  I am looking forward to hearing stories about how it went. 

I am hoping to do this again in a few months, to see as a small group where we have grown, and where we still need to grow. 

I had this amazing dream the other night.  It was one of those dreams you don’t want to wake up from.  In this dream, all of my desires came true.  Everything that I want right now, happened.  It was so wonderful, and throughout the dream, I was so happy.

But eventually, I did wake up.  And I knew right away that none of that stuff had really happened.  Honestly, I was still happy from my dream, but also kind of sad because it was only a dream. 

It really got me thinking about my wants for my life verses God’s wants for my life.  Everything that happened to me in this dream was something that I wanted for myself.  I didn’t even consider what God had planned for me.  That is something I am trying to learn right now.  Am I willing to hand over my dreams and desires to God, and in return get His dreams and desires.  In my head, I know that He has some good stuff planned for me, better even than what I have planned.  But in my heart, I can’t let go.  It’s like forcing myself to say that I don’t want the things that I actually do want. 

So, I am currently in the process of giving over everything.  It is most certainly a process.  I’ve told God what I want, but I’ve also told Him to do what He sees fit.  After all, He does know a lot more than me.  I’ll keep you updated.

I first heard this phrase when I was at a Bible study in high school.  When I first heard it, it sounded like a bad thing.  Reckless, as in reckless driving, is not something you want to describe yourself.  And abandonment could never be a good thing, right?

But think about this: I want to recklessly abandon my life without Jesus.  There are things I do that don’t please God.  I want to abandon those.  There are things I want that God doesn’t want for me.  As hard as it is, I want to abandon those desires.  There are things about me that are not a part of who God wants me to be.  I want to abandon those characteristics.   

Reckless is defined as “utterly unconcerned about the consequences of some action; without caution; careless.”  That is exactly what I want my abandonment of my old self to look like.  I don’t care what my friends, or my family, or my coworkers, or anybody cares about my decision.  I only care about what God thinks.  I only want to please my God. 

This phrase, “reckless abandonment” came to my mind again last Sunday, and I have been thinking about it quite a bit since then.  Have I totally abandoned myself?  Am I living completely for God? Has He taken over my life? Is He my everything? 

I can honestly answer with a resounding NO.  I am not even close. 

But it has been my focus for the last week, and will continue to be so for quite some time.  I’m learning again to trust God with every part and every detail of my life.  I’m learning again to want what God has in store for me, instead of what I have planned.  I’m learning again to find my value and my identity in God, not in anything else.  I’m learning again to follow God’s commands and guidelines even when I don’t feel like it.  I’m learning again to be completely consumed in my pursuit of Christ.  I’m learning again to run after Jesus, and to abandon and discard anything and everything that gets in my way.   

So, one of the songs we sung during this morning’s worship is quickly becoming one of my favorites: Precious, Intimate King.

After we sang it this morning, I really starting thinking about the last verse:

So I will lay my will

Down at your feet, my Lord

In adoration, in adoration

Learning to lay my will down at the feet of Jesus is something I am constantly working on.  I want so badly to take control of my own life, and tell God what I want to happen.  Instead, I need to learn to give up and surrender my life to God, let Him take control and decide what happens.  I know that His choices for me will work out better than mine.

What really got me about this song, though, was the last part: “In adoration”

I always tell myself that I have to let God take control because it will be better for me in the end.  But, really, I should let God take control becuase I love Him, and I want to please Him, and that is what He asks me to do. 

Then, to top it all off, the lesson today was about submission to God.  Both Robin and Kate did a great job, and both of them talked about submitting with your heart, not just on the outside.  So, that made me think.  When I submit my will to God, is it because I’m just looking out for myself, or is my heart in it? 

I think that if I could learn to really, truly, give up my will to God, from the heart, I think it might just get a little bit easier.  I don’t think it will ever be easy, and it will always be a struggle, but I do believe it won’t be so much of a battle. 

Wow! Winter camp was more awesome than I thought it was going to be!  I was really impressed by both the band and the speaker, Scott.

The theme was Transform, and Scott talked about Peter.  He talked about how when Jesus and Peter first met, Peter’s name was actually Simon.  Jesus met him for the first time, and told him his name was now Peter, which means Rock.  He also talked about how Peter walked on the water with Jesus, on an unstable lake during a storm.  He told us how Peter  had a really bad day, and denied that he knew Jesus three times, but that Jesus still loved him and his last words to Peter were “Follow me.”

He told us the first step was to start following, truly following Jesus.  He told us we would inevitably fail, but that Jesus would keep loving us.  He encouraged us to place a filter on our lives!  He talked about really bad days, days that change your life, days that leave us a choice of whether to give up or to continue following.  The whole weekend was pretty powerful. 

What I got out of the weekend is this:  Be me.  I realized this weekend is that I am trying so hard to make myself better, that I am forgetting the “myself” part.  I wrote in my journal one night, “I want to be a better version of me, but I still want to be me.”

There are things in my life that I need to change, I know that well.  But there are also parts of me that God created, parts of my personality that are a part of who God made me to be.  I need to be happy with those parts. 

I had a moment this weekend where the light just clicked:  Jesus takes into consideration who I am when He sends me challenges and trials.  He doesn’t want me to give up my personality to overcome those challenges, He wants me to figure out how I can overcome them, personality and quirks and all.  It was a very freeing moment. 

So, currently, I am in the process of learning to be happy with who I am.   I want to be satisfied with the person God created, but never satisfied with my progress towards becoming more like Jesus.  This weekend, I learned the difference between the two.   

This past weekend I got to go up with some friends to the White Mountains and go snowboarding!!  It was so awesome.  There was a decent snow, and the best part of it was there wasn’t many people there.  Sometimes when we were going down a run, it would just be us.  It was like we had the whole mountain to ourselves. 

Also, I don’t want to brag, but I did great this weekend.  I’ve been snowboarding since I was in high school, so I’m decent at it, but I was really trying to improve this trip, and I did!  By the end of the day, I felt like I was a much better boarder. 

A few times during the day, I was thinking about how I was having a great time, and how God was smiling at that.  We are His children, and I believe that He loves to see us living life and enjoying it.  He invented mountains, and He invented snow, and He invented gravity, and He gave us the tools and the brains to create snowboards.  He did all that for us, for our use. 

And, yes, there are certainly more important things than our happiness, and our entertainment.  I think God cares more about inside things than outside things.  God will sacrifice my happiness in a heartbeat if it means He can teach me something.  He will make me uncomfortable if it will grow me. 

Our comfort, and our happiness, are towards the bottom of His priority list.  But that doesn’t mean He doesn’t want us to be happy.  I had a blast this weekend, and I think God enjoyed watching that.  But if my focus in life was solely to please myself, and all I thought about was my happiness, God wouldn’t enjoy that.  I could be having the time of my life, but God would be heartbroken. 

I think that God wants us to spend our time and our efforts on others.  He wants me to think about serving people around me, instead of serving myself.  He wants me to think about what others need, not what I need.  He wants me to put my wants last, and my happiness last.  And when I do that, He will lovingly and joyfully bless me with things like a day of snowboarding.

And, honestly, I don’t have this all figured out.  I am very good at only thinking about myself.  Being ‘others-minded’ is a skill that needs to be practiced just like snowboarding.  If I make it a goal of mine, and ask for help, I’ll get better at it.  I just have to be willing to give up my own happiness.  

Yes, New Year’s Resolutions, those promises we make intending to be better/skinnier/richer/healthier people.  Most people abandon their resolutions within a couple of months, and I’m no different.  I still make them every year.  There is something about a brand new year that makes me want to make a change in my life. 

So, this year, my New Year’s Resolution is…

to spend an entire year studying the book of James. 

I spent some time this summer with a friend studying the first chapter of James.  I really enjoyed it, and the book has intrigued me.  I want to spend a lot of time really digging into it, and seeing all that it has to say.  Like I’ve said before, I believe the Bible is living and active, and I don’t think I will ever discover all there is to this book.  I think I could study these 5 chapters for a whole year, and find plenty of interesting and challenging things to think about.  I’m really excited about it.

So, to help me not ditch this plan, I’m telling all of you.  If anyone wants to join me, I would love it! 

I encourage you to spend some time reflecting on this past year.  What have you learned? Where have you grown? Where have you not grown?  Whether you make a resolution or not, reflection can be a very beneficial thing.