I am completely in love with the Lord. I feel it. I feel so full of Him. I am reading the bible not only because I have to, but because I really want to. I am learning things every day about my relationship with Him. And it’s all so great. I know I need to keep moving forward though. I want to be someone who is pure of heart. I want to get rid of all of the excess in my life and focus more on the only important thing in this world. It’s going to be EXTREMELY hard to give up buying things, and feeling good about having things, and desiring all of these..THINGS! But that is where I want to get. I want to be able to live in a box, with one pair of clothes and a bible and be completely content with my life. Maybe I don’t want exactly that to happen, but I just want to be thankful for everything I have. The kind of thankful that leaves me feeling like there’s nothing more I need. That even if it was all taken away, the fact that I have God would suffice. That’s the way I feel right now. I just don’t want that to ever go away.

So In Chapter 6 what stood out for me was the first section verses 1-4. It talks about how the one type of jew were feeling less taken care of than the other. Since they didn’t think a matter this small should distract them from bringing people to the Lord, they told them to pick people who they knew were full of the spirit and wise to basically wait tables. Mike talked about this a while ago but its still making sense to me now. I need be willing to do the little things that need to be done in order for the bigger, more awesome thing to get accomplished. I don’t know what that will look like for me, but I have a feeling I will run into a situation like that soon.

Acts 7 is just a crazy chapter. I wish I could have been there when Stephen was saying all of these things to the high priests! He basically gave them a history lesson on things they already knew. But he was trying to show them that all throughout history people disbelieved and even killed the people who ended up being right and the ones God really talked to. He didn’t care what would be done to him because of this, because he had to have known that they would kill him for the things he was saying. Stephen said it anyways though and even in the middle of being stoned to death he asked the Lord not to hold it against them. Stories of martyrs are always so awesome to me. I have a whole book called Jesus Freak about hundreds of documented martyrs. It’s just so amazing the faith you have to have to stand up for Jesus in the face of death. I pray I never have to face a situation like that, but if I ever do, I want my faith to be as strong as Stephens.

38So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; 39but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” So they took his advice, 40and when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. 41Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. 42And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.

Once again, this is so awesome! First off, the bad part, when the religious man says basically that even though this could be of God, we still won’t believe it! I think that is the way that a lot of unsaved and even saved people are. We hear something that is obviously from God, or we are told about God and we understand that it’s something important in our life, but we are too scared to either listen or to do what God is telling us to do. Those religious men were scared  at that time because they had just ordered for Jesus to be killed a while before that. Peter and John were doing a good job of reminding them of that. But now that Jesus was gone from the earth, the apostles were now doing things like Jesus was doing, in His name! They were probably so scared that they had killed the wrong person that all they wanted to do was shut up the men reminding them of it. At least one of them had enough sense to know that if it really was from God, they would be in big trouble if they tried to stop the apostles. So they just beat them instead. This is another cool part. After being imprisoned and beaten for what they are saying, they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. We get upset when people might make fun of us or take us the wrong way when we are talking about Jesus!  They faced much harder circumstances than the average american will have to face in their walk with Christ (unless the end times come and the bible is like banned or something). But they were totally ok with it because they knew that what they were doing meant so much more than their earthly life!

Lord I thank you for giving me opportunities to tell people about you. I pray that I never get scared of what someone may think or how they may react  or of getting treated weird afterwards and that I can rejoice in the fact that the work Ive been put here to do is so important for eternity. Amen!

13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. 14But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition.

So this was really awesome to me. Here Peter and John were, just “uneducated, common men”, and they shut up these supposedly learned religious men! They had nothing to say in opposition because Christ was so obviously working in their lives. The man they healed was the proof. We can’t always do crazy things like heal people but I feel like our lives should be something that leaves people with nothing to say in opposition. I want it to be so obvious to people that Jesus is inside of me that they try to tell me not to tell people about Him!

32Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.

I really like the idea of this. Everyone wasn’t in a different section of christianity, they were all together. They all believed the same thing and so they shared everything with each other because they were all connected in that way. It was the start of the church and I think what God intended for it to be like. I think it would be awesome if we could get to that place again, or at least something close to it.

Lord i pray that I can leave people with nothing to say in opposition of your love being shown in my life. I thank you for the people you have put around me that I can connect with. I pray that the rest of this weekend can be awesome for everyone. Amen!

17“And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. 18But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19 Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, 20that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.

What God was telling me in this passage was that even though stuff that happens is crappy, like the people condemning Jesus to the cross instead of a murderer(which was preeetty crappy at the time), He can use that as part of His plan. Those people had to turn against Jesus and send Him to the cross or else we would not have the salvation in Him that we have. All of that needed to happen to Jesus to get Him to the exact place where God needed Him to be. So, if stuff that is crappy is going on in my life, it’s probably stuff that needs to happen to get me to where God ultimately wants me to be. Christ didn’t have it easy in His time on earth and me, being someone whose goal is to be as Christ-like as possible, will probably have to deal with crap along the way in my walk that sucks, and hurts. I just need to keep in perspective that God’s got somewhere he wants me to be, I just need to keep following Him to get to it.

One other super cool part of this chapter was towards the end verses 42-47. I even like the title of the section! It’s called “The fellowship of the believers”. Everyone got saved, came together and were on fire for God. They did all this crazy stuff that is listed really fast and stuck right in the middle is this short part about how everyone just up and sold everything they had for the work of the Lord. I know that weekly I am getting pressed by God to give more when I get my paychecks, and I know that it’s the fellowship that we have with the church that makes me want to give. Basically having everyone around me so sure about Jesus and so sure about this church makes my faith in God and in what we are doing so much stronger! It makes me want to give more! Who knows if that makes any sense when it’s not in my head but lets hope.

I know this is a crazy way of doing this but im in a weird mood today so here’s my weird post.

Lord I pray that my faith in You can continue to grow and that my desire to give gets bigger all the time. I pray that I can stand firm in my beliefs, even the ones that may sound crazy, and never take the gifts You’ve given me for granted. Amen.

So I read Acts 1 today. The verse that stood out for me was:

Acts 1:7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.

I feel like right now this is a big thing for me, and a lot of people I know. Everyone, especially me, is in a rush for things that they want to happen. I think it may be one of the hardest things for a christian to actually try to wait for God’s timing, instead of thinking that our timing is the right one. I know that personally I get upset when the things I pray for don’t happen immediately. And I get discouraged when it takes a while to maybe get through to someone about God. I’ve been told all my life though that we don’t need to worry about that, but still it’s hard for me to grasp most of the time. The reason why this verse jumped out at me was that I was just talking with a good friend of mine about how he needs to wait for God’s timing in the situation he is in. The more I talked about it with him, the more i realized that there are areas where I need to do the same. Isn’t that crazy? That God can tell us something from us telling other people? It’s just funny to me.

I was just looking up verses for my friend and I found this one that goes with this.

Psalm 37:7 Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him;
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.

Lord I pray that I can be more patient. That I can wait for Your timing for any need I may have in my life. I pray that I can see when I am being impatient and not trusting that Your timing will be WAY better than mine. I know that Your plan for me is amazing, there’s no doubt in my mind. So I thank You for loving me enough to give my life a plan. AMEN!

I hope that I did this right! Mike tell me if I messed up! haha

I just really want to see the power of God. I know that for everyone they may not see something as crazy as someone being raised from the dead, but is it wrong that I just really, really, REALLY want to see miracles like that happen? That is why i want to go on a missions trip, because the power of God is always shown in settings like that, but I know it’s shown in like any setting too. Like that thing happening in Lakeland Florida. There is a huge revival happening down there that insane things are going on. People are getting healed, they have seen a pillar of fire during their worship, amazing stuff! Not a lot of christians even up here know about it though. I also kind of think that is sad, that when God is doing something absolutely amazing in OUR country, we don’t even know about it.

Well the point is, I want to see God work in a huge way. The teaching on Sunday also gave me a desire for this. I want to be audacious enough to think that God could do things that we can’t even imagine to be possible. That he can blow our minds. I think that with cinema church he might blow a bunch of minds, which is why im excited. I guess my rant is over, I hope its not crazy haha!

At the memorial service everyone could stand up and say anything about Ally. Everyone was talking about how Ally was such a happy person and they were telling all these amazing memories they had with her. One girl in the balcony stood up and turned me into the biggest blubbering baby you will ever see. She told everyone that because of what she saw in Ally’s life, and her love for God, she now wants a closer relationship with Christ. I couldn’t help but cry, it was amazing, how God could take something so seemingly terrible like the death of a 17 year old girl and transform it into all these lives being touched and changed for something greater.

Another awesome part of it is how many opportunities have opened up to talk about things that people don’t generally like to talk about. Satan. And how he is here to steal, kill, and destroy. And while most people think those things don’t actually happen, they do. But the most amazing part is that while Satan thought he could kill her just by killing this earthly body, he could never kill her spiritual body! He has made that mistake so many times, just look at the death of Jesus. The demons were having a ball when Jesus died on the cross, but they didn’t count on Him being even more awesome than before!

So there is my second post in this thing…maybe someone will end up reading it!

So this is my first post. I don’t really know what to say. I have been listening to The Glorious Unseen for like twenty minutes and it’s really good cause it’s worship that I love to listen to all the time.  I have more finals tomorrow but this day off was nice. I am not too worried about finals at the moment..i probably should be considering i have no idea what to do on my contemporary issues one and I haven’t studied at all for chemistry. It’s snuffin though. God is really good. I’ve wanted to talk to my friend about Godly stuff and bring up this one thing i was worried about and she just brought it up today. It was really good because I didn’t know at all about how to bring it up. But she just like said things that I was thinking about talking to her about. I know not everything is supposed to be easy like that but I was thankful that this was easier. I don’t know though. I worry about giving spiritual advice to people sometimes. Especially at times when I feel like I’m nowhere where I should be when it comes to God. And I mean hopefully i always feel like that, even when i am in a good place, that I need to grow. Because I always will need to grow. But I don’t know. Rob Bell is coming out with that thing Everything Is Spiritual. I want to see that DVD because I saw some previews and it looks cool. I just started looking for podcasts to help me like get better at hearing Godly things all week long. Hopefully they help out. I’m kinda rambling so that will be it for this entraaa

wooo