When Comfort is Uncomfortable

I've come to the conclusion lately that I am way to comfortable....which makes me uncomfortale. I think it may come from all the way back to this summer at Wild Week. Just being there would shake you up! It put me on fire for God and then coming home...its not like I'm in a rut. It's just like I'm almost too happy? I just feel comfortable...Life is good. I love Jesus. And it's almost like I feel guilty for being this happy and content when other people aren't. I feel like I'm not making sense but oh well. It reminds me of the saying "I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all." That statement had a whole new meaning about a week ago but that's for a different blog. So in a nut shell, I've discovered I'm to happy. I need to hurt for others who are going through tough times. I need to feel pain for the lost people that I encounter every day and not think twice about. Why am I all of a sudden apathetic? Why does it not bother me anyomore? I'm too comfortable. I want to be disturbed and bothered by these things. I want to be uncomfortable. To me, that will be more comfortable because I'll know that's where I'm supposed to be.

Confused yet?

Prayer

So...Just figured that I would blog for a few minutes about some of the things on my mind...again. I like doing blogs like this. It's like a diary that you let people read, although some things are best kept secret.

Prayer.
Something I've been struggling with lately. It's just that prayer is such an important part of your walk with God. But it's so hard to do at times. Sometimes you're just at a loss for words and don't know how to say what you're trying to say and then you end up getting frustrated and it just turns into a big mess so you give up. Sometimes you pray for something so much, even if it is something selfless, and God's timing just isn't for you and He doesn't answer the way you'd planned. So you quit that too. The thing is...I believe that God wants us to pursue him with our prayers. Keep asking! Keep praying for that lost friend even if you feel like your prayers are hitting the roof! Leave it to God.

So tonight, after BCM, we went on this prayer walk where we split into different groups and went to different parts of downtown Charleston to pray. We prayed over the community, the campus, BCM, our families and friends, the world, and anything else that came to mind. I'm not really sure how long we were out there, but it was great. It was me and 4 other girls and we went to the battery to pray. For those of you non-Charlestonians, which is most of my readers, the battery is this walk that goes around the Charleston Peninsula and overlooks the ocean. It's really pretty. We went to the park at the battery and sat in the gazebo. And all we did was just sit there and pray about whatever came to mind or whatever we felt needed to be prayed about. We just lifted all of our concerns up to God. I think we often underestimate the power of prayer. Just sitting with those girls and listening to us pray together...it was just a powerful feeling. If you think about it, you're talking to the Almighty God of the universe when you pray. Take a second to digest that. Prayer is a powerful, powerful thing. I often push prayer to the back burner of my walk but that needs to change. It should be one of the first things I turn to when I need help or guidance or whatever. I'm going to work on that.

If anyone reads this that went on the prayer walk in my group, thanks! It was helpful :]

Tim Tebow

Heisman trophy winner, quarterback for the Florida Gators. Up until tonight, while watching the Florida game with my parents, I'd never heard of him. But if you watch him awhile, it doesn't take long to see that he is really good. :] Anyways, my mom starts telling me about how faithful he is and that he keeps his focus on God even through all of his fame and awards. He only sees football as a gateway to reaching others for Christ who otherwise wouldn't listen to him except for the fact that he plays. For example, he goes around speaking to many prisons on his faith and talks to high schoolers about it as well.

He always keeps the verse Proverbs 27:2 in mind which states "Let another man praise thee and not thine own mouth, a stranger and not thine own lips," to keep him humble and keep his focus where it should be. Every summer he goes to the Philippines with his family to lead evangelistic crusades and minister to orphanages. His only goal through his football playing is to use his talents to reach others for Christ. He truly believes that God gave him those talents for a reason and he constantly looks for opportunities and ways to serve. I applaud him for that. It takes a lot boldness in your faith to stand up in the spotlight of our society like that for God. It takes a lot of faith to stay humble and discipline yourself in the face of adversity. It takes a lot of faith to stay so grounded when all eyes are on you. So just figured I'd write what I thought. I think he has a strong ministry before him. :)

College

So two weeks ago, I FINALLY got to move out to my favorie city ever. Charleston, SC. Finally off to college, finally on my own, finally out of Florence for good. I highly doubt I'll live in Florence even when I'm done with school. Anyways, this new life for me has come with many new experiences, responsibilities, sights, and muscles. You'll understand that if you keep reading.

I'd heard a lot about the College of Charleston. I heard it was a huge party school and that there was alcohol everywhere and bla bla bla. ButI always said that it could't be any worse than USC or Clemson. Well...the first night we were down there we had a first hand experience. Haha Unexpectedly. It's actually a funny story. Ask me about it. (Don't get the wrong idea) But within the first few nights, we'd seen tons of alcohol and weed, been invited to a kegger, a party at the Gravel Pit, and a party a few floors above us. Halfway through the second week, someone pulled our fire alarm in our dorm at 4 in the morning. There was a girl so trashed, that the fire alarm didn't wake her up. It wasn't a pretty sight. Two guys carried her out and she still didn't wake up laying on the sidewalk. She proceeded to throw up. A little gross. And the ambulance came and took her to the hospital. I felt bad for her...but I guess she should have had some kind of self control. Needless to say, we didn't get back in the room until after five and I had 8am classes. So yea...Charleston lives up to it's reputation.

However...the city is AMAZING!!!!! I absolutely LOVE it!!! It has so much history and incredibly gorgeous architecture! I love walking around and just looking at all of the old historic buildings. I'm pretty sure this is the prettiest city I've ever seen. (Not to mention there are around five starbucks on campus :) My absolute favorite spot is the Cistern which is a building on campus. It was built in the late 1700s and it is gorgeous. It has a huge grass courtyard in front of it with tons of huge mossy oak trees. Hopefully I'll get some pictures up soon on here or facebook.

Oh...and the muscle thing. Freshman can't have their car their first year (unless you want to pay 500 dollars a semester). So I have to walk everywhere. Which really isn't that bad. For those of you who have never been to CofC, which is most of you b/c most of my readers are from Wild Week, it's located in downtown Charleston and everyone walks because everything you need is just a few blocks away. It's another thing I love about Charleston. So...after the first few days, my legs were killing me. It hurt just to put weight on my feet. But it's all better now. You get used to it. Charleston just has so much to do so I'm walking constantly. I'm thinking of investing in a bike.

So I went to BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministries) the other night and loved it. So many friendly people all there for the same purpose. And they have a lot of events coming up that I'm really excited about! Different retreats and that sort of thing. It'll be good for me to get involved with them and stay connected because God knows there's plenty of things to take your attention away from God in Charleston.

I love my new home. Pictures up soon hopefully. :] Thanks for reading.

Here's to the Class of 2008.

So...this weekend, everyone is leaving for school. All of the people I've been around my entire life are all leaving and scattering across the state and all along the East coast tomorrow. And a few hours ago...I would've said I don't care because I'm so ready to get out of Florence. (Even though my stupid school doesn't move in until next Saturday.) Anyways, like I said...I was fine. Then, a few hours ago, I talked to a good friend of mine, Hunter. He was packing up and getting ready to go to Clemson tomorrow. Sometime in the middle of talking to him, it hit me. Oh wow...everyone really is leaving tomorrow. I don't know when the next time I'm going to see all of these people is going to be. Truth be told, there are only a very small few that I'm actually close with and actually care about but still. These are the people that I've been around almost every day of my entire life up until this summer. We're all going separate ways..and I won't have a car because freshman don't take cars to my school because you don't need them so I won't get to come home very much. Then...for the first time in a while...I cried. Not just over Hunter but just the fact that everyone is really going. We've talked about how excited we all are that we're done with high school and finally getting out and it's just hitting me that it is finally here and it's actually happening. And now I'm sad...not at all because I'm leaving...God knows I'm so ready to go! But because everyone is going off and doing their own thing. So anyways...good luck to all of you who are leaving and those of you who are staying and those of you who are coming with me! If you're not, I'll miss you dearly! Here's to you WF class of '08!

I'd like comments on this..but if you leave me some kind of crap like "its time to move on" or "it'll get better soon" or something like that, well...lets just say don't. haha Thanks for reading...if you did.

1 Corinthians 15

Okay so I was just reading 1 Corinthians 15 and figured I'd post a blog on what came to me during my reading.

The beginning of the chapter talks about the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Now, I was reading this and nothing was really sinking in for some reason and then a thought occurred to me. We have really beat the Gospel to death. Stay with me. We've heard and talked about the Gospel for SO long that it almost loses it's meaning with us. When we think of Jesus being nailed to the cross...a lot of times it just comes across as just that...words. Do we really consider all of the physical pain and agony? All of the suffering that OUR sins put our Lord Jesus Christ through for US? Do we even try to imagine the pain He went through all so we could be forgiven when we have done absolutely NOTHING to deserve it? No. We've heard it so many times that we rarely let it sink in anymore.

Now some religions preach that the cross and the resurrection are pointless and merely "symbols." Oprah said that the cross was a symbol to help you find the god within yourself. Think about how many people listen to her. It's sad that she's misleading such a multitude. Now..back to what I was talking about in the previous paragraph. When we think of the resurrection, we need to realize that Jesus was DEAD. D-E-A-D Dead. The Bible says that Jesus was fully human and fully God at the same time. He was fully dead. As in no heart beat, no blood flow, and no oxygen in the lungs. For 3 days, he was dead. And then, He conquered it! He became alive again after being dead! Wow. We can't even grasp that concept enough to fully appreciate the weight of it.

I don't understand how some religions preach the Bible...but don't believe in the resurrection. It says clearly in vs. 14 that if Christ has not been raised from the dead, our preaching and even our entire Faith is futile and useless. But we should be rejoicing because He did rise from the grave and He did conquer death so that we would never have to face it! Vs. 55 "Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

Lastly...I'm going to try not to go to in depth with this b/c I want to do a separate blog later on walking in the Spirit. We should glorify Him in all that we do because then, and only then, will our actions not be in vain. Vs. 58 "Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

That means everything! Whether it's getting ready for class in the morning or going on foreign missions. Everything should be Christ-centered for us. I'm going to make myself stop there due to the fact that I'll go more in depth with that in another blog. Goodnight all! I love comments by the way.

Rafting Trip

See me in the bottom right......^^

I left Sunday with my youth group to go on a whitewater rafting trip up in West Virginia. And here's what happened. We get there, and by there I mean in the middle of nowhere somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia, and before we even go to the place we're staying, we pull over on this trail that leads us into the woods. Now mind you, we've been riding on a hot, no air conditioner bus pretty much all day. They proceed to tell us that before we go to the campus or unload our stuff or anything like that, we're going hiking! Most of the youth group wasn't very happy. I, on the other hand really enjoy stuff like hiking through the mountains so I tried to get everyone else to stop complaining. Then we get to what they called our "path." This path was the worst path I've ever seen. It was about a foot wide with all kinds of plants and trees growing over it. And there was another really significant problem. The entire way was infested pretty heavily with yellowjackets. I was one of the lucky few who did not get stung, thankfully. This path was also extremely rocky and at some points very VERY steep. So we're walking along just listening to the sounds of nature over everyone's complaining when all of a sudden we step out on this huge rock that juts out of the side of the mountain. It was amazing! We were very near the top of the mountain overlooking this place called the gorge which is an amazing river that flows through these mountains. The view was nothing short of breathtaking. The picture above doesn't do it very much justice. After a few minutes of ooh's and aaahs, our youth pastor tells us to take a seat. His friend, another youth pastor from WV, was with us and he took out an acoustic guitar and began to lead us in a few praise and worship songs. It's really hard to put this experience into words for me. Just sitting there, worshipping God looking out over this amazing view of His creation. Wow. You look all around and you see these huge mountains just surrounding you and you can hear the sound of the river flowing down below. As you look at the river you can even see the rapids a little ways upstream. For me, it was just an amazing experience where I could really feel how close God is. You could just feel His presence.

The path reminded me of life. Life is hard. We go through many thick areas, over a lot of steep paths, and we get stung a lot of times but we're constantly having to push our way through. But in the end, it's all worth it to get to our final destination and be with God.

Another symbolic meaning I found in this trip was looking down at the river. You could see some pretty intense rapids that the rafts would go through but if you could look ahead, just a little further downriver, you'd see peaceful waters. So no matter what you're going through, there's always a newfound peace at the end. These were just some comforting thoughts that crossed my mind as I was listening to the music and taking in my surroundings.

It was also pretty cool the next day when we were actually rafting on that river to be able to look up at the rock that we were on the night before. It was a great trip. :]