in him is the fullness of all things

I've been reading this book called The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. Lately, I've been really convicted about the way that the church is responding to the poverty and suffering of people in our backyard. But even more recently, I have been convinced that it is more important to strive to become the church that Jesus wants us to be instead of complain about what the church is doing wrong. Here is an excerpt from the book. I remember hearing about an old comic strip back in the days of St. Ed's. Two guys are talking to each other and one of them says he has a question for God. He wants to ask why God allows all of this poverty and war and suffering to exist in the world. And his friend says, "Well, why don't you ask?" The fellow shakes his head and says he is scared. When his friend asks why, he mutters,"I'm scared God will ask me the same question." Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the...

well actually, 65 but either way, PRAISE THE LORD FOR SUNSHINE! It is my second full day in Phoenix, AZ and I am absolutely loving it down here. I'm spending the holiday with my Aunt and her family down in Arizona and I get to stay here for 3 WHOLE WEEKS! This is the very first time that I have been here to visit by myself and I can already tell that it will be by far my most favorite time here. Yesterday evening, my cousin's beautiful girlfriend, Eden, took me to her favorite mall in Phoenix. Ever heard of H&M? That is her favorite store and I think that it is definitely moving up on my list! It has been very cool having someone to hang out with down here. In the past, my brothers have been able to play video games and do boyish things while I stay in my room and read. But last night we went to a variety of different stores, including Anthropologie which I had never actually been inside before! It smells like heaven, let me tell you :) We ended up spending a couple hours i...

http://www.i-heart.org . Find out what God is doing and come along side Him. More to come later.

Hello Everyone:) Do you ever have one of those days where you just want to sit next to a window with the view of campus on a sunny day and just reflect on all that the Lord has done for you? Well that should be everyday but alas, today is one of the only sunny days that we will have for a while so here I sit, soaking it in. Today was an early day for me: getting up at 6 am, leaving the house at 7 am, getting to morning devo at 7:15 and being thouroughly blessed through worship, getting in the Word, finally followed by a sweet time of prayer with dear friends. Now if that isn't a way to start out a morning, then I dont know what is! The Lord has been whispering so many nuggets of wisdom and truth into my heart today. The most pressing being that I need to have my joy rooted in Christ alone. Not only in His blessings, for there will come dry seasons when His blessings don't look the way I think that they should, and I need to be joyful even those times. When my joy is solely root...

So after nearly a 2 month hiatus, I AM BACK! I had no idea that it would be this difficult to keep up with this blog while going to school--I guess that's what taking 18 credits(!) can do to you. I feel like almost every waking moment that I have is being spent studying or sleeping. It has definitely been a more challenging year as far as academics go, but the upside is that I have been forced to rely on my Daddy in heaven more. The Lord has been so faithful in giving me the ability to make it through, one class at a time, one exam at a time, one day at a time. There is a brilliant passage in Proverbs(3:5-6) where God promises to direct our path when we acknowlege Him in all our ways. That can be so hard to do. I've found that setting aside time to spend with Jesus has become harder and harder and thoughts of condemnation keep rushing in faster and faster when I neglect time with God. I can only pray for more discipline. A divine discipline. What do people live for? SO many thi...

I just wanted to take a moment to just reflect on how blessed I was to have such an awesome roommate last year. So many times the Lord just reminds me of how he has been faithful in the past and after seeing Alli today, I'm just so aware of what an answered prayer she was. I came into college with the expectation of becoming best friends with my roommate, an expectation that I was warned against because I might be dissappointed . Alli and I had met eachother through the roommate matching profile, which, by the way said that we were only a 23% match. SO WRONG. Anyways, we hit it off so incredibly well the very first time that we met, I knew that we at least would be friends. What really astonished me was just how much we really had in common. Neither of us really cared too much about the state of our room--I never got mad when her side was messy, and she never got mad when my side was messy. We both had science related majors so we were able to study together for some of our hard c...

Just read it. A friend of mine and I have been trying to get into the habit of memorizing verses from the bible and I came upon this passage the other day: Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been j...

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" -1 Corinthians 2:9 Such a good word, right? For the past few months, I have been suffering from a little thing that I like to call "wedding fever". Symptoms include reading wedding magazines, searching for the perfect wedding gown, browsing engagement rings, spending too much time on TheKnot.com, and daydreaming about Mr. Right. YIKES. Well I think that just being in college and seeing more and more people begin to get engaged or married has made me wonder if God has forgotten about me. In my heart I know that He hasn't but isn't it sad how often we allow ourselves to become so envious of certain things that God is doing in other peoples lives that we forget what He's doing in ours? God has really been showing me that I need to enjoy my singleness. This is such a sweet time where it's just me and God and my affection and devotion isn't being sp...

It really has been a great week :) Well I can't talk about this week without talking about yesterday. It started out with a football game (go Beavs!) in the morning. It was a great game, minus the fact that it was raining but I went with my two friends Kayla and Karly Laney and cheered on the Beavers. I ended up leaving at half-time to go and get ready for the wedding (the score was 31-0 in our favor). As I had mentioned before it had been cloudy and raining throughout the whole morning and I was beginning to fear that the wedding--which had been planned for outside--would have to be moved indoors. I prayed fervently that whole morning asking God to wipe away the clouds in the sky and bring forth the sun and as I was driving up the hill to the church I realized that it wasn't raining! I was so excited I just started praising God in my car! By the time the ceremony started, not only was there no rain, but the sky was clearing up! God truly does answer prayers and it turned out t...

I'm back! You know sometimes it's so hard to get up the gumption to write on this thing but once I start, I find that its actually not so bad ;) I suppose its been a fairly average week. The highlight I would say would be going to The Way up at Solid Rock Fellowship in Beaverton, Oregon. Not that The Way hasn't been awesome every single time that I've been there, but this past Friday was exceptionally spectacular because my very own college pastor IAN NELSON was bringing the message! He is so gifted when it comes to speaking so of course he did a great job. Have you ever noticed how when you are watching someone that you know speak in front of a large group of people you tend to pay more attention? Like every little detail involving their surroundings seems to be carrying impending doom if they make the wrong move? It was so funny, we were sitting front and center and we were watching Ian pace back and forth as he spoke [a normal occurance for our ADD pastor] and we not...

Thats right, I did. I found that I'd been reading so many other blogs and I thought, "hmm. maybe I'll just start one". So I did. Part of me is skeptical as to whether or not anyone will read this but I'll just leave that up to God. I'm not really sure what this will consist of besides my thoughts and what God's been putting on my heart, and perhaps a few pics but it is my hope that I will actually be faithful in blogging my little heart out...at least until school starts, that is. I guess I'll just share a song that the Lord has so graciously blessed me with. Has anyone heard of a song called Desert Song by Hillsong? It's such a great exhortation to us as God's children to choose to praise Him no matter what our circumstances are because HE is God, and not only that, but He is a good God. He can see what our earthly eyes can't always see and like Romans 8:28 says, He is working all things together for our good. Jill's testimony is so m...