Exciting Times

Life is incredible right now. I just plain have so much hope. And where does the hope come from? Faith. I have just been able to recently put my faith in God more than I ever have in the course of my life. As result, stress has turned to hope and joy and just left me feeling darn incredible. I love our Lord so much and am so happy to see what He is going to be doing in our lives. A lot of this I think comes from the church we are currently attending. Since we have started going there things have just been happening within us that have just been so refreshing to our souls. I really have been able to see and feel the Spirit working in our lives.

On another note, today I officially started putting money aside for Bible College. I will have a certain amount automatically put in a specific savings account for that every week.

I am just so excited about life right now :-).

Spirit Working

I have just been so blown away by God and what He is doing over the last couple days. I seriously have been smiling almost non-stop. I wish I could always be on a high cloud like this... maybe I can be? I don't know. But I have felt the Spirit so near recently. On Sunday we borrowed a dvd from church called "A Venture In Faith" which is the story of Chuck Smith and the Calvary Chapel movement... WOW! It was so spiritually refreshing to watch! I could not help but sit back and praise God for His wondrous works! I love the setup of the Calvary Chapel churches. They are very opposed to the Purpose Driven/Market Driven/Program Driven style of churches. They believe that the Word is the point, so everything is built around that. They all use a rolling-commentary style expository preaching format and just go book to book across the entire Bible! And though all the Calvary Chapel churches are independent non-denominational churches, they all tend to be in one accord doctrinally because of their emphasis of the whole Bible! If you look at the Bible as a whole and don't just ignore that parts you don't like, it makes sense that it would lead you into sound doctrine. I love that, and need that. Chuck Smith pointed out that if the focus of the church is purely evangelism and there is not spiritual meat, the people in the congregation will not be able to mature, so Calvary Chapel makes it a point to teach the Scriptures in the services, not just give a quick evangelistic message. Calvary Chapel sees pastors as equippers, not evangelists, and therefore sees the pastor's job as training and equipping the members of the church to go into the world and preach the Gospel. But the great thing is, God has used Calvary Chapel in mighty evangelistic ways just because of their emphasis on the Scritpures... even though they don't water them down. Should anyone be suprised? God's Word will never return void.

Thanksgiving Vacation

Life has been crazy, and the funny thing is that when life is crazy I am less inclined to write. I would think that in the crazy times writing would be therapeutic, but instead it just feels like a chore. I start to write and then my brain starts exploding with stuff and I just never have enough time to get it all out and end up scrapping the post. I could just put these half-thought-out posts up but that would drive me crazy because my brain does not work that way. I neeeed to get my whole thought out or nothing at all. So now, rather than regular and meaningful updates, I end up posting randomly over periods of time with lists of relatively mundane events in my life. Not my ideal, but at least something is getting written. So here is what happened over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Thursday:
Riley got us up early. We took it easy first thing in the morning but got to cleaning and getting ready for the visitors about mid-morning. Hannah was not feeling well so her mother and I did most of everything. I cleaned the bathrooms and vacuumed and did some other random chores while Hannah's mother got the food together. Then the extended family came over and we had a wonderful time. Lots of good food and warm conversation. Later when most everybody had gone, Hannah, her mother, brother Ben, and I were the only people left and sat down to enjoy the movie Elf. It is kind of a new tradition of ours to watch it together each year :-). That along with a glass of Mojito made the evening very relaxing. We called and had a wonderful but brief conversation with my parents before going to bed. 'Twas a great Thanksgiving.

Friday:
I got up and went to Target at 5:30am to brave the Black Friday sales. It was wild and crazy. The line from the doors was desperately long and everyone went crazy once the doors opened at 6. It was quite disturbing watching these rabid shoppers carrying multiple televisions as they rand wildly through the isles. I have to say that is about what is worst about our country. Needless to say I found the small portable DVD player for Riley Joy I was looking for. Then I ran to Hackman's and got a couple items at dramatically reduced prices. We relaxed the rest of the day.

Saturday:
We spent almost the entire day doing yardwork. We cleared bushes, raked leaves and sticks, trimmed bushes, I put up a wire fence, and we put away the patio furniture for the season. It kept us busy but was really fun. It is so refreshing to work outside on a nice day and get a lot accomplished.

Sunday:
Church went great. Pastor David talked about Contending for the Faith. Our scripture passage was from the first half of Jude. We need to contend for our faith and the truth of the Gospel no matter what the circumstances. We can not let out faith grow cold and miss out on the grace and blessings God has for us. For example, Israel let their faith grow cold after they crossed the Red Sea and therefore did not get to enter the Promised Land.


Wow, I am finally done. Quick note--it has taken me THREE DAYS to finish this quick post... why am I having such a hard time writing?