What Did That Verse Say Again?

Every week in senior Religion class at school we have a memory verse quiz. These quizzes are usually fairly easy and each week I find myself cramming the verse into my head ten minutes before class. This last Tuesday was no exception. This week's passage was Romans 5:6-8: 

^"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 person, though for a good person 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."

I was able to memorize it just in time for class to begin, hardly even recognizing what it was saying. I hadn't thought about this passage again, until today.
 
This morning I was scrolling through Facebook when I came across a video a friend had shared about a girl who had once attempted suicide. It was a touching video of this girl holding up note cards that explained her journey through life and how she almost killed herself. It explained how she now knows that she has a purpose and that God loves her. Then, near the end, she quoted the last part of Romans 5:8, one of the verses I had to memorize, "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." 

That hit me hard. This girl's testimony gave that verse so much more meaning. Here I was, just memorizing that verse for a little five point quiz, while this girl is living her life because of that verse, because Christ died for us. I hadn't even thought about what the verse really meant. As Christians, we often read scripture without taking the time to truly understand what it means. There are verses like John 3:16 or Philippians 4:13 that we have heard all of our lives and we often find ourselves skimming right through them. Those verses have incredible meaning. It is amazing to realize that God truly did send His son to die for us and that we can do anything through His strength. Next time you are reading a Bible passage, or even if you have to memorize one for class, I want to challenge you to take a few minutes to reflect on what it really means. Then, I think we will genuinely appreciate what God has done for us.

New Year's Resolution

Well, 2011 is finally almost over. For some it's been a great year filled with success and happiness, and for others it's been a year filled with sadness and worry from death, sickness, relationship issues, and financial loss. As I look back at my year, I'm not sure what to think about it. In the broad since, this year has been great. I have been blessed with safety and good health to both my family and I. I've had a warm house to sleep in every night and a car to get to school every day. I've had success in school and in extra curricular activities, including sports. I've had great friends that I've shared a lot of good memories with. While I am very grateful for all of these blessings and many more, I still have a hard time saying that it's been a great year. I was trying to figure out what's preventing me from calling this year a success, when I asked myself this question: Have you used your blessings from the year to the best of your ability to help and love others?
 
After thinking on that question, my answer would be no. While I've tried to use the blessings God has given me to help others at various times this year, I'm positive I could have done a better job at it. My mind is filled with things I could have done better; "I could have helped this person, I could have been nicer to them, I could have volunteered to do that, etc..." and I realize my year was filled with "could haves." So I was thinking of what I could do differently in 2012 to make it a year of "I did" instead of "I could have" and came to realize what my one new year's resolution needs to be. It was a challenge from Pastor Don Keele at the GCA Church this morning, and it really stuck out to me. His challenge was to make knowing Jesus Christ your one resolution for the new year and was based off of this verse found in 1 Corinthians 2:2, "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." Imagine what your year could be like if you made that your one resolution.

I also realized that just living another year has been in a blessing it itself. I've reminded of a good family friend, Daniel Harper, who passed away after a battle with brain cancer in August, and how short life really is. Don't be afraid to do the right thing. Don't be afraid to try something new. Don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and to accept God's calling. I want to invite you to take the challenge with me, to make knowing Jesus you're number one priority in 2012. All of your other resolutions will fall in to place if you make Him first in your life. Instead of living a year full of "what if...", make it a year full of joy and confidence in your actions. Also, think about the question I asked myself, "Have you used your blessings from the year to the best of your ability to help and love others?" and try to make 2012 a year where your answer to that question can be yes.

Wisdom

Almost all of us want to possess wisdom. We want to do the right thing and know how to handle different situations. But what exactly is it, and how can we get it? Let's start off by defining wisdom. Dictionary.com says wisdom is "knowledge of what is true, or right couple with just judgement as to action; sagacity discernment, or insight." Knowledge of what is true; that's definitely something I want to have. Often times we get mixed up between Earthly wisdom and Heavenly wisdom. There's a couple different types of Earthly wisdom that we see. People considered wise in this world are sometimes people who have gone through a lot in their lives and have a lot of experience with many different situations. For example, we usually consider our parents wise because they have already gone through the things that kids go through. Another group of people we consider wise are Chief Executives Officers and other financially sound people. They obviously must be doing something right to get into an important position. But are all of these people really the ones we should look up to for wisdom? While there are a lot of things we can learn from experienced people, it's not necessarily the wisdom that the Bible says we should be searching for.

Colossians 2:3 tells us that "In Him lie all the hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Sounds pretty clear to me that God is the giver of wisdom. Also, wisdom and knowledge are often used together throughout the Bible. They go hand-in-hand. You can't have wisdom without first having knowledge. Once you have that knowledge, God gives us wisdom which helps us to understand that knowledge and put it into use. Now how can we get wisdom? It's pretty simple, as we know from Solomon. All we have to do is ask for it. 

Tonight I was at our youth group's Bible Study Vespers, and the speaker was talking about wisdom. He gave an interesting perspective on wisdom that I hadn't thought about before. He was saying that wisdom is a miracle. It is a true gift from God that always seems to come at the right time, yet we hardly ever recognize it as a miracle. Often times when we are struggling with something in life, it is resolved because someone was given wisdom. Whether you were the one that received it and was able to guide yourself out of the situation, or whether someone else used their wisdom to help you out, someone usually was given wisdom. Next time you're in a tough situation, ask God to give you and others around you wisdom. When the situation is resolved, look back and see if wisdom helped clear it up. 

The Bible also says some pretty good things about those who have God's wisdom:

 "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. though it cost all you have, get understanding." Proverbs 4:7 (notice again, wisdom and understanding used together)

"Wisdom makes one wise man more powerful than ten rulers in a city." Ecclesiastes 7:19

"Know also that wisdom is sweet to your soul; if you find it, there is a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off" Proverbs 24:14

Sounds like a pretty good thing to me. I definitely want to be wise, but we have to make sure that we are getting it from the right place. I hope you'll join me in asking God for wisdom today. 

The Ultimate Goal - NBA Finals edition

Who will win it all? Will the Miami superstars win it all with their "dream team" like they promised at the beginning of the season? Or will Dirk, who even plays though illness, finally get the ring that he's worked so hard for? Can LeBron James close out a game in the 4th quarter and prove he is one of the NBA greats? These are a few of the questions that have been swirling around the sports media this past week. As many of you know, the NBA Finals are taking place right now between the Miami Heat and the Dallas Mavericks. These players have put a lot of effort into making it to this point in their careers, and they are all focused. Here's a quote from Dirk Nowitzki, "So we're one win away from my dream, what I've worked for half of my life. This is all I'm really worried about. This is all I'm focusing on." Sounds like he's pretty locked in on reaching his goal. 

What if we all were that focused on reaching our goal in life? And no, I'm not talking about our goal to be a professional athlete, or to make a lot of money. I'm talking about our goal to reach Heaven and carry out Jesus' instructions. In Colossians 3:23, it is pretty clear how we should do things, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." God wants us to work hard at what we do, especially when it comes to His work. Just imagine if we devoted our whole lives to strengthening our relationship with God and to spreading His word like NBA players work for a championship ring. Just like all things in life, it's not easy to put all your effort into one thing. There are always going to be distractions and obstacles that want to make you give up. But fortunately, for this goal, we're not on our own. We have the greatest coach around to help guide us through life and give us instructions on how to meet the goal. With His help, I know we can all dedicate our lives to reaching the Ultimate Goal. 

"I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 3:14

Trust More, Stress Less

Stress, we all have it. It's that little word we use to describe our lives about 24/7. With the world today, it seems like we are always going. There's always something to do. Something to watch, something to play, something to eat. We say that our lives are stressed and always busy, yet when we have time to just stop and rest, we just complain about boredom (myself included in that last bit). Right now is a relatively easy time of the year for me. It is summer break, and most stress was gotten rid of after my last final exam. However, I still find myself constantly wanting something to do. I almost can feel stressed even when there is nothing that I absolutely have to do. So what can we do about stress, and how can we keep from being bored?

While there is nothing wrong with being busy and, for the most part, keeping ourselves occupied, there comes a time when we need to just stop. Today I came across a link posted by a friend on Facebook about The Daniel Challenge. It is a website devoted to helping people to challenge themselves to live like Daniel did in the Bible. In case you don't know, Daniel and his friends were shipped to Babylon, but they quickly realized that the food being served there would just not do. So they requested to be served healthy food and lots of water. The king's men finally accepted and Daniel and his friends, along with a few other healthful elements, ended up being stronger and better fit then all the other men. The website challenges you to focus on 10 elements that will improve your life. While I encourage you to try this out, there is one element in particular that caught my attention. The site describes it as "Trust More, Stress Less". That is a very interesting concept. All we have to do, is trust that everything will work out, which results in stressing less.  If only we could always live our lives like that.

God calls us to live that way as well. In Matthew 6, the famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us not to worry. He tells us to stop worrying about the little things of this earth, because He already knows all our needs. We are told to seek the Kingdom of God, which will supply all our needs. Then in Matthew 6:34, which should be a familiar verse, it says "So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its down worries. Today's trouble is enough for today." Jesus knew that our lives would get stressful and hectic, so he clearly lays it out for us. Just don't worry. The Daniel Challenge says that people who belief in a higher power stress less than those who don't. While I believe that is true, it doesn't come by just saying you're a Christian. You have to actually trust in God to deliver you from what ever situation your in. Want to get rid of or lessen your stress? While it may be hard, it's a simple answer. Trust More.

"Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done." - Philippians 4:6

The Bigger Plan

Don't you hate it when plans don't work out? Whether it's plans for school, a job, family, friends, or other relationships, things just don't seem to go according to plan a lot of the time. This summer is going to be a little tough on me, and it's really frustrating because my original plans don't seem to be coming together. It seems like nothing is going my way.

While I may not see it, there is a bigger plan in store for me, and for you. God has called each one of us to take up our cross and follow Him, which includes surrendering our plans to Him. What we often don't realize though, is that He has a plan for us, and wants to combine our plans and His. His plan doesn't always consist of us leaving all our friends and family behind to travel across the world (although sometimes it does), but a plan that is the best for us. We must give our plans to Him to let Him mold them to his plans, and then, we can be truly happy. We need to ask everyday for His plans to be carried out in our lives. His plans are always the best ones for us. 

"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." - Jeremiah 29:11

Bad Timing

Timing is everything. It all began yesterday when, with some encouragement from a couple friends, I decided to start a blog. Wasn't sure what it was going to be about, but I figured I would come up with something. The process began. Since I'm a computer techy, first thing on the list was to make sure the design was exactly how I wanted it. I began with the top; the banner. After scanning through Google images for a bit, I found the perfect picture to illustrate my theme of personal memoirs. It was then opened in Photoshop, a background color was chosen,  and text was added and aligned. It was done and this image was on it's way to becoming the header of my new blog. I uploaded it and was anxious to see how it would look. My blog is refreshed and what do I see? A blurry mess. "What did I do wrong?" I wonder to myself. Okay, must of have the wrong settings in Photoshop, save it again and I'll be good to go. Only problem was that it never got better. No matter what size this image was or what settings I messed with, it would not look right. It was either very blurry, or way to small. I did some searching on my friend Google to find some others having problems with blurry images before, but seemed like a rare problem, and no solution was found. A little while after morning came, I decided it was time for some sleep.

The next morning came, and I had decided to tackle my blog again. Still no luck. It didn't make since, I was doing it all right, other people could do it, but I simply couldn't. After almost giving up, I tried a few more things and thought I had found the solution, but I hadn't yet. I could feel closer and closer every minute. I researched the problem some more and found a comment thread that was overlooked the night before. Some others were having the exact same problem. It was a bug on the site! To make things worse, this bug had only appeared within the last 24 hours. Just my luck, that of all the days to start a blog, I chose the day with blurry images. As you can tell by the non-blurred banner, I did find a solution to the problem. I uploaded the picture to Photobucket and simply linked the picture, instead of uploading it straight to Blogger. My timing was bad.

Often times in life, we wonder why things don't go the way we want them to. Just like I did with my image, we feel like we're doing everything right. We ask questions such as, "Why won't things just work out?", "Why can't life be fair?", "Why do I have to get this bad luck?". My answer to that is simply this: Our timing is bad. God has a time for everything (See Ecclesiastes 3:1-8), we just don't often see it. We think we've been doing everything right, and we may well have been, but our timing is off. Life isn't going to wait on us, but sometimes, we must wait on it. We have to remember that while we are often demanding and want things at our convenience, we just have to wait. There are things beyond our control. Just like with my picture, I wanted it to be done and uploaded correctly the first night. But it didn't happen; the site's bug was beyond my control. I could  have kept trying and trying all night long, but it wouldn't have done any good. When things don't work out according to OUR plans, there's no point in relishing on the fact, and trying over and over to make them happen. We must accept that our timing is not right. Sometimes, we have to find another way, a workaround, until the problem is fixed. Other times, we must simply wait, and make sure our timing is right. The only way I know to do that is by going with God's time.

"But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they sun run and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." Isaiah 40:31