The joy of my Salvation!

This weekend was up there as one of the best weekends of my life. Mike Baumgartner wanted to visit his home, but had no car. He lives in Iron River which is around a couple of hours away, and I personally wanted to go on a little road trip with someone and visit them at their home, so I told him I'd be willing to drive him home whatever weekend he wants as long as he wouldn't mind me staying there with their family over the weekend. Well, this weekend, he took me up on the offer so we went to visit his house and his family.

One thing I really like about Mike and Matt Baumgartner is their passion for God. We did some other things like ping pong, playing settlers and hiking around in their yard on the beautiful day outside, but most of the time, we were focused on God digging into his Word and just talking about Theology and about God in general. I really appreciate it and love it. I wish it would happen more around here at Tech. It's something I need to make an effort to do.

So, along with so much time with God and focusing on Him, their mom also made some REALLY good food, so I was well fed and I had Mike's bedroom to myself and I really felt at home and enjoyed the company of his whole family. Their dad also fixed the muffler on my car which was falling off, so it was awesome. I also got to help them out in the sense that I vacuumed a lot of their sanctuary at their church and it was a joy to help out after all they did for me.

Over this weekend, we also visited Matt and Mike's Sunday School teacher/church deacon's house to play settlers with him and talk to him about theology and God. His name is Nathan and he's a REALLY knowledgeable man in terms of Biblical knowledge, so to hear his insight on questions that Mike and Matt had was really good. I got a lot out of it and really enjoyed the fellowship.

In one of the mini-Bible studies we did with just Matt, Mike and me, we talked about what we would be discussing in Sunday School the next day to be prepared for it and to see what we could get out of it so we could provide some insight when we got there too. It was one of the coolest times in Bible study I've had in a long time and I got a lot of out of and I think these random Bible studies need to happen more.

So overall, my weekend was nothing short of amazing and God-filled and even the car ride talking with Mike both ways was sweet. When I got back to Houghton, I hung out with some people and then went to Vespers and then had a good talk with Titus on the way back to drop him off. When we got to McNair we were talking in the car about life and God and we talked for quite a while which I think both of us really enjoyed.

Then later when I finally got home which was already like 12:30, I ended up talking to my parents about my weekend. Usually I'm just so tired and it's so late that I just go to bed, but I wanted to talk about my weekend, so I did. Then for the first time in my life, I really talked about what God's been doing in my life in some detail and talked to my dad about different ways to interpret the Bible and what he believes, what our church believes and what I believe. I never talked about that before, but God's really been doing a work in my life, so I opened up to them and they really enjoyed talking to me since I usually pass by and go in my room and shut the door. I ended up talking to them until about 2 AM or so and had to quit because I had to wake up at 6:40 in the morning. I then looked at homework I had to do. The night had only just begun. So, I worked on my homework until about 3 AM when I finally got to bed, so I got about 3.5 hours of sleep last night.

Now this morning was quite a difficult morning with so little sleep, yet I knew it was good for me to have talked to my parents whether it was late or not and God helped me to get up and make it to class. Somehow I'm still pretty awake (coffee helps too...). When I went to get the coffee earlier on, I spend that time between classes to read the Bible and pray and it's awesome to see what God's been showing me in that hour every day.

Today, I read John chapters 11 and 12. Now in the Campus Crusade weekly email, they have a Bible verse and this week had an excerpt from John 11 and I thought it was really good and exciting to see the story of Lazerous. Luckily, I just "happened" to be there in my personal study. I'd been going through Luke and now I am going through John and they're amazing! Just reading how much Jesus cared for Lazerous that he actually wept! Jesus truly loves us! There was so much more I got out of it as well and I prayed for about 15 minutes which was amazing just to open up to God and talk to Him and praise Him for the wonderful things He's been doing in my life lately. It was one of the best personal devotion times I've ever had, so God's so relevant and actively working in my life now. It's so exciting to see and I want to share that excitement which is why I am writing this.

There is so much more I can say with details, but I think I pretty well covered it and nobody is going to want to read page after page worth of material in every detail in my life. I guess if you want to talk about it or want prayer for anything, please feel free to talk to me. I love talking to people! God has really brought to me the joy of my salvation! Thanks for reading, and until next time, God Bless!

Everything good comes from God!

WOW! So God has been doing an amazing work in me lately. I cannot fully describe it, but He's brought me closer to Himself. The Lord brought me to speak at TNT about how He's been answering prayers in my life. I was extremely nervous and it was a huge step out of my comfort zone, but God enabled me to do it. I wish I could have expressed with more enthusiasm the wondrous things that God has been doing in my life.

One example has been two posts ago about how God provided me with a new car. There have been other prayer requests lately I've had that God has answered right away. My green folder with all my school assignments... Well, I lost it and prayed about it having NO idea where it was and in my inbox I got an email saying it was found and where I could pick it up! I couldn't believe the quick answer to prayer! Then I had an exam scheduled on thursday which is the day of TNT... I've never missed a TNT since my first and I didn't want to ever miss one. Well, I prayed about it and God had the teacher change the date to Monday instead of thursday! Is God not amazing. So many times we put God in a box and put a limit on the kinds of things He'll do or we think that what we want to pray for is so insignificant that He won't really care.

God wants to be intimately involved in our lives, we just need to have faith that God will answer our prayers. He doesn't always answer them the way we want him to either. Sometimes we'll ask for something and we'll get something completely different. Sometimes we'll get nothing we wanted but everything we needed.

I place my hope in my eternity and it allows me to fight off sin on a daily basis. I'm far from perfect, but God is perfecting me until the day of His glorious return when He'll take his children home!

To relate to the title of this post, to sum it up, God has been revealing to me that EVERYTHING good comes from Him. Nice weather comes from God. Bad weather is a reminder to praise God all the more when weather is nice. Good grades come from God. He enables us to study. Christian fellowship that builds us closer to each other and God... comes from God. Not getting hurt on any given moment or good health: it all comes from God.

James 1:17
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

There it is in the Word of God. You can believe that and take it to the bank!

God is AMAZING and answers prayer!

Alright, so the coolest thing happened yesterday. My mom was working at the bank, and overheard one of her co-workers talking to a customer. The customer, an elderly lady, said that she bought a new car and had to get rid of her old one. My mom heard her say a few things about the car and that she wouldn't expect to get more than 1000 dollars for it. So, my mom decides to ask about it and go see it briefly. She said it looked good at first glance and asked the lady for her number.

Now my car is essentially falling apart. It still runs, but there are so many problems with it that it probably will not last much longer. So my mom was looking for me to potentially buy this car. Well, she called me and I was interested in checking it out. We didn't know how much she was going to say it was. So, my mom called my dad and me and we got a time together with the lady selling the car to take it for a test drive.

When we arrived at her house, she let us take it for a spin by ourselves so we could talk about it and comment on it on our own. It's a 1994 ford taurus, so it's pretty old, and it has 128,000 miles on it, which isn't too bad. There's very little rust and has power windows, power locks, air conditioning and cruise control, which makes it better than my current 1995 rust-bucket neon. We went inside to talk to her and she said someone had looked up the Kelly Blue Book price for it and it was valued at 1300 dollars. (I checked and found it to be lower than that, but it was 1055 bucks, so it's somewhat close). Anyways, she said she'd be fine selling it for $950. She invited us in to look at some paperwork on the car and to just talk to her for a while. She ended up saying she would just make it 900 dollars even because it needs an oil change and we'd need to get it licensed, etc.

Well after thinking about it, I don't actually have that much money and I'm trying to avoid taking out any loans while in college, so although it seemed like a good deal I was reluctant. My parents thought I should get it because my car is getting really bad. So, I said I'd like to think about it for a bit and we told her we would get back to her by this afternoon today. She said that would be fine. So, we went home and I came down to houghton. I felt stuck between a rock and a hard place on whether to buy it or not. My car does still run, so I didn't want to pay that much even though it was a good deal. So, I decided to pray about it and pray hard. I asked God to show me that if I should get this, He would have to give me a strong sign... I was hoping it wasn't that my car broke down so I would have to get it out of need.

Well, when I was down hanging out with friends at Cyberia Cafe, my mom called me. When I picked up, she sounded excited and said, "Well Nathan, I think God is working in this situation" so I got excited and said, "why, what's goin on?" Then my mom told me something that God and God alone could explain and cause to happen. She said the lady had called her back and said that on the new car she had bought, she really needed the money to pay the taxes on it quickly and that it would cost her a little over $500 and that we could have the car she was selling for $575! My mom couldn't believe her ears when she was hearing this. This car is worth $1055 and she was offering it to us for $575!

Now I don't know what you think, but things like that don't just happen! We had just called her and told her that we wanted to think about it. We never said no, and she simply called and greatly reduced the price of the car.

Simply put, God answered my prayer and told me to buy this car. To not buy this car would be foolish. Plus, I can actually afford that much without taking out a loan, and I'll have a little bit of money left which should last me until I get a job that I'll need to start looking for. Isn't God simply unbelievable. God truly watches over His children and hears their prayers and takes care of their needs!

Now whenever I drive friends around, the suspension will be better in the back seat and they won't have to ride in pain, so it makes it much better for carting people around too! God is amazing!