Cool Psalm

Ok, forget the numbering post idea. I'm getting sick of it.

So, I was reading my friend Lauren's Blog and she was talking about how the Psalms are really awesome and uplifting, so I figured I should read some because I haven't been reading my Bible lately and didn't really know where to start. I read a bunch of good ones but Psalm 5 was especially awesome:

Psalm 5
1 Give ear to my words, O LORD,
consider my sighing.

2 Listen to my cry for help,
my King and my God,
for to you I pray.

3 In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait in expectation.

4 You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil;
with you the wicked cannot dwell.

5 The arrogant cannot stand in your presence;
you hate all who do wrong.

6 You destroy those who tell lies;
bloodthirsty and deceitful men
the LORD abhors.

7 But I, by your great mercy,
will come into your house;
in reverence will I bow down
toward your holy temple.

8 Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness
because of my enemies—
make straight your way before me.

9 Not a word from their mouth can be trusted;
their heart is filled with destruction.
Their throat is an open grave;
with their tongue they speak deceit.

10 Declare them guilty, O God!
Let their intrigues be their downfall.
Banish them for their many sins,
for they have rebelled against you.

11 But let all who take refuge in you be glad;
let them ever sing for joy.
Spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may rejoice in you.

12 For surely, O LORD, you bless the righteous;
you surround them with your favor as with a shield.

This is really encouraging when you're walking with the Lord! It's also encouragement to be walking with the Lord because being against Him is the worst possible place to be!

This has been an odd sort of day. Yesterday I had 3 exams in a row which was horrible... I wasn't a fan, but it was nice to get 3 out of 5 out of the way. I have two more exams tomorrow on Wednesday and then I'll be all done! This middle day though is just lame. I just came down to Houghton and have been sitting here in the Campus Cafe for forever. I also learned that my wireless built into my laptop does not and will not work with the new setup of "Rovernet 2.0." I couldn't figure it out and so I brought it to the Tech support people. Figures that they couldn't figure it out either. Oh well. I'll just have to get some external wireless hardware and it should be fine. That'll cost me 30 bucks that I don't have though. I might do that next year when I need it because now that it's so close to the end of the year and I won't be hanging around Tech non-stopped, then it doesn't seem so necessary.

WOW! Ok, so I just took a break to read another Psalm! I read Psalm 6 cuz it came next. I won't copy it down for you like Psalm 5, but you should totally read it. Many times when I sin, I feel so guilty afterwards and it's so hard to restore my relationship with God. That Psalm shows me the mercy of God!

Ok, Psalm 6:9-10 are just irresistable, so I'm putting them on here:
Psalm 6
9 The LORD has heard my cry for mercy;
the LORD accepts my prayer.

10 All my enemies will be ashamed and dismayed;
they will turn back in sudden disgrace.

Have a great day!

Post 12: (I was off by one post) Slipping up on Blogging.

Hey all, I know it's been a while. I haven't been too busy to blog, I just don't have as much cool good stuff to write about lately because I haven't been reading my Bible and praying consistently as I should. My dad had an intersting spell at work today. I talked to my mom and she said he couldn't concentrate and he didn't feel like he was actually at where he was at is the best way I could describe it. Anyways, he was feeling really strange, so my mom came and picked him up and brought him to the Emergency Room. His blood pressure was really high and as of me now writing this, he's in intensive care overnight so they can run some tests and see if they can figure out what's going on. If you could pray for my dad, that would be awesome!

So I drove home today to shovel the foot of sopping sticky wet snow off of my driveway. Well actually I used the snow-blower because shoveling all that would have been a nightmare! Then I came back down to Houghton so I could help Ben move out of his house and into another. It was actually pretty fun helping out. He really appreciated it to. Then I got home at like 1:45 and wrote my World Cultures paper and now here I am typing. It's certainly been an odd day.

Since this blog is supposed to be kind of a journal for myself that can be read publicly, for the sake of myself, I'm going to write that it is definitely necessary and worth it to be reading the Bible daily and meditating on God's Word. As soon as we get away from that, life starts getting messed up. I was encouraged today by reading a chapter in I Corinthians. I ended up calling a friend and telling him to read it to and I think he did, so that was cool.

I also got my granola bar in the mail today! woot. It actually didn't taste all that good. It had chocolate, but it also had almonds and rasberry, the latter of which is decent, but almonds are not my favorite. It was really cool to eat it with Titus and Eric though cuz we all ordered them online at the same time and all decided to eat them together.

This summer I really hope to start a ministry at work. If nothing else, I plan to work hard at work which is NOT common at Daniel Heights. I figured if I worked hard and took only 15 minute breaks like we're supposed to, not only would I be doing what's right, but if people ask me why I'm being so diligent, I can tell them I'm doing it for the Lord and possibly share the gospel with them. That would be sweet. I told my friend and brother this and they both discouraged me from doing it. I couldn't believe it! However, I can sort of see their point that you shouldn't be shoving the truth down people's throats, especially when they don't want to hear it and I plan on talking to them as I'm led by the Holy Spirit and if they start complaining or something and make up stories about me and I get fired, well then it's all for the Kingdom of God and every bit of it is absolutely worth it. God will take care of me an show me another job if necessary. However, I don't think it will be much of an issue.

Well I really need to get some sleep. It's 2:40 in the morning and I gotta get up at 8:45 and Wednesdays have classes from 10 until 4 straight in a row and some things going on in the evenings, so I'm going to get to bed. If you read this soon, if you could pray for my dad and for my quiet time with God, that'd be awesome! Until then...

Post 10: It's been a while...

Well, life has been fairly busy lately. I haven't make a blog post since the friday before this last one! Today was Easter, which was awesome. It's the one time of year where a lot of people go to church who would not otherwise go because they feel obligated because it's the day that Christ rose from the dead and conquered the grave! Woot. Jesus is awesome. On Saturday, with Campus Crusade and any other people invited, I watched the Passion of the Christ. It was good to see that movie again as it reminds me of all the pain that Christ went through to save me from my sins. The total pain he felts was certainly not all physical, or perhaps not even mostly physical, but for the First time in all of eternity, the Son of God was seperated from the Father because he took on the weight of all of our sin. I wish I could more fully understand that.

I think if you took that far enough, all of us Christians would realize how much we need to be out sharing the gospel! Many people after watching that movie are affected by it and love Jesus more because of it but don't actually take the step of faith and share the gospel. Now if you're reading this, I'm not putting myself on a pedestal of anything, for I myself certainly do not share the gospel nearly as much as I should. This is why I'm glad that God has put Godly people in my life to help guide me to do some things I wouldn't usually do. After watching the movie, we went out to the campus cafe and met up and then split up into groups of two to go and share the gospel with people anywhere on campus. Quite honestly, the thought terrifies me, being my shy self... at least to new people. However, to KNOW that I have the Holy Spirit inside of me who is working through me, I know that all I need to do is take that step and start talking to people and I will be led to say the right things by the Holy Spirit.

So, that being said, Helen and I went up to a couple of guys and introduced ourselves. We talked to them about life and whatnot and then brought up Easter. I found out they were Catholic and they went to church about every other week or so they said. From the sounds of the conversation and the fact that after a fair amount of small talk, they wanted to get going, I do not think they were Christians just from the responses I was getting, but since they had to go, I just pray that God will use the little we were able to tell them to cause them to really examine their faith and see if it's real. I wasn't able to share the Gospel. I'm really excited for when we do this next week. I hope more people join us!

There are so many thoughts running through my head right now that it's hard to decide what path to take and write about. I guess I can start off by saying my mind hasn't quite been where it should be lately. Nobody ever said living a Christian life would be easy... especially not a life that's pleasing to God, but it should be something we strive for and I've somewhat put it on the back burner by not reading my Bible daily. I MUST get back into that. My days go by SO much better that way.

Oh, there's a track of thought worth talking about: the encounter. I really really enjoyed the encounter. If anyone is reading this blog who doesn't go to Michigan Tech, they're like... whaaaa? An encounter is a worship service that one of my friends headed up just to unite the Christians on campus and for the purpose of outreaching to people. We sang some awesome songs and watched a really really powerful video called fruitcake and ice cream. It's about a girl who went from being totally against God to becoming a Christian in 14 days because of the love of her new Christian roommate who simply listened to her and loved her as we are commanded to love others. The speaker in the movie read from her journal so we could see her thoughts and it was so powerful and moving. After that, we had more singing, then there were some girls who did a praise dance which is a form of worship I'm not too familiar with, but I enjoyed it. I think it was great to do that on campus right inside a residence hall. There were like 70 people? That's a guess, but it was quite a lot. We filled all the seats we had in there. I truly wish I could show how much I appreciate everyone who helped out with that!

Summer is approaching fast! There's very little left in the school year, yet so much more work to be done. Be praying for me that I will be able to focus on my schoolwork more near the end here. I really need to work harder than I have been if I want to get my grades back up.

I want to close this up with the lyrics of a song we sang at Vespers, which is just an evening worship service at a local church for all college students in the area. It's one of my favorite songs and it has a really good message in it. It's called "How Deep the Fathers Love for Us"

How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom
(REPEAT)

I truly want to apply that song to my life and live it out. It captures the message of Easter! Well farewell for now. I think I gave plenty of words to chew on.

Post 9: Friday!

Well, I just got out of World Cultures... a class I'm doing very horribly in by the way. I hope I pass it. It's gonna kill my GPA for sure. Today we watched a movie called rabbit proof fence. It's a true story about these girls that were taken away from their mom because they were "halfbreeds". They escaped the place they were taken and they had people tracking them all over the place and were almost caught many many times. It's a true story and they walked hundreds and hundreds of miles to get back. One of the girls got caught when she was bribed by a guy who told them to go to the train station and get a ride there. She was so tired so she wanted to go there, but she was taken. I saw this movie from a different view than most would. I saw God working in their lives and providing the exact means of escaping. When the one girl did not follow the two sisters, it was like a picture of her falling into temptation. It's the kind of temptation that Satan tempts us with. He makes something look so appealing and so much easier, but it is just a trap or a snare. Rather we need to stay the course and focus on God and He will work all things together for good.

Now this movie wasn't really Christian in any way, in fact, it was quite the opposite. The place they were taken, the people there actually wanted to "train" them to be more white like. They had nuns and a church where they forced the children to go and recite prayers. The "Christian" type things were just the opposite of what Christianity is all about, so it sort of bothered me, but to see God's protection on these girls, it was amazing because it's a true story. I so wish others could see the movie through these eyes.

Moving onto the rest of the day. There are many many different things I could do tonight and I really don't know which one to pick. One group of friends is watching Fiddler on the Roof which I've never seen, another group is watching Bolt somewhere at some point, and a third group is sharing the gospel around downtown Houghton or somewhere else maybe and we call that Commandos after something we did at Big Break that was similar. Along with those three things, there is a Youth Service we're planning at my church and all night long there is a standathon. There are so many things to do and so many choices to make. I'll have to read my Bible and pray a bit to see where God leads me. Right now, I'm probably going to go do Commandos and share the gospel, because that is probably the most important because I think our youth service at my church is going to go just fine without me.

I also could use some sleep. Last night for Shenanigans (our social/outreach event after every TNT (our Thursday Night Thing (our large group meeting for Campus Crusade (the best organization ever)))), we walked downtown just to walk and talk as a group. It was really fun to just hang out while walking and some went to cyberia and the rest of us walked to Hardees. After eating at Hardees, we walked down by Chutes and Ladders which is a park along the canal. Most of us kept walking but me and a few others climbed around on the equipment. It's actually illegal because the park is closed after dark, but we were doing no harm and the police didn't come by, so it worked out ok. After that, we jogged almost all the way to the bridge to catch up with the rest of the group that kept walking and we ended up walking back to HTC and hanging out there. I left a little early (early being at like 1 AM) to go home because I had to drive and not fall asleep at the wheel as well as the fact that I needed to drive back to campus made staying any longer undesirable.

Well, I was just called by Eric VanDrie and we're gonna head into the Commercial side of Houghton and do some gathering of materials (a.k.a. shopping), so I gotta get going. This post is probably gettin' pretty long anyways. Have a Great day!

P.S. In a blog of a friend of mine, she put at the end to read Psalm 18. It's a really cool Psalm that she challenged her readers to read and I did and I'm really glad I did, so you should read it too! God's amazing.

Post 8: Busy, Busy, Busy...

Well, I had an awesome weekend at retreat. I love getting together with cru people and just hanging out and getting to know people better, but I most definitely also enjoy being challenged by the messages I hear and the group discussions! Some people were a little crazy and went jumping in the lake after they cut a hole in the ice... I do NOT handle cold temperatures well. If someone payed me $100 then I would have done it, but nobody offered. haha.

The only problem with retreat is that it usually means that you have a bunch of work to do when you get back to campus. As of me writing these words right now, it's 11:40 PM... make that 11:41. Time is just flying by. I still have to do at least linear algebra which is due tomorrow along with my mastering physics which is overdue that I cannot get greater than a 50% on now. I may do that tomorrow though, I'm not sure.

As for tomorrow, I have to wake up at 8:45, get ready in the morning, drive down at 9:25 so I can get to class by 10. My first class is Basic electronics till 11, then from 11 to 12 I have Physics. Then from 12 to 2 I have world cultures. From 2 to 3 I have Computer and Operating System Architecture, and from 3 to 4 I have Linear Algebra. After that I have a 1 hour break to eat and hopefully then is when I'll be able to do my mastering physics homework. At 5, I have a TNT planning meeting for Campus Crusade followed by a Socials team meeting at 6:30. At 7, I need to decide between either going to a freshman body evangelism outreach event planning meeting or going to Bible Study. Either one will probably go until 9 which is when Men's Leadership Bible study is. At 10 o'clock I need to register for classes promptly so I make sure I get into everything I need to get into. After Men's Leadership Bible study, I am gonna talk to a friend about some things and by the time I get home, it's sure to be at least as late as 11:30. At this point I'm going to wish I was dead... ok, so not really.

I actually quite enjoy my Monday's, but this one has the extra freshman body evangelism outreach event planning meeting thing and my class registration in addition to the usual hustle and bustle. I know God's gonna take care of me and bring me through it one hour at a time. I just hope I'll be able to stay away in my classes. I got very little sleep last night and I'll probably get very little sleep tonight because of the time it already is and knowing that I still need to start and finish my linear algebra. God is good though and he loves me and if I'm doing my best to serve Him in everything I do, then how could the day possibly be bad?

I think if you've been reading along with my blog, you'll realize that I'm a reflective learner which I think sort of makes it for a better read personally, but when I sort through the thoughts in my head, especially when I'm writing them out, I can take more out of it and learn more. I had to definitely pray about the ride situation with retreat and it did all work out. Everyone made it down ok and that's what matters. If I slightly annoyed some people with too many emails... well so be it. God knows my heart.

One of these days I'm going to write letters thanking certain individual people in Campus Crusade who have really made a big difference in my life. I really look up to many of them as Godly people who are living for God and by following their examples, I am learning to become more of a leader and to grow closer to God. Something God's shown me recently through others is that we WILL be persecuted for living for God. It's written plainly in the Bible. If we are wanting to pursue God, then we will be persecuted. If we're living comfortable easy lives, then we're not living the way we should be living. I would count it a joy to be persecuted. I don't say that to sound proud by any means. However, to know that I am serving God and have His approval (the only approval that truly matters), then if anyone else is against me, what have I to worry about.

I need prayers for guidance in my life. I continue to pray for wisdom, because I know in my own power, I make plenty of dumb choices, but if I rely on the power of the Holy Spirit living within me and truly have faith, then God will be able to do great things through me... things of which I want no credit for. I STILL have yet to be sharing the gospel. I MUST get out there and share with people. I find myself getting busy, but that's what the devil would like me to think.

Ephesians 6:12 says: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." When our non Christian friends come up to us and try to make Christianity look bad by twisting it around or by referring to horrible examples of Christians and defining Christianity by them, we need to realize that we're not fighting with Jesus against them. Rather we are fighting for them to escape the blinders of sin and to see the light which is in Christ Jesus.

I have so many more thoughts and things to talk about, however, it is now 12:01 on Monday morning and I need to get to work on my homework. Thanks for taking the time to read this if you have. It can be quite a mouthful sometimes.

Post 7: Frustrating day

Well, everyone has their up days and down days. Most of my days have been great recently, but not this one... at least not so far.

It all started with me being volutold (volunteered and told what I was to do...) to be the ride coordinator for Spring Retreat. I've never gone to a retreat for Crusade before, so I don't know really how far away it is, how to get there or how coordinating rides is usually done. So, I asked people for help which seemed to be pretty scarce. Eventually I talked to Stacy Coleman who ended up emailing me with vague details as to how to handle it.

Well, I didn't know that Lake Ellen was in a different time zone and didn't know how far away it is. I asked a whole bunch of people when we should meet up at the Rosza sign for departure. Nobody knew the answer to that, but I got a few suggestions and someone said 5 maybe. Well, I figured being a little early is better than being a little bit late, so I pick that time. Then I'm told to make sure everyone has a ride and people who need to go late or early would be able to get there and back.

So, I decide to email the Crusade list and ask everyone that if they're going, they should email me telling me whether they're driving (and how many people they can take), or riding and whether they need to leave early or late or not. I get some emails back, but not from everybody. Well today, (the day of departure), I get an email finally with a list of all the people who are going to retreat... so what do I do with that? Well I figured I'd put together a spreadsheet together so I can sort people out and make sure everyone has rides with everyone. It took me like 2 hours+ to put that together trying to iron out all the inconsistencies with people leaving at different times and assign people as appropriate according to what I was told people were doing.

So at this point, I send out another email with the list of people and who they should go with. Well, after I send this out, it is THEN that people feel it is important to finally email me and tell me they already had other plans and were leaving at a different time rather than earlier when I first asked about it. All of a sudden people have all these different driving plans that I wasn't told about and I'm supposed to coordinate all this? So, I'm forced to send out yet ANOTHER email to the whole list (which is a lot of people), and by doing so essentially spamming them, explaining to them that they need to completely forget about the spreadsheet I just sent out because it was so messed up at that point to just meet up at the sign at 5 or as soon as they could make it. I also told them we'd probably be leaving around 5:20-5:30 since apparently that's the norm.

To make a long story short: next time I'm volunteered to do something that is somewhat significant by myself,especially regarding things I've never done before or don't know anything about, I'm Not going to do it unless I have someone else teaching me how to go about doing it first. I was trying to help people out and have it run smoothly by making that list, but instead it caused more of a headache for everyone.

All that aside, I am very excited for Retreat. Luckily I have a little bit of time to relax before hand. Hopefully people won't be too mad at me for making everything so confusing. My day's gonna be turning around really quick and it'll be awesome by the time everyone's rides are taken care of! I got that out of my system and now I'm ready to go! woot!

Thanks for readin',
later!

Day 6: Just some thoughts

Well, This past week was definitely not quite as exciting as Big Break. Should it be? Certainly the climate bonuses in Florida were amazing, but the best part of that trip was seeing God work through me and everyone in Campus Crusade. Should I be seeing that here at Tech? I told myself I'd share the gospel with at least one person per week. I don't think I've done that this past week so this following week I'll have to talk to 2 people. I don't want to make it sound like I'm just doing it for the sake of doing it to increase my numbers or "score" or anything like that. I truly care about people and I feel they need to hear the gospel presented in a loving way. I just find myself being so busy all the time. Do I leave myself with time for facebook? Yes. Do I leave myself time for hanging out with Christian friends? Yes. Could I use facebook less and hang out with Christian friends less to introduce myself to new people? You Betcha in terms of time, but I haven't been.

I think one of the biggest things I slacked off on this week was reading the Bible. I have been spending a lot of time in pretty consistent prayer, but reading the Bible on my own time by myself is something I plan on doing over the course of this week starting with doing that right after this blog post.

Having said that, I'm really looking forward to retreat! It's gonna be my first ever Campus Crusade retreat (other than men's retreats), because I was not involved in Campus Crusade during the first one. Foolish me, haha.

That reminds me. A lot of times I tell my friends who were my close friends in high school that they should join some college Christian organization. They all say they're too busy or they just don't really want to. I was that way at first, but then I went to Campus Crusade and the people there really cared about me and were interested in my life and they invested time in getting to know me. This was different than in my Christian high school which is why I keep coming back. I really love the people in Campus Crusade and the organization as a whole and what it does. Sometimes though, people get the wrong impression when I talk about it. They think I'm pushing them into campus crusade and they view it sorta like a cult... They know it's not a cult, but it definitely does seem to absorb most of my time outside of class. My brother in particular looks down at me for this. He thinks I totally ditched my high school friends still in the area or in high school. It's not that I don't want to hang out with them, it's just that I've met new friends who share more similar interests as me and are really growing closer to God which is great! I am praying for my old friends that they'll also pursue a relationship with God as that has totally changed me into a different person.

I was a Christian in high school, yes, but I was not living my life for God, I was living it for myself which is actually considered to be one of the most miserable kinds of lives. I would now much rather invest my time in other people and sharing the gospel. I just need to get over the fact that I'm a somewhat shy person and it's difficult initiating conversations with new people for me. However, as God has showed me over spring break, I know if I rely on Him, He will work through me despite my weaknesses. The more I trust God and take steps of faith, the more rewarding my life is. It truly does give me a joy and a peace that I cannot comprehend... which reminds me of a verse in Philippians 4.

Philippians 4:5-7 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

It's so cool when God shows you that His word is truth. If anyone reading this does not know God personally, I would love to show them how. It truly has changed my life and I want to share it with others. It's by no means "easy" to live for God, but it's definitely more rewarding both on earth and my rewards in Heaven will be greater the more I live for God!

Well, I sort of changed my mood from ok to really good and now I'm excited to read the Bible and have my personal time! Woot!

Well thanks for reading. That's all folks!