Learning from my 8th graders

I have a wonderfully amazing group of girls that I am blessed to lead in Bible study every week. We have a great time together, though it can be extremely hard to keep everyone focused. If you have ever had 15 eighth grade girls in one room, you'd understand. They can definitely test my patience. ;-) But tonight we had one extra leader, so we split the group in half, leaving me with only 8 girls. It was definitely a easier number to handle. We really had some great discussion and it was neat to see where they all are spiritually. Then when we held hands around the table and started to pray, I was amazed at what I heard.

Each girl in turn began to pray for the leaders of our country, for the war, and for the upcoming election. We hadn't talked about any of this stuff in our discussion, yet they were thinking to bring it all before God in prayer. I was seriously amazed, for two reasons. One, I can hardly even find high school and college students who know or care to know anything about our country's leaders, yet here are the jr. highers praying for them. And two, as a Christian I am called to pray for the leaders of my nation and the surrounding nations, but how many times in the past few months have I lifted them in prayer? I was reminded tonight that I need to get on top my job of praying.

As I continued to listen to them bring their hearts before God I noticed one more thing. One of the girls began praying for the election, and let God know that she trusted Him. She asked that He would remain in charge of the election and that He would bring the right person to office according to His plan, despite what her opinions and desires were.

I discovered then that her heart was right where mine should be. Instead of praying and begging to God that my presidential "pick" should win, I should be letting Him know that I trust His plan, even if it seems scary to me or doesn't make sense. Instead of this fighting, even between Christians, of who "needs" to win office, we should be giving it up to God. Even though we, "the humans" rule our country, He is still ultimately in control.

Yes we still need to strive to be greatly informed, so we can make the best decision possible when it comes to voting. Yes we still need to vote, we desperately need to vote and to pray about our voting on leaders and props. (Admitting to God that He is in charge doesn't mean I need to slack on my responsibilities as a citizen) But I need to not stress about the future of my nation, no matter how bleak it may look at times. I need to bring it before God instead. He raises leaders up, and He brings them down, and everything He does, He does well.

Thank You Lord for my amazing girls and all the things they are teaching me.

Morning Thoughts

I’m not the kind of person who wakes up in the morning with profound thoughts on my mind. Actually, I guess you could say I don’t wake up with any kind of thoughts on my mind, besides how long I can remain in bed and still have a profitable day. But, well, this morning my brain was functioning on a higher level than normal, and I discovered something new.

Every single day as I wake up I fail to notice all the little ways that God is blessing me that day, such as the ability to breathe all on my own, and the ability to move out of my bed without assistance. People like to say, “You never appreciate what you have until you lose it.” Well, I didn’t have to lose these abilities to learn to appreciate them, but I did watch someone else lose them.

As I lay in bed this morning and prayed for a friend, I discovered there are so many things in life I take for granted. There are so many things I feel I deserve, things I have a right to have, such as my ability to breathe, move, see, think, and speak.

Well, I have no rights. I was bought by Christ. Everything that I have, every ability I possess, is a gift from Him. I don’t deserve anything, but He daily chooses things to bless me with. I may not have all I want, but I have all I need, and more. What if I chose to start each morning counting all the blessings God has given me that day? What if I thanked Him for the blessings I constantly overlook? If I did, I think I would be much more able to praise God throughout my day, no matter what the day may bring.

Lord, help me to start each day thanking You for the many overlooked blessings. Help me to think upon these blessings throughout the day, so that I will live my day to praise You, and not live for myself, which is what I’m doing each time I let a bad mood over take me. Thank You for being and providing everything I need.

Surrendering....to something heavenly.

Ok, so here is the song of the week. It’s not the kind of song that would normally make me stop in my tracks to listen, but after hearing it playing on the radio enough I finally just stopped and paid attention to the lyrics. I love finding songs that just nail what I'm experiencing…

Whatever You’re Doing – Sanctus Real

It's time for healing

Time to move on

It's time to fix what's been broken too long

Time make right what has been wrong

It's time to find my way to where I belong

There's a wave that's crashing over me

All I can do is surrender

Time for a milestone

Time to begin again

Revaluate who I really am

Am I doing everything to follow your will

Or just climbing aimlessly over these hills

So show me what it is you want from me

I give everything I surrender...

To...

Whatever you're doing inside of me

It feels like chaos somehow there's peace

It's hard to surrender to what I can't see

But I'm giving in to something heavenly

Time to face up

Clean this old house

Time to breathe in and let everything out

That I've wanted to say for so many years

Time to to release all my held back tears

I have been praying to God for some time now to make everything right again inside of me. I have been asking Him to fix my brokenness, to help me follow His will, to help me see who I am in Him. I keep wondering why things aren’t better yet, why there is all this chaos inside of me.

I have finally realized that it’s because God is trying to change me, but I keep holding things back. There is this struggle inside of me, between God trying to take things and fix them, and me still holding on to them. I hold on to them because I want to pretend like they're not there, like they don't exist. Well, it’s time for me to face the things I have held inside to long, and finally just let them all go. It’s time for me to surrender everything to Him. Surrendering is the hardest thing for me to do, but it’s about time I did.

Lord,
It’s time for me to face up and clean this old house.

It’s time to breathe in and let everything out.

Everything that I've wanted to say for so many years.

It’s time to release all my held back tears.

Lord,

Whatever you're doing inside of me, feels like chaos somehow there's peace

It's hard to surrender to what I can't see, but I'm giving in to something heavenly.

Prayer and Faith...

This past week I dug through my Cds and pulled out some old favorites. Some of this stuff I haven’t listened to in years. It was fun to see how much my taste in music has matured and changed over the years. I especially enjoyed listening to the songs I remember as my favorites. I can still see myself as a brand new teenager blasting early Relient K, Switchfoot, and Jeremy Camp albums in my room.

As I was listening to a Relient K Cd I discovered I can across the song “For the Moments I Feel Faint.” It was probably one of the songs on the Cd that I skipped over, definitely not one that I listened to over and over again. But now, in my greater maturity, I was struck by this song’s simple yet beautiful lyrics.

Am I at the point of no improvement?
What of the death I still dwell in?
I try to excel, but I feel no movement.
Can I be free of this unreleasable sin?

I throw up my hands
"Oh, the impossibilities"
Frustrated and tired
Where do I go from here?
Now I'm searching for the confidence
I've lost so willingly
Overcoming these obstacles is overcoming my fear

Never underestimate my Jesus.
You're telling me that there's no hope.
I'm telling you you're wrong.
Never underestimate my Jesus
When the world around you crumbles
He will be strong, He will be strong

As I listened to the lyrics of this song I began to think about all the thinking, and questioning, and wrestling I have done lately on the topic of “Prayer.”

How many times how many times when I pray to ask for God’s help in a situation do I have doubts that He really cares to help? How many times when I pray to God to ask for help to overcome my brokenness do I not truly believe that He can make a difference? When I pray and ask God for a something that would be a miracle, how many times am I thinking, “I really don’t expect Him to do anything. I don’t live in the time of miracles.”

My prayer life seems full of these small doubts and unbelief, and recently I have begun to think about how they impact my prayer life. When I doubt, all I’m doing is limiting what the power of God can do in my life. All I’m doing is underestimating my Jesus.

Could it be that God wants me to have such faith that I can pray for anything without doubting??

I’m not saying that if I start praying without doubts God will answer my prayers how I want them answered. I can pray and believe without doubts that God has the power to heal my lovely friend from cancer, but it doesn’t mean He will. That’s when I have to trust in Him having the best plan.

But what I have realized is that God wants me to have the faith to believe Him capable of anything, to pray without any nagging doubts or unbelief in the back of my mind.

Even with the statement “With God all things are possible” branded into my mind, I know there are small hidden doubts in my mind when I pray for certain things I believe to be “impossible.”

God CAN overcome my brokenness. He DOES care about my difficult situations. He CAN heal and perform miracles.

It’s going to be hard to start really praying this way. I know I’m going to need lots of help living this new realization out. But I believe that it has the potential to change my life and my relationship with my Father and Savior.

“God, I want to have such faith in You that I can pray for anything, fully believing without ANY doubts that You can accomplish it. I no longer want to limit Your power in my life with my doubts. I don’t ever want underestimate my Jesus. But I also ask for the ability to trust in Your greater plan when my desires aren‘t granted.”

I'm sure you will see many more blogs on this topic in the future as I continue to think these things through.



(I have to thank my brother in Christ, Eric Williamson, for sparking all my thoughts on prayer and faith. I have made so many discoveries already, and I know there are so many more to come as I continue to wrestle with this important topic.)

Me? Help you?

God didn’t prepare me enough to be an older sibling.

It’s not like I don’t try. It’s just that:
Life doesn’t make sense to me more than half the time, so how am I supposed to try to make it make sense to someone else?
I am still constantly looking to people for advice on the tough issues, so how am I supposed to give advice on them?
I can’t keep my own relationships straight and work them out, so how can I help someone else with theirs?

School questions? Sorry, that’s over my head. Relationship problems? Can’t help there, I always mess mine up. Parents? Friends? God? Decisions? Oh please don’t ask me.

It’s not like I’m not trying! I just can’t seem to get the answers for myself and therefore can’t help.

God must have given special abilities and skills to people He placed in the role of “older sibling,” I’m just not sure what happened when He got to me.

I feel like I’m failing them. I’m seriously am falling down on my role.

I’m taught to depend on God for everything else, am I supposed to depend on Him for this too?

Because I want to be the best big sister for them, and I just can't seem to get it right on my own.

An Intro of Sorts

I’m the kind of person who occasionally likes to attempt to think through different things in my life. I use the word “attempt” because every time I begin to think through things, my mind wanders off into other random thoughts, “rabbit trails” if you will, and I never end up anywhere close to a conclusion of anything. So all in all my attempts to think leaving me running through life with a head full of random ideas which usually don’t make sense and amount to nothing.
Many many people have informed me that I should start blogging, “to release the jumble of thoughts” or something to that effect. The majority of the conversations usually went like this:

“Becca, you know, if you started blogging you would be able to get all of your thoughts written out and give your mind some much needed peace and rest.”

“I do write my thoughts out. I have a cluttered desk full of pages of my thoughts.”

“But if you wrote them in a blog you would try to think through your thoughts more clearly because you would want them to be clear to whoever was reading them.”

“Why anyone in their right mind would want to read my inconsistent, unconnected thoughts, that I don’t even understand, beats me.”

And so the conversations ended on that note because most people, who know me well, know not to try to debate with me.
But, as you can obviously see, I eventually gave in. Here I am with a blog.
We’ll see what happens next…. Well, that is if you're brave enough to stick around... ;-)