So many things to say. So few words in which to express them!
Ahhh.....it's a Nickel Creek kind of night!
Listening to Ode to A Butterfly.
wondering when and if I will ever reach their superior level of musicianship.
sigh......
(and I do not take that sigh lightly.
I do not really like doing the whole figurative description of your emotions.)
Anyways......God is good!
All the time he is good!
A verse I heard on the radio earlier today spoke about when we ask God to bring happiness during trials.
The first thing that made me sit up and turn up the volume was the fact that it is a very accurate statement!
Oftentimes, we pray for happiness. Wishing that we can.just.be.happy. Like, "is that so hard God?"
"Can you just take away the yuckiness, take me out of this funk, and make me feel happy?"
Something the pastors at my church talk about frequently and then when we studied James this summer, they discussed the fact that God does not promise us happiness in life.
He does not promise that we will always have everything together, that we will not experience pain, that we will not face suffering, or that we will even
feel happy.
This is something that is often inappropriately glossed over in Christian circles.
In James it says that we will face struggles and trials of many kinds.
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. " James 1:2-4
God tells us here through James that we will suffer and have pain in life (as in, 'sometime in the near future this will definitely happen' type of
whenever). Moreover, God does not promise us a life of happiness but he does promise us a life of suffering and . Although that does not sound too enticing, doesn't it sound better when we consider Heaven? If our life is only considered a blink of time in God's timetable, I would
much rather experience true, full, joyous happiness when I'm at last in the presence of God, with all of the other believers from this entire world.
Now, after thinking about all of that in a millisecond, I then perked my ears up to hear the following verse:
"In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait in expectation." Psalm 5:3
I loved what the guy on the radio said. Just like a pregnant woman is expecting, knowing that she will eventually have a baby but cannot hold it yet, we are to wait on God.
As a follower of God, this means that I am supposed to present my requests to God, and then to wait on Him.
He
will give an answer.
He
will respond.
And by waiting in expectation, I am then waiting in faith.
Honestly, for a long time I didn't really understand what faith was exactly.
(I'm still trying to wrap my head around it too.) Just like "abiding in Christ", come on?
Yes, you hear people say to "have faith", "these three remain: faith, hope, and love", and "you gotta have faith." But what does faith really mean?
I think that I just equated faith with trust. But faith is so much more than that.
To have faith, is just like the verse above states, to believe in what God has in store: God's plan for the future, what
can, and what
will happen.
Also, just like an expectant mother, "waiting in expectation" or having faith in God, is knowing, believing in, and not diverting from the outcome, which is that
God's will will occur.
You know what, I think that that little "taking a minute" clip on the radio helped me and assured me that I'm actually understanding what faith is!
Thanks
Jason Anderson!
Last Thursday I felt like I had a sneeze stuck in my nose.
....all...day.........
.weirdest.feeling.ever.
I went to Valle de Guadalupe near Ensenada, Mexico on Thursday.
I went with my friend Omar, who grew up there at Rancho Sordo Mudo.
RSM is a school for Deaf children. Although they used to use ASL, now the gov't makes them teach LSM (lengua de señas mexicana) which was sometimes confusing for me. ASL and LSM share some signs that have the same meaning, they also share some signs but have different meanings for them, there are slight differences in handshape/location of certain signs, and then there are just a lot of different signs in LSM.
After spending time with tons of Deaf people and kids who only use sign language to communicate, it was really hard to only use my voice when talking with people!
Haha. Case in point:
When I was trying to order food at McDonald's in Rosarito, I couldn't remember the words in Spanish so I almost started signing to the guy at the register!
(Which is another story in itself! Somehow, by focusing so much on signing, I seemed to have lost all my Spanish vocabulary! I could barely remember anything! Agh! So frustrating! If I go back sometime soon I definitely need to brush up on my Spanish! Or at least speak with my Spanish speaking friends.)
Okay, okay. Before I make a long story much, much longer, I'm going to head out and save my RSM trip for another post.
Wilhelm.....out.
