Life in Abundance

• Knowing I'm loved by God
• Loving Him back
• Having an intimate connection with God while I'm studying His Word and praying with Him
• Enjoying the company of others
• Pouring into other's lives
• Having people in my life whom I love and who love me
• Being in a relationship with a man of God who puts God before me and me before himself
• Having happiness that's deeper than circumstances
• Being supported financially for doing what I've dreamed of since I gave my heart to the Lord.
• Realizing that I'm blessed, and being able to be truly grateful

Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your goodness to me. :-)

Coming Back

Last night Paul and I listened to the sermon "The New Covenant" by Pastor Jeff Leake. I was blessed as I heard the different types of covenants that were made in Jewish tradition. The two that stuck out to me were that the two people making a covenant had a meal together, and if they were really close, they fed the meal to each other. If I'm not mistaken, this was to symbolize that all they had was the other person's, even the person himself. The next covenant that I enjoyed learning about was when two people made a covenant with one another, they would exchange robes. This was also to symbolize that what the one person had, they were willing to give to the other.

So what? Who cares? I do. The Bible says that Jesus clothes us in robes of righteousness and that Jesus became sin for us. Also, Jesus had communion with His disciples and we even have communion with Christ as He has a meal with us and feeds us and essentially is saying, "I am unwaveringly devoted to you, all I have is yours."

While reading Nehemiah 8-9 this morning, I was reminded of the many failures of the Israelites and how faithful God was to them. The prayer in chapter 9 ends with the people stating that they're oppressed and they need deliverance once more. How great do these two messages work together! Though it's clear that we cannot fix ourselves and we mess up continuously, Jesus became a human to do our part for us and put Himself in us in order to say it's no longer by our efforts.

Amen. I meditated on this all today. Jesus, I'm hungry to know You more, reveal Yourself to me.

Some Summer Fun

What can I say? I'm being blessed left and right this summer! At my home church, I have the oppurtunity to be the Worship Pastor and Youth interim. I have been challenged as a worship leader, for sure, but being a youth leader brings many new challenges that should have been expected, but I never thought about.

• It's hard to keep the attention of teenagers! Being in college for three years has far removed me from the days of having to gain attention from people.
• It's impossible to have any one-on-one talks with people when you're setting everything up and running things. Kind of depressing. :-)
• Worship in youth group needs to be explained and illustrated. A lot of teaching needs to go on in the middle of a worship service in order to help the teens understand what worship actually is.
• Small groups are different in that our leadership team can't just assume that the teens know how to pray with eachother. In fact, we have to assume that they might not know.
• When one person is sick who drives the vans to help pick up the teens, there could be up to fifteen kids that can't come to youth that night. It's sad.

Those are just some of the areas that I'm being challenged in this summer. On an even brighter note!, I'm starting guitar lessons today. WHOO! Thank you, Lord, for another day and another opportunity to come to know You more.

Be blessed!