Waiting. Patience?

Today my Grandma and I are driving from Calgary to Nanaimo. We left at 6:30am (5:30am Nanaimo time). Been a good trip but a wee bit frustrating for me because I tend to be a very “go go go” type of person and sitting in the car for so long is not really my ideal kind of thing (Don‘t get me wrong I do love traveling!). I guess it’s interesting to see we can learn from something as simple as a 15 hour car trip(delayed alot from construction)! Even more so now because we were supposed to get on the 5 o’clock ferry, we missed it and have been waiting here for 2 hours praying to get on the 7 o’clock ferry. Unfortunately there is no promise we will get on that one! Usually what I do in my spare time is surf the internet, facebook, msn, reading things on Wikipedia, etc. But I have no access, so I am using Microsoft to write. Lately I have been praying to God to give me patience; well, here it is! Although I may end up posting this to my blog later on tonight or tomorrow because I don’t have any access to the internet. I guess I’m just writing and rambling on cause’ I’m bored. I wish I would write more often, I guess I need someone to be constantly reminding me otherwise I completely forget I have a blog. Right now I just need to learn to thank God for giving me an opportunity to learn some patience. This is more a praise report that giving my opinion on something. Oh! Look at that we made it on the 7 O’clock ferry. Anyways I guess I gotta run, getting kicked outta the car! Lol. Now praying someone reminds me to start writing more. Bye for now!

Through the Storm

Have you ever read the story of Job? He is such an amazing inspiration! That way he trusted and praised God even though he lost everything. One of my Favourite verses ever is Job 2:10- "Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?" As well and Job 1:21- "The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised."  Isn't that so amazing how he was able to trust in God with everything and praise him even though all was taken from him. The reason I am talking about this is because I have a good friend who reminds me of Job. He is really just like a brother to me and, lately he has been going through some troubles in his family and in his life where he could have easily fallen away from the Lord and given up. Instead he let the situation bring him even closer to God than ever and was willing to praise him even through the storms that are raging in his life.  It really inspired me, because I have a tendency to be quite negative about many things in life and not always trust God when storms start raging. What Job says is so very true, "Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?" I think not! The trouble is what brings us closer to God and teaches us to trust and praise him through all troubles, not only this, but to be able to lay our burdens at the feet of our Father. My 'brother is a perfect example of this. 

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7

Place your trust in him and cast your troubles and anxieties on Him and things will go well, because he will direct you and straighten your paths for you.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on you own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and HE will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5,6

Praise to you Lord! You are my all <3 I am nothing without you, help me to be more like Job and my brother. Trusting you in all I do, putting your will first, and Praising you even through raging storms and darkness. Lord please help my brother to continue loving you the way he does and I pray he can continue be an inspiration to more and more people and bring them to you. You are amazing and I love you.
Amen

Casting Crowns- Praise you in the Storm- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHdcyue0bSw

I-N-D-E-S-C-R-I-B-A-B-L-E

Have you ever stopped to look at something as simple as a blade of grass and thought, "Wow, what an amazing creation this is!"?  I do sometimes, but not often enough. Sometimes I get caught up in life and forget how amazing God is and how blessed I am. Sometimes I take God and everything he has given me for granted. But I'll tell you; When I do take the time to stop, step back, and look at everything he gave me, it leaves me completely awestruck and breathless! I mean really; I know this isn't about evolution vs. creation and all that, but how could you possibly look at any natural thing in this universe and say that it was not intelligently created and put there for a purpose? Everything God created is absoloutly beautiful and breathtaking. I think that everyday; atleast once a day, everyone should step back and take a look at how amazing God is and how truely blessed we are that he created it all for us. Not only did he create the earth, but he also created us! And how amazing is the human body; to be able to think, move, eat, sleep, comunicate with one another, it's just amazing that he is able to create such things! Whenever I am feeling down I like to listen to the song "Indescribable" by Chris Tomlin. I meditate on the lyrics and let myself think of how blessed I am, that the one who placed each star in the sky and each grain of sand on the beach, is also the one who created me and chose me among billions of people to have a personal relationship with Him. Isn't that a great thought? Praise God, he is indescribable. <3

"I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High." Psalms 7:17

"When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" ... "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!" "I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out." Luke 19:37-40

 

Chris Tomlin- Indescribable--- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FlIchSJoOA

 

 

 

 
God's wonderful creation

Thankful

This weekend I was at a retreat with my youth, and one of my friends (Julia) and a couple other people had just got back from a mission trip to Haiti and came straight to the retreat from there. Can't remember who all stood up to talk but I remember what was said. They talked about how they went to an orphanage; while there Julia was holding a little girl that I think was around the age of 1 or 2 but felt like a newborn baby. She was so malnourished and didn't have any strength to even eat! The most horrible part was when Julia tried to put this little girl back down into the crib, she clung to her shirt with every fiber of strength in the little body and screamed and cried. She didn't have the strength to sit up, or even eat, but all she truly wanted was to be loved by someone so she clung on. This kind of stuff brings tears to my eyes.. What was also talked about was how the way some of the children live down in the slums of Haiti, how they have to scrap for a meal and are lucky if they eat at all each day; and the joy in their eyes if they simply have a toy to play with that they found in the garbage. It is so horrible how every day of our lives we take everything for granted. Everything! In our culture we have so many things, yet we never seem happy enough with what we have. Television, game stations, computers, ipods, food, water, clothes, so many things we have for entertainment. All we seem to want is more... but these children don't have any of that.. They have to travel far just for water and are lucky if they don't get some sort of disease from drinking it. They work so hard each day just to get maybe one meal on the table. Meanwhile we just expect the food to be there. It's so sad! Sometimes I wish I lived like that instead of them, because I know I am spoiled, and I know I take my life for granted. Sometimes I don't even realize just how blessed I am. I don't really know what point I am trying to get at, I just needed somewhere to rant on how I am feeling.

Lord, Thank you for everything I have in my life! Thank you for simply keeping my heart pumping and putting food on the table for my family everyday. Thank you for giving me a loving and caring family and a place to sleep every night. I have the world at my finger tips and it is because you blessed me with it. Thank you. Lord, please use me to help those children in need, because all they really want and need is love. They need your love. Thank you for giving me your love Dad, I love you <3 and I am so thankful for it all. Please help me to be more like those children and not just expect things of my life but instead be more thankful for even every breath I take.
Amen
(This is dedicated to my beautiful friend Julia, because I know this is what was on her heart)

New Goals

Hey guys,
I've been thinking lately. I think what I want to do with my life is work as a missionary in children's ministries. Go on mission trips, get involved in orphanages, etc. So this week my main focus for school has been to try and find youth mission trips and Christian orphanages that I could possibly volunteer at. Does anyone know of any well trusted programs that I could check out? Also can you guys please pray for me? That would be great :) Thanks for hearing me out!

Responsibility

This was introduced to me through one of my friends, and I remember when she showed me the book I kind of laughed in my head and thought: “Do Hard Things? No Thanks.. I think I’m good!” I was a little hesitant to open up the book to see what it was all about, but when I did I was very shocked. This book is about how our society has such low expectations for young people, and how Alex and Brett are flipping that around and creating: The Rebelution. Rebelution defined as- A teenage rebellion AGAINST low expectations Rebelling against Rebellion. This gets me excited and gives me hope thinking that I can actually do something big with my life; I don’t have to wait till I “grow up”, instead I can start now.
My favourite quote so far from this book is-
"The teen years are not a vacation from responsibility, they are the training ground of future leaders who dare to be responsible now." I like this quote because it kind of makes you think twice about how most of us take the “teenage” years. In fact just yesterday I had a friend on face book post this as her status-
“All my life I've been good but now, whoa I'm thinking WHAT THE H*** cuzz we are teens we will PARTY HARD :D ♥ ♥ ♥”Yeah, that really bothered me... So I actually posted that quote in response, all she could say to that was “lol”. I thought it was very ironic that she said that, and I really don’t see how that is a laughing matter, but ok. Instead of “partying hard” we should be taking responsibility. Help out around the house more, do things without having to be asked, even these are small responsibilities. Alex and Brett name off some stories of young adults in their book, one of which I really thought was neat! It was about a young boy named David who was born in 1801-

“At age twelve, David was given command of a ship that had been captured in battle and was dispatched with a crew to take the vessel and it's men back to the United States. On the journey home, the captured British captain took issue at being ordered around by a twelve-year-old and announced that he was going below to get his pistols (out of respect for his position, he had been allowed to keep them.) David promptly sent him word that if he stepped foot on deck with his pistols, he would be shot and thrown overboard, the Capitan decided to stay below. At the age of twelve, David became a man."
Isn't that cool? It honestly does not matter what age you are; if you are willing, you are able to take responsibility, and take action; don't waist your life in the "teenage vacation".

(Dedicated to Alex and Brett Harris)I would highly recomend to any "teenager" to buy this book and read it, also check out their website which has lots of interesting things, it also has a video series based on the book. :)
http://www.therebelution.com/blog/2010/04/video-series-fabulous-life-of-a-teenager/

Share

At the event, in the open sharing time that I talked about in my last post, something else struck me. One of my friends came up and shared that through out the year he had some struggles and always had a tendency to bottle it up inside and not get it out; he knew this was the wrong way to approach it. He told us that when he opened up and willingly shared it, things seemed to start getting better for him, he knew it was on the path to being fixed. This struck out to me because I also have a tendency to bottle things up inside and not want to open up or share with others. But the matter of fact is, that if you just keep your hardships to yourself things are less likely to get better. I know I have always felt better after sharing with a friend or a youth leader. Not only will they listen to you, but they will pray with you. Prayer is the best possible thing to do for anyone. Also, not only should you be sharing with a friend to pray with but also share it with God. If you put your trust in him, he can do some pretty amazing things.

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
1 Peter 5:7

Dedicated to my youth friend- Austin

Shine

Every year my, youth has a new years all nighter event, and every year at that event; around 1:00 am our pastor (Colin) hands out paper, an envelope, and a pen to each youth. On that paper we are to write ourselves a prayer, once we are done we put it in the envelope and write our address on it, then hand it in to our pastor. At the end of each year he mails our letter to us so we can read it and see if we met our goals for the year. Last year I was unable to make it to the event, but a couple days ago while I was there I heard alot of my friends talking about how they had received their letter in the mail that week and how they hadn't met their goals. Now, I didn't write a letter last year, but either way, in my heart I knew I hadn't met my goals either. I felt horrible and far from God; but after we had wrote our letters we had an open sharing time where whoever wanted to, could go up and share something with the group. About halfway through my brother went up and shared some hope that really spoke to me. He talked about how alot of us did not meet our goals last year, but there is still time because we are still here. That we do not know when our end is, so we should not waste a moment and always try to live our lives for God. This really struck me because it is true, we really should take advantage of every little moment and live our lives to the fullest for God. Not only should we be living our lives for God, but this includes spreading God's word to others so they they also may live for God and experience the Joy of being close to Him.
Live you life to it's fullest, and let your light shine to everyone around you. A verse Pastor Colin shared with us was-

No one lights a lamp and hides it in a jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, he puts it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Therefore consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more, whoever does not have even what he thinks he has will be taken from him. Luke 8:16-18

This is a verse I found that I liked and thought it tied in well with his sermon.-

Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you. 2 Thessalonians 3:1

Dedicated to my amazing brother- Nick