Wow! It's October already! The days have already been going so fast! I can't believe that I've already been here for over a month! I feel like I'm still brand new to all of this!
I especially feel that way with my responsibilities for the year, the biggest one being the Assistant Academic Director of the program. It's definitely a new thing for me and I still feel like I'm figuring it out, but I think that's OK. I will say though that I am SO excited to be walking in that position this year! Academics are definitely a passion of mine and I love being able to help oversee them and to be a part of helping some people figure them out and get better at them. It takes a lot of organization and communication, but I love that! It's something that I get excited about, so I'm really excited to continue to walk in it and to make some things better and to help some people really learn!
Another big role for me has been helping to lead my college and career small group. This isn't exactly a new role for me, but every year I'm challenged to be better and to do more. I'm so excited for my small group, because I think God has some amazing things in store for us this year, I really do. We have to be faithful to listen though and to make our group a priority to allow Him to do that and that's something I have a hard time with sometimes, keeping my group a top priority. It's not that I don't love them or that I don't want it to succeed, it's simply that my schedule gets quite full quite quickly, but I never want that to cause me to put less priority on my group than I should. I think I've been doing well at this lately and I just hope that I can keep it up.
On another note, some big things have happened in September. Not only did the 2nd year students return, but all of the new 1st year students arrived as well. That has definitely been exciting and it's been so awesome to be able to get to know some of them and to begin to learn their stories and who they are. It's going to be awesome to watch God transform their lives this year! In fact, He's already started and it's an incredible thing to see!
Also, on Saturday the church had a reunion. It was a large event where nearly 300 people who attended the church as much as 50 or 60 years ago came back to see their old friends and to see where their beloved church had ended up. It was such a neat experience! I loved being able to meet some of them amazing women that came for the event and to hear small pieces of their lives and their history at the church! They all just had so much history there, so many memories. Several of them got saved in the church, others met their spouses there and got married there, others met their best friends there. The church really just holds more history than I could have thought and I just loved hearing about it! I love being able to get snapshots of peoples' lives, to hear what they've been through and the things that they've experienced. Like one woman I talked to who had married a man in the military right after she graduated. This woman was able to travel to so many exciting places! She lived in Vietnam and Germany and more for at least a year. She had not only done tourist travel, but had lived in foreign countries, experienced incredible things, and learned so much and I got to hear a little about it! It was awesome! And it was just inspiring to live my life to the fullest, to not let time just pass me by, but to really take advantage of the opportunities and experiences that come my way, because I want to be able to tell stories like the people I met did when I'm their age. I want to say that I lived my life in a big way and that I made an impact in people. I want to do huge things.
Also, our youth/young adult retreat is coming up this weekend and it's going to be awesome! Between 200 and 300 youth will be there, all encountering God. I'm so excited! So, if you could just lift that up in your prayers, that would be awesome. Just pray that God would get people there, that He would clear schedules and provide finances and that He would just really show up this weekend and just change lives. :)
Also, as far as personally, I finished reading Acts, which I'm teeny bit sad about, because it was an awesome book! I do want to share a passage that I read though and my thoughts on it, because it really stuck with me. It was Acts 21:10-14. It says,
"Several days later a man named Agabus, who also had the gift of prophecy, arrived from Judea. He came over, took Paul’s belt, and bound his own feet and hands with it. Then he said, “The Holy Spirit declares, ‘So shall the owner of this belt be bound by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem and turned over to the Gentiles.’” When we heard this, we and the local believers all begged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem.
But he said, “Why all this weeping? You are breaking my heart! I am ready not only to be jailed at Jerusalem but even to die for the sake of the Lord Jesus.” When it was clear that we couldn’t persuade him, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”
I love this passage, because it really challenged me! Paul's just chilling at this guy's house and then suddenly a prophet comes, take's Paul's belt and tied his own hands and feet with it, then tells Paul, "Look, buddy, this is going to be you in Jerusalem. You're going to be chained up and handed over to people, so who knows what will happen after that."
Can you imagine if someone came to you and told you that? What if you were going on a missions trip and a prophet came and told you that you would be chained up while you were there? Would you still go or would you cancel the trip and run from it in fear? I have to be honest, I think that I would be pretty fearful if someone told me that. I'm not sure if I would run from it or not. And running was exactly what all of Paul's Christian buddies were telling him to do. They didn't want to lose him and they were scared for him, so they told him not to go on his mission trip, but Paul's response was incredible! He stood his ground and even asked why the people around him were so upset! He then told them that he was prepared to not only be put in jail or tortured or persecuted, but even to die for the cause of Christ. How incredible is that?! I think it's easy to say that we think the same things for ourselves, but Paul was stared in the face with the opposition he would have to endure to stay true to his word and he still stood firm. This so challenges me, because I think that it's easy to say that I'm completely sold it for God, ready to do His will, whatever the cost, when there is no cost, really. There's no man holding a gun to my head or an army searching my church out to harm us. I simply have to wake up early enough to go to church and spend time with God throughout the week. I have to be bold enough to tell people that I believe in God and share Him and what He's done for me with them and the worst thing that could happen is disagreement or perhaps the slightest bit of verbal persecution. Is that really that big of a cost when I think about it? And, yet, sometimes, those things hold me back. I want to change that. I want to be more like Paul. I want to have courage and boldness in Christ, even when I know it will mean that I have to go through some hard things. I want to not just say that I'm completely sold out for God, but to really live it.
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