Sweetly Broken, Wholly Surrendered

One of my favorite times of the year happened last weekend.  I spent last weekend at TCX, the Upper Midwest regional conference of Cru.  Even though it was my fourth time going, I feel that I still learned things that I might not have learned had I not went.  I may be a leader on my campus, but God still allowed me to learn a lot.

The first full day, one speaker talked about us being Ambassadors for Christ, because since we have been given much, much is required.  Since we are Ambassadors, we need to rely on the Gospel to change not only ourselves, but others as well.  Before the next meeting, I went to a program on operations, something that I think God is giving me a heart for.  I love maintaining this blog, but I love planning events, and social media as well.  Since my words do not do justice, I love letting my actions speak.  I’m not good with my words, but I want to show the Gospel through my actions.  Another speaker talked about the character of God and how He is All-Knowing, All-Powerful who is everywhere, using Psalm 139.  It’s amazing that God’s attention to detail is so immense, even we cannot be as deep as Him.

The next day was the day of outreach, a day that I used to dread, but now welcome it as a friend.  As a introvert, it’s hard for me to talk to people about the Gospel, but I don’t need words and just be a positive light to the people I meet.  I like talking to people about Jesus, but it’s hard for me to talk to strangers.  The morning session’s talk was pretty appropriate.  He talked about how instead of focusing on the Gospel and the lost, we tend to focus on ourselves and our things.   Ten days removed, I want to elaborate on this because it is very appropriate to hear, especially when other things get in the way.  My day of outreach experience was being around the elderly.  Even though most of the people I met were already believers, it was neat listening to their stories and just being there for them.

New Years Eve morning we talked about holiness and (to a greater extent, humility) and how we are already holy before God and he loves us into it and not into being scared or guilty.  I wanted to post something on this but did not because I did not feel qualified to talk about it.  My only seminar I attended talked about the Great Commission and social justice.  Because of my upbringing, I have always been interested in social justice.  Now that I am making my faith my own, I wanted to see whether social justice was Biblical (dumb question I know…), while I still had questions about it, I wanted to see what it was about.

The last session walked about Jesus calling Simon and Andrew out of their boats and how they dropped everything to follow Him.  It was thought provoking because since God calls us to leave our dreams and desires to follow Him, I needed to hear it after a rough year in school.  I do not know what I am doing after graduation because it is up to God because He knows what to do.  My life is just a vapor so I just want to follow Him.

I loved the main sessions of TCX this year and if you want to see the sessions the link is here: http://www.livestream.com/ccc_uppermidwest .  Even though I am going through victory laps at school, I do plan on going to TCX this December.  I loved going the last four times and I cannot wait to go back!

     I’ve always liked this time of year sans snow.  From the lights to the food, it gives me something to think about, even if finals are coming up, but those don’t make up what Christmas means to me.

     Even before I became a Believer, my family has taken part in Advent.  Looking back, I see it as a good way of introducing me to the Gospel.  Since I began college I’ve wanted to participate in Advent, but haven’t because of the stresses of the end of the semester.  However, this year I am planning to take part.  Last year, I felt like December came and went, and by participating in Advent, I can slow down and remember once again the reason of Christmas.

     Thursday at Cru, we talked about the “Waiting Room” and how we use it to train ourselves spiritually.  I fully intend to use Advent as a time of waiting, reading the Bible, Checking out resources, and reading a devotional.  I am using John Piper’s devotional “Good News of Great Joy” (found at http://bit.ly/VbhjZa), but there are many other devotionals out on the internet.  While I like lights, cookies, and wrapping presents (poorly), I want to focus on Jesus this Advent.  I will be joyful in His waiting, and be joyful in His birth.

I love going to Cru, as a believer, it gives me a sense of community and a positive outlet of avoiding the world.  But tonight at Cru hit home for me in many ways.

It’s no secret that I want to get involved with ministry in some way.  And tonight (10/18/12 for those wondering what tonight referred to) I had a bit of a revelation.  Tonight one of the songs was “I Will Go” by Starfield.  I have heard that song many times before, but tonight really hit it through my head.  The bridge goes like this: “I want to live for You, go where You need me, I want to follow You”.  

It hit me, to be a Christ Follower, we need to obey God’s word, we need to be obedient to God, even if it means doing something totally different from what you had in mind.  I remember going to school I had a perfect plan to go to school for four years, be a Social Work major, join the Storm Chase club, and try to meet new people.  Now, I think one of those things actually happened.  I feel that I have spent too much of my summer trying to please myself, and try to ascend the ladder of self-actualization.  My feelings as I type this is that I have tried too hard to be a college student with being a Christian on the side.

God didn’t send Jesus for us to completely follow your own plan, He sent Jesus because He wanted everything from you.  God wants your crappy future and refine it so you can live for His glory.  I feel naked because the plan that I thought I have just crumbled in God’s hands.  However, I feel that God can take the half way finished me and change how I live my life.  I do not want to rely on my own being and rely on the Holy Spirit to help influence others for Christ.

Almost ten months ago, I made a pledge that I would give a minimum of one year to serve the Lord.  I realize that God gave my talents of using technology for a reason, that I should not hoard my talents, but yet link people to the Gospel through social media, blogging websites, and sites like Youtube.  I don’t want to think that I am a great blogger, because I am not a great blogger.  However, stuff like this takes time and I need to work on it and not spend months on end with writers block.  

From a missions standpoint, I don’t think I’m called to minister overseas, but I want to minister through my prayers, my presence, my gifts, my service, and my witness.  And I want to minister through technology because I am using God’s gifts as well as I can.  I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but God provides in amazing ways.

I think that it is a good time for me to vent.  It’s been a while since I cranked out a quality blog and this is what I’m doing right meow.  I’m not going to confine what I blog about and I really hope I make sense.  With The Lumineers playing in my ears, let’s do this thing!

First of all, I am craving tea.  I never thought I would say it, but over my time in college, I would never have thought that I would be a tea drinker.  I have cut back on drinking pop so much that I crave caffeine, and tea usually does the trick.  I hope that by TCX, I will be armed with a loose leaf tea infuser as well as some loose leaf tea.  Plus, when I’m tired, I’ll brew some tea and it will be enough to pay attention for awhile.

School has been alright, I guess.  I’m a little burnt out so obviously I need a break.  Heck, Fall Break seemed like a blur.  I had to drop a class because the time that they met was not the best time.  Also, I have a project in my Anthro. class and I have to film myself in my Helping Skills class (Basically where you start to do one on one counselling sessions).  Also, I can’t believe I have three semesters after this one.  It seemed like yesterday that I moved into Hill-Case Hall back in 2009.

This semester, I’ve been thinking more and more about how I want to go about my life (jobs, living, etc).  I know that I won’t be living in St. Cloud for the rest of my life.  My major basically guarantees that I need to go to grad school, something that I don’t want to do when I graduate, if at all.  Since I changed my major, the possibility of doing full time ministry became more of a possibility.  I want to use the talents God gave me and use it to the best of my ability.  I love doing operations and using technology to glorify God.  So if God is calling me to ministry, I feel that He wants me to use my technological abilities for His glory.

Also, the home hockey opener is Friday, I’m totally excited to root the Huskies to victory.

This was fun and I want to do this again!  So nice to do Free Association to crank out a blog post!

Pardon my lack of posts, I have been busy with school and Cru that I have not sat down and just written something out.  I wanted to “relaunch” this page, but school got in my way.  I am not being lazy, but my attention has been placed on other things and blogging is low on that list (but y’all are still awesome, all ten of y’all haha).  As I spend my last 4-5 semesters I really need to figure out what I want to do in the long term, because I don’t want to hit grad school that early, or at all for that matter.  My major almost guarantees that I need to go to grad school to get jobs that I want, and that is something that I don’t want to do right after I graduate college.  But I digress…

School has been tough on me and while I can start to see the end, I know that I’m not done yet.  I need to make sure that whatever I do, I need to be happy about it for the next 30-40 years.  Can I be happy with merely having a bachelor’s degree, or is there something bigger in the grand scheme of things that God has planned for me?  In other words, is God telling me that I don’t need to use my future degree in order to create something bigger?  I need to chew on this because it is important for not only now, but for the rest of my life…

Politics are one of the things that really boggle me, not only on a human level, but with me as a Christ Follower.  Politics can not only be confusing, but it can be downright discouraging.  So I hope that this post can clear things up on how I personally view politics and how that relates to me being a Believer.

I want to be completely frank about this: I personally don’t care about politics.  Over the last few years, I have been everywhere on the political continuum, from liberalish views to being perfectly moderate.  I feel that whenever I try to get into political type thought (i.e. picking a candidate when I vote), I feel like I am lied to and/or “mud” is slinged onto my face.  I can’t trust politicians because of the fact that they may not be trustable to vote for.

Just because I am apathetic towards politics, doesn’t mean I have views of my own.  In that case, I lean towards Libertarian views.  I believe that everyone has rights they need to fight for, but the views that I believe in are mainly Biblical.  I am pro-life, but not militant.  There are better ways to get rid of an unborn child instead of simply killing the child.  Adoption and Safe Haven are way better ways to help children live in possibly less toxic surroundings.  I am against the death penalty, especially since Jesus said “Whoever is without sin, let them cast the first stone”-John 8:7.  The death penalty is simply barbaric, especially since there is a chance that some people may be serving time, even though they are innocent.  I have other views, but that is an inkling of what I believe in.

I will not vote for Barack “I made this situation worse” Obama nor Mitt “Mayor of Whoville” Romney.  They are not worth four years in charge.  However, I think that Gary Johnson is more than capable to take the situation at hand and make it better.  He lines best with my views, and while he hasn’t been given much screentime, it is best to give him a shot, and not give the Presidency to a couple of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

      I can’t believe that on Monday, it’s been a year since I left for North Myrtle Beach Summer Project.  Honestly, this year seemed like a blur.  I can’t believe that I left everything that was familiar, and went with three other people who I’ve never really met before.  A plethora of emotions were going through my head during then, ranging from jubilation, to total udder nervousness.  

      For those who know me, I am one of the biggest introverts ever.  I crave being by myself and the thought of riding and sleeping with people who I have never have known is somewhat terrifying to me.  However, I had a blast driving down to the destination with Geoff, Josh, and Katie.  There were so many things that we talked about from calories in a McDonalds meal to  playing a game to point out cars that are colored orange or yellow.  There were some funny moments, from using my camera to take pictures of funny poses to stopping at some pretty sketchy places, including an Illinois Oasis at 3 AM.

     While the car ride down was a journey to a destination, the destination was a journey in of itself.  I learned a lot of growing in Leadership and in my personal faith-walk.  Coming back to campus, I was ready to help, and even though I didn’t lead a Life Group on my campus, I could still use my skills to create events that were not only fun, but could also be a link to the Gospel.  However, I felt a need to share my faith more.  This is something that I would like to improve on next year, especially moving off campus.  Another thing that I would like to improve on is to help send people to Summer Projects, not just for North Myrtle Beach, but to any Project.  I am open to go on another Summer Project next year, whether it may be stateside or international.  I want to go, and I want to bring others with me. 

     It’s been a while since I posted something on Tumblr and finding time (and thinking of a suitable topic to post) has been an issue for me.  Needless to say this semester has been crazy and in some ways crazy isn’t a great feeling.  Taking 15 credits and trying to get into the Social Work (SW) program has burnt me out over the last ten weeks.  It also made me think whether Social Work would be a suitable career choice for me.  I realized that some of the things I am doing right now would show up had I continued (I will address the “had” later).  I did not think I would be a bad social worker, just an inexperienced one.  I have no outside experience to add to my life story.  Also, if I am already burnt out with the classes, imagine me in the field.  I would be a wreck!

     Over a month or so (give or take a week), I have seriously considered changing my major from SW to Community Psychology (CPSY).  The reasons behind them really backed it up for me.  First of all, I have done better academically with my CPSY classes than my SW classes; also, I tend to enjoy my CPSY classes more.  Also, it is already my minor, so if I changed my major, I would just need to take a Statistics class and two other CPSY classes to get caught up.  Finally, Psychology is really interesting to me, especially picking someone’s brain to learn what is potentially wrong with them.

     So I did what I have usually do when I make a decision of this magnitude, I prayed about it, and I decided that unless St. Cloud State Career Services said otherwise, I would change my major.  I talked to Career Services about whether the decision would be wise or not, and they said that would work, so next semester will be my first semester as a CPSY major.  I am excited to see where this takes me and I hope I can continue to do well in my major classes as I start heading towards graduation.

     I should not be anxious on what I want to do with my future, it is God’s, not mine.  He knows me better than I know myself.  I may even do something completely different to what my diploma will say when I leave here.  I have no idea what I am going to do once I graduate, but I know that with my future in God’s hands, I should be good.