Three years

thank you Jesse for a wonderful day. you're the bestest. :-)

Humility

An excerpt from C.J. Mahaney's Humility:

Maybe you've wondered why your devotions in the morning sometimes seem to be effective for only an hour or so. I've learned not to expect that what I've experienced in Bible study in the morning will be sustaining me at two-thirty in the afternoon. No, by two-thirty in the afternoon, someone will have brought me a care (or more likely, a number of people will have done so). And this requires deliberately approaching the Lord to cast those cares upon HIm.

I have to remember that whenever I feel buried under care, the real issue is pride and my self-sufficiency. I must deliberately and specifically cast my cares upon Him and thereby humble myself.

Don't be mistaken. God hasn't gone anywhere. He's just as sovereign, just as good, just as faithful when I'm buried under care as He was in those early hours of communion. The issue isn't God. It's my pride that resists trusting Him through dependence upon Him.

In fact, I should also recognize that all the cares coming my way are actually provided by God specifically for the purpose of cultivating humiility in my life. I shouldn't act surprised when they come, because there's a reason God wants me to learn to depend on Him, to need Him, and in the end, to give glory to Hi with an ever-deepening appreciation for the mighty hand of God.

As I finish up my summer session at Penn, I am reminded that it is so easy to just do my quiet times in the morning and think that I don't need to have communion with God again later in the day. I am reminded that I am here, right now, writing this 16-20 page Social Studies Curriculum for my final project, because God is gracious enough to allow me to be here and He is teaching me to depend on Him for everything, include the words that are typed onto that curriculum. I can't believe that I'm leaving for California in just two days... it seems like yesterday that I moved in. Again, God is gracious to let me go home for a few weeks before coming back. :-) Praise God!

How Great is our God!

The splendor of the King,
Clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice,
All the earth rejoice
He wraps himself in light,
And darkness tries to hide
And trembles at his voice,
And trembles at his voice

How great is our God,
Sing with me
How great is our God,
and all will see
How great, How great
Is our God

Age to age he stands
And time is in His Hands
Beginning and the End,
Beginning and the End
The Godhead, Three in one
Father, Spirit, Son
The Lion and the Lamb,
The Lion and the Lamb

How great is our God,
Sing with me
How great is our God,
and all will see
How great, How great
Is our God

Name above all names
Worthy of our praise
My heart will sing how great
Is our God

God has shown me His goodness, His grace, and His greatness in Philly thus far. I look back at how everything has occurred in the last few weeks and I cannot help but smile, knowing that none of this would be possible unless God orchestrated it to be so. And yes, God provides, abudantly, immensely, and perfectly. My big fear of being spiritually inactive has been quelled--because God has given me a church that I can be a part of. I'm teaching sunday school now (every other week)... I'm in awe of how everything with that has worked out! God is growing me, and will continue to grow me, in giving me a challenge of how to share the gospel with 1 to 5 year-olds... who cannot read, nor do they speak the same language. o.O But I suppose God knows what He's doing. :-P

Okay, more updates later.