Walking With the LORD

It has recently been brought to my attention through several different people, events, circumstances, etc. that, well, walking with God is the best thing ever.

Of course I already knew walking with God was basically the epitome of Christianity--if you are a child of God, you walk in His steps. But just recently the full magnitude of what it means to be in the LORD has hit me like never before. If you are truly in Christ, you are constantly checking with Him. Your decisions are all based off of what He wants. In fact, the only thing you want is to do what He wants! It is very liberating to just throw everything over to a God who loves you. I can't figure out why I continue to think things will be better if I worry over my little problems myself. When the little things are in God's hands, they don't seem like such a big deal after all.

And the best thing about being in the center of God's will? You can't mess up! Whoa! Obviously it's not a "Oh, I got in God's will and now I can do whatever and nothing go wrong" thing. It reminds me of the Ultimate Balance Test on Wii Fit. On said test, you must stand on the board and keep your center of balance at 50/50 for 3 seconds. HARD man! As soon as you're in, you're out! You have to chase it down, to keep figuring out how to get in there and keep it there. It's the same way with walking in God's will. You can't do any one thing and be "in the club". It's a constant process. Most of the time walking WITH God means quite a bit of time running BEHIND God, yelling, "Hey, wait up!" :P

But you know what's awesome about staying in God's will and walking with Him? It's fun most of the time, at least for me. The more I study and read and pray, the more I know about the characteristics of my Savior and all the different things He likes. And THAT is cool stuff.

Thoughts on reading through the Bible in 90 days

It was a wild ride! Most days I would start reading in the morning and slowly tackle bits of it through the day and finish it all up at night. There were days when I fell behind, and when you fall behind, it takes a looooooooooooong time to catch back up! :P The best thing about it was that, no matter what passage anybody brought up at church or whenever, I was able to do, "Oh yeah, I just read that" and everything was fresh on my mind. (That being said, it's a lot to have on your mind ;) ) Also, of course, I can now say I read through the Bible in 90 days and that's fun :) Most of the time the reading was fun to do as well, except of course when the days reading is 15 chapters of Numbers :P All this said, here are the bad things about it:

Everything was at the speed of light - no time to think deeply about anything before BANG! You're in the next book of the Bible. And once you start, there's no turning back! It's impossible! Once you have that reading plan in your favorites online it's always there wanting you to come back! Also, with all the reading there is to do, it is oftentimes hard to see it as time with the LORD, as opposed to assigned homework or something of the like. I really had to work hard emotionally to keep my head where it was supposed to be. Toward the end I finally got into a groove of reading half during the day to get it done, and then taking some time on the last half at night for some more study and talking to God. If you're going to take this on, do it this way :)

All things considered, it was a big challenge with not a whole lot to show at the end of it. Though I can't really say this, because who knows? Maybe God trekked me through it because I'll need the experience for...something. Or maybe he cleared out some things in my heart I'm not aware of, or just used it opened a door to make space for something He'll put in my life at some time. So, I shall end with this:

Read through the Bible in 90 days if God tells you to do it :)

Standing around doing nothing

Well, I know I often say I love my church and that that's old news, but guess what? My church EVEN has a great back-up pastor when ours is out! Dr. Bentley spoke today about growing. How do we grow? Growing is working hard at things, studying in order to know things, exercising our body to stay healthy, etc. But he told us that most people stop growing at the age of 40! It may be because they don't NEED to grow more to get the job done, or that they have more fun things to do, yadayadayada. As kids we have to learn or not get to wear the dorky blue hat(:P), but you don't have to be 40 for this to fit: are we growing spiritually? Are we studying and listening to God and others who know more than us? Or are we standing around doing nothing in our faith. There are times when I say something like, "Oh, well. I'll read more Bible tomorrow" or "it's just Sunday morning church... lah-dee-dah". Dr. Bentley said that when you stand around, content with where you are, you are ineffective. It's like a dull knife. I don't want to be ineffective - I wanna be sharp!

Join me in staying on top of life - growing in wisdom and stature (maybe:P) and in favor with God and man!