Month: November 2011

I have been the same exact size since 9th grade-weight, pants size, shirt size, shoe size, height, etc. Haven’t gained any weight since then. Would have the same pants if they didn’t wear out and tear. Fun fact: I haven’t grown an inch since 7th grade. I have always been the same ol’ me with the same ol’ clothes and same ol’ bubbly, stubborn personality.

Well the song ‘Changes’ by David Bowie says (or, I suppose, sings) it best: “ch-ch-changessss…Turn and face the strain”

Welp, news flash….Time is a changin’…..and so is my pant size…along with that bubbly, stubborn personality. Don’t get me wrong, I will always be the same ol’ Sarah with the same ol’ passions. But I am tired of getting lost in time. I do not want to let those passions fade with the strain of time.

I’m ready to face the strain that time has let creep in, and I have decided to have a Thanksgiving resolution, rather than New Years. We always wait until tomorrow to make change, till next month, till the beginning of the year. Well, I have decided that I have had enough. I am ready to do well at the goals I set for myself and get off my lazy butt.

I claim that I am an adult. I claim that I am a believer in Christ. Well, then, now is the time.

Not tomorrow.

Not next week.

Not next month.

Not 2012.

IT’S NOW!

So, if anyone else would like to join me -I’d love the accountability- in the next couple of days I am going to be brainstorming what goals I would like to set for myself and I am going to follow them. Now, not next year.

To Be Continued… =)

“Since we were forged by The Lover, we should delight in love and in being loved. It would be inhumane not to delight in love. It would also be inhumane if we didn’t hurt deeply when rejected or sinned against by others. The problem is not that we desire love, the problem is how much we desire it or for what purpose we desire it. Do we desire it so much that it overshadows our desire to be imitators of God? Do we desire it for our own pleasure or for God’s glory?” – When People are Big and God is Small – Edward T. Welch

So since thanksgiving is soon approaching (tomorrow!!!) I figured a thanksgiving post would be a good idea.

A tradition that I love that my family and our close family friends, the Jones’, have done since I was little is to list what you are thankful for with popcorn kernels. Each person grabs a handful of popcorn kernels and places them in the bowl, one by one. As you do that, you say what you are thankful for.

I love this tradition because it is so easy to get caught up in the holiday traditions of food, sports, and even just regular conversation. Don’t get me wrong, these things are good, but you miss the point if you just settle for good and not strive for great.

It is funny how so often we take what God gives us to be something great, like giving thanks to Him, and warp it into something that is “just good” or even the opposite, bad.

This Thanksgiving, I want to make it great. This year I want to remember everywhere I have been from last Thanksgiving to this one. This Thanksgiving, I want to reflect on God’s grace in my life—the countless times he has taken what I have made “just good” or bad and has redeemed it and made it great!

Here is just part of my list:

1. Thankful for singleness. I thought I had it all in a relationship. And, thought that eventually in marriage I would finally “be there” wherever ‘there’ was. The Lord completely showed me that I was wrong. His grace is enough and will always be enough no matter what season of life I am in. I didn’t realize this when I first became single, but this new stage of singleness has changed my outlook on life forever, has really changed who I am as a person, and impacts all the other things I am thankful for.
2. Thankful that the Lord took me from a life of sin of idolatry, pride,  and sexual immorality and redeemed my life from those never-ending pits and is continuing to save me from those pits. 
3. Thankful for 1C. I was talking with a friend the other day (maybe yesterday, I can’t remember) about how I thought, in my perfect world, I was going to be married as soon as possible. I said to her, “WHOA, if I was married right now, I wouldn’t have been able to be an RA and I wouldn’t have known my girls, and the Lord wouldn’t have worked the way he has this year.” The Lord knows best, and the women of 1C have seriously been a huge part of my life and will continue to impact me for the rest of my life. I couldn’t imagine my life without them.
4. Thankful for my church family. While single, I now can serve in a completely different way than when I was in a relationship. I can’t quite explain why, but I am thankful for this. 
5. Thankful for friends. (I know that I keep talking about my life as a single person but,) When I became singe, I could devote so much more time into friendships and oh boy am I thankful for this time. Not only have I seen where I went wrong (while in a relationship) with my friends, but I now see where and how I can grow in those friendships and how to make them grow stronger and go deeper. The Lord is good and has provided so much more than I could ever have imagined.

This is probably the first real time I have talked about being single and out of a relationship but I did not feel like before now it was appropriate. I was so wrong while I was in a relationship. I did so many things wrong because I had the wrong outlook on my faith, the person I was dating, and the grace of God. I am thankful for this year and how much it has changed my life because it has changed my life for the better. The Lord only knows how stubborn I am and how much of a kick in the butt I needed in order to learn all the things I have learned.

This year, I am just thankful. His grace is abounding, and I am undeserving.

The other day I was talking to a friend about purity and what that looks like in our lives. I was saying how important it is to live a pure life so that we can give a good witness to those who aren’t believers.

As I was saying all of these things, in regard to sexual purity and where the line is drawn, I said, “it is hard to draw the line because the bible doesn’t explicitly say where that line is.”

I kept talking and babbling when I then decided that it might be a good idea to look at scripture and what the Lord says about it because I couldn’t give my friend a clear answer on the subject. I also started thinking about what I was saying and thinking to myself that a lot of the things I was saying and spouting out were cultural Christian ideas. I thought maybe consulting the God of the universe would be a good idea since His will is perfect. 😉

Big surprise—it was.

I looked up the words “sexual immorality” online to see what verses popped up. 1 Corinthians had the most hits with seven. Everything else has one or two. I decided to look at the 1 Corinthians passages. Then moved on to the Ephesians passage. And then Colossians. Each one painted the picture PERFECTLY clear for me. Look at what I found:

“It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you…Let him who has done this be removed from among you.”
(1 Corinthians 5:1-2 ESV)

“‘Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?

Never!

Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

Flee from sexual immorality.

Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
(1 Corinthians 6:13-20 ESV)

“No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability,

but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

    Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.
(1 Corinthians 10:13-14 ESV)

“But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.

Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater),

has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.”
(Ephesians 5:3-8 ESV)

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Colossians 3:5

“And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
(1 Corinthians 6:11 ESV)

Several things became very clear to me:

1. As believers, we are called to walk in the light because we are children of the light and have been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord and by the Spirit.
2. As believers, we constantly try to do the “Christianity” thing, which is to be a virgin, and in doing that, we get it all wrong (Bear with me here).
3. We walk as close to the line as we can get before crossing it the whole time confident we are being a good Christian by abstaining from sex. Once again, we are wrong.
4. Sexual immorality and idolatry are one in the same.

Whoa buddy, do we have it all wrong, or what?!

Being a follower of Christ is not about following the rules of “Christianity” (once again bear with me). Being a Follower of Christ is about holiness and purity because Christ was holy and pure. It is about receiving the grace and love that he has lavished out on us by the Father sending his Son to die on the cross and rise again from the dead for our sins—the never-ending, bottomless pit and life of sins that every human being lives daily. Receiving that grace should spark a fire in all of us to live our lives to please, glorify, and honor him. In Ephesians 2, Paul reminds us that we are Christ’s workmanship and were created in Christ Jesus to do good works so that we can walk in them, so that we can live as children of the Light.

Knowing all of these things and then reading through the verses above should cause us to look at the things in our lives that are compromises and that we aren’t living fully out for Christ (in accordance with scripture) and cause us to RUN the OPPOSITE direction.

I realize that this is extreme for most people, but yet again bear with me. Why, as Christians and followers of Christ, do we dance on the line? Why are we not running the opposite direction? Why are we settling for the sins in our lives if Christ has died a horrible, gruesome death on the cross for our sins to destroy those sins? Why do we even let an ounce of sin in—sexual sin or not?

Let me just be the first one to admit that all those taboo sins that Christians don’t talk about, I have committed. But, let me just also say that I AM DONE. As I was talking with my friend about this subject that gets warped and changed and twisted to fit into our cultural Christian mold, I have decided for myself and any relationship I enter into in the future, it will be pure. It will glorify the Lord. We will walk as children of the Light. It doesn’t matter what boundaries we have to set up and what we miss out on, we will fight for purity outwardly and also in our hearts.

This cultural Christian dating relationship/engagement/marriage/etc. cannot live a life that looks no different than the world. Why do our relationships look no different than the world’s relationships? Why is it okay to dabble with everything before sex just because it doesn’t spell out every single way to be sexually impure in the Bible?

People try to answer that last question all the time and get stumped. The reason is because they do not have a high view of scripture and a high view of the Gospel in their lives. Almost all of the scriptures I listed above repeated over and over again to not even let sexual immorality be named among you and to FLEE from it.

Do you think by fleeing, stopping the boundaries at “just kissing” are enough? Do you think by fleeing, stopping it at “just dabbling” is enough?

It is NOT.

We have to run the opposite way and not even be partners/dabble with it.

I understand that this idea is extreme or radical for most people in the American Christian culture, but I am having a hard time separating the truth of the Word of God with our cultural norm. In order to bring purity back into the Christian relationship, something has to change. Something has to look different.

To Be Continued… =)

Recently, I haven’t gotten to do this, but my residents and myself have done “thankfuls” for our days each week. Today I am thankful for so many things….

1. Sleeping in and getting quality rest that I need
2. Classes ending earlier than expected
3. Lunch with Amber 
4. Canceled class
5. Conversations with the fellow RAs on my staff
6. Time in the Word
7. Unexpected hall dinner that was so lovely
8. A&E (Accountability and Encouragement) groups with the women of my church family that I couldn’t live without!
9. Refreshment in prayer and goals set for the week to grow in the Lord
10. Sisters in Christ to share in excitement with me
11. Conversations with my residents about “self-esteem”, the gospel, our American culture and the safe God we have created, and soooo much more.
12. Quality time with residents before they leave me for a week 😉
13. Encouraging notes, texts, and messages from friends/residents/etc.
14. Jenta’s hair-doing abilities. 😉
15. Sleep.
16. Tomorrow’s and next week’s festivities: Girl’s night out with friends tomorrow, thanksgiving break, FAMILY TIME, yummy food, hanging out with best friends who get home from school far away (AKA emily, kayla, matt, etc), extra time with the Lord and resting/waiting on Him, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc…..

 To Be Continued… =)

Last night I went to the International Day of Prayer (IDOP) that my church put on at the Gym at my school. During the night, we heard from several pastors in the area and got the opportunity to pray in groups for the persecuted church around the world. This video was shown:

After this video was shown, the girl featured in this video, Sarah, was brought up and my Pastor got the opportunity to ask her several different questions about her time in chains and why she didn’t sign the document. This was so powerful.

Sarah articulated to us that during the time she was in chains, the reason she didn’t sign the document was because she would be betraying her God and her fellow brothers and sisters, and she couldn’t do that.

She went on to explain that her God had never wronged her. How could she betray him by signing that document when her God had always been good to her?

That is huge. Most of the world would say that God had betrayed her and wronged her by putting her in those chains to be beaten and tortured, but Sarah disagreed. Sarah had been given, by God, eternal life with Him and that was the biggest gift she has ever needed.

That is so accurate. As believers, we NEED Christ. We have an extreme problem – sin. There is only one solution – Christ and his sacrifice on the cross and resurrection from the dead to defeat death and sin.

I needed last night. I needed last night to remind me of how my own brothers and sisters in Christ were suffering around the world. I am here in America, comfortable in my Christianity, lazy in my faith, and they are being beaten for the same faith that I have. Something is wrong with this picture. I needed that wake up call.

To Be Continued… =)

Thursday night, the freshman, women dorm that I am an RA at held an event called “Dare to be Free.” This event focused in on the struggles that women face, daring women to let Christ free them from these struggles.

To start the event, we passed out a questionnaire that had many different struggles on it including: masturbation, sexual limits within a relationship, pornography, eating disorders, body image, insecurities within relationships, comparison, pride, jealousy, gossip, etc. We asked them to mark which struggles they have/are struggling with, then asked them to fold up their piece of paper and place it back into the basket.

We passed back around the basket and had each woman pull out a piece of paper.

We then read through the list and asked the woman in the room to stand when a struggle was marked on their paper as the list was being read.

On every struggle, almost all the women in room stood up with the exclusion of just a couple of struggles. This fact astounded me – even though this perhaps should not have. Seeing the hurt and pain of so many women was something that I had known, but I had never physically been able to see. These women struggle. They struggle with deep things.

No. One. Is. Vocal. About. It.

This. Is. Not. Okay.

After we read off the list, we entered into a time of sharing. Three RAs and myself shared on different struggles we had/are facing and shared how Christ has/is working in our lives. This was a great time of sharing. One day, I might be bold enough to share my struggles that I have and am struggling with online, but for now, I will not. If you would like to know, ask and I will pray about sharing with you. 😉 haha

Following the time of sharing, we had a panel (the 12 staff members of my RA staff) answer questions that people sent in via text. These questions were deep. These questions were to the core of what we all believe about ourselves (whether or not the beliefs were true or not). These questions were challenging even to the 11 other people on my staff with me.

I left that night at that event wanting badly to tell those women until I was blue in the face that Christ loved them and valued them and is pursuing them. I wanted to tell those girls that a life full of Christ is so much more valuable and worth pursuing than any other relationship with any other person on this planet. I wanted to tell those girls that their worth is not determined by any other resource (magazine, TV show, celebrity, movie, book, boy, girl, group of people, thing, themselves, etc.) on the planet except for by Christ and what his word to us says.

So that is what I am going to do (sorta).

~~~

To women of all shapes and sizes, cultures, skin colors, religion, short, tall, skinny, fat, brunette, blonde, black-haired, gingy [ 😉 ], white-haired, wrinkly, braces, no braces, glasses, trendy, wears hand-me-downs, extroverted, introverted, and whatever earthly things you are identified by:

You are so beautiful.
You are loved by the God of the universe and were created in His image.
You are precious in His sight and he knows the number of hairs on your head.
He died on the cross to make you daughters of Him, the King.
He has adopted you and you are now heirs of His throne.
He has taken your sin and your struggles upon Himself and has counted you as clean, righteous, holy.

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These are the things that identify you. These are the labels that define your worth. Nothing in this world can define that…only Christ can.

“Your blood speaks a better word
Than all the empty claims I’ve heard upon this earth
Speaks righteousness for me
And stands in my defense
Jesus it’s Your blood”
Your Blood- By: Matt Redman

“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”
(Proverbs 31:30 ESV)

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” -2 Corinthians 12:9

To Be Continued… =)

After I posted like a week ago that I haven’t really gotten the time I have needed to write out what is going on in my life and process through the things I have been going through, the Lord totally provides so much time to do that. So here I am…blogging… =)

This week has been an interesting one, and it is only wednesday. So much has gone on. My emotions have gone from being super duper low, to being super high. Today has been one of those days where I have been on the Roller Coaster called EMOTIONS. I woke up in a sad mood. A little discouraged. A little on edge. I went to chapel and J-MO totally rocked it (why I just said that sentence the way I did, I do not know). Got out of chapel and went to pick up my beautiful and newly engaged friend Sarah from the airport (so amazing to see her, by the way). After my discouraging morning, chapel brought my spirits up a little and definitely encouraged me. Then going to pick up Sarah I got a good 40 minutes that I don’t usually get to spend in the word, praying, meditating on scripture, and all the other amazing things that being in a relationship with the Lord brings.

I came upon this gem of a verse: “For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.” Psalm 107:9

I didn’t really think twice about it at the time I read it. I thought it was an amazing verse, I tweeted it, then moved on.

Later on this afternoon, I received some news about a friend that should have crushed me to the core of my being. I should have been so sad and I should have grieved deeply. I should have been upset. I should have been angry. I should have been selfish. To paint a picture for you, if I wasn’t a Christian, today would have been one of the hardest days of my life. As I received that news, yes, there was an initial weight in my gut. Then I took a second to process that information and not let my emotions completely rule my life. 

I realized….

I. AM. FINE.

Better yet, I. AM. GREAT. AMAZING. SPLENDID. EXCELLENT. and any other adjective that shows that I have the Lord and he is in control. There is no reason I shouldn’t be fine and no reason I shouldn’t be praising the Lord right now.

The Lord has brought me to where I am and he has done that with power, might, faithfulness, gentleness, care, love, perfection, and so much more.

Yesterday’s (well, early this morning’s) blog about “Who Jesus is?” had it’s moment to prove itself in my life…and by God’s grace, it did.

“For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.” Psalm 107:9

The Lord has filled my soul with GOOD things…great things even. He has satisfied my longing soul. He has given me so much to praise Him about that I cannot help but be thankful. Thankful for my past and all that it brought and so entirely thankful for my future and all that will become of it because the Lord has been so good to me and has satisfied me and that is enough.

To Be Continued… =)