Category: Wisdom

Reflection-Redemption-Reconciliation-Discipline-Purity

Published on by Sarah E. CooleyLeave a comment
Saturday night and I’m sitting in my room by myself-my roommate is gone-my friends are at a party-my boyfriend is on duty stuck in the box-and I am here blogging. It’s something I love to do, but have not had time to do recently! I don’t know why, but things that you love sometimes fade when you are involved in a lot of things! Even though I don’t usually have time for this, I am glad and thankful for tonight and being alone to be able to just write! I am learning a lot this year! I feel like every year at the beginning of the year is a time of reflection on:
  • How I did last year
  • What I did poorly
  • What I did right
  • What I can improve on
  • What I need to keep doing
  • Who I made an impact on
  • What relationships I need to work on
  • What I need to work on within those relationships
The Lord definitely convicted me during Christmas break. While reflecting on what I did this last year, I learned that I have a lot to work on. Time spent on frivolous things far outweighed time spent in the Word or in prayer. Time with my own friends far outweighed time spent with my residents and those who are in need. Time doing stupid things far outweighed time doing homework, planning events, time at youth group, time with the Lord, time journaling, time cleaning and staying organized, etc.
The list of things I did not do right could go on for days, but for the sake of my good name, I won’t go there! 😉
As I was reflecting on this last year, I remembered that this year can be used as a time of redemption and reconciliation to the Lord. I spent the rest of the time brainstorming on what to do to reconcile my time wasted and to reconcile relationships wasted. I came up with some great options:
  1. Delete my facebook: As sad as this was to do, I have hours of free time available to fill with productive, edifying things. 
  2. Schedule in school hours: spend time doing homework in time I would spend on facebook or napping. 
  3. Plan out RA events before the month they are taking place. This helps to actually put details together the month of instead of worrying about what I am going to do and how I am going to do it.
  4. Keep a list of TO-DO’s running through my brain and written on a list CONSTANTLY!! There is always something to do, but remembering them is the key (thus-WRITE IT DOWN!!)
  5. Multi-tasking. While in the box hanging out with residents and RA’s, make fliers, plan events, do homework, etc. While in my apt relaxing, write emails and finish homework/read the assigned books I have to read.
  6. While getting ready in the morning, putting things away after I am finished using them. This eliminates time I have to spend later cleaning it up! On the same page, cleaning dishes after using them.
  7. Wake up 30 minutes earlier to do my QT’s instead of filling the time somewhere else throughout the day. I now create 30 minutes some other time to spend doing homework.
  8. Knock on my residents doors once a week-at least! I can catch some of them and spend some time talking and building relationships.
  9. Spend meals with residents, friends, and family instead of getting To Go meals and eating by myself in my room. 
  10. The list goes on… but those are just some highlights!
I plan to change a lot of my life around this year to be more disciplined! I am claiming to be a believer, and an adult as well, I need to start acting like one. The world-changers didn’t spend hours wasting their lives watching TV or browsing Facebook. They got off the couch and did something! They made a difference in someone’s life! With these simple things, I pray I can do that as well!
~~~
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
(Titus 2:11-14 ESV)

Soon and Very Soon

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“Soon”-Hillsong
Soon and very soon
my King is coming
robed in righteousness
and crowned with love
When I see Him
I shall be made like Him
Soon and very soon

Soon and very soon
I’ll be going
to the place He has prepared for me
There my sin erased
my shame forgotten
Soon and very soon

I will be with the One I love
with unveiled face I’ll see Him
There my soul will be satisfied
Soon and very soon

Soon and very soon
see the procession
The angels and the elders
round the throne
At his feet I lay
my crowns my worship
Soon and very soon

I will be with the One I love
With unveiled face I’ll see Him
There my soul will be satisfied
Soon and very soon

Though I have not seen Him
my heart knows Him well
Jesus Christ the lamb
the Lord of heaven

I will be with one I love
With unveiled face I’ll see Him
There my soul will be satisfied
Soon and very soon
Soon and very soon
Soon and very soon

This song is so my life right now! I cannot wait to be with Jesus and away from this burdening world!! 
With all the stresses of this world – finals, school, work, lack of money, no time, a boyfriend, friends, family, etc – it makes my hope in a perfect, stress-free heaven so much greater! Those things can be great, but they can also bring a long a lot of things to worry about! I have never been more ready for this break and more thankful for the time I get to spend with family, friends, my boyfriend and his family! I am so thankful for this first semester to teach me, mold me, and create in me a new longing to serve!

I have been so blessed to be able to go to a wonderful University and a wonderful church and to be blessed with a great family and support system! I am so blessed to have a boyfriend who is so patient with me and so giving of his time to others and to me! He is so caring and so sweet! He is such a servant for the Lord that it is so amazing and even shocking sometimes! I am so thankful for all the things I have learned this year through all these relationships and for all the gifts that God has given me in the struggles I have gone through!

I feel so filled with worry and anxiety, but in contrast, so filled with a hope for a easier and perfect life with Jesus soon and very soon! He has it all under control and the worries of this world are nothing but a wrinkle in time! Praise the Lord!!!

Pictures from some great times from Yule 2010:
The Love of my Life

The greatest sister ever
❤

The Struggle of Holy Living

Published on by Sarah E. CooleyLeave a comment

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              Jerry Bridges, in his book “The Pursuit of Holiness,” writes about holiness and how it greatly lost in the American churches of today! Many people within the churches have lost their identity as Christians and that is largely because The Pursuit of Holiness” has ceased to exist! “The Pursuit of Holiness is mainly an application book for the nominal, lukewarm, and even passionate believer.
            Throughout the last year or so of my life, God has been directing back time and time again to the different passages of holy living and right living. I spent all of last semester reading through Galatians 5 with the main focus of that passage being living out the fruit of the spirit and avoiding wholeheartedly the deeds of the flesh. After that semester spent in Galatians 5, I moved to another passage that directed the believer to doing good works and that is Ephesians 2, specifically verses 8-10. Reading through and studying that passage, I spent a lot of time at the beginning of my study spent with verses eight and nine. I realized soon after reading the chapter over and over again that you cannot separate the verses of this chapter and specifically you cannot separate verses eight and nine from ten!
            This chapter is an amazing expression of grace lived out and verses eight through ten show and exemplify the beauty of it! It states, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10 ESV). The last verse is a call to live a holy life! If this verse were not there, we could live however we wanted, but it is there and now we have a command to live a life of good works!
            This passage and the one mentioned prior are exactly what Jerry Bridges talked about in his book, “The Pursuit of Holiness.” He outlines many different things in his book about this concept of holy living and ways to fight the temptation that is so easily overlooked in the American Christian lives of today. In chapter seven of the book, Jerry Bridges talks about how to basically remedy this problem of ungodliness and the opposite of holy living. The chapter is titled “Help in a Daily Battle!” On page 73, it states, “This is not theoretical teaching, something to be placed on the library shelves of our minds and admired, but of no practical value in the battle for holiness. To count on the fact that we are dead to sin and alive to God is something we must do actively. To do it we must for the habit of continually realizing that we are dead to sin and alive to God. Practically speaking we do this when by faith in God’s Word we resist sin’s advances and temptations. We count on the fact that we are alive to God when by faith we look to Christ for the power we need to do the resisting. Faith must always be based on fact, and Romans 6:11 is always a fact for us.”
            Romans 6 is an amazing passage that Jerry Bridges refers to throughout his book. It is the gospel message tied together with the defeat of death and sin. He talks in verse six how our old bodies have been crucified and this was so that we could have a defeat over sin and that we would no longer be enslaved to it. This is so true and the more and more Paul writes in this passage, the more and more you begin to see this truth laid out. In verses 10-12, Paul continues to write about sin’s death and the possibility of holy living. He writes, “For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.” Sin is dead in our lives and now we are alive to God! We do not have to obey sin’s passions any longer. In verse 14, Paul concludes this paragraph stating, “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” We have been given the wonderful grace of Jesus and now in the last part of the chapter, Paul instructs us in righteous living! In verses 14-23, the instruction to holy living is quite clear. The reader is first asked the question, “What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” (verse 14). This right there is the bluntest verse about holy living you will ever get. Then Paul goes on to state that we are now slaves to, not sin, but righteousness, or right living. In the later verses, Paul, like in his other letters, uses the illustration of fruit. He says, we have been set free from sin and now are slaves to righteousness, but when we were in sin, he speaks of the fruit that we were receiving and what it’s end was. He states that “the end of those things is death” (verse 21). This verse ties back to Galatians 5 and the fruit of the spirit and the deeds of the flesh. It first goes on to state the deeds of the flesh and the sinful life that leads to death or in other words, it leads to a live outside of the kingdom of God. Then it goes on to contrast the verse using the word “but”: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-25). This call to living for Christ is not an easy life. This life will be full of hardships and trials, but through those things we are slowly being sanctified. We are being changed into people who can be recognized as followers of Christ by the way we “walk” not just by what we say. This is the call of Christianity, not some half-hearted approach to living. We are called to holy living. A life filled with Christ and filled with the attributes of him. The fruit of the Spirit, not just any spirit, but the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit! We are called to have the attributes, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, so that we can live holy lives that have crucified our flesh of its passions and desires! This is a remarkable truth that if we only took a fourth of what it was saying and applied it to our lives communally as the church of God, this world would look a lot different, and Christianity would look a lot different! But, praise the Lord we are called to a life filled with the Holy Spirit, not just partially! Through this book, these passages have come alive to me. Yes, I will still struggle with sin because I have a body that is sinful, but I have been made new in Christ and my heart desires to follow after him! I pray that America (and myself) will open up their Bibles more often and see the truths so prevalent throughout scripture!

GRACE

Published on by Sarah E. Cooley2 Comments

wow, so its been a crazy month, thus the lack of posts! May flew by, and june is going by rather quickly too! You’d think, being summer, it would slow down, but it hasn’t!

God has done some amazing things in the past month and a half. My trip to the Middle East was amazing! Our Father was so amazing, as always, and just opened up so many opportunities to share and just tell about the gift of Grace!

I learned so much about the Arab culture, Islam, and women in that culture. The difference from Jordan to America is totally and completely astounding! The way of life is just completely opposite from America. It was almost a breath of fresh air. The women were modest, transportation was sooo inexpensive, the weather was hot and dry and humid and cold and rainy, the people were sooo hospitable, the people are poorer…everything is just different! For me, it is amazing to experience different cultures. One of my favorite things to do is travel! Enshallah (Lordwilling) I will be able to do it for a career (at least the being overseas thing, maybe not the traveling thing)! The next step in my life would be to go overseas and stay there for an extended amount of time…certain things will have to happen before that, but that is one of the next major steps in my life! I can’t wait to see where God will take me and lead me! I can only imagine the possibilities! =) God is good, all the time, all the time, God is good!!!! =)=)=)=)=)=)

Last week, I got to spend with Drew at his house, which was amazing! This was following a week with Drew at my house! This was two weeks more than I thought I was going to have with him! I am so blessed to be able to call him the MAN in my life! Girls, I’m sorry, but I’ve got the best one around…I’m the luckiest girl in the entire world!

I found out today that I’m probably going to graduate in May, if everything works out as planned.  Then shortly after that I will be getting a job and starting my life as an adult! Scary, but I’m sooo excited to see what the Lord is going to do! God has made so many different things planned and I am in awe of all of it! I know I couldn’t do this life on my own, and I’m so grateful for everything he’s done! It’s by his GRACE alone that I’m even alive and saved from my sins! It’s by his grace alone! I can do nothing on my own!! Ephesians 2, for those interested in a good read!!! God is good! All the time!!!! Anyways, I’m excited for the rest of this summer, I’m excited for next year, I’m excited for next summer and all the years following that! God’s got something amazing up his sleeve and I get to take part in it! I’m one blessed girl!!

summer!

Published on by Sarah E. CooleyLeave a comment

Although I’m extremely thankful for a break from school, I’m struggling with the thought of a 4 month summer without those closest to me by my side…. God sustain me! This is going to be a longgggggg 4 months!!!
Currently, I need this……

Luckily tomorrow, I get similar to this, but better because Drew will be with me….=)

 
Thank the Lord!! PTL!!
To Be Continued… =)

God has done great things… =)

Published on by Sarah E. Cooley1 Comment

First of all, I read this blog and it hit me hard this morning….

Second of all, school is out for the summer, and God is good! =) This year has been a big struggle for me! I have had some hormonal problems so I have been working with my doc to even those out, which has been a journey to say the least! The time when I didn’t know was probably the hardest. I felt crazy and didn’t know why. Once I discovered that I wasn’t crazy, life was a lot better! I could focus on understanding when I was overreacting or being oversensitive and trying to fight those feelings and emotions and be happy again! Isn’t it interesting the curve balls that get thrown our way!

Another difficult thing this year was figuring out my time! I have always been a procrastinator, but with the last couple of months that is not an option. I am taking a number of units and then doing a ton of stuff outside of that! The hard part is fitting in the boyfriend and friends to the mix without going delusional! It has been so good to get organized and to make priorities, but it has been sooo difficult as well! =)

ISP…international service projects has definitely been difficult, but also so good! God has been using this to speak to me in so many different ways! I am praying now to know for sure if I am supposed to be on the mission field full time! For me, that has been a difficult journey of finally accepting that fact and not letting my plans for the future get in the way! That is why this was so impacting to me because I am still trying to make the decision daily to follow the Lord and not let the things of this world govern my decisions…

Speaking of ISP, God has done great things in my fund-raising! Those of you who actually read my blog, know that I published a post asking for support monetarily. God has provided in miraculous ways! I do not have the complete $3300, but in order to go I had to have within $1000 of that, so $2300. All of this came in and more! I will be over the $2300 very shortly and all of this was done by prayer! It is nearly impossible to raise $1600 in a week on a college students budget, but my GOD did that! 

This year, although difficult, has taught me so much! I have learned more this year than I have in my whole life! God is just doing great things in me and through me and I’m excited to continue to tell you how my summer is going to turn out! God is good all the time!! All the time, God is good!!!

Flower from Disneyland.. =)

Sooo…

Published on by Sarah E. CooleyLeave a comment

…it almost seems ridiculous to post anything on here because I only have 8 followers, but I am absolutely desperate and I know that God can work miracles! Anyways, I am in need of some serious fund-raising for my trip leaving May 4th to the Middle East! I have $700/$3300 needed for my trip and currently am pretty saddened by it! I am trying my hardest to keep my mindset correct and on the Lord, but it is weighing me down badly! If anyone knows of anything I could do to raise this money, LET ME KNOW!! I will clean, babysit, take pictures, cook, write papers, organize garages, mow lawns and other such yard work things. I will do just about anything! So please, if you know of anything, inform me! Thanks everyone who has supported me and my trip (and trips in the past) by prayer or money support! Pray that I not only get support raised, but that I will keep my head up! I know for a fact that the Lord wants me on the trip! Its evident by the way he has made a way to get me on this team, and also by all the spiritual warfare that has gone on to try to get me off of this team! Please pray for me, I really really would appreciate that right now! Thank you all! =)

Chelsea… =)

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So, yesterday I was sitting in my apartment wondering what I was going to do with my Friday night until the event I had planned to go to later that night. It was looking quite uneventful when I got a message from my good friend Chelsea wanting to go out, be a model for me, and take some pictures! So of course, I jumped off my couch, got my camera together quickly, and met her at the gazebo. We had a fun hour of exploring and experimenting the campus! Here are the pictures of my beautiful friend Chelsea… =)
 
To Be Continued… =)

The Precious Girls I Babysit! =)

Published on by Sarah E. Cooley2 Comments
So I babysit these girls every Thursday, and I have absolutely fallen in love with them! They are precious! Little Lily is the bestest big sister ever, and Emma follows after her big sister like Lily is a movie star! =) These pictures sum up why I love these little girls to death! I left their house today with a picture of me drawn by Lily (pink hair included), and two huge hugs from Emma! =)

To Be Continued… =)