Be Present

Skip to 4:31 if you want to watch the "Be Present" spoken word

You know those moments when you watch something or read something and afterwards you are just like "well...I feel guilty now"....that is kind of what happened to me after watching this video. It definitely spoke to my heart. 

There are so many things that serve as distractions: Emails, Texts, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, Snapchat, Fantasy Football Updates, Tumblr...the list goes on and on. It's exhausting and it is like "man, when was the last time I looked up?" This generation is so guilty of not being present. We participate so heavily in social media that we completely ignore what is going on right in front of us.

This message called me out.

Referring to his wife, the man basically says "her presence is God's present, so be present" 

The Lord calls us to love Him and love His people. But how can we truly be loving if we aren't present? We spend more time typing then we do talking. We can't truly love, know, and understand His people if we don't even take the time to look up at them.

I pray that we can view the people that surround us as God's presents. So I just encourage that we spend more time talking to the people in our living room than talking to the people on our phone. If we are going to be there, let's be there. Amen? 

51

I just want to give glory to God right now and all that He has done through InterVarsity this past semester. Yesterday we had our end of the semester celebration in which we look at how we have seen God work. 

This semester we saw a total of 51 people make decisions to follow Jesus

PRAISE THE LORD!!!

Basically, InterVarsity saw a person coming to faith every other day. How crazy is that? Sometimes, I take for granted how special this community is. I get to see somebody come to Jesus almost every single week. That is so incredibly beautiful and inspiring. 

I pray you can all rejoice knowing that we have 51 new brothers and sisters.

I can't wait to see what next semester has in store! 

Decisions With Discernment

My prayer for you all tonight is that you just meditate on these lyrics

Lately, the Lord is really telling me what and who in my life is leading me closer to Him and who is not. 

We make decisions daily. They could be life changing or they could be as small as picking out your outfit in the morning. But how many times do we make these decisions for the sake of our God? When was the last time we approached decision making with discernment? 

No request or decision is too big or too small for God to have an opinion on, so why don't we start asking Him? 

Talk to Him tonight. Ask him what He thinks about your life....your job, friends, school, family, girlfriend,  boyfriend, closet addiction, children and what you do with your spare time.

Don't be afraid of the answer. Chances are He has something so incredible planned for you. He loves you enough to care about all of it. 

Offer every pocket of your life up to Him and see how He works. 

A Little Like Lily

As I was praying about what I wanted to share this week at woman's study, I came across this video and immediately thought "this is perfect". 

Some of you are probably thinking "where in the world is the biblical connection?" 

I know, it is kind of a stretch. 

The passage we went over was in Matthew 7

We discussed the idea of persistent prayer, receiving God's blessings and how to use them when our prayers are answered. 

The two things I wanted them to take away from this video were: 

1.) God knows the desires of our heart. When Lily was opening up her presents she would ask "how did you know I wanted this?! how?". So often the Lord denies us of what we ask for and gives us something even GREATER. So great that we always end up asking "how did you know I needed this Lord. How?!" His gifts to us are perfect. 

2.) After Lily was done receiving all her gifts,  her mother asks "okay, so where do you want to go with all these things?". Of course, her answer was Disneyland. However, I think that after the Lord spoils us with His abundant blessings, the question is "okay so how are we going to use these gifts". We not only should be receiving His grace, but we should be using it for His glory as well. 

So often God looks upon us as we looked upon Lily. Besides, to Him, we are all children. He knows our heart so intimately and He knows EXACTLY what we need. 

Now all we have to do is ask.