A Holy Pursuit

Four years ago I started hearing about this place called Moody Bible Institute. I didn’t know much about it except that a couple pretty cool people were checking it out and planning to attend there the following fall, so I decided to check it out, too. That March I completed my application and scheduled a campus visit. After checking it out I knew this was where I wanted to be, there was just one problem: I had been placed on the waiting list. So began a four-month period of time in which I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I had a wonderful job that I loved and would be able to keep if I stayed in the area, but I also had the offer of playing volleyball at Moody if I made it in, which was a huge draw for me. I went through that whole summer in complete uncertainty as to what my future held. Finally, after months of waiting to hear from Moody, I decided it was useless to keep hoping. So I began to consider other options and look into classes at the community college I...

Last Spring I found myself in a stage of life in which I evoked the wisdom of my parents, a professor at Moody, and my aunt. I just needed some individuals older and wiser to speak into my life and pray with me. Although I just wanted someone to give me a straight answer as to what to do, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. So instead, I listened to their advice, Biblical counsel, and just processed everything the best I knew how. However, while I was talking with my aunt one evening she gave me the best advice I have ever heard. I was pouring out my heart to her listening ears and after giving some of her initial thoughts she wisely said, “Sara, you need to ask God what He is trying to teach you through this”. I thought to myself, ‘Well yeah, I am doing that’; but as I thought more about it I realized I had neglected to do so. I was so caught up in my own thoughts, feelings, and emotions that I had completely forgotten to just sit at Jesus’ feet and ask what He wanted to teach m...

This past weekend I was able to travel to Ohio with my fiancé to celebrate the first birthday of his niece. These kinds of celebrations are always exciting and joyful, but this one was especially so. Lily shouldn’t really be alive, according to many doctors and specialists. She was born last year on October first at only 25 weeks developed. She was barely a pound when she was born and comparable to the size of a Barbie doll. While Lily should have been snuggled safely in her mother’s womb to continue growing and developing normally, she was instead placed in an incubator with all kinds of wires and cords hooked up to her tiny body with machines monitoring her every breath and movement. It was incredible seeing Lily in such a helpless, fragile state, hanging on to life. However, there were many times then, and still now, that I thought of the verses in Psalms that state: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully a...

The theme for my dorm floor this year is “Bittersweet”. My RA has chosen this theme based on a book she read recently that focused on rejoicing in the good times of life, and learning from the hard times while looking for the redemption that can happen through each. Bittersweet has seemed to be the theme of my life recently, as well. Last year around this time my grandpa, who was a spiritual patriarch in my family, passed away suddenly, and about three weeks later my grandma followed him. Although my grandma had been ill for quite some time, it was still difficult to see her go, especially so soon after losing grandpa. This year, coming upon the anniversary of these events, I was feeling very fragile. I have never been one to cry very easily, especially in front of other people, but during this time I wept almost uncontrollably at times. Then I would feel guilty because I should have moved on by now, right? My grandparents are rejoicing in Heaven where they’ve wanted to be for s...

I have recently been involved in a summer Theology class studying Christology and the analogy of the Church as the Bride of Christ. I have been reminded of many astonishing and refreshing details along the way, such as the analogy in Ephesians 5 regarding Christ and the Church as compared to a husband and wife. It is so awe-inspiring and convicting to re-learn all of the things that should characterize the Church, as well as recognize God's never ending love and faithfulness for His bride. I am reminded of the Old Testament narrative of Hosea and Gomer in Hosea 1-3. Hosea was an upstanding, loyal prophet, while Gomer was a prostitute. Nonetheless, God commanded Hosea to take Gomer as his wife and be faithful to her, despite her unfaithfulness. Hosea obeys and he and Gomer have three children together, whose names are symbolic of God’s feelings toward Israel. Then the bad gets worse and Gomer goes back to her life of prostitution and is finally placed on the auction...

I am at the stage in life when many of my friends are getting married. They are embarking on the next stage of life including the union of two lives into one. They are pursuing the merging of their life with someone else’s; working together to accomplish God’s will for their lives. This is an exciting stage; a new step; almost like a new beginning. It is full of new discoveries, new plans, and new decisions. And this is where it is going to get controversial. Last semester I had the opportunity to write an extensive research paper for my Marriage and Family Systems class on the topic of birth control options and family planning methods. What I found out was surprising and a little disheartening. In addition, this summer I am completing my internship in order to graduate and I am doing it at an amazing crisis pregnancy and family ministries center. Because of my involvement there I have been involved in various discussions regarding the pill, the shot, and birth control in general...

Yesterday was the last day of my Senior Seminar class for a major that I NEVER thought I would have. Looking back now I am amazed at how the Lord in His sovereignty worked things out in my life to cause pieces to fall into their proper places. Upon the final class period with my Senior Sem girls I became sentimental as I thought back on those things that happened in my life that caused me to choose the best major available at Moody. I want to share this story of sovereignty and surrender with you. Growing up I didn’t really like girls. They were too moody, temperamental, and mean. Besides my best childhood friend who was a girl, I mostly hung out with the guys. My brother is just a year and a half older than me and most of the kids in our neighborhood were boys. So naturally I hung out with them doing a lot of boy things… Playing in the woods, riding dirt bikes and 4-wheelers, playing paintball, playing sports in the backyard, playing on the farm and making hay fo...

Stories. Everyone has them. They are shared around a campfire on a starry summer night. They are sad, joyful, and everything in between. They are of lessons learned, often the hard way. They serve as warnings and inspiration. Jesus used them to get his point across. The Bible is full of them. True stories. My church has, for a long time, encouraged the use of stories to be employed in services and as a means to help others. For a while I resisted this idea, thinking “Shouldn’t Jesus be enough? Whatever these people tell me I can just hear right from Jesus.” As I was pondering these thoughts I was confronted with more issues in which the element of story was used very powerfully in my life. I heard a sermon series on Jesus’ use of parables [a fancy word for stories], which really helped me experience for myself some of their power and effectiveness. Then during Founder’s Week this year I heard an incredible story from one of the speakers, Virelle Kidder, author of “Meet Me At The ...

I’m not very confrontational. In fact, I’m at nearly the opposite end of the spectrum. I avoid situations that involve confrontation as much as possible. If it means I need to sweep things under the rug and try to forget about them or deal with them on my own accord, I would rather do that than go to someone with my faults and sin or to lovingly show them their sin. However, due to academic reading I have been doing lately as well as long-time work on my heart by the Spirit of God, I am realizing areas in which confrontation is necessary. As I learn to confront certain situations I rely heavily on the Lord to keep my voice steady and my eyes dry, as I am also a very sensitive, emotional person. Regardless, with the scholastic learning also comes life application. Following is a journal entry from not long ago, regarding this subject: “For a long time I have been desperately and passionately asking God to draw me nearer to Him. Yet I feel a distance. I have been realizing the real...

God has been so good. I have recently started trying to count my blessings after coming out of a stage of discouragement and hardships in my life over the past semester. It has been my goal to start recognizing and thanking God for the many ways He has blessed me and as I started out I found myself thanking Him for the usual: health, an incredible family, a great school, loving friends, a wonderful boyfriend, amazing grace, salvation, and the like. But as I continued this thought process I realized I have seen God’s grace and mercy in my life in tangible ways that I would say I am grateful for, but didn’t totally stop to recognize and thank the Lord for. I know I won’t remember all the specific situations, but I want to share a few of the big things I have seen God do recently. First of all, the source of much hardship was the loss of my wonderful, wise, loving grandfather in August, and the passing of my equally amazing grandmother just two weeks later. Their deaths were somewha...

It was one of those nights. I rarely have trouble sleeping, even to the point of my friends dubbing me as mildly narcoleptic. Usually I can fall asleep anytime and anywhere. Sleep has always come easily to me, and I have been blessed in this way. But that night was different. I had finished reading my daily “Streams in the Desert” devotion for the evening, and spent some time in prayer, which usually calms my soul in order to find peaceful slumber, but sleep wasn’t coming to me that night. My thoughts were troubled and filled with ponderings of which I could not understand. I was thinking back on last semesters Systematic Theology 2 class, and what I had been confronted with in that class. I struggled with the idea of being chosen by God through adoption, and being justified through my obedience and growing in my relationship with Christ, despite my seemingly continual struggle with sin. How could God see any potential in me when I don’t see any in myself? How could God think I w...