A Holy Pursuit

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...

Ecclesiology has been a point of interest for me for quite a long time; possibly because I have witnessed a great deal of struggles and issues in the church in general. I won’t deny that some of these issues touch more close to home than others, but I am still interested in the general study of the church (and when I say “the church” I mean the whole church, everywhere, as the complete body of Christ). In my Systematic Theology 2 class we recently completed the section on Ecclesiology and my appetite was whetted for further thought and discussion concerning the study of the church. This is the “baby” of my original study on Ecclesiology. First, I believe there are three main aspects of the church: fellowship, worship, and evangelism. I will briefly address each of these topics, but I may end up eventually addressing more on each topic or discussing further dynamics of the church.  However, with that said, I don’t find it necessary to compartmentalize every area of the church....