Because God is Love.

Right now, I am leading a small group and a covenant group in the christian sorority on campus, Sigma Phi Lambda. It is a tremendous blessing to have this opportunity to invest in my sisters in Christ and to get to see their lives and hearts on a regular basis. I love the intentionality of our time (although it is required). Anyhoo, I feel like I am a broken record because every time we meet together I insist on taking prayer requests. Now, I am definitely not the world's greatest pray-er. Probably not even in the top 5. or top 50. You get the idea. But I just love the way prayer requests 1) bond people 2) reveal what you care enough about that you want to tell others so they can join with you in lifting that thought up to our King.

Ummm... beauty-full.

In my covenant group I always ask each girl to share a praise and a prayer request, so we can have that constant reminder to rejoice in the Lord while also being faithful in prayer. I can't speak for anyone else... but I love it. It's a big hit in my life.

This is a very long drawn out way of saying that I am about to share with you the things that I am praising Jesus for and the things that He could definitely work on in me.

PRAISE
Psalms 4:6-7
Many are asking,"Who can show us any good?" Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord. You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound.

God has revealed sin in me.
Now, normally this totally wouldn't be a praise until there was much moaning and crying and oh me how much do I stink at life... but this instantly brought me so much joy in the Lord! Dearie me, I did not even realize how much I was trapped in this mindset of having to work for approval, work for recognition, work to serve, work to be loved, work, work, workity work. Trust me, it was exhausting. And I am very easily exhausted. Realizing that my pride was keeping me from daily accepting Christ's finish work in my life has been so so freeing. Nothing I do has any effect on what he has done. What a relief! I can't be too bad, too sad, too fat, too anything. I will never be good enough. I will never be too bad. I will never not need his saving grace. In the back of my mind Satan always whispered this "A good Christian would... X, Y, and Z." Now I can just tell Satan to talk to the hand, because that lie ain't working on me no more. (Lord willing).

PRAYER REQUEST
Psalms 5:1-3
Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my sighing. Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray. In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.

My brain is about to explode, and is also falling out of my head.
If these situations weren't so debilitating/time-consuming/not fun they would be funny. I have metioned in blog-land before about both my headache disorder and my scatterbrain-ness. Well both are quickly increasing in frequency and intensity. I had a headache Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday which is just three days too many. The pain is endurable if I have enough medication in my body, but what I really hate is how debilitating these headaches are. I hate that I have to stop functioning and basically ignore everyone and everything and run to my room to lie down. I hate that I have to take a number of pills each day for life to be bearable. I now have a fear of my liver just bursting after a round of advil and tylenol and allergy medicine and motion sick medicine. My liver is just going to explode, unless my brain does first.

On a much lighter note, my scatterbrained moments are occuring pretty frequently these days. I keep forgetting when I drive to campus that I will actually have to drive home from campus as well. My body just automatically walks to the bus stop and gets on the bus without a second thought... Until I am already on the bus and moving, in which case, I run to the front of the bus and plead with the bus driver to let me off, and then my request is promptly rejected. Other funny moments include my naptimes. I frequently have vivid dreams during my naps. Last week, I dreamed that I had slept a whole 24 hours and subsequently slept through my exam the next day. To which my reaction was to jump up and run in circles around the living room screaming "OH MY GOSH, OH MY GOSH, I MISSED MY TEST" over and over and over again. Reality hit me when I looked down and realized that I had worn that outfit to school that day and so there was no way that I could have missed my test because it was still the same day. Pretty frightening.

Posted in: on Friday, October 15, 2010 at at 10:49 AM