The first night we were there, the service was mainly about choosing to live for God. We can make choices but we can't go back. So we have to choose wisely. Choose to obey and live long. That's all my 'notes' say but that message was really good and i just wrote down somethings that i really liked and other things that i really liked i didn't get down because i was trying to really listen...but it is true. If we life for Christ then our lives will be SO much better. Sure there will be difficult times, living for Christ doesn't erase difficult times. You will go through difficult times that will help strengthen your walk with Christ. No one said living for Christ would be easy but its worth it. You don't want to make the wrong choice and have to deal with the consequences, even though so many times we do.
The second message was probably one of my favorites. The speaker (Eric Heimlech) talked about Trusting God. We can choose what road we're going to take but where is your road leading you? Who are you trusting your life with? Many of us put our lifes in our own hands. Ha. That won't get us very far. Unfortunatly, many of us do take our own lifes in our own hands instead of trusting God with it. Our lives would be so much better if we'd just leave them in God's hands and stop making our own choices. We need to surrender every area of our lives to Him, we cannot hold on to anything we just have to give it all up at once and try not to bring it back once we give it up which it's sometimes hard not to try to bring it back but you just have to keep praying over and over and over. 'Pray without ceasing.' We also need to seek God in everything we do; our decisions, what we should be when we're older, who we're going to marry, where we go to college, what friends we make, etc. Every area of our lives should be focused and pointed towards God, not just some areas, every area. See it's like this: Your on a cliff and you can either stay far away from the edge and be safe, or you can venture forward to the edge, and balance with your feet on the edge of it. Where are you at? At one point and time in everyone's life, they have been balancing on the edge of a cliff. It's not an easy place to be and it hurts but you have to do everything you can to get away from that edge until you're safely back away from it. That night, the Lord spoke to me in so many ways. I understand some things in a certain situation that i didn't think i'd ever understand, but i realized some things that really opened my eyes, not completely but in some areas. And it was funny because that day at camp was just not really a great day. I mean i was having fun and stuff but i was thinking way to much about various things and then that evening we had this message and it just really hit home.
Then the third message. I will admit by this time i was exhausted and i did hear parts of the message but didn't hear a lot of it. I do remember though that it was about getting rid of all the 'trash' in our lifes so that we could be more open to what God has in store for our lives. He told us a story about this man who was a bum and lived with these other bums and all the did was collect trash and get dirty (they hadn't taken showers in years). They had these huge piles of trash. And then one day someone who was witnessing to these people told this man how he could be free and took him to be baptized in this river and be cleansed. The man went with the person witnessing and got cleansed and he came back to tell all of his friends what had happened but none of them wanted to hear about it. But this man was so excited and he was jumping up and down. He got a job and then one day he went back to that familiar trash pile and he started looking through it. And he was like oh i could use that sometime, oh! and this! until he had picked up so many things that he fell beneath the weight and he was right back where he started. In the trash. So many times we let the past come back to us and we take up our old ways. We need to leave our trash pile for good. The past is the past. we're living in the present. What happens in the past stays in the past. We learn from our mistakes, we don't turn around and do them all over again (well, sometimes we do). But it was jsut about how we needed to clean out our trash piles and leave them there. (So i remembered more than i thought of the last service, haha) And i'll add this because it kinda fits in. Tonight when i was making myself some supper. I went to open some cream cheese to put on a bageal and it was moldy (i about puked when i saw it) but i just thought. Sin is like mold. It grows on you and sometimes you don't even realize it until it gets so nasty that you have to do something about it. Throw it out. Just like we need to throw moldy cream cheese away, we need to throw away all that trash in our lives so that we can live freely for Christ.
I know I say all this stuff, but just because i say it doesn't mean that I'm like doing it perfect every time. Not at all. I get it wrong more times than i get it right. It's just something for you and me to think about so we can improve our lives for Christ.
But i'll end with a quote that the speaker kept saying over and over which was really good.
"Sin is not just the breaking of a law; it's a missing of an opportunity"
1 comment:
Christa,
You continue to impress me with your blog entries. Where has this hidden writer been?? You do an excellent job of expressing your opinion! And, more importantly, you hit on some really crucial topics. I liked your summary of the camp services, and the summary itself was very well done.
It is sad that the only place we talk now is on places like this lol. I hope you're feeling better, and I hope you can survive these last few days of work. Hard to believe its this time of year again. Time goes by way, way too fast. I mean, weren't we just having your 16th birthday party? Weren't we just getting ready for Christmas? Weren't we just frying our brains while attempting to write a half coherent research paper or studying for a final? I mean...next summer is it, you know? After that, there's not going back to JMS or familiarity. It's all changes. Weird.
To answer your questions about spending money (and I'm sorry to hear you couldn't buy that car), I have spent quite a bit on Spidey stuff. Strictly speaking, I've only spent a probably a thousand or so dollars on Spider-Man whatever...but on comics stuff in general...over two-thousand I'm sure. I just spent a, um, large amount on six hardcover collections and one trade paperback. I probably should feel bad about that, but I don't really. It's what I like and what I enjoy, though goodness knows I get enough grief about it from people who always have snide comments to throw around.
Things have been quiet around here. I was just to the movies, too, on Tuesday. I took my sister to see "The Dark Knight", which was my...third...time seeing it lol. I'm very disappointed in you. I told you to see this movie! And what do you want to see? A singing bride-to-be and girls who share pants!! LOL! Neither of those movies really appealed to me...but that new movie that just came out, "Henry Poole Is Here", looks interesting to me.
Personally, I haven't done much else. A week ago I was at a Star Wars marathon at Jeff's house with Joey, Caleb, and Josh (Kraybill). And that made me decide to watch all six movies in order, which I've been doing for the past week. I have one more to go.
Good luck school shopping! I've got everything I need, but I'll pick up a couple shirts over the course of the year probably. Anyway, yeah. We should totally do something this last week. Jackie wants to do something, and she said I could bring a friend or two if I wanted, so you could come with and do that, if you'd want. But *sigh* you guys aren't on the best of terms...or weren't it seemed. You know, I really hate longstanding grudges or whatever you call them lol.
Well, there you go. That's a very long comment. Enjoy it!
Aaron
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