A serious case of Blog Neglect...

I haven't posted a blog in a while... My apologies. I've been a little caught up in another project I'm working on called Christian Carpology. In one sense, it's just another blog I'll be posting to, but in another sense, it's something much bigger than me. And after a while of wrestling with the html for the site, it's finally up and running! (Praise God!)

Me and eleven of my good friends are writers for Christian Carpology. We have a vision of professing God's love and truth to everyone by recounting how He is moving in our lives and the lives of others around us.We're posting various testimonies, devotionals, cool music and upcoming events for Christians around the country.

We may seem to be a pretty random group of bloggers (representing Pittsburgh, Philly, DC/Maryland, Texas, UK, Ghana and Korea), but we have one very big thing in common - Christ is our Savior. And I believe that God has united us to be ambassadors for Him through this blog. I love all of them, and God is working in their lives in marvelous ways and I'm excited to read their posts and stay updated on what God's doing all over the globe.

So... (drumroll please) without further ado... here's:

Christian Carpology (www.carpologist.blogspot.com)

And below is my latest post to Carpology. Something that I've really been thinking about lately and it's definitely encouraged me a lot, so I pray that it blesses you as well.

mercy - what an interesting concept

Sometimes when you sin and ask for forgiveness from the Lord, you aren’t fully prepared for His mercy. What I mean is that, we’re so used to being judged and scrutinized and pointed at by others when we mess up, that it’s hard to believe that a perfect God would be willing to forgive us when we fall short. It's just difficult to comprehend. And even more, it’s hard to embrace grace and mercy when we ourselves don’t show grace and mercy to others.

what makes me different from my dog

Sometimes I look at my pet dog, Chocolate, and wonder about his life. His days pretty much consist of eating and sleeping. I’d say he's either sleeping or laying on the floor for about 75% of any given day. And eating… Well, he loves food. Not so much the dog food that we give him every morning, but human food. He lives for human food. Anytime I’m eating something, no matter what it is, he sits by my feet waiting, anticipating a crumb on the floor or the occasional, intentional gifting of a piece of whatever it is I’m munching on. And it's times like that I feel like that’s all he really has to live for – a piece of popcorn that happens to fall on the kitchen floor.

the happy gospel

I just finished the book, “The Happy Gospel” by Benjamin Dunn (yes, a shameless plug – I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone). Through reading this book, the Holy Spirit definitely opened my eyes even more to the mystery of the gospel and gave me a newfound appreciation for its goodness. In fact, I could hardly keep my seat as I was reading. The Holy Spirit was literally leaping inside my stomach as if I had butterflies. I’ve literally been filled with joy over the gospel.

Testimonies - God the Father

God is good.

God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good. I’ve heard that so many times. But how many times do I really stop to let it sink in? Do I really believe God is good? Let alone, do I really believe He’s good all the time?

Something God has revealed to me over and over again is that I need to trust Him more. Not just trust Him with my burdens or trust in His ability to save people from their sins, but to trust Him because He is inherently good.

i'm beautiful.

Beautiful. It’s a word that some Christian females shy away from. Well, maybe I won’t talk in generalities. I’ll talk about myself.

God be glorified... by any means necessary

Hey y'all,

This is my testimony. I posted it to Facebook a few months back, but I'm sharing it here as well and asking that God would use it to bless you and prepare your heart to fully receive Him.

Posted on Facebook on 7/28/10 at 8:23PM, entitled "the story of my life: uncensored, uncut and unedited":
I spend a lot of time on Facebook declaring God’s goodness and His redemptive power, but I don’t think I’ve ever shared what God has rescued me from, publicly on Facebook. So here it goes. Behind every saint is a story. And mine is, ha. Let’s just say God’s grace is SO amazing and He is the only reason that I am where I am today.

a different kind of prophetic

A self-fulfilling prophecy is, according to a trusty source called Wikipedia:

“a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback belief and behavior.”

This concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy is something I learned about in Social Psychology class. Pretty much, it means that you can believe something about a situation that isn’t true and act in ways that reflect this false belief and that can actually cause your belief to become true. For example, say you are about to meet a girl named Kim. Someone is spreading lies about Kim and tells you that she has a huge attitude problem. Before you even meet the girl, you don’t even like her. So when you finally meet Kim, you treat her poorly, which causes her to have an attitude with you. And then you say to yourself, “I knew she was a rude person.” That's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jesus: Lord, King, and Example

If you’re following man, you’re not going to get anywhere in the eternal life. At best, you’ll get to the place where they are.

When Christians look to other people to dictate how they live their lives instead of looking to the Word and the example of Jesus Christ, that’s when we run into problems. It’s in Christ where our example lies. If we don’t have an example in a friend or family member about how to live a Spirit-filled Christian life, then we should look to Christ. Case closed. Glad that’s taken care of. Moreover, even in the case that a person is surrounded by Spirit-filled Christians, the example of Christ still reigns supreme. And even greater, the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth in terms of how to live even from each day to the next, each moment to the next. Therefore, we have no excuse. We have no reason to say, “I didn’t have someone to show me the way,” when the reality is, as a follower of Christ it is literally our responsibility to follow Christ. Follow in His footsteps. Don’t settle for ordinary living. Christ did the extraordinary. Be inspired to live greatly by the example that Christ set while he lived on this same planet earth.

say NO to foolishness

This is a Holy Spirit-inspired blog. I have no idea what I'm doing here. But we'll see what happens.

At church on Sunday, toward the end of the sermon, I scribbled down something in the margin of the church bulletin: "Don't try and figure out what you were thinking."