Encounter

I've been wanting to write this post since LAST Sunday, and just never got to it.

The church that I've been going to had a worship night (which I guess they have once a month) last Sunday. Basically they sing in worship for about an hour.

It was SO wonderful, and powerful!

I loved every minute.

There is something so special about so many believers in one place together, worshiping God with all their hearts.

I had this image in my head of God and His HUGE cross. I was thinking about how BIG God is. Looking around at all of the people in the sanctuary with me. People filled with their own problems, their own lives.... and then about my problems. How they seem SO big to me because for right now, it consumes e v e r y part of my life. It's school. It's hard. It's tough. Makes me smile. and want to cry. I love my kids. and I can't stand them. and I'm C O N S U M E D with this, on a daily basis.

But here is God and his MIGHTY CROSS. I had the image of little, tiny, me. And my little tiny life.
In the perspective of everything else, it didn't seem so big. I kept thinking about my smallness and presenting my "stuff" to God. Laying it at his cross and just  looking up at His cross in awe.

Are you getting it? Can you picture it? What a powerful image. It's saying "Here it is God" "You take it" "I surrender" "You are SO much bigger and greater than I or my problems will EVER be."

Even though it seems SO HUGE and massive in my life. Like this mountain I can't see around..... I can give it to God and worship Him in awe of who He is.

It is a wonderfully humbling revelation.

Listen to this song. SO good.

Perspective

You need God's perspective.

That's something valuable I have taken away from this weekend.

Remember how I said I didn't have the best day on Friday?

Sometimes, I just can't help feeling negative about my job. Satan has been getting in my brain real easily, and telling me that I have no purpose there, that there's no point... I felt way insecure...and I have to go and do basically nothing again tomorrow. I'm frustrated.

(you should know this though) what I didn't say before is that it is something that the principal is working on... so eventually, my time should be filled with other things... but for now this is where I'm at.

At R and R on Saturday Jenny talked about how we can be on one of two buses. You are either on the bus of your situation, OR the bus of the spirit.

I learned that I need to be living IN God, not IN my situation. Instead of feeling sorry for myself sometimes, while working, I need to remember that Jesus is with me and that HE is greater. He has a purpose.

When we are living in our situations, essentially we are the ones driving the bus... (it's a tour bus...did I say that? ha) so we here our OWN commentary and voice. However, when GOD is leading the bus, you hear HIS voice, and His commentary, not the other way around. I wrote down that " your vision is skewed when you're sitting in your situation". So true.

When we are living IN the circumstance it's hard to see anything else... my view of things are skewed when I'm focused mainly on them and not on God.

She also said how it is so easy for us to see our selves and our situation, but we don't automatically see our Savior. Don't let the situation have the say, let GOD have the say on your situation.

It was very refreshing :) I also had a good cry while there...but we won't talk about that ;)

You may remember how I have been looking for a church since I've moved here.. Well I think I have found the one that I'll stick with. :) I wasn't so sure a few weeks ago.. but I tried to put myself out there a little more, and I truly love it! It's a big church... but the adult fellowship group (you'll here me refer to this as ABF) is what makes it so special. The people are wonderful and I'm definitely still getting to know them (duh) but now that doesn't seem so impossible as I once thought. I feel like I fit there, and it's a great feeling.

Excited to relax today. :)

New Church

Hi blog world.

It's been a whole week since I last blogged..whoops!

Not sure why that happened, because I didn't get sub jobs allll week. (with the exception of Friday when I subbed in 3rd grade!)

I'm feeling a lot better than I was feeling last Sunday. That was tough...

Later on I was thinking and praying and I think it was sort of God's way of telling me that I can't MAKE things work that just don't, even if it's what I would want to happen.

Me feeling so badly about it was kind of a sign I think, or a door closing, so that I would have to try something else there. I really have nothing against that church but there really isn't a place for me to grow and be involved.

God was like..."Can't you see Kari? Try something else..."

He has something better for me than that.

This morning I went to a church called CBC and I really enjoyed it.

On their website they have a lot of Adult Fellowship Groups listed and it said they had one for ages 22-29. I had emailed earlier this week to see what room it was in, and I went there before the service. (it was like a Sunday school class). At first I wasn't so sure because, except for one other woman, I was the only single person in the room. haha. BUT I still really liked it and enjoyed myself. The people seem really awesome. Some are older than me (well, most) some are pregnant, one couple even has a couple of kids....but I felt SO welcome there. After we were done, a lady talked to me and they were saying there are other singles, but they just weren't there... I said is it okay that I'm here? And they were like "ohh yeahh!" , I'm not uncomfortable with it so if I can go there I want to. They seem like a group of people that I would love to be friends with.

She told me they do a lot of things together and that she would include me in the emails if I gave her my info.

The church itself is a really big church. They have two services, and there are a lot of people....but I really liked it. I think I'll go there again next week.

During the message this morning, the pastor was talking about how WE, as the church body, need to be Jesus to people wherever we are. It was a really neat reminder. He had a bunch of stories that he read to us as examples.

WE need to share the truth that we know with others. With everyone we encounter, we need to be Jesus. (our co-workers, friends, family, neighbors, anyone we encounter)

He gave a couple of reference verses, my favorite was John 1:14

¹⁴And the Word (Christ) became flesh (human, incarnate) and tabernacled (fixed His tent of flesh, lived awhile) among us; and we [actually] saw His glory (His honor, His majesty), such glory as an only begotten son receives from his father, full of grace (favor, loving-kindness) and truth.^(E)

He discussed us being "incarnational" rather than "invitational"...Meaning it's good to invite people into OUR Christian environment, but at the same time we should BE Jesus to the people around us. Just like when Jesus CAME to earth in the flesh.

In other news, I named another one of the kittens. ha. Yeah. I did that. Her name is Sydney (Bristow). So there is now Beatrice and Sydney B. :)

hahah

I've also been doing a lot of crocheting lately. I've learned how to read patterns and it's so fun!

Here is a hat I made that I am pretty proud of. :)

I will be making many more things in the future. :) I really want to try to make some booties! There are so many fun ideas on Pinterest.

Hope you had a relaxing, enjoyable weekend!

Your love never fails

So, it's Sunday evening and two weeks of junior block are already passed. (Only 10 more!)
It sounds like kind of a lot but I have a feeling it will go by really fast just like everything else does.

I feel like I have a lot on my mind right now.

This weekend was alright.

I got to hang out with Shelby on Friday night. (we went on a shopping extravaganza to the mall and the grocery store..haha, woohoo!)
I also got to have lunch with my good friend Alex on Saturday so that was fun.

The rest of the weekend though, was basically spent working on my math center...and let me tell you, devoting hours at a time to a project like that is sort of draining. It's not like it was really hard or anything but just kind of tedious. I also felt weird because since I was home working on it a lot, I felt like I was alone a lot. (which I was...ha) I don't mind being alone sometimes... If I'm relaxing it's no biggie, but I spent hours cutting, pasting, arranging..etc and didn't talk to anyone! I didn't like it at all.

BUT I am pleased (verrrry pleased) to say that my center is officially DONE!!Except for some last minute laminations -bc the copy shop was closed this weekend- that's nothing though and I'm so glad I was able to finish mostly everything else. (and THANKful that God gave me the motivation!)


On a whole other note, this morning was only the SECOND time I've been at UCF since being here at school. It seems so strange because I feel like I've been here for weeks and weeks, even though it's only been two. (?! how can this be?)

Anyway....it was okay. I honestly felt kind of weird about a lot of stuff this morning. It just feels so different now than it used to. A lot of it is probably due to the fact that I'm a senior now...and well, it IS different. And ..I don't like it. (that it's different that is)
For some reason I felt extremely distracted during worship..which was disappointing because I spent awhile before church preparing my heart so that I could focus on God.I also felt like the message was targeted to freshman only, which was kind of frustrating. I was thinking about it and I feel like UCF is mostly targeted toward underclassmen. Which is GREAT, but at the same time I feel like I've outgrown my place there.
Is UCF really that different or am I the one who's different?

A lot of this sounds really terrible. I AM fully aware that church is about worshiping God and giving Him the glory. It's not about the music, and it's not about the sermon.
At the same time though I was frustrated that I couldn't or wasn't worshiping like I wanted to. It's not about the sermon, but I want to go somewhere that I'm being fed. My soul is so thirsty for more of God and I'm just scared that I can't grow anymore there.

I feel so, so horrible for even thinking these things about UCF. That church and the people in it are largely responsible for turning me into the woman of God I am today, and I'm so grateful. I just couldn't help feeling those things this morning. It actually kind of got to me, well obviously, heh, it makes me more upset than I would like to admit.

I felt a TON of peace last week being here, like I said before, but for some reason today I was kind of struggling with the changes. =/ boo, I don't want to struggle with them because I know how dumb it is, but I can't help it darn it. I miss last year =( Like a lot. I miss having JJ around, like crazy, (she probably would have been the one keeping me company while I did my project), I miss UCF in the smc, I miss my other roommates, I miss CAREGROUP from last year like nothing else. Everything feels so different and I really miss the way last year was. I don't know if it's just because I'm not used to it or what it is. But boy...it does not feel good. :(

I still feel "right" with God, and I know nothing can ever separate me from His love, but I guess this just goes to show that you can have a GREAT relationship with God and still have bad days.

hmm..just gotta remember to 'breathe' and I'll be okay.


Next thing, is that I DID spend some quiet time with God this morning. I was looking out my window at one point and saw the F O R E S T that is our backyard since the weeds decided to grow as tall as trees. I look out there everyday and think to myself I NEED to get out there and do something about those asap before they get worse, but I have yet to do anything. It got me thinking about an analogy of course. :) (God likes to put these analogies in my head I think because I would never be able to think of them on my own I tell you.)

So basically we're like a garden. Weeds can grow in a garden (or a yard in this case) and they start out as no big deal. They're little tiny things and you could probably still enjoy yourself outside without thinking about them much. BUT leave them unattended( like maybe all summer perhaps) and the little things GROW. A LOT. The little weed that would have been so easy to pluck out of the ground before, now has thick branches and roots that probably run pretty deep. If I wanted to get rid of the MASSIVE weed at this point I wouldn't be able to even do it by myself without some sort of chopping devise. I would need to work REALLY hard to get rid of it, and all the weeds back there. In order to avoid the hassle and I put it off longer and it just gets worse.

The weeds for us are our sins. They start out as just little tiny, blips. One thought maybe or some words. If we aren't careful to pray about them and set ourselves straight with God's help they only get WORSE unattended. The worse they get, the harder they are to get rid of. Maybe you've gone from a thought to action or a habit. Before you know it you're in so deep that it's all the more difficult to set yourself straight again.

I've experienced this in my life through different things. A lot of the time with me it's things that make me upset that I try not to think about. Rather than bringing those things to God and praying about it, (I usually feel that thinking about those things at all will just make me more upset) I avoid them like the plague. So sometimes there's a build up and things just get worse and worse because they grow and fester in my mind. It doesn't sound as bad as sin per-say ( or maybe it does) but it IS sin, because that is a classic example of me not trusting God or thinking I can do things on my own.

Now, I'd like to think this situation hasn't happened to me in a while because lately, I DO try to bring absolutely everything to God. I guess it usually happens when life gets busy.

But anyWHO, there's that analogy. Weed out your garden before it becomes seemingly impossible to do so! ;)