the era of perpetual questioning.

I feel like I'm at the point in my life where everyone just asks me questions.  I suppose that's how every seventeen to twenty-one year old feels.  I call it the Era of the Perpetual Questioning.  Last school year it was: "Where are you applying to school?"  "What schools did you get into?"  "Where did you decide to go?"  "When do you leave?"

Answers: Word of Life.  Word of Life.  Word of Life.  Beginning of September.

This school year it's: "What are you studying?" The Bible.  "How do you like school?"  I. Freaking. Love. It.  "When do you go back?" January second.  "How's break going?"  Boring, but Christmasy.  "How's the weather up in New York?"  Borderline arctic tundra, but with more trees and mountains.

Honestly, since I've been home for break I feel as if all I've been doing is answering questions.  It's a tad bit exhausting and mind-numbing.  I pretty much have rehearsed answers to any question someone could throw at me.  I'm sure once I start nearing the end of my time at Word of Life, people will start asking me more questions, ones I don't even have answers to: "What are your plans after the BI?"  "Are you going to another school?"  "Are you gonna go into full time ministry?"  "Where do you want to live?" 

As of now, I have no idea what the answers to any of these questions will be.  I know the answers will be provided in time, but that time has not yet come, and so I worry.

But there's something I don't worry about, and it's something that I learned in church today.  In the Bible, whenever Jesus refers to Himself as "I AM", it's as if He's saying "I'm it!  I'm the only thing you need!"  I don't need the answers to those questions that I constantly fret about because I have God.  He provides the answers.  He is the answer.

~grace&peace~

Song of the day: "Royals" cover by Puddles the Clown.  Enjoy, all you cool folk.

 

i have confidence in God.

I've struggled with self-esteem issues since I was quite young.  I mean, let's be honest, can any of us think of one person we know who has never thought something negative about his or herself?  Well, of course not.  We are inherently selfish people, so obviously we never stop thinking about ourselves.  Many of us are naturally insecure, whether we'd like to admit it or not.  We put on this delicately stitched together façade of self-confidence, but in actuality, when you pull the curtain back, we're pathetically broken and this just makes us focused on ourselves instead of being focused on God.

We don't need self-confidence.  Self-confidence makes us self-centered instead of God-centered.  Anything we have achieved in our lives we have not achieved by our own power, but by God's power.

The reality is that we are nothing without God, so there is no reason for self-confidence.  We are sad beings who have fatally messed up.  But God loves fatal mess-ups.  He does amazing things with fatal mess-ups.

The less we are the centers of our own lives, the more God is the center, and this is when He does awesome things.  We have nothing to do with the awesome things.  It's all God doing them through us so that He is ultimately glorified. 

I may not stand more than a mere four feet and eleven inches.  I may stutter a little too much when I talk over-excitedly.  But God's gonna use me for big things.

~grace&peace~

before the fall.

Something I struggle with often is putting other people down.  Not verbally, but mentally, and it especially happens when I'm having a bad day.  I'll be in a bad mood about something or I feel like I dislike myself for so many dumb reasons, and it'll just consume me to the point that I'll mentally take it out on someone else.  Or I justify it by thinking something like "Well, at least my hair doesn't look as bad as so-and-so's."  Yes, I'll admit that having a bad hair day can genuinely put me in a bad mood.  I'm quite particular about the curly mass that grows on top of my head.

And every time I do this, I know it isn't something God would like.  I also know it's not something Jesus would do, and I'm suppose to strive to be like Jesus in everything I do.  But I do it anyway, and as I'm putting others down inside my head, it ultimately becomes a sin of pride.  I start thinking I'm better than someone else because I think my hair looks better than theirs, or because I get better grades than them, or because I dress a certain way.

NO!!

I do this all the time, and it's been something that I've pretty much always struggled with.  However, only recently have I realized that this is because of pride.  It's thinking that I'm better than someone else because of something as superficial as what I'm wearing or what my hair looks like just to justify the fact that I don't particularly like myself one day. 

One of my old Sunday School teachers used to say that all sin is sin of pride.  The more you think about that, the more true you realize it is.  All sin is disobedience towards God because we think we're better than the rules He has set in place for us.

That's honestly kind of sickening.  To think that we are such rebellious children that we dare to defy our Heavenly Father who loved us so much that He not only set rules in place to protect us, but He sent His Son to die for us.  Who do we think we are?

You've probably all heard Proverbs 16:18 quoted thousands of times.  Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.  But how many times have you heard Proverbs 29:23? A man’s pride brings him low, but a man of lowly spirit gains honor.  However, we shouldn't try to be humble in hopes of gaining honor. That defeats the purpose of humility.  We should be humble in the hope of glorifying God.  In our humility, God is honored because we are nothing in comparison to Him. 

Today I pray that I can be more humble and not focus on myself as much so that God is glorified and I can reflect Him in every aspect of my life.

~grace&peace~

Song of the day: Carol of the Bells by Pentatonix

don't even bother reading this.

You know, I was gonna blog about something right now, but I kind of forgot what I was gonna write, and that's probably because it's 2:17 in the morning and as usual I'm kind of going crazy, so I'll just leave you with this fine work of art:

http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/

marinate yourself in the truth of scripture.

We have three different chapels here at WOLBI during the school week. Our school week is from Tuesday to Friday (which makes Mondays sacred in the eyes of any WOLBI student) and every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we have chapel. Wednesday is Chancellor's Chapel, which means all the faculty and staff, the first and second year students are all together, and usually we have a guest speaker. On Thursdays we have Student Life Chapel which is when one of the faculty gives a lesson basically on living together with 500 other members of the body of Christ and how to work through situations that may arise in a Godly way. On Fridays we have ministry chapel which present different ministry opportunities for us.

Today's Thursday and we had our last student life chapel of 2013 because we're going home for Thanksgiving/Christmas break in six days. Our Dean of Students gave an awesome lesson about how many of us are nervous about going back home for break and being confronted with the problems we've been away from or have been ignoring for the past two months. He basically summed it up by saying that we have nothing to be afraid of because we have the Holy Spirit on our side!! Isn't it awesome to think that we as Christians don't need to be afraid of anything we may face in our lives because the Holy Spirit dwells within us. 

He also tied the lesson into our theme for the school year, which is "True Identity in Christ." Here are just some of the things he talked about:

"I Am Complete in Christ."
     -I have complete salvation.
     -I have complete forgiveness.
     -I have complete purpose.
     -I have complete direction.

None of these can be taken away from me because I have been made new in Christ. I have been forgiven of every sin I've ever committed and will commit in the future. When God looks at me He sees His Son.

"Christ became to us the Wisdom of God."
     -We live through one who died.
     -We are blessed by one who was made a curse.
     -We are justified by one who was Himself condemned.

That second point really stood out to me. "We are blessed by one who was made a curse." When Jesus died on the cross, He was completely separated from the Father, which is mind-boggling to think about because the Son and the Father are both members of the Trinity along with the Holy Spirit and they can't be separated. But when Jesus Christ took upon His own body all the sins of the world, God could no longer look on Him. Mark 15 recounts the story of Jesus crucifixion.  In verse 34 He cries out "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?!" which means "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?!" He calls God the Father "My God" instead of "Father" because at that moment He was completely separated from His Father, and God could not look on Him. It's heart-wrenching, but Christ did that for me. For all of us. And if He can sacrifice His life in the most brutal way possible for a disgusting, vile sinner like me, I think I manage to keep doing my quiet time and not fall into temptation during break.

One more thing that the Dean of Students told us in this chapel was "Marinate your minds on the great truths of Scripture."

When you marinate a piece of chicken in Italian dressing, the Italian dressing becomes part of the chicken. You soak the chicken in the dressing for a long time and it's succulent and tender and down-right amazing once it's cooked. If we marinate our minds in Scripture it means we spend our own time pouring over the goodness that God has given us in the Bible. We use it as a guide for our lives, study it, and apply it. That's why God gave us the Bible. He didn't intend it just to be used as a centerpiece for your coffee table or as something you swear on in court. It's a living book for living people. Read it. Study it. Apply it. Love it.

~grace&peace~

a lesson to be learned.

Soooooooo....

I have this theory that a lack of money spawns creativity, which means that broke college kids are among the most creative people in the world.

However, that creativity really shouldn't flow over and get involved in your coffee making skills. I mean, let's be honest, coffee is one of the main things that keeps me (and the majority of college kids) semi-sane and for the most part alive. So this afternoon, mere minutes ago actually, I was making coffee because I had a teeny little bag of "cinnamon bun flavored" coffee that I got for only fifty cents at D.G. (that's Dollar General). And this coffee already smells really weird when I make it, but I wanted to use the rest of it up. So I made like four cups of this "cinnamon-bun flavored" coffee.

I turned on the coffee maker, and it was in the middle of brewing when I realized that low and behold, the little pop out thing where the filter is had worked its way open and coffee was leaking slightly onto my desk. And this also meant that I would have super weak coffee.

A little background information: I've been drinking coffee basically ever since I can remember and I've been drinking it black since I was about four. I like coffee. A lot. I like it super strong. I will drink it black. I will drink it with cream and sugar. I will drink it with weird flavored creamers. I will drink pretty much anything on the Starbucks menu that has coffee in it. I will NOT drink weak coffee. It makes me sad.

Anyway, my trusty coffee maker had malfunctioned in this way only one before and I had simply solved the problem by putting the already made, rather weak coffee back through the coffee maker. It worked that time.

This time when I put the already made, it-turns-out-not-so-terribly-weak coffee back through the coffee maker it just proceeded to make extremely, severely burnt coffee, and a rather unpleasant smell was created, which I had to explain to each of my three roommates as they entered the room.

I am now drinking said burnt coffee because I'm morally against wasting coffee...or any food really.

So, lesson learned, kids: don't mistake your own stupidity for creativity, even when coffee is involved.

delightfully awkward introductions.

Hello good friends, or whomever you may be. I hope we'll soon be friends.

As you've probably already deduced, I'm Abby, the authoress of this not-so-illustrious writing
endeavor. Now. Where to go from here. Hmmmmm.

Okay. The awkward introduction part.

Well.

We'll start with the basics.

I used to live here:

 

Richmond, VA: Also known as RVA, the 804, "The Mond" (if you're from Northern Virginia or "NOVA"), or the Capital of the Confederacy.

 

Now I live here:

 



 

The gorgeous Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. Yes, there is in fact a place called New York other than the City. I'm quite convinced that this is the most beautiful place in the United States, and I feel beyond blessed to live here for few years.

 

So the reason I have relocated myself from the perpetually humid, non-snowy mid-size city capital of Virginia to perpetually chilly/frigid small-town New York is because I wanted to devote a whole year of my life to studying the Word of God. I'm a Christian. I'm saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, and all my life I've been learning to love Jesus with my whole heart, but I fail him daily, and I know I'll keep failing Him all my life. However, He loves me anyway. I don't know why, but He does. So I'm gonna use my life to serve Him and worship Him, even though I know that everything I do will never amount to anything compared to what He's done for me.

 

So I'm up here in this cloudy-with-a-high-of-32 weather studying the Word of God at Word of Life Bible Institute. We're a school of about 450 kids and for either a year or two we are completely immersed in God's Word with classes like Theology, Bible Survey, Apologetics, evangelism, classes on certain books of the Bible such as Revelation, Acts, Leviticus, and more. And honestly, it's not a school just for people who want to become a missionary or a pastor or go into some kind of full-time ministry. Many kids here are planning on going into some other sort of career, but want to base their lives in the Word. I highly recommend it for any Christian who has completed high school or college and doesn't know what the next step in his or her life is.

 

I've been here for just over two months so far, and man, it's been a wild ride.  I've learned so much, met some of the most amazing people you could even fathom, each of them with their own unique story and testimony. Someone once described Word of Life to me as the place where you make eternal friends because your friends who are Christians and members of the body of Christ are the friends who will also be with you for all of eternity. 

 

However, we also want to expand the body of Christ and the Church. Every student here gets to be a part of multiple kinds of ministries so that we can serve the Lord and others and evangelize and just sort of get our feet wet with all the different options in ministry.

 

With all this said, I have no idea what the next step is for me after finishing my version of college. For once in my life, my longest term goal isn't just to graduate high school and then go to Word of Life. I'm here now. At WOLBI. And I have to create new plans now, and also be open to fact that my own plans for myself may not be where God wants me to be. However, I can't just sit around on my butt hoping that one day God will divinely reveal to me all the plans He has for my life. One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 16:9--The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. I can still make plans for my life, but I still need to remember that God ultimately has a plan for me and His plan will be glorified, and I need to keep Him at the center of my life as well.

 

As far as plans go, I don't really see myself going to a normal college because I really have no idea what I would study. However, I do have some long-ish term plans...Lord willing of course.

 

1. Finish my first year at Word of Life. Learn lots. Grow lots. Glorify, love, and serve God. (Getting there.)

2. Go on a short term missions trip to the Philippines next summer. (More on that to come.)

3. Go to second year here at Word of Life so I can learn more about ministry and all the options.

4. Go on another missions trip to gain more experience in missions.

5. Study Spanish in Argentina for a year or two for the possibility of some sort of ministry in a Spanish speaking country. (More on that to come as well.)

6. ???

 

So basically this blog is all about God's unfolding plan for me. I have no idea in what direction He will take my life, but I know it'll be a grand adventure and I sure do love a good adventure. This particular adventure will be full of many wild antics. It'll have a number of riotously funny, borderline insane, intelligent, endearing characters. It'll probably (hopefully) have an excited plotline, but we'll see. You're now along on this wild ride with me, so hang on.

 

~grace&peace~