Top 10 Hymns

My friend, Hannah (who has an awesome blog, btw - you should check it out), just made her list of top ten hymns, so I took the time to make mine.  A lot of these have sentimental value attached, so just bear with me while I list them out for you:

10. Amazing Grace -  If Christianity had an anthem, I'm sure this would be it.  But, I mean, if you really think about the words themselves, they are SO AMAZING.  Because of His amazing grace, a wretch like me was saved - how sweet is the sound of that grace!

9. Power of the Cross - I love this song, because the melody accentuates the words so amazingly.  And the emotions that I can pour into this song - whoo.  That's all I have to say about that.  Favorite stanza (even though they're all awesome):

"Oh, to see my name

Written in the wounds,

For through Your suffering I am free.

Death is crushed to death;

Life is mine to live,

Won through Your selfless love." 

8. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing - This is one of the most poetic hymns I've ever heard.  I just love it.

7. Old Rugged Cross - I used to sing this hymn in the truck with my dad on Sundays when he would take me to church.  I don't have a lot of fond memories of my relationship with him, but this is one of the best :)

6. O the Deep, Deep Love - This is a "new" hymn, but it's so beautiful.  Just in case you've never heard it, please take a moment and listen.

5. Be Thou My Vision - For those of you who don't know me (or much about me), know this - I LOVE acapella music, and I love singing in harmony.  This hymn is definitely one of my favorite ones to sing acapella.

4. When I Survey the Wondrous Cross - The words to this song.  Man.  They make me bawl like a baby.  Or choke up immensely.  All depends on the room and the day.  I actually like the alternative melody to this song.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, take a listen:

3. Just As I Am - This hymn has been the "altar call" go-to hymn at manyyyyy church services I've been to.  I have it memorized.  And it is challenging, and so convicting too.

2. How Great Thou Art - This song can either be sung acapella as a solo, or as a HUGE choral number with many parts.  I've heard it both ways, and I believe the words are just as powerful either way!

1. I Need Thee Every Hour - Guys.  This song.  Is my favorite hymn of all time (obviously, because I listed it at number one.)  This hymn has the ability to break my heart down ANY TIME I hear it, no matter WHAT is happening in my life when I listen to it.  Favorite version right here:

What about you?  What are your favorite hymns?  Can someone please comment something so at least I know people actually read my blog and this isn't just a glorified online journal?  lol

When Songs Bring Tears

Guys,

I don't know if you know this, but I was a big choral nerd in high school.  I kinda still am, I just don't really have an outlet for it any more.  Ever since high school, I've been a huge fan of acapella music, especially when Eric Whitacre is the composer.

Favorite Eric Whitacre song here:

This song is taken from 2 Samuel 18 when David learns of his son Absalom's death.

32 And the king said unto him, "Is the young man Absalom safe?" And he answered, "The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is."
33 And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"

This song makes me WEEP.  It is so good.  And, of course, I selected the version with sheet music showing because I told you - I'M A NERD LIKE THAT!

Anyway, so Eric Whitacre - I'm a huge fan of his.  And I've never really been able to find another choral composer that can touch his awesomeness.  Until today.

Dan Forrest, y'all.  Just listen to this song.  #Goosebumps

This song is from Ruth 1, when Naomi tells Ruth & Orpah to return to their families after the deaths of Naomi's sons & the women's husbands.  Ruth says:

16 But Ruth said:
“Entreat me not to leave you,
Or to turn back from following after you;
For wherever you go, I will go;
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people,
And your God, my God. Where you die, I will die,
And there will I be buried.
The Lord do so to me, and more also,
If anything but death parts you and me.”

I love it so much, I've always loved this story, but this song just brings the emotion in these verses TO LIFE.  I just bought it on Amazon - but this version in the video is waaaaay better than the version on Amazon.

I hope you enjoy these songs as much as I do.  What music moves you?  Please share!

What's New, Pussycat, Woah-oo-woah-oo-woah!

If you don't understand the title of my blog post, I feel sorry for you.

If you watched that, then you're welcome.  If you didn't, poo on you.

Anyway, back to me and what's new in my life.  I know, I know, I haven't written a blog post in ages, and I definitely haven't been keeping up with my #30DayChallenges, but I have to say, I did warn you at the beginning, and I'm much better at making plans than keeping them.  Sad, but true.

The first thing I want to say about my life is that I am back on Low Carb, Low Calorie, and I'm determined to lose at least 15 pounds by the end of this year!  I'm calling it my Pre-New Year's Resolution.  I've already lost 5 lbs just by eating less and eating healthier and drinking more water and using this great little APP called My Fitness Pal.  My immediate goal is to lose enough weight to fit back into my wedding dress (and most of my clothes!) - but my long-term goal is to be skinnier and more fit than I have ever been in my adult life, which shouldn't be too hard considering I've never really had a desire to be super fit before.

Okay, on to the next thing.  I need to get serious for a minute.  I don't usually work on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays as many of you know.  So most of the time, I'm at home by myself doing nothing in order to save money.  To be honest, it's been kind of depressing.  I don't make plans to hang out with friends, and more often than not, that just means I stay at home watching Netflix and pretending the people in the shows I'm watching are my friends (kidding, except kinda not).  And when it started, I blamed Tyler.  I blamed him for our financial shortage, I blamed him for not being wild and exciting and interesting and into all the things I'm into - in short, I blamed Tyler for not keeping me content.

And recently, I realized - IT'S NOT ANYONE'S JOB TO KEEP ME CONTENT; CONTENTMENT CAN ONLY COME FROM GOD.  Sorry I just had to All-Caps you guys in the face, but it's true.  Contentment can only come from God.  And guess what?  My prayer life during that time was virtually non-existent and the only time I read the Bible was on Sundays during the preacher's message at church.  It's a wonder I was so depressed and discontent. (sarcasm)

But then, my friend Hannah invited me to a new Bible study the women of Faith Baptist Church were beginning.  The Bible study is centered on 12 women in the Bible, and so far, I am learning SO MUCH from it - it's probably one of the best Bible studies I've ever been a part of.

Then I decided I wanted to try and read the Bible through in a year, because I've tried that a few times, and it never worked out.  However, I've never tried to read the Bible through chronologically.  So I hopped on Amazon.com and did some shopping and found the Reading God's Story: A Chronological Daily Bible.  I ordered it then and there; it arrived on Wednesday, and I'm already a few days in and loving it!

I don't want God's word or my relationship with Him to just be a checklist or a bunch of names and dates on paper, I want my faith to be a living, breathing, full-of-wonder thing.  I want to be the woman of God He created me to be.

So yeah, that's what's new in my life (the most important things anyway).  Also (sidenote), we recently got our Old Towne engagement pictures from Tyler's friend, Sara, so I'll be posting those soon.  Keep your eyes peeled!

One Word Makes All the Difference

I was thinking about it today, and there is a word that, when placed in front of other words, completely changes their meanings/connotations.  That word is: Christian.

I know the word Christian was originally used in reference to Christ-followers as an offense back during Biblical times, but now it's used to describe everyone who has professed salvation - that is, everyone who has called on the name of Jesus Christ to save him/her from sin.

And as Christians, we are called to be set apart from worldly things (Romans 12:1-2).  If we as Christians are doing our job right, then our "words" below should look a whole lot different from the world's.

So if you could, just take a few minutes to think about what each word means to you and how the meaning changes once you put "Christian" in front of it:

1. Song ...... Christian Song
2. Book ...... Christian Book
3. Adult ....... Christian Adult
4. Wedding ... Christian Wedding
5. Marriage ... Christian Marriage
6. Love .......... Christian Love
7. Hope ......... Christian Hope
8. Vow ........... Christian Vow
9. Purity ......... Christian Purity
10. Friend ...... Christian Friend
11. Morality ...... Christian Morality
12. Forgiveness ... Christian Forgiveness
13. Truth ........... Christian Truth

Can you think of any more? Which ones stood out to you the most? Also, does the word "Christian" hold a good or bad connotation for you? Why?

LiveJournal Post from March 3, 2007

[This is a good reminder of what led me to counseling in the first place.]

     I am the queen of crap. My whole life - a load of crap. Everything I try to do - utter crap. 

     Ok, here's what I'm trying to say. I've met a lot of Christians in my life. They all have completely different personalities from mine. But when I met them, I noticed the love and passion they had for Almighty God, and I wanted that. So instead of seeking after Him, I sought after imitating their mode of worship and how they acted about their love for Him. So my worship to Him about 80% of the time was not real. It was not me. But today, I was challenged. I have been challenged a lot lately. Challenged to be who God made me. And to be real. To be authentically Christina in love with her heavenly FATHER. 

     And tonight I was grieving. Because I've been sick lately, and I've been focusing more on trying to get better instead of growing closer to God. So I was thinking about areas in my life that I'm unsatisfied with - I don't trust guys. I haven't developed very close friendships with the people I've met at college. Why? The heck if I know. So there I was, sitting in confused anguish. And I opened my Bible and prayed for God to open my eyes. And I found - 

"Give the Lord - you heavenly beings - give the Lord glory and strength. Give the Lord the glory due His name; worship the Lord in the SPLENDOR of His holiness. The voice of the Lord is above the waters. The God of glory THUNDERS - the Lord, above vast waters, the voice of the Lord in power, the voice of the Lord in SPLENDOR. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion, like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord hews out FLAMES of fire. The voice of the Lord SHAKES the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer to calve and strips the forest bare; and in His temple everything says, "Glory!"" (Psalm 29:1-9)

     His voice does all this. His power is infinite. And His voice calls my name. He gives me His power over my enemies - His enemies. Wow. 

And then - "One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple...When You said, ' Seek my face,' my heart said to You, ' Your face, O Lord, I shall seek.' ...Wait for the Lord; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the Lord." (Psalm 27:4, 8, 14)

     That is what I pray I may do all the days of my life. To wait for the Lord. To dwell in His house. To behold His beauty. To meditate in His temple...to inquire in His holy place. To be transformed from the inside out. To show with my life His glory. My spiritual gift is exhortation. I want to use it for Him. 

     I do. This is my prayer. My plea. My passion. This is my purpose. I want to encourage others. I want to be available to everyone who needs someone to pray with. Because I've been so deep in despair and I've felt so alone in my quest, in my search to find God. I've felt like there was noone willing to pray with me who cared about what I might be going through. Who might not understand what I was going through or who might not want to try to understand. 

     But I want to know my life is open to God to use however He needs to use me. To lead me wherever I need to be led. And that I will be willing to follow. 

"The Lord is my strength and my shield; My heart trusts in Him and I am helped; Therefore my heart exults, and with my song I shall thank Him." (Psalm 28:7)

Quiet Night, Raucous Thoughts

(Originally written as a Note on Facebook on Saturday, October 6, 2012, at 10:39 pm)

My mind is everywhere tonight. I am sitting in a virtual stranger's house, babysitting two extremely beautiful children who are asleep, and I didn't bring a book to read so I'm at odds as to what to do. So, of course, I initially Facebook stalk people. Which led me to my friend Kelly Ann's most recent blog post, which was beautiful to read. And then I thought, "When was the last time I posted a blog?" So I figured I'd write a note that showed my heart and what's been going on inside it lately - hopefully this does just that, and God uses it to, in some way, bring glory to Himself. Because that's what my life should be all about. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

*deep breath*

Okay, so, as many of you who know me already know (haha, are you lost yet?), many of my friends as of late have been getting married or engaged. Which makes sense, because it's about that time in my life where friends will do that; I'm just at that age. But God never cites a specific age for finding THE ONE; it's in His timing, which is vastly different from mine. So anyway, friends getting engaged and married - check. And how do you think this made me feel?....sorry, I mean, how do you think I initially reacted to this? Like a spoiled brat. "God, why can't I get married like everyone else? Why am I still single? Why haven't I found THE ONE yet? WHYYYYYY?!" ...you get the picture. Now that I think back on it, it's kind of embarrassing...

So this was my attitude. And I was getting more and more frustrated with the "LACK" of attention I was receiving from the opposite sex; I was finding everything to blame it on - such as guys being "shallow," other girls being more "aggressive" and "flirty" than I was... dumb stuff. My heart was growing ugly and bitter. So foul.

I went to do my intensive up at Liberty this summer, and God COMPLETELY wrecked my heart and my emotions with the realization that I was being INCREDIBLY SINFUL, PETTY, AND BRATTY. I was SO focused on my discontentment that I was fully missing everything that God was trying to do in my life. Praise God, just like He brought me out of my most recent ungodly relationship, He brought me out of my most recent ungodly nonrelationship. (That may not make sense to you, but it makes sense to me.)

When I came back from my intensive, my attitude had totally changed. It was definitely a work of God and not of myself, because it was miraculous. I felt so free and light and amazing. But my flesh and the Enemy had other plans. A few weeks ago, I started to grow discontent once more. I began to desire to settle for right now and satisfy my fleshly longing to be in a relationship rather than continue to serve God and patiently wait.

Sometimes I really despise the word PATIENCE. It is not a fruit of the Spirit that comes naturally to me. Which, when you think about it, is a weird statement to make, because none of the fruits of the Spirit are natural, that's why they come from the Spirit and not ourselves. But I think out of all the things that the Spirit supplies me with, I quench patience the most.

So anyway, I began to get impatient. And grow discontent. And, just like He always does, God used His Word and the Spirit and fellow believers in my life to hold up the mirror and show me my UGLY. Praise God. Even though it's hard...especially in the quiet, lonely times (like right now)...God is good. And He has given me so many defenses against my deceitful heart, my flesh, and the Enemy.

Once again, God focused my gaze on what matters most in life, which is NOT ME BEING HAPPY. That should not be my life goal. God forbid I should EVER forsake all else to pursue my own wants in lieu of what God wants. What matters most in life is that I GLORIFY GOD WITH ALL THAT IS IN ME. That I seek to be conformed to His image. Because His image is the original. Mine is just the copy. And I am but dust. God, fill me with more of You, because I long to respond to You...You won't relent (Praise God!)...great is Thy faithfulness. So many songs are coming to mind right now. I think I will go praise you through music. :)

Spring Cleaning

Today was an amazing day and also a heart-breaking day.

Pastor Osborne delivered two incredible sermons today, but the message he brought tonight (technically, last night) was profound. He used spring cleaning as a metaphor. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul alluded to the "spring cleaning" Israel had to do by finding all their leaven and removing it from their homes. For those who don't know what leaven is (and I really didn't until tonight), leaven is leftover dough that ferments and can spoil the rest of the dough if used.

So anyway, Pastor Osborne compared that to us and how we need to confess our sins and renew our hearts DAILY. He said that "it is harder to get your life clean than to keep it clean." That is so true. I have experienced it over and over again in my life.

When I don't stay in the word and confess specific sins DAILY to God, I become a hoarder of sin and laziness in my heart. Eventually, there's not even room to walk through the pathways of my heart, because they're so cluttered with meaningless distractions and "small" sins that I've become desensitized to because I haven't confessed them. When I finally become convicted to actually "catch up" and "get back to where I used to be," it's a HUGE struggle to overcome.

D        A        I          L        Y.

That's a word I struggle with, because I'm so undisciplined and lazy. I create plans all the time to get in the Word and spend time with God, but it falls apart after a few days. Every time. And I'm left feeling hopeless and defeated. Every time.

Let me take a break from talking about that really quick and go somewhere else. For the past month and a half, I've been on a "healthy eating plan," "lifestyle change," or "healthy food regimen"...whatever you want to call it. I've been telling myself for the longest time that I need to lose weight, but I finally had to buckle down, decide what foods I could and could not eat, and commit to it. It takes a DAILY (there's that word again!) decision to deny myself bread, pastas, and other high-carb or high-sugar foods and instead choose to eat the foods that are good to my body and not just good to my taste buds. Sometimes I want to cheat. There are days where I eat a cookie...or a piece of bread...or...fill in the blank. But then I envision the end goal once again. I am determined to be at a certain place by December, so I will stick to what I'm doing in order to attain that goal.

Okay, so let's go back to the whole DAILY discipline devotions thing. Same concept, right? I just need to "begin with the end in mind" as it were. Where do I want to be? And how do I get there? Answer: I want to be at His feet, following in His steps, IN HIS WILL. I get there by DAILY deciding to spend time in His Word and talking to Him...confessing my sins.


I never want to get to a place where I can't recognize sin in my life. I never want to be living in sin and moral filth and consider myself to be in a "close and loving relationship with God." I found out something about a missionary in my church tonight that broke my heart. He is being blinded to sin by Satan and his own selfish heart, and he still considers himself to be serving God.

Please Lord...

                                                                                                                                ...change his heart.

And help me find and remove the leaven from mine.

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

Late Night Ramblings.

First of all, I think it's safe to say that I'm awful at themed blog posts. Agreed? Good.

Second of all, I don't even know why I'm attempting to write this right now, because I'm tired. I just finished reading all my blog posts from Germany, and I miss the Dueck family with a passion.

Third of all, God's been doing some great things in my life and in my heart recently. I've been pretty consistent with my bible reading lately, and I really hope that continues. Also, God has convicted me about my attitude. There's this book called, "Lord, Change My Attitude (Before It's Too Late!)" by James McDonald. It outlines five negative attitudes that the Lord hates (complaining, coveting, criticizing, doubting, and rebelling) and gives five attitudes to replace them with in the life of a believer (being thankful, content, loving, having faith, and being submissive). I think my biggest challenge is to replace my complaining and covetous attitudes with attitudes of thankfulness and contentment. Which reminds me! I need to write in my "5 things I'm thankful for" journal. I'm trying to write down things I'm thankful for each day (as recommended by James McDonald in the book) so that I will complain less and less and more joy will come into my life.
Also, after I finished that book, I started reading another book I've had for awhile called "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day" by Mark Batterson. And as I was reading it, it just hit me for the first time that God is truly ALWAYS with me. Like, when I call on His name in prayer, there's no waiting period as his presence "loads," because He is already there. He is here right now. All I have to do to talk to Him is open my mouth. How crazy is that?! Also, how humbling is that? The flipside of that means that He is ALWAYS there when I sin. He is right there watching me as I lie, or doubt, or complain, or any other amount of things I do that are sinful. So I guess it's true what Pastor Osborne says about his definition of the fear of God - the continual awareness that I am in the presence of Holy God; every thought, word, action, motivation, and ATTITUDE are open before Him and are judged by Him. Wow.

God, please continue to grow me in the fear of the Lord. You know my heart better than anyone ever has, does, or will. Empty it of my selfish desires and fill it with Your desires. I pray that the things I want would be the things You want. I pray that my faith would grow by hearing, and hearing by the reading of Your word. Help me to read it, memorize it, and meditate on it DAILY. Teach me moment by moment. When I have the choice of spending time with You or doing ANYTHING ELSE, I pray that I would choose to spend time with You.

RastiLand and God's Land!

So yesterday, Alwina, Elias, Lionel, Julian, and I all went to RastiLand, a theme park about 1 hour from Schieder. It was fun! But it was no Disney World ;) Here are some pictures:

Elias and Julian ^

Lionel on the bumper boats ^

Elias and Julian on the playground ^

Alwina and Lio riding in a go-cart ^

On the wettest ride ever ^

How wet they got ^

How wet I got! Ugh! ^

The boys playing in the rain ^

As you can see ^^ we were perpetually wet the whole day.

Boys being boys on the way home ^

Today was another good day. Last night, I had trouble sleeping, even though I was exhausted when I went to bed. So I got up and spent some time reading God's word and talking to Him. And, once again, God impressed upon me how faithful His love is. Just read this Psalm He showed me to remind me:

"Out of the depths of my despair I call to You, Lord. Lord, listen to my voice; let Your ears be attentive to my cry for help. Lord, if You considered sins, Lord, who could stand? But with You there is forgiveness, so that You may be revered. I wait for the Lord; I wait, and put my hope in His word. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning - more than watchmen for the morning. Israel, put your hope in the Lord. For there is faithful love with the Lord, and with Him is redemption in abundace. And He will redeem Israel from all its sins."
-Psalm 130

Isn't that amazing? God is amazing! He has been showing me so much through the Psalms, but the main theme has been His faithful love. A hymn that He has been using in my life lately is "Great is Thy Faithfulness." Especially the second stanza - "Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness to Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love." Today, I went on a mini nature walk and took some pictures of God's beautiful creation. Here are some examples of how this hymn was shown to me in nature:

After I got home from my nature walk, we went to Elvira's house for dinner. Elvira is Wilhelm's sister, and she and her husband, Eduard, have 4 daughters. I had a wonderful time singing and spending time with them, and for dinner, we had PIZZA! It was sooo delicious! The three different kinds of pizza were: tuna (yucko), corn and salami (pretty good!), and ham and pineapple (my absolute favorite!). On our way home, Wilhelm and I got into a discussion about the children and about life. It all started when I asked him if he ever wished his boys could stay the age they are now, because they're just so cute. He said no, because the boys will see "beautiful sights" at each stage in their lives, and he wants to be there to see them experience them all. For example, he said, his parents are retired now. And his father has more time to spend reading God's word and spending time in prayer. So those are his beautiful sights right now. Wilhelm also said sometimes people are so caught up in waiting for the right job, the perfect mate, etc., that they are not content with where God has placed them right now. Which is what God has been showing me lately also. I need to be content with my present situation. I need to open my eyes to the beautiful sights God has for me to see in this period of my life. I'm excited to see what they are <3

More later!

PS: Generic yogurt crummy tastes.

PSS: Hallo! Wie geht's dir?! ...Yeah, that's all I got. I'm getting better though, right?

Fellow ck-er: Seriously. RastiLand - you shoulda been there.

Sunday Morning Worship Time

Outside, it's raining. Inside, it's pouring. :)

I woke up this morning and determined to spend time worshiping God in my own private worship service while the Duecks went to church. After they left, I did my personal devotions in 1 Kings to prepare my heart for the sermon. Then I went onto Faith Baptist's website and listened to the sermon Pastor Osborne preached last Sunday morning on revenge. And wow. God started speaking to me.

The biggest impression He left was when Pastor Osborne was talking about David and Saul in 1 Samuel 24. In that chapter, Saul was in the process of chasing after David to kill him, because he was jealous and paranoid. He stopped in a cave to "relieve himself," and while he was in the process of doing so, David and his men were hiding in the back of the cave. David's men told him, "Hey, David, this is the day the Lord has told you about. He has delivered Saul into your hands to do whatever you desire with him." But David knew better! He knew God had made no such promise to David. So he spared his life. But he went up to Saul and cut off a corner of his robe. Right afterwards, the Holy Spirit had convicted David of his sin in cutting of the corner of Saul's robe. But noone else would have blamed David for doing this thing. Only the Holy Spirit, only God. David was SO SENSITIVE to the Holy Spirit, that he was convicted, even over a little sin that noone else would consider to be sin!

How many times have I done that? How many times have I committed so many "small" sins which are not considered sin by the rest of the world, so I didn't even think twice about it? During my last relationship, many of my "friends" put thoughts into my head of hurting my boyfriend as much as he would thoughtlessly hurt me. They said it was good to teach him a lesson. But it is never our place to teach anyone a lesson! Looking back, I can see the ways in which I sinned against God and my ex-boyfriend by being petty and vengeful.

I pray that God will continually show me my small sins and convict me of them. I want to have a heart like David's, that is extremely sensitive to the Lord's leading. I don't want to have a petty and vengeful attitude towards anyone. I also want to be able to speak God's truth in love and encourage others like Jonathan did with his father and David.

This is my prayer today: to surrender all to the Lord. To put on the mind of Christ. To have a heart like David. To live in the presence of the Lord daily.

"All to Thee, Lord, I surrender,
All to Thee I freely give;
I will ever love and trust You,
In Your presence daily live."

Walking Down Schnecke Lane...

For those of you who don't know, "schnecke" is German for "slug." And their slugs here are GI-NORMOUS!!! They only come out after it rains, and it rained all day today. But that's okay, because I like rain :) So Alwina, Levin, and I went for a walk tonight and these slugs were everywhere. Naturally, I proposed that we should count them as we walked. Going one way, we counted 32 slugs!!! Yeah, 32! Talk about disgusting!

Anyway, just thought I'd share that bit of enthralling news with you all. This walk was the first time I had been out of the house in FOUR days. That's right. When I woke up Friday morning, I was SICK. As in, nauseous, throwing up, sore throat, coughing, fever, congestion...you name it, I probably had it. So Friday and Saturday, I was bed-ridden. I felt awful. And I felt even more awful because we had planned to travel to Frankfurt to see Alwina's sister this past weekend, and my immune system ruined it all! Luckily, Alwina's sister was able to drive here and see the family instead. While I remained in a fever-induced coma ;) Alwina was very good about giving me medicine and being sweet to me. I shall relay to you my diet over the past 4 days:

Medical Menu for Health-Challenged Individual (aka Me)
1. Toast, lightly buttered.
2. Some really gross black liquid stuff that I can't pronounce the name of (for congestion).
3. Fever medicine (Supposedly. I was popping whatever pills Alwina gave me.)
4. Vitamin C. ALL the time.
5. Gargling with salt water. Blech.
6. Drinking water - a lot of water.
7. Black tea with honey...only fun to drink AFTER the fever went away.
8. Last but certainly not least, DICED GARLIC. Raw. I had to swallow that each night.

Well, there you have it. My diet. Sounds good, right? =/
I'm just glad I'm better now - praise God that He is the ultimate Healer =)
That's all I'm going to talk about being sick, except to say this. I still have a cough. And it hurts like something that hurts a lot. So please keep praying for me.

There's not really any other recent news on the Germany front, but I do have some news on the relationship with Jesus front - that is, if you'd like to hear it. You would? Ok, good. So the other night, in my feverish condition, I started thinking about demon possession (don't ask me why - maybe because I'm reading through 1 Samuel right now and Saul is possessed by an evil spirit). What I was thinking was - how easy am I making it for Satan to attack me right now by being so inconsistent with my devotions? I find other things to occupy my time instead of spending time reading the Words of SOVEREIGN GOD and praying/talking to the MAKER OF THE UNIVERSE. Who is more important or worth my time than Him?! Noone!!! So what's wrong with me? I'm selfish. And unfaithful. That's all there is to it. I asked God to remind me every day to spend time with Him. Because I don't ever want to forget that He is my all in all. Even though I know I will. Lord, thank You SO MUCH that You are a God of forgiveness and second chances! But I'm tired of stopping, and then running to catch up again, when I should just be consistent and faithful in this race I'm running in the first place. I don't want to stray from His path, because His path is GOOD and RIGHT and PERFECT. No other path can boast of these qualities. No other person can honestly say they will never leave me or forsake me - except for God. No other being can create something out of NOTHING - except for God. No other being can sustain me another day - except for God. No other being can do for me what I cannot do for myself - except for God.

Praise the Lord, for He IS.

Wisdom in James

"Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. An indecisive man is unstable in all his ways."
-James 1:2-8, HCSB

So another thing a man can do to gain wisdom is to ask God for it. DUH! But if you think about it really hard, how many of us actually do ask God for things in the right way. What does that mean? We need to ask God in faith without doubting. If we're just blindly asking without the assurance already in our hearts that God will provide, why should He answer our prayer? And this also implies asking God first without trying in our own strength first. Because if we try to fix a problem or find answers or wisdom on what to do in a situation from our own reason or someone else's advice BEFORE WE SEEK GOD on the matter, what does that say about our faith in Him?
This, I believe, also goes along with the verse in Psalm 111 which tells us the fear of the Lord leads to wisdom. We are to boldly approach the throne with faith IN FEAR and reverence. I feel that many times people (and I include myself in this also) do approach God in prayer boldly, but they misconstrue this boldness into irreverence and bossiness. They try to tell God what they want Him to do for them instead of presenting their requests to Him and then waiting in patient abandon for Him to accomplish His will.

God, help me to submit myself to You in prayer. Reverently. And in fear. I freely admit that I do not have a proper fear of You, and I am often irreverent when I speak to You. Please forgive my prideful attitude. Cleanse my heart of all sense of exalted self. Cast down any idols I have made before You. Help me to seek wisdom above all else. I love You, my Abba.