Abide

Originally this week’s blog was going to be about my first week of school, but there has been so much that’s happened this week and some major lessons I’ve learned throughout it that I felt led to share. I may even post both this week considering I had every intention of posting Monday before I got sick. Anywayyyyyyyy...

This week was honestly really rough. It all started with a sinus infection that put me in a cycle of my sickness affecting my schoolwork, but then my schoolwork affecting my ability to get medicine to heal my sickness. Thankfully, I had ibuprofen and essential oils (Doterra Past Tense) to get me through it. Besides being sick, I also had a huge history midterm coming up. Plus, did I mention its homecoming week? I had been stressing over this exam since the first day of class because I could just tell by the way the lecture went that it was going to be difficult. (I would suggest not taking HIST 131 with Rogers). Even with my all my studying I still felt nowhere near prepared for this test. So because I was so focused on the exam, I actually considered skipping my devotion group, Delight, which is a ministry that I will go into much further detail on in a future post. I have never been one to skip out on a ministry event because I had more important things going on and the fact that I was willing to do so for this test really messed me up. Thankfully a friend reminded that not only is investing time with the Lord more important, but that it would also give me piece of mind about the studying and the time I would find to do it. Needless to say, I went, and oh my goodness was it exactly what I needed. Everything about the night related to how I had been feeling all week. Through the devotion and discussion time the Lord showed me just how sovereign He is.

The devotion for the week had been about abiding, but because of my poor prioritizing, I didn’t even read it so I had no idea what I was missing out on. As we read and discussed the story and scripture, God just grabbed a hold of my heart and started teaching me so many different things. The definition of abide is to endure without yielding, to remain stable, and to continue in a place. Abiding is exactly what I needed to have been doing all week. So many problems would’ve been resolved if I had just stayed in a stable place with God and had not yielded to, in this case, the worldly gratification of grades and education. That night we also discussed the important truth that abiding is not the same as striving to be the perfect Christian. Sometimes we get so overwhelmed by trying to accomplish the checklist of Christianity that we forget that all God really wants from us is a relationship. Now this does not mean that things such as daily Bible reading are not crucial, but that we can worship God differently through out each and every day and it does not have to be scheduled, structured, or anything like a to do list. The last time I checked, I have never had any relationship with someone that was based on connecting with them the exact same way every day. So why do we expect our relationship with God to be any different? One of the leaders said something that ultimately was my main take away from the entire night. She said, “If you believe God will only fulfill you through your effort to grow in Him, then you are limiting God and what He can do.” As humans, the reason we strive so much to create and complete a checklist is because we have the idea in our mind that it is solely up to us to maintain a relationship with Christ. We do play a part, but no good relationship is one sided. Our shortcomings because of our flesh don’t automatically ruin our relationship with God. After all, He gives us grace which means there is no reason for us to hate ourselves because we didn’t meet the standard that we set for the relationship. The problem with that is we should be trying to meet God’s standards not ours. So instead of abiding in the Lord, we often find ourselves abiding in our failures. As I left Delight I was filled with a gentle peaceful spirit. The peace had nothing to do with a sudden confidence for my test, but had everything to do with how sovereign God is and how He wouldn’t allow a small obstacle such as a test to hinder his plan for me. I by no means can say that I think I did absolutely great on my midterm, but I can say that I have confidence that whether the outcome is good or bad and whether not I didn’t read my Bible as much as I normally do, my relationship with Christ will not change and neither will his plan for my life.

The effect of Wednesday’s delight meeting just overwhelmingly impacted me. My week since then has been so great and its only going to get better. Today I get to see my best friend in the whole wide world not to mention begin all the fun homecoming festivities and time with new friends planned for this weekend.

Thank y'all again so all the support!

Love ya and stay tuned,

Emily ♡