thoughts

I am so thankful for these two days we haven't had school. I really need them.

Recently I made a pinterest. It's like an overflow of creativity ideas that makes you just want to do crafts all day. Every time I see a good idea, I wish I had the materials so I could make them, haha. It also makes you believe you can do anything creative because everything looks so pretty!

While my prayer topic now is to gain wisdom, it sure is not easy gaining it. God is giving me opportunities to make decision and it's hard. Often times it's easy to look at other people who have made great decisions in their lives and have thought "oh, that must have been easy for them because it's just them" but I realized that everyone struggles to make the right decisions in their lives. It's easy to think that dying on the cross was really easy for Jesus, but it wasn't. Before his crucifixion, he pleaded with God that the pain be taken away from him if it was God's will. From here, we can see that it was difficult for Jesus to choose the will of God. He did it, but it wasn't easy. At the same time, God's great plans for our lives are not going to be easy. They're the best, but they're not the easiest. However little or great the decisions that faces me, I pray that I may have discernment to choose what is right before God no matter how difficult the choices.

"Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near." - Isaiah 55:6

It is good to seek God. I remember hearing a message by Shep. David Brogi and I think he said (paraphrasing) you will never waste your time seeking God. It's so true. The wisest thing to do in this life is to seek God. 

I need to trust God. There's great peace when I trust him.

I'm reminded once again that God uses us to do great things when we are weak. It is so important for us to be humble before God. Completely honest, vulnerable, and humble before him. Time and time again, I try doing things all on my own again only get burnt up, frustrated, and weak. However in these weakest moments, God uses me. Why? Because it's not about me. It's for his glory. It's all for his glory.

wisdom

"For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." - 1 Corinthians 1: 25

"We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began." - 1 Corinthians 2: 6-7

"This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual worlds." - 1 Corinthians 2: 13

"Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding." - Proverbs 4: 7

I used to think there was one type of wisdom, but I was wrong. There are two types - wisdom of God and wisdom of the world. The least of God's wisdom surpasses the greatest wisdom of the world. The thing about wisdom is that anyone can choose to seek it. It's just that not many people do. However wisdom gives us discernment in knowing what to do in tough circumstances. Right now my prayer topic is to gain wisdom. I believe to gain wisdom, you need the Holy Spirit as well. The Holy Spirit is that one that will guide us through the decisions we make in our lives. I actually had a lot of things to say, but I can't seem to write now that I'm actually writing.

thoughts:

• The decisions you make today will impact your future. Be wise with the decisions you make today.
• Priorities matter. Time to set my priorities again.
• I heard this on the radio this morning, which I will be paraphrasing: often times we don't want to do the will of God because it's hard. We only know what God reveals, one step at a time. I thought this was quite interesting because that's what Moses did. He didn't want to do it because it was hard. That's what I do too. I give excuses because it's hard, but then God's plans are the best. (:
• I can't do things. I need to give them up to God.
• It's good to build other people up.

autumn

 It's definitely autumn. I love how the leaves all change colors. The trees are so beautiful. It just makes me smile watching the bright red, orange, and yellow leaves pass by them in a car. (:

peace

There is peace admitting that I cannot do it because I know that there is someone far greater who is working through me that can do it. Throughout junior year, I really had to rely on God because at certain times there was just too much work, too many due dates, and too many tests piled in one week. Sometimes I have that mentality that junior year was supposed to be the hardest year, so senior year should be a breeze. But it really isn't. In the same way I brought everything before God junior year, I need to bring it all before God. Even though things may not be working the way I expect them to, whenever I entrust something to God, he takes care of it. As I learned in TLC today, I must remain faithful to what God has given me. Even though I may not get recognized just as Mordecai's act in saving the king was not recognized at the time, my actions do matter. Your actions do matter. No matter how small or large they seem, if God wants you to do it, it's important. Sometimes I forget this and when nobody seems to care about anything, I want to stop caring too,  but then I have to remind myself, again -- "Who am I living for?" It truly is amazing how God uses people when they give Him the little faith they have. He multiplied two loaves and five fish. He healed the blind, the lame, and so on. Give Him the little faith that you have and trust Him. He will use you to do great things. I keep going on tangents, but often times we do hear "we will do great things" but great things really come from doing all kinds of little things. Going back to your actions, the small decisions you make now will great impact your future. The decision you make now as a kid, especially to seek God will definitely be beneficial as you get older. Hey, God always keeps his promises. He said if you seek Him, you will find Him. So however old you are reading this, make the decisions today that will honor God. If you keep pushing it off 'till tomorrow, you know tomorrow will not come for a very long time.

Thankfulness

Phrases that really stuck to my mind from the past two weeks:

- Go where you are needed, not where you are wanted.

- Change your attitude or change your name.

Hey, Thanksgiving is around the corner. Yes! However, I need to remember to be thankful even when it's not Thanksgiving. I am really thankful for today. Though it could have been a stressful day, I believe God was telling me to just enjoy it. The weather was so nice and most of my classes were pretty chill. I am so thankful that God listens to our prayers and he is trustworthy. It's so exciting when prayers are answered and it's amazing how God answers them! There's so much power in prayer. Don't forget that. But you have to believe and trust God when you pray. Without believing and trusting God can do big things, your prayers aren't worth much.

A lesson from a dreams:

- Things will not go the way I plan them. It's okay. God has the best plans.

Oh yes! I am so thankful that my 50mm is fixed now! Even the autofocus works. It was broken, but then I gave it to my friend. He followed some manuals, opened it up, took it to his internship at NASA, or something like that and now it's fixed! Thank God. Now I really have to go take fall pictures. Hopefully I can do that Saturday! (:

First quarter's ending this week. Whoa, time has gone by so quickly. At the same time, everyday is busy busy busy. I am constantly working on something or another, but there's peace.

"He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Chris our Lord, is faithful."

"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus"

"I can do all things through Him who gives me strength."

NHS Inductions this week. Woohoo. Planning fun.

APTAT || Camping

Yesterday I happened to find messages by John Piper and I chose one. If you have time, it's worth listening to: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/the-word-of-god-is-at-work-in-you. I was amazed how real the Bible is in his life and you can just recognize it by listening to him speak for only a few minutes. He really analyzes the Bible in depth and you can just see God working through his life. The one thing I really learned from it was APTAT. So what is this? It's not a real word, but it's an acronym.

Admit

Pray

Trust

Act

Thank Him 

It's a way of living. Whenever I face any problems, I need to admit that I am powerless. I can't do it without God. I am helpless. Then I need to pray specifically. During the message, John Piper talked about how it is important to hold onto verses, promises God has given us. We need to repeat such promises over and over to ourselves. Then I need to trust God that He will be with me, take care of the problem, etc. After that I can't just sit and pray. I must act and after everything is over, I need to thank Him. (:

APTAT. After listening to this, I realized I did have my own variation of this as I learned how to overcome struggles last year, but it's assuring to know that others do the same thing.  I need to remember to thank God. There's great assurance knowing that it is not by my power I do things, but through God's power. His power is so much greater.

I was reminded that I need to bring everything before God, not just the big things in life, but even the small things. (:

Prayer is powerful.

Yesterday/today the youth group went camping! It rained a bit, but it was a good experience. Sleeping in tents were somewhat uncomfortable but not too bad. It reminded me of Mexico... We were all so fascinated by fire. Why are we so fascinated by fire? As I kept watching the fire, I kept thinking of fire as a metaphor to the Christian life. We need to keep feeding the fire to watch it grow. In the same way, we need to keep feeding ourselves spiritual food for us to keep growing. And the analogy goes on and on...

On another note, flag football's not that bad as I remember it from freshman year...

new blog post to check out: http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/2012/10/she-clings-tightly-to-edge-of-pool.html

phew

Today I took my third and last SAT ever. It wasn't that bad while I was taking it but then I got extremely tired after.

thoughts:
- I would hate to live my life and in the end, realize everything I did was meaningless.
- Foundations & bases are really important. So I wanted to elaborate on this, but I can't seem write lately.
- People always surprise you.
- YAY I'm done taking the SATs.
- What to major it, what to major in...
- Lens might be fixed. Yay. (:
- Sleeping before eleven = a happier person.
- I need to take fall pictures.
- Need to finish college essays rather soon.

50mm

Sadly my 50mm prime lens took a fall yesterday and broke. I find it funny how random people have told me today that they are sad that my lens broke. It's extremely sad because I realize now, that it's gone, how much I actually used it, but I'm thankful as well. I realized how much I actually do have. I don't deserve to have all these - a DSLR. A year ago, I just had my little Kodak M1033, and now I have a DSLR. So thankful for this. I still have my kit lens (:

College Essays

"Describe the parts that add up to the sum of you."

I really want to write this essay, but I'm having such a hard time. Why? I don't know. I already wrote two essays, attempting to answer this question, but I didn't answer it. What are parts that add up to the sum of me? Should I stick with concrete ideas or not? I don't know. There's so many directions this essay can go, but here I am, stuck.

In my opinion, the difficult part of writing a college essays is the word counts. It's extremely hard putting certain feelings into words that communicate clearly to others.

Maybe I'll just choose another prompt. Maybe.

On another note, college essays make you think about your life - what you did, who you are, etc. It brings me back random memories.

God's Goodness

God is so good.

It feels like I haven't blogged in a while. Well, I did the other day, but that really doesn't count. Well, God has been teaching me a lot through Esther. Last Wednesday we watched Veggie Tales in TLC and it was really good. It reminded me that Esther was indeed brave, but she was human too. It took a lot of courage for her to be able to go up to the king without being summoned. I don't have circumstances like Esther did, but I can learn a lot from her. What stuck out to me the most from the video was when her cousin Mordecai came up to her and told her there was a reason for why she was the Queen even though couldn't see at the time. And when the time did come for her to take action, her decisions were important. Often times I feel like we fail to realize that our actions affect not only ourselves, but others as well. Well, I know I do. Sometimes I wonder why I'm placed in certain places at certain times and I don't know why in the beginning but I know that God always has the best for me. I just have to trust him, but when the time comes, I have to choose to live out the plan he has for my life. No one else can make the decision for me or live out my life for me.

Hmm, on another note. College applications. Whenever people ask me which colleges I'm applying to, they seem surprised by my answer. UMCP & UMBC. I've thought about applying to other colleges, but then, where would I go? Even if I did get accepted to a college out of state, it would be really expensive to go out of state. If I have to go to school for a long time, I might as well keep my debt low. I think I'll stick around Maryland a little bit longer. (:

This is a year of peace.
However, I have to keep choosing to trust God, which gets hard at times. It's easy to start worrying when things don't go the way I plan it, but there's always a reason. Always. I may never know, but there is.

YAY. I got my license yesterday. That's a long story in itself. So many things went wrong, but it all worked out. I was also praying for nice weather and it was so beautiful yesterday! Ah, anyways, long story short I would not have passed without God's grace and mercy. God is good. (: It actually seems surreal. Isn't it weird driving by yourself? Through the driving test God taught me that there are so many things that will be out of my control and when things are out of control, I can't do anything but pray. There's power in praying & believing. I got my license on 10/11/12!

“‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.” - Mark 9:23

Well today I finished taking my AP Bio quiz and then I was going to study for my English test. Then this guy tapped me on my shoulder and asks me if I did my stat vocab. And then I realized that I totally forgot about that part of the stat homework. Then I try to do some of it, but then whatever, I had homework passes. But then when I entered class, on the board it says "finish 5.2 vocab for homework." Yes! I have the weekend to do it now. Thank God. Sadly the forgetful part of me left my workbook somewhere in school. But, I asked someone to scan it to me.

God is good.

What's happening

• College applications.
• LHS Inductions coming up
• NHS Inductions coming up
• RP stuff @ MD Saturday.
• SAT soon.
• Camping next Friday.

the little things

Well, this past weekend I learned to be thankful for the little things. (:

The weather just plummeted yesterday night. Today was just really really cold. Anyways, I was really cold in first period and second period today because of the temperature change. Then in second period, I prayed for warmth. Guess what. Third period was warm. I literally walked in and said "oh my gosh" because third period is always cold no matter what. Statistic is always cold, but today it was warm! God is good.

--
Psalm 37 & 73
I find it really cool how they're similar and their numbers are just flipped.

Responsibilities

There were new faces in TLC today! That was quite exciting. Though it seems like people who came in the past years seem to be too busy, we're seeing new faces. The leaders decided that this year we're going to try to focus on different characters throughout the year - hopefully one a month. Today we had a discussion on Esther and essentially responsibilities. Queen Esther went through a lot of things as a child. As an orphan, her uncle Mordecai raised her. When the King was looking for a new Queen, she was taken in along with other women to be considered to be the next Queen. She pleased the King and therefore she became Queen! However a heavy responsibility fell upon Esther. Haman created a decree that allowed him to kill Jewish people on a certain day. Mordecai urged Esther, as the Queen, to plead before the King.

Esther 4:

¹⁰ Then she instructed him to say to Mordecai, ¹¹ “All the king’s officials and the people of the royal provinces know that for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being summoned the king has but one law: that he be put to death. The only exception to this is for the king to extend the gold scepter to him and spare his life. But thirty days have passed since I was called to go to the king.”

¹² When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, ¹³ he sent back this answer: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. ¹⁴ For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

¹⁵ Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: ¹⁶ “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”

Despite being under all the pressure, Queen Esther chose to take upon the responsibilities God had given her and carried them out. Then this lead into another thing - responsibilities God has given us as Christians. Even though we're "only" teenagers and "only" in high school, we have the responsibility has Christians to tell others about him. It's definitely hard. I get so distracted with schoolwork and I like to be comfortable, but it was definitely a good reminder to spread the gospel. I believe there are other specific responsibilities God has given each person such as using the talents he has given us to glorify him to washing the dishes.

This discussion was really encouraging to me today. Just watching people partake in the discussion, I realized that there are people at Roosevelt living for God. Yes, we all have our weaknesses, but we're here to encourage and support each other. Apparently there's going to be a new Christian club that meets on Thursdays. I think their main focus is going to be in Bible studies, but it's great. I hope that more people may come to accept the salvation that comes through Jesus and be able to live their lives for Him! Ahh, it's the best decision you'll ever make.

Speaking of responsibilities, I feel like sometimes responsibilities can end up feeling burdensome. However, it's important that we choose to do the right thing under heavy circumstances. Look at Esther - look at the consequences her decisions brought. She saved the Jewish people from a genocide! Even though responsibilities can seem burdensome, let's trust God and be faithful to him. (: 

Though it may not seem like it, our decisions affect other people 

friends

Looking back throughout high school, I am so thankful for the friends God provided me with. I think I took it for granted that I had Christian friends, but now I realize that it's something special. I have friends who are seeking God in their life alongside me. I'm not alone. I'm so thankful that God prepared friends for me in advance in high school. He always knows what's best for me even when I don't. (:

It's not easy to have good friends either. To have a great friend, you have to be one too. It takes a lot of energy to build a relationship with someone, but in the end it's worth it.

--

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

--

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11: 28-30).

God has been gently reminding me to just come to him. God can handle it. He doesn't want to just hear about the big problems. He wants me to tell him everything that's concerning me. He doesn't want me to be burdened. Instead he wants me to trust him with all my heart that everything's going to work out. Unlike me, God's not concerned about everything going right at the moment. He's concerned about the end result. He's concerned about the condition of my heart. He wants me to keep growing and growing. I need to lay down everything before the king - the good and the bad. God works for the good of those who love him. (:

Do you believe it?