Secular Themes

As I'm reading "The Purpose Driven Life," I'm seeing that seemingly harmless secular themes are actually evil. Themes such as "do what makes you happy" and "find fulfillment in friends and family" do not give God glory. It's impossible to find fulfillment in anything other than God. And it's sin to pursue something out of selfish ambition.

Anxiety

The biggest fear of mine is not being loved--loving others more than they love me. But perfect love casts out all fear. My love is not perfect nor is the love of others. Only God's love is perfect.

In order to feel totally secure, I need to love my Creator and embrace His love for me.

Lord, may I depend on you and not other people for love.

What is bringing out this fear is my birthday party. I just want to be with the people I love, but I'm afraid that people would rather do other things than come to my birthday party. I still can't believe it when certain people I view as "popular" want to hang out with me. That's not healthy. But I sometimes live in fear that I'll ruin my friendships with them. That I won't be everything they think I am.

Despite my best efforts, I'm not that big of a deal.

Be Enough

Lord, I need you to make me lean into you. Why can't I see that you are so incredibly beautiful all the time? I need you right now because I am having a hard time being satisfied in you alone. I'm having a really hard time tonight because I was expecting today to go a little differently. I was expecting something magical to come out of my conversation today with Mr. High-five. And it didn't.

I don't want this to be a dull summer.

I need to pray for my prayer group more.

I need to do my homework more.

I need to be humble.

I need to be less legalistic.

I trust You. Now I need to lose the attitude. Even when I complain about boys to my friends, I can feel that you do not want me to behave that way. How should I behave? Like a queen. Like a strong, trusting, passionate leader.

P.S.

Can I please just say something that is funny to my person?

Ok, so I prayed about who Mr. Jacket would be to me and I thought i heard God said that he would be a source of pain in my life. I was like...great. I'm not sure if I heard God correctly here, but it's funny because I was playing ultimate frisbee with some friends and Mr. Jacket throws me the disc. Well, I try to catch the disc and end up spraining my ankle.

I suppose I might've heard God correctly :) He has so far been a great source of pain, just not in the way I was expecting. Hahaha

But I really think I heard God tell me that Mr. High-five would be a good friend because it was in a time when I wanted him to be more than that, so it wasn't like I heard my voice telling me what I wanted to here. And then I just ignored High5 so I could get over him. I wasn't expecting a blossoming friendship, but here we are. Blossoming.

God, you're more incredible than I thought you were.

The Conversation

Mr. High-five is really generous. He took me grocery shopping because I needed a ride. He was already going shopping, but still it was generous. It was a fun change to go grocery shopping with a guy. Guys eat a lot. He spent more than double what I paid.

Anyway, during our outing he mentioned that Scott said that he (Mr. High-five) should talk to me about the best version of himself. I apparently have a gift for seeing how people can be their best. Scott and I discovered recently that God gave me a gift in that area, so he sent some business my way.

I honestly don't know if it's a special gift because I feel like most people are able to do it. But either way, I was looking forward to having this conversation and practicing my superpower.

So today was the conversation. Oh Mr. High-five. I never thought we would be good friends. But here we are. Sitting in my room having a deep conversation as though we are good friends. So I tell him about his great qualities and how I see him being even more of who God wants Him to be. I miss some points so he fills in the gaps. We take time to let God speak into his life, and He does. God. You. Are. The. Best. God. Friend. Lover. Ever.

Lord, I pray that Mr. High-five and I can continue being and becoming better friends. And please don't let me get proud in this gift of imagination. I pray that I will humbly imagine people's lives in a precise way that is in line with your will. And as I spend time in prayer, please give me vision for people's lives and let me speak those images into being by your power for your glory. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Phew. It's been SO REAL.

I also might've put my tank top on backwards in my preoccupation with Mr. High-five's arrival. I'm still such a girl.

Also, I prayed for God to give me more flowers and through Erin He gave me my favoritest of flowers--a precious rose. :) Thank you, Erin! That was such a surprise.

Flowers

I wanted flowers to press so I could make pretty pictures with them. But I thought about my serious lack of flowers and how I didn't want to take other people's flowers in thievery.

So I prayed for flowers.

Lo and behold a few hours later I walk out of my bedroom and find that sitting in the kitchen's trash can is an old yet still pretty bouquet of flowers. PERFECT! So I got the flowers that weren't touching trash and they are now being pressed between all of my spare textbooks.

Thank you, LORD. Please send more beautiful flowers and leaves! I love you. So this is intimacy. I want more!

Night of Prayer

So basically my blog titles are all kind of the same. Oh well.

I got to pray for so many people tonight!

I prayed for a girl who wanted to hear God speak to her more--have more intimacy with Him. She was frustrated that she couldn't hear Him on her own. She didn't want to feel like she had to pray with other people to hear God.

I got to pray for another girl whose shoulder was hurting. After we prayed, the pain was significantly reduced. Praise God that a lot of the pain went away.

Prayed for another girl who went to a crazy Muslim meeting addressing "Who is Jesus?" It was kind of faith-rattling. Got to pray spiritual protection over her. God is good.

We made some prayer cover for a girl who went to the beach with some Christians to have the big talk about becoming a Christian.

Prayed for another girl who was having a hard time processing grief over her grandma dying. God did some healing in her tonight. We prayed for God's peace to reign and for Him to help her sleep tonight without using Niquil. God is SO good. What's crazy about this is that last night I had a vivid dream where a guy was pouring his heart out to me about the pain he was going through. I said that I didn't know what to say. He just looked at me through teary eyes and said, "Could you just hold me?" So tonight a similar thing happened with this girl. She poured out her heart through tears and said, "Could you hold me, please?" So I did. In both cases.

I love praying for people. Thank you Jesus for being so faithful and loving. We don't deserve You, but we need You and love You.

Also prayed for a random guy I knew from last year. He started talking about how he needed to get back with Jesus. We prayed through that.

aaaaaaaah. satisfying. God is moving moving moving. Thank you, Lord. You are so exciting.