I don't know.

"I don't know how you swallow all I am, when I can't stand my taste".

That is how I feel right now.

In the past year, for some reason, God has taught me a lot about grace and how much of it has been bestowed upon me.  What a blessing.  While reflecting on that, I become somewhat scared, knowing that because of these revelations about grace that I was having, I would soon need to become focused on my sin and the evil in my life.  Obviously, this did not excite me.  I loved, so much, learning about grace and finding it more and more obvious in my life.  Grace is a happy thing to learn about, something that is intriguing and life changing.  In my mind, I assumed that I could never be focused on such a happy topic for so long.  At some point I would have to focus on the hard things.  SIN.  For some reason, I thought that this would all be very bad, and that I would hate learning these things.  I could not have been more wrong.

Quite recently, I have been faced with the thought of my sin.  Not only that I have it, but sins in my life specifically, that I have hidden from God and myself.  I am naturally a very self sufficient person.  I do not like to talk about my sin with anyone.  Including myself.  So at first, when all of these things were coming at me, I hated it.  I got so overwhelmed, thinking that there was no way I could ever even begin to fix these things in my life.  I HATE it.

I was stupid.

In learning about my sin, I have come to hate it.  Which only makes God more amazing.  The fact that He loves me despite it.  How can He love someone that has all of these hate worthy qualities.  It is hard for me not to hate myself sometimes.  When I think about everything that is wrong with me.  I am so wrong and evil at the core.  It is just hard.  But then I realize that Jesus is in me.  He is perfect.  Therefore, there is something good in me.  What a relief.

Why He loves me is still a mystery.  I think that it always will be.  But that is okay.  The mystery of His love is what makes it so amazing.  "I don't know how you swallow all I am, when I can't stand my taste".  That is exactly how I feel right now.

...

1 John 5:14-15 "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, he hears us.  And if we know that He hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked Him for." TRUTH

John 3:30

     So I am a Young Life leader at Westerville North High School.  I think that Young Life is the best ministry for high schoolers, and I don't only think that because I'm bias.  I just think Young Life does the best job of relating to kids right where they're at and giving them exactly what they need, Jesus.
     Anyways, through my leading, I have experienced more and more the fact that I am absolutely nothing.  Not nothing in the way that I mean nothing, nothing in the sense that God is everything.  Basically, He must become greater, I must become less.  God has shown me that He doesn't need me.  But He uses me none the less.  Amazing.  Sometimes I feel like I am not doing enough, meeting enough girls, loving them enough...and for some reason, I feel that their salvation is dependent upon that.  As if my existence in their life is going to change their lives.  I have recently learned that this couldn't be farther from the truth.
     Feeling as though I am responsible for saving the hundreds of students at Westerville North has given me an unreal amount of stress lately.  I have been blessed to find out that that simply is not true.  God changes people.  Jesus changes people.  The cross saves lives.  Not me, or anything I can do.  This is quite possibly the greatest news ever, aside from the grace of the cross.  It gives me the FREEDOM to share Christ with people and let Christ take over.  It gives me the FREEDOM to love girls, but have them depend on Christ instead of myself.
     I'm glad that even when I do absolutely nothing, I can know and be confident in the fact that God is still going to work, and still going to change the girls at Westerville North who so desperately need Him, as I do.

Renewed power of prayer.

     Tonight was the first time I have ever given a club talk.  I gave my talk on the story of Zacchaeus and how Jesus made a point to spend time with him.  If you know me at all, you know that one of the last things I would enjoy doing is being the center of all attention in front of 120 high school students.  But tonight, that is exactly what I did.  For the past four weeks I have been in preparation and constant prayer for this night, due to the fact that I knew I would most likely suck at it.
     I whole-heartedly believe that it is because of that prayer that my talk went even remotely well.  High schoolers sat and listened to me talk about Jesus for 10 minutes and I hope and pray more than anything that someone left changed.  That they all left changed.  Not because of what I said but because of what God laid on their hearts while I was blessed enough to be able to be the one delivering Jesus' gospel.  I was FREE to do things and be things that my natural self is not.
     Prayer has a renewed power for me tonight.  I am in no way qualified to do what I did.  But because of this blessing of a ministry that God has given me, I was transformed.  And that is what prayer did for me.  God did that for me. Ptl.

Hello

So this is my first post.  I do not really know what exactly I want to write on this.  Lately I have been extremely interested in reading other people's blogs, so I just decided to make my own.

I am excited about this because there are so many times that I will read something or hear something and I will want to write or share what I think about it.  I do journal, but some things are just too long and thought out to actually write down.  I think this blog will make it easier and more fun. :)