500th Times a Charm Right?

Ok. For real this time. I'm going to be a faithful blogger.

Sometimes I read things and want to share them, but their too long for Twitter and I try to let that also be my standard for Facebook statuses as well. Don't want to get out of hand and clog some newsfeed.

Anyway. I've been reading (I won't tell you how long) When People are Big and God is Small and just wanted to share a quick exert from what I read last night. The chapter is talking about Growing in the Fear of the Lord and this specific section was talking about growing in the fear of the Lord by looking at God's wrath. Here is a quick link from Tim Keller on what it means to "fear" God. Now to what I read:

We have been rescued from deadly peril and endless pain. But as we get farther from the day we were rescued, do we remember what we were saved from? Do we remember that we should have been crushed by God's wrath? Do we realize that, from our perspective, the cross is the greatest injustice that there will ever be: The Perfect One crushed in the place of sinners? And do we remember that there will be a divine judgement when God's wrath will be revealed (Rom. 2:5)? Hell teaches us about the fear of the Lord.

Mmmmm. That's so good. As we have been going through the Old Testament in Downline this semester I am reminded that one of the greatest things I can learn from the Israelites is my constant need to remember what the Lord has saved me from, and to let that drive me to fear the Lord and know that when I learn to fear the God of ALL, all of my others fears (no matter what they may be) vanish.

"I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of  your hands. I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land."   Psalm 143:5-6

Christa

I am Casey Anthony.

July 5th. Two thousand and eleven. A date that will live in infamy. Ok, so maybe it wasn't as devestating as Pearl Harbor, but I will remember that date for a very long time. Mainly because of the stark contrast between that day and the day before it. July 4th the mood was: Yay we love America. July 5th. America stinks. This was the day that Casey Anthony was aquitted of murdering her daughter. Now let me just give you a little background and let you know that I began watching the case on Day 6. I watched it every single day that I could. I became very knowlegable in the judicial system. So much so, my mom was convinced that I could be a lawyer from watching the trial (She truly is my biggest fan. She would cheer me on if I told her I wanted to win the Super Bowl in tennis.) I digress. Anyway, as I watched the trial I, like so many other Americans, was sure that Casey Anthony was guilty of killing her daughter. I was not sure that it was pre-meditated and all of that, but she had something to do with her daughter's disappearance and murder. I, in all of my knowledge and education, just knew that she was going to prison for a very long time. She was SO guilty. Then here comes July 5th. I remember watching and waiting for the verdict. I was ridiculously and unexpectedly so nervous. I'm not really sure why. I remember when they said not guilty of 1st degree murder thinking that she had DEFINITELY gotten manslaughter. Wrong. I was so shocked and just really disgusted as I watched her and her team of lawyers overjoyed at the verdict. I honestly could not watch it. I quickly just tried to forget about it, although this was such a huge deal and it was everywhere. I tried to remember that no matter what I thought this was not the most important judgement day of Casey Anthony's life, and no matter what she had done I needed to pray that the Lord would see fit to have mercy on her and open her eyes to His free gift of grace had she not already received it, because if you understand Hell you understand that we all deserve it and that you would wish it on no one. Which leads to my next point.

It wasn't until a few weeks later, that the Lord really showed me something so great and enlightening in my negative thinking about the verdict: I am Casey Anthony. Casey was put on trial for murdering her daughter. I believe that anyone that has watched any bit of it can agree that she had something to do with it. But she was aquitted. She was found not guilty of murdering her daughter and did not have to pay the price for the murder that I assume she did. So here is where I come in. I am guilty. Everyday of my life I am guilty of sinning against a righteous and holy God. But in my case there is PLENTY of evidence to convict me. Yet because I have accepted the gift of God sending his only son to die for MY sin I am counted as not guilty. I get off free. The punishment for my sin has already been paid and I stand forgiven and debt free. And let me just clarify that I had to accept this gift. It is not my default option and it was not enough for me to just have knowledge of the gift. Just as when anyone offers you a gift, it is not yours until you take it. I am sure we have all bought gifts for someone and they ended up just sitting around our house for a long time. We had a gift for that person, but they had not yet received it. In the same way, we must receive the gift that God has offered us through His Son. And that's more than just some bible school prayer or a sobbing walk down the aisle. It is a gift that leads to repentance and a life change. A gift that continues to give and I grow more and more in seeing my previous state as a totally convictable sinner, enemy against God, but was redeemed from punishment by the blood of Christ.

"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew now sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Cor. 5:21

Done.
Christa

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July to everyone!! As irritated as I can be with our society and culture sometimes, I am ever so grateful for the freedom that I have in this country. My prayer for myself and my other brothers and sisters in this country is that we will not take our freedom for granted in the area of boldly proclaiming the hope that we have in Christ. On the day when I celebrate the freedom I have living in this country, I can not help but be reminded of brothers and sisters in other countries that daily risk their lives to share their hope with others. So happy Independence day! Let the reminder of this freedom many of us have urge us to not be content to sit on our freedom, but that we will go about "proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance." (Acts 28:31)

Excuses.

So as I promised (because I know that you are all just dying to know) I must fill you in on how my time at court for jury duty went. I must say it was a great experience. Of course things did not get started until 30 minutes after I was supposed to be there. In the previous post I predicted that it would be more like a social event. Well not so much at first. I walked in, you know, the awkward walk in where you want to just stop and look around and take in everyone that is there to see if you know anyone, but you don't want to because it is also at that point that everyone in the room will turn to look at you and see if they know you. Many of you college students know exactly what I am talking about. It's happened at least twice a year for however many years you've been in college. And you know how everyone sits just perfectly spaced out so you're not too close to the people seated around you. And you look around just HOPING that there is a big gap left open so you don't have to awkwardly choose which persons GIANT personal bubble you are going to violate. Luckily there was a gap left for me. So there I was sitting in a court room full of people I did not know (at least as far as I knew). Who knew there were so many people in my county that I did not know. Then began the roll call where I learned that a few people that I do know had skipped out on jury duty and their names would be turned over to the sheriff's office. Ruh roh. (Don't worry I gave them a heads up). Next we were told the list of things that would allow us to be excused from serving. Oh. My. Goodness. The excuses these people had. I was cracking up by the end because it was so ridiculous. So these are the things I could have done to get out of jury duty:

1. There was one point where I could be excused if I had been convicted of a felony. One lady did raise her hand for this one. I almost followed suit.
2. It crossed my mind to stand up and scream while crying "I'm emotionally unstable!!"
3. Am I the primary caregiver to someone? Yes. It's my day to cook lunch.
4. I also wanted to stand up and tell him how "involved" I am in the Casey Anthony trial.
5. There is a rule and I quote I "shall not be a common gambler or habitual drunkard." If this doesn't sound like something off of Andy Griffith I don't know what does. Although I do not qualify for either of those things I still thought it was funny.

I am sure that one of these would have worked. But I persevered and stayed. I took 2 oaths which qualifies me for gas money and a per diem. Not bad for a day at the courthouse. After all of the excuses, my chances for serving increased a lot. They said they were choosing 20 jurors and there were about 50 people left. We were dismissed for a short recess, where I wish I would have stood up and asked where the playground was. Like any recess I've ever been involved in this is where the social gathering began. We then returned to court where we would find out if we had been chosen to serve. I must admit I became a little fearful of serving when they brought in the inmates wearing their nice stripes that were sitting just a few benches up in front of me. One was just hanging out with his fam that had came to support him. It was so cute. 3 members of his family, whether intentionally or not I don't know, were also wearing fat horizontal stripes. How cute. Anyway. I was not a chosen juror randomly selected, but was quite entertained for a few hours. If you ever get the chance to serve please do. It's a great experience.

Getting good!

So this is me getting better at my blog posts! Twice in 1 week. I'll take it. I think my life is getting aquainted to my blog. Now things will happen and I will say to myself "Oh SELF we need to blog about that." It's all about finding that balance between what people really would like to know and what we just all THINK they would like to know. Like that awkward moment when you are in the middle of a long story and realize the person you are telling actually does not want to know the story as much you convinced yourself that he/she did. Not that that's ever happened to me before or anything. Ok it's happened to me more than I'd like to admit.

Anyway, I had the chance this past week to put into practice the lesson learned from a my last major experience with the spider that I blogged about some time ago (If you missed it read here). An opportunity was presented for me to remove some, what I were told were, dead bugs from a bathtub. Dead bugs? I can totally do dead bugs. Welp. I got the dead bugs out. I went back in a few minutes later to use the restroom and here was a...you guessed it... big spider in the tub. Here's how things went down in my brain:

GASSSP. He's huge. Wait. We have supposedly learned a lesson about this already. Ok I will go grab my flip or flop. I don't know which one is which. Wait. I need to wear shoes in case it runs so fast out of the tub and gets on the floor. Because if it touches my foot I will just DIE. I will put on flip and flop and grab another shoe. Ok ready. Return to the bathroom. He's not there. I bet he's behind the door waiting to attack me. Nope not there. Shake the shower curtain. Yelp. There he is. Just do it.

And he died. I will say in his defense that he was not as big as the one from the other story, but he was probably about 2 inches in diameter (including his legs, after all those are the worst things). Think about how NOT scary spiders would be if they didn't have any legs. Yeah too bad they do. Eight of em. Another funny thing is how I was still a little skeptical to pick it up with a piece of toilet paper. It all goes back to irrational fears. Like it's going to resurrect and put itself back together and eat me. Like I said totally irrational. But I will say this time I cut the time it took for me to kill it by a lot! One step in the right direction. I've got more about dealing with fears, but lets not blog about everything at once.

Welp. I have been summoned for jury duty here in Webster County. I will spend my Monday morning giving back to the county that has given me so............. well I don't know about all that. But thanks for letting me live here. I was SUPER excited at first because I have been glued to the Casey Anthony trial, but then I realized that the chances of me getting something as interesting as that are zero to none, one because stuff like that just doesn't happen here in Mayberry, and second because chances are large that I will know whoever it is that's going to court (or at least pretend like I do to get off). It will go like this:

Juror picker: Ms. Hudson, do you know Mr. ______ ? (I'm not sure why it's a man)
Me: Yes sir.
Juror picker: Are you biased?
Me: I'm totally biased.
Juror picker: Will you listen to the evidence from both sides and make a fair assessment?
Me: Probably not.

Honestly, some folks of Webster County have told me that it is not likely that they will even have to go to court so this whole "jury duty" thing will probably be more like a big social gathering for everyone that was summoned. Yay. Can't wait.

So I will definitley keep you posted on how that goes. That's all for now! Ta ta!!

No bueno.

I have been no good at this blog thing. I really want to be though. So I am trying harder. Startiiiiiing NOW. I am working on my discipline this summer. Since I can not fix all of the things I need to be disciplined in at once I will start with a few things. My blog will be one of them.

(Discipline starting)

The last couple weeks have been great. I have really had great fellowship with friends. That is one of the first things I began to miss being away from Starkville. This past weekend I was in the Delta for Mr. and Mrs. Swindoll's wedding. It was such a beautiful wedding. I do not usually cry at weddings, but apparently this wedding was an exception. I think so much of it has to do with the fact that I have grown so much in my understanding of what that day means and represents. What a blessing it is that God chooses to give us a small glimpse of His love and devotion to us through marriage here on earth. It's so funny because I found myself so content in my singleness at that wedding (which I will confidently say is the opposite of what is expected for a gal my age at a good friend's wedding). Seeing how much this couple loves each other is just a tiny glimpse of how much God loves me and is devoted to my good and well being unconditionally. So as great as I think marriage will be I can always say that I do have something better. Now may I remember this in the years to come. :) Chad and Edna, your wedding was absolutely beautiful and I am so excited that the Lord has blessed you both with the opportunity to experience that beautiful picture with each other!

This also brings me to something else that I read this past week that I want to share. It is a quote from C.S. Lewis a.k.a. Clive. Yes. We are on a first name basis.

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

John 15:11 "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full."

Psalm 16:11 "...in your presence there is fullness of joy."

John 14:27 "...not as the world gives do I give to you."

Fullness of joy is only available through Him. Not through marriage, not through money, or the right job, house, car, family, dog, clothes, food, lamp, couch, lawn mower (my dad's cutting the grass right now), tv, etc. etc. Clive was right. For too long, we have been far too easily pleased.

On a side note watching my frand play the guitar this weekend was the straw that broke the camels back to push me to learn to play. I have been saying for over a year now that I wanted to learn. So I have officially began (another knotch on my "work on your discipline" belt). So far I have 3 raw fingers, and can play 3 chords and the chromatic scale and have diligently practiced.....drum roll please..... 2 nights in a row (I started Monday). So far so good.

Went outside to take my dad some water in the middle of this post and realized that it is a BEAUTIFUL day. So I shall eno and read and work on my discipline. :)

Love

I feel like anytime I sit down to write, my thoughts are so scattered and this would turn into one of the longest posts EVER. So, instead I will just share some verses. Afterall, they do not return void and my words SURELY will. So a big focus area in my life right now is love. Not the romantic type, despite the efforts of the elderly ladies in my church. The type of love that I am not able to understand apart from understanding the Gospel and the love of Christ. Literally anytime I think of love I am pulled to evaluate what I really mean by saying it and is it the same type of love Christ displays. The more I have grown to understand the love of Christ the more heartbreaking it is to look at the definition put out by our culture. The conditional, self-seeking, unenduring definition of love. So I share these verses just to shed some light on what love really is and what it is not.

"...God is love." 1 John 4:8 If God IS love, then apart from Him I can not know what love truly is.

"We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19

"but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8 This is how he loved me FIRST. I didn't love Him and he died for me.

"If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same...But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful." Luke 6:32-33;35-36 Christ demonstrated His love for us (Romans 5:8) so that through Him we may be able to demonstrate the same type of love to everyone.

"For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised." Colossians 5:14-15

"Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all of our days." Psalm 90:14

"Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you." Psalm 63:3

Please know that the only thing in our lives that will never change is God's love for us. That's for certain. It is from everlasting to everlasting. And understanding that love, as hard as it may be sometimes, is huge in living the life in the joy and peace that Christ intended for us no matter what our circumstances are, how bad someone has hurt us, or how much we think we may have the "right" to not love, because God (being perfect, righteous, and holy) has the ultimate "right" to not love but loves us anyway. Think about it. :)

I just wanted to share this picture, uhhh, because I love her a lot. And maybe just because she is so stinking cute. :)

Thankful

Today I am just so thankful for a gracious, merciful God. I am so thankful for a God that is able to love me and works things for my good through my mess. I am thankful for a God that although sending His Son for me was already far more than I deserved, He does not stop there. Upon believing and accepting the death and resurrection of His Son as a payment for my sins he sealed me with the promised Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13) to grow even closer with Him and enjoy His presence like no other. All this even when I set him aside. Even when I look to other things in my life to bring me joy and satisfy me, which let me say, they never do. His mercies are new every morning and His love is steadfast. He is the only person that truly knows me from the inside out yet he still loves me.

I attended David Platt's Secret Church on Good Friday of this year and he said something that really stood out. The orphanage he and his wife were adopting their first son from had to testify in court that no one wanted the boy they were trying to adopt. He said person after person sat on the stand and said "No one wants him...No one wants him... No one wants him." All the while he and his wife wanted to jump up and scream "WE WANT HIM!" He was giving the illustration that this is what the Lord does for us. But what really set deep with me was the realization that God -- the only person who knows everything about me. He knows how desperately sick and deceitful my heart is. He sees all of the sin in my life daily. He sees everything I hide from everyone else. He sees the stuff that no matter how much anyone in my life says that they love me, if they saw all of this about me, they would not love me, but HE says I WANT YOU. He. Wants. Me. He is the only person, in his holiness and perfection, that could JUSTLY say I want nothing to do with her, yet he loves me more than anyone else could ever imagine. That my friends is so amazing to me. It is the truth that I want tattooed on my forehead. :) He loves me, He delights in me, He desires to spend time with me. And let me tell you (in case you haven't heard) this is not some special connection I have with God. That's Him. He feels the same way about every single person He created. His love is unconditional, unfailing, and from everlasting to everlasting. Heck HE IS LOVE (1 John 4:8)! I do not even know what love is apart from him.

So today I am thankful, for the opportunity to spend time with Him, and despite my wanderings, like a good shepherd, He leads me, and he says to me "..I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord." Hosea 2:19-20 FOREVER. In rightousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy, and faithfulness. I am His. And I am thankful.

Lessons in Obedience

I would say one of the biggest lessons for me over the past year has been obedience. OH yes, it sounds so simple, but it can be OH so complicated. I would like to take it back to a few months ago, when an event sparked my interest in starting to blog (months ago, thats how long it took me to actually do it.)

So one morning I got up and went downstair to our laundry room and when I walked back out of the laundry room a massive spider had emerged out of our storage area. Now, let me just say I know that people have a tendency to exaggerate in these types of stories (spiders, fish, snakes, lizards, etc.) but please know that when I say it was huge, I mean it was huge. It takes two hands to make the circle as big as he was (don't ask me why I automatically said he was a "he". I'm sure there's some deep psychological reasoning, maybe on another post.). So despite the fact that the spider is a good 15 feet from me I, gracefully, hop up on the loveseat to protect myself. I yell to one of my roommates to please come downstairs and bring shoes. Because of course thats the only reason I could not kill it, because I did not have on shoes. It had nothing to do with how large it was or anything. She comes downstairs and brings me shoes to put on to kill it. This was not what I had planned. So I am now "equipped" to kill the spider, but that is not exactly what happens. Let me remind you that he is in the middle of the floor. Wide open space, and I have plenty of opportunity. Well being the brave soul that I am, I manage to stare at him and freak myself out so much, that it took me 30 minutes to finally kill him, and by the end of his life, I was 30 minutes older, our living room had been completely rearranged because he moved, and I had a full day of reminiscing on this event.

This was one of those things that shortly after it happens I think "Oh my gosh, you are so dumb." Let me be really honest though and tell you that this happens so much in my spiritual life. I often look back on things that I have done and things that have happened and think to myself "self, that was really dumb." But seriously, here is where the lesson in obedience comes in. While I was psyching myself out, I was also trying to be realistic by telling myself things like I am so much bigger than him, and asking myself questions like what do you think is going to happen and my answers were SO unrealistic. Like he'll eat me, or a giant convoy of others are waiting behind the curtain, or somehow I'll miss him and he'll bite me and I might die. Again, so unrealistic. But that is me in so many situations in life sometimes. I have every opportunity and am more than equipped to do what the Lord has called me to do, but I psych myself out or just wait. I have all of these fears that may even seem realistic, but when I hold them up against God's Word and what I know to be truth, they are so unrealistic. You see, the thing is, I could have killed that spider in the very beginning, when he was in the middle of the floor and it would have been over. No dancing around him in my living room for 30 minutes. No 30 minutes of straight fear and anxiety. It would have just been done. Instead I wasted 30 minutes just to do what I could have done to begin with. I wonder how often I really do that with God. How often do I just sit around and think about what I know the Lord wants me to do or just postpone doing it because of fears that I may have or things I may not understand. It all reminds me of the story in Genesis 19 with Lot being warned about the destruction of Sodom. Just as Lot was warned of the destruction to come, the Lord graciously does the same thing to me, and at times I just sit there. After Lot had been warned twice in v. 16 it says "But he lingered..." He lingered. My tendency is to say, boy he's dumb. But then I look at my own life and see times where I have sat in Sodom after warnings of destruction and just as Lot was, I have had to be dragged out. In another attempt to do his own thing Lot asks to not flee to the hills as he is told but go to a city closer. His request is granted, but ends up leaving anyway because he was fearful in that city. But I love in v. 22 it says "But escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there." We are not able to experience the fullness of what Christ has intended for us until we learn to walk in obedience to what he has asked us to do.

O God, how I pray that we will daily remember the joy of obedience and times of disobedience. I pray that we will remember Your Son and the perfect example of obedience that was shown by His walk here on earth all the way to death on a cross. I pray that through His example and Your power that we may be obedient in the small and large things and grow everyday in trusting you and being more obedient.

Take some time to read Genesis 19 if you have the chance and please feel free to share any other passages on here that contribute to this, or not.

Dumb spider. This is me being super brave.

Let's try this...

So I have been debating for a while whether or not to start a blog. It actually was not whether or not I wanted to, it was just sitting down to do it. So I am finally settled into Mathiston for a while, so I find myself with plenty of time on my hands. It's a good time to start.

Again, like all of my other blogs I have started, I will warn you, that if you know me, I blog like I think so I may be all over the place at times. I really just want a place to share things that the Lord is so graciously showing me in my own life and how He is refining me daily. I feel like I am in a big transition right now, but I am so excited about these next few months of downtime to really seek the Lord like never before and spend so much time with him that if He were human he would be SO annoyed and think I was clingy, but it works for Him and I. :)

Tonight, I have spent enough time creating this silly thing, so maybe I'll sleep on a nice inciteful blog post to share tomorrow.

(I never know if I should put my name at the end of these things because clearly you know it's me if you're reading it. So this is me not putting my name at the end.) Holla! :)