BE STILL

Lately, God's been revealing to me a lot about the disgusting pride that I have ingrained in myself. PRIDE. I absolutely HATE it. And I have been realizing and am still realizing now more than ever that I have A LOT OF IT in me. A lot of my pride is subtle, like in many situations I didn't even think or realize that it was my pride that I'm wrestling with. Pride can come in many forms and manifests itself in different ways. Often times when I sin, I feel really bad and guilty and contrite afterwards. But many times I feel bad not so much because I broke God's heart and hurt Him but because I failed, I messed up, I scr*wed up. I feel bad because my pride was hurt. And I believe this is not what I should be feeling about sin. The focus needs to go back to God, not me.

Mmmmm these past two weeks since coming back "home" to America (home? what IS home? home = Heaven, right?) have been pretty crazy rough busy overwhelming in the sense that God's been working so mightily (He's ALWAYS at work) and teaching and revealing so much to me. I'm still processing all the things that happened and lessons learned during and post-VSET, which has been quite overwhelming because God has just been teaching and revealing A TON OF STUFF to me, especially through conversations with the leaders in ICA (Danny Akemi Vieng Sally). Kinda heavy on my soul. In addition to emotional/spiritual heaviness, I still have a million things that I need/wanna do like: continuing to email my students in Kyrgyzstan every day, reading up on VSET updates and updates from longtermers overseas, going to school every day and doing reading and homework (especially Russian homework), calling up and writing letters and updates to my supporters to thank them and fill them in, catching up with many many friends, TAWG and processing things from VSET, running and exercising, napping and resting, scrapbooking, unpacking and cleaning my room, applying to nursing school, cooking for my parents and serving them now that I live at home, reading the Bible more as well as good Christian books, finding a part time job because I need money to pay rent and also because I spend at least $50 a week on transportation/commute alone...

Meanwhile these thoughts are swarming at a rate of 3544563mph through my mind, I feel that time is zipping by so fast. 　I've barely had time to do half of the aforementioned list, let alone catch up on sleep during nighttime! Today during church service at Living Hope Evangelical Church, our co-pastor Danny gave this really awesome message on BEING STILL. Generally the verse that comes to mind about being still is Psalm 46:10:

"Be still and know that I am God."

But the other one that Danny focused on today was taken from Exodus 14:14, which says:

"The LORD will fight for you; YOU NEED ONLY TO BE STILL."

I was really spoken to through the message today. I think I really needed to hear that, to be reminded that despite all these things happening around me and inside of me, I need to just BE STILL in the presence of my God, knowing that He is near, that He will provide a solution for whatever difficulty or discouragement I am going through (just like He did for Moses and the Israelites at the Red Sea), and that He wants me to continue to trust Him as I go forward into the unknown (God commanded Moses to go forward and cross, not stop at the entrance of the Red Sea). And in the end, it's God's Love that has the last word. God wants me to know that HE LOVES ME.

Prayer Requests:
-that I BE STILL in the presence of GOD
-that I may obey God, even in the littlest ways
-for God's peace in my heart and soul
-for the faith to trust God with this upcoming year (being a recent college grad, jobless, somewhat directionless)
-that I may focus on BEING rather than DOING for God right now
-that this painful red swollen sty-thingy on my upper-left eyelid won't cause blindness or anything damaging/threatening to my eye and that the pain would subdue soon

Song of the Day (Week): Somewhere in the Middle - Casting Crowns