ROMANS 3

So I was reading through Romans and in Chapter 3 Paul talks about how we are all under the power of sin from birth but God is righteous to judge us all. So does that mean that babies go to hell?

I think that this fear can be inferred here but I don't think this is what Paul is getting at. 'm not sure exactly what he is getting at but I can infer that some in Rome were making an argument that God was unfaithful because His people were and also that Christians were being accused of saying that they should have a license to sin because when they are forgiven it highlights God's goodness.

Image bearers of God -what a beautiful thing

Though marred through the fall humanity still bears the image of God. I have been in some pretty tough places teh last couple of months and my friends have really showed up. Jen and James have let me live with them and they have been so generous. Samuel has helped me with my car picking me up for class and ferrying me places and tonight as Jen and I were working on my car a man stopped to help us with it. He did not know us but he worked hard to try to fix it. Though marred hunamity still bears the image of God.

God has if for no other reason pun me at FWBBC to find soem men to restore my image of men with.
-Jared
-Stephen
-Jacob
-Thomas
-Samuel
-Kevin

They respect women, treat them like queens, opne doors, pull out chairs and not because they are beautiful or the men want to date them but because they are women and deserve to be put on pedestals. These men care for womens hearts and want love and companionship and tenderness and beauty and understanding in return. They are not predetors who seek so they can get but they have hearts some wounded that are able to be wounded and need love and desire romance. They are men, strong, dominant, masculine, but they also need to be sheltered. I did not believe men were like this. I thought they could not be hurt because they did not care and had no desire to be loved but that is not true. Men are just as in need of love and vunerable and able to be hurt as women. They want love to not just bodies. They need to recieve in relationships too. They want to give to a lady and make her feel loved not to try to ignore her or sleep with her but so that she can feel loved. Mens hearts hurt and want to fix womens hearts.

Do I really need faith?

God has been speaking to me that I need to have faith. That I need to just believe His word is true and that I will not be able to approach all doctrinal things logically some of will just have to be excepted. He has shown that He is present in this life and involved in mine so must just trust Him and accept that His word is true. He will take care of those not believers about apologetics and arguments that is not my job. Faith must be the foundation stone before He can start adding Christian character into my life: love for others, self control, patience, perserverence, etc. (2 Pet. 2:1-8, Gal. 5:22-23). Beliveing Him without more proof is the first step. He has shown Himself worthy now I just need to believe that and trust Him not fearing teh unknown: that He might not be real or not be of upstandign caring character.

My week

Prayer needs:
-Money for Bulgaria and if I should add that to this summer ($2500)
-A place to live that is not my house (preferably without me having to work)
-A Christian community
-How to get all of my meds filled for the summer

What God has been saying this week
-Don't be scared. There is much darkness, serial killers exist people live with no empathy for others. Evil is out there. How can I deal with that? I training to be a counselor, I can't deal with that reality. Answer: I don't have to. God is the light that stepped into the darkness and depravity, it is His job to carry this suitcase. It is too heavy for me.
-Sexual sin is a reality that I need to be aware of and on guard against and the way I need to guard right now is not yoking myself with someone who will not be equal to me. Not meaning less or more worth but maturity, ect. there is a guy that I like but he is not a mature Christian and right now does not show a heart rending for sin. Me wanting him has caused me to dull my heart to God and wanting a sinless life and wanting His things. I need to guard myself from choosing a mate that will not edify me.
-Mercy: God's grace and restoration to be able to want the things HE wants and to work in His kingdom for His things and to pick up where I left off by repenting is always available. If I want to turn back to God He will let me and I get to start walking with Him again.

Ravish me so I may be chaste

BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,	5
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:	10
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee. -John Donne God forgives me when I wander away and choose men over Him. I repent and He forgives me. He allows me to follow Him again and even reminds me of life with Him, all He has done for me, and promises to do for me but the first guy that comes along that I find mildly attractive or the first opportunity I have to present my past life to people for acceptance I take it. I leave God a thousand times a day. I say to Him I know that You have the true answers but I want the world's answers. I keep thinking it won't all fall on my head. If can keep repenting God won't let it fall on my head and eventually I will believe God has the answers and want His answers more than the worlds but I keep getting seduced by the world in seconds I choose it over God. I am so sorry God. Please help me. Please I want to follow You help me to want to follow you more than I want the things of the world. Please my heart seems weaker. I can't stop revive my heart again. I repent for choosing men and the things of the world over You: mans opinion, romance, sex, cigarettes, comfort, lack of emotional pain, etc.. God I believe in your forgiveness, renew my heart. I am here and I surrender. I wait. Sara

You made a man lame? Why?

God causes things to happen to show that is what is needed for that situation. This smacks at my sense of justice to say "So you screw things up just so you can show that are you the one who can fix them?" That's stupid and it causes me undue pain! What kind of God would do that or need to do that to be known?" Then I realize how brilliant and merciful that is. God catches our notice so we can see Him to be saved. God will cause despair so that we can see that He is our Joy all so that we can believe in Him and be saved. It is not about God fixing our lives it is about Him being known and us being saved. I don't like it but I also love it. My problem is that I like comfort too much and when God does not give it to me I don't like it. I don't want to see things His way but when I do what He does starts to seem more logical I may not like it but I can see why He does it and I can say I don't understand you with peace and not fear.

worship

When God is tender and loves me it makes me want to prostrate myself at His feet and let it be spoken that He is much and I am little. I keep thinking that it comes by power and by force but it doesn't.

smoking

i got so bad that i was willing to tempt karen to be able to smoke. i realized that i had been blocked from Gods presenc and had not talked to him in daye accept in fear. when i threw the cig out i felt reliefe and love immediatly and i knew that i was sinning when i was smoking.

trouble

I desire to be so intimate with God but I am not able to be the kind of person that will allow that communion. I have too many questions and unholy irreverent anger. i know the things I fear and feel are wrong but I can't help feeling them. I am angry at God when I don't understand and no amount of practice helps my heart from being irreverent. I am prideful and constantly focused on myself and how to be loved and safe. I don't care about God except for a few stolen moments that don't last and that catch me unaware. I wish to be holy. i long to be able to do the right things and to react to God in the right way naturally but it is not natural for me and it is not what is in my heart and when I am flustered and not on guard, that true self comes out and shakes her finger in God's face and says "How dare you not be who I think you should be! How dare you not live up to my understanding and How dare you hide yourself from me and do things and be things that I can not understand and that make my heart have to believe you are who you say you are even when I see things that seem contrary to who you say you are?" In all of my theology classes it seems that all we do is make excuses for God and explain away the behavior that we do not see matching up to what You said You are like. It reminds me of a wife that is being abused, who explains away the husbands abusive behavior. I know that i have crossed that line that Job would never cross. i have done the irreverent thing I have asked questions too far but I don't know what else to do. i long to be like Job and David who poured out their hearts to God yet never wavered. they never crossed that line of lack of belief or abuse against God. I am not that way a bump in the road hits and i forget all of Gods good behavior and distrust him all over again. I don't know God and i don't know how to make sure that I will know the real God and not just the God of my creation because I can never make heads or tails of the Bible. I spit out what I have heard from the Christian community and my professors trusting that they have studied it and know better than I and I feel like I could never see enough of the scripture to know if they are right or not so i feel afraid all of the time of being duped. I am afraid that I am losing my faith that it is slowly eroding and I feel like there is nothing I can do about it. I don't want to stop believing because I know that some being talked to me and I don't want Jesus not to be true because then I am without hope and their is no salvation and I have no where else to go if He is not real. Back to drugs would be the only option and its not one I want. I am afraid.

I don't trust the Bible to be infallible. i trust God to talk to me out of it and somehow I trust it to have truth because i have seen truth in it but I wonder is this really all there is? is this really the holy book that has all we need? And how do we know that it has no mistakes? therefore I am not sure if I can trust that God is who the Bible says he is because I don't know if I can trust the bible but don't you have to believe in God first anyway to trust that the bible came from Him and then we have to trust what the bible says about how it is trustworthy but the early church were also people and they trusted that it was from God but oh this is so confusing there is no simple answer that I can be satisfied with. so I trust my experiences but they are faulty and I forget them and am never sure if they are God or a circumstance that I am attributing to God so I go round and round. And when I do read the bible I never retain it. I can never remember what I read or what God said to me through it and can I say I get bored with it and I don't understand it and I have such bad anxiety when I read it that I can never spend enough time with it to really make it worth my while. I have not mined the depths of scripture in so long I am terrified of it so i never get the chance.

Prayer? Who gets it?

Prayer,

So I receive when I don't ask I don't receive when I don't ask. When I pray He answers when I pray He doesn't answer (or so it seems). Sometimes I pray and it happens later sometimes I pray and it happens now sometimes it is so long ago i have forgotten and He has to remind me. He will do what He will do so when we pray does that mean that HE would not have done it even though He did not have a problem with it? I think that God is sovereign and relational. I think that He is going to do what He is going to do but that He likes to hear form us and we need to know that we rely on Him. I think that realization comes through prayer and that He also honours us hugely by wanting us to talk to Him. He will say in scripture that so and so persuaded Him (Abraham and Lot, Moses, etc.) but I think that the big picture God does what He wants, His solid not to be changed will and then there is His permissive will, that which God listens to us and says ok we can do it this way (Saul and Moses).I think that is why prayer is varying just like a father who has a set will that the child cannot cross, you must eat healthy, and then those nights when the child needs cheering up or they to a ballgame and get to stay up past their bedtime and eat hot dogs and ice cream. Solid will and permissive situational will. Its complicated but boy am I glad that God is alive and a thinking rational human being who can be spontaneous and not a robot that only follows a programed pattern of actions.

What am I learning?

I have learned that it is ok to not know something. It is ok to still have things to learn and not understand because God will protect me from what I do not know or understand He has protected me from things that I do understand. it is ok if I cannot see the path ahead He like a good father will not allow bad things to happen to me that I was unaware of and mockingly say "Its still your fault and responsibility." It is ok to allow growth to happen and not try to push it to happen. It is ok to not be "ready" yet but still in the process.

Just a thought

I struggle with sexual sin. I struggle with lust like many people. I have natural God-given desires for marriage and companionship and sexuality but because of this fallen world and my past I also have love needs that were not met when I was little so I carry over these needs into my natural God-given desires and they get blown way out of proportion and it leads to sin because I am now trying to get love needs met through sexual desire and a relationship with a male. This not only leads to sexual sin, and unhappiness I might add because men cannot meet my love needs anyway, but it leads to idolatry. Ok so that is the foundation so here is my question, God I know that you are healing me and reshaping my heart and belief systems to trust you and get my love needs met in you. I am not blind I see that but in the men time until these things are completed and that ability finally reaches my heart, because boy have I been waiting, how do I take care of these sexual needs that are being blown way out of proportion? They are there and they are strong. It is not working for me to them just wait until you are married, just wait until God heals your heart and you have all the love you will need then you won't want sex anymore until you are married. Yeah right! It is not working telling myself to wait so I find myself turning to other means such as food, smoking, and lustful means. So what do I do? How do I deal with my sexual desires and my love needs and wounded heart while all of these things are in the works because I don't want to sin and I am not saying that I did not choose the sin but I can see that not having a godly outlet for them in the meantime is making it harder to say no. Please help me God. Give me some good answers because I know that you know. In Jesus name.

Psalm 21:7

"Through the unfailing love of the most high [I] will not be shaken"

God is so good!

That was the coolest thing. I was just reading through Psalm 16 and I had asked God to renew me through it and for it not to be just a reading and as I was working through it and the blog I just posted after reading it I started thanking God for His faithfulness and how He has blesses me and how working through trials is so much easier with a sense of His love and acceptance and presence and I just prayed a prayer from this booklet that I have been praying through and it was a blessing for my soul praying over it a sense of God's presence and help! Way cool, God loves me very much!

Contentment

I have have some very hard emotional struggles that so affected me that I was getting physically sick. I have chronic insomnia but praise God that sleeping meds work for me. My situation has not changed but I am learning to be like Paul when he said in Philippians that he can be content in bounty or in drought. I feel feel at peace with God, things are not perfect and I still struggle with fear of Him being evil but feeling His encouragement, help, faithfulness, promise of Himself to me and my good, and learning to stay connected to Him purposefully and feel His blessing on that somehow my situations is just not that hard anymore.

Now I will admit that have been on vacation from school shopped a lot slept a lot hung out with friends a lot watched movies a lot and the weather has been great but I have learned to see truth and right now my eyes are open to it and believe that if I can't see again for fear that they will open again. Learning the truth that things will not always go well but God still loves me and is not punishing me has helped.

true faith

Every painful encounter that comes our way can be a gift from God because in that time in that event in that trial we change like coal into diamonds. We must force ourselves in those situations, after much patient teaching and prodding and pointing our of truth from God, to laugh and be thankful and rejoice and choose with our will even if the emotion of "want to" is not there keep going to trust God and say ok you are still good. Those moments of hardship are lie boot camp for the Christian because they make us stronger so that when God asks us in those trials to set new boundaries of what we can endure of how far we will step out in faith of what will cause us to doubt God and His goodness, we will have the strength to allow them to be reset further out. The pain in life is what makes us be followers of God. It helps us follow in faith not ruled by emotion but true faith that even when our whole hearts scream out, "You are hurting us God that does not seem to fit with who you told me you are or who i think you to be", we still choose to keep following and trust that we what God told us about Himself and what He promised will come true. We see with faith eyes like Abraham. I also think of Peter who, when Jesus said that His body was to be eaten and His blood drunk and His followers abandoned Him, said "Where shall we go Lord? You have eternal life."

Relationship

God,

You have been whispering to me the past week that your love and care for us does not equal an easy life where nothing goes wrong but that when things do go wrong you will be there with us in the storm. It is much different than I imagined and a lot quieter but I see the truth of our relationship now instead of a fantasy. It makes sense that Paul talked about thinking about heaven, because that fantasy that we want of no problems is in heaven not here. You are not against me when things go wrong, sometimes what seems to be "wrong" is actually right and good for me.