I am 15 years old. I have 8 brothers and sisters. I and my brothers and sisters are homeschooled by my mom.
I am a born again Christian and I love the Lord so much and He is very dear to me and can I never doubt it. I strive to love Him more, to attain His image, and to live only for Him! I blush and am ashamed when I consider how inadequate are the returns I am making Him; yet I can praise Him for the past and trust Him for all that is to come. I long to make progress every day, and each minute is precious, and I tremble if I should loose one. In Jesus Christ alone is the only way!!
So I’m sure you’ve all heard the quote that says something like, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
I used to think this was a pretty great idea. I may or may not have written it across a couple of notebooks back in the day just to serve as inspiration.
And then I realized…the stars are great and all. But God has huge moon-sized dreams for me. Why would I want to stop short when He’s brought me so far?
God likes to do BIG moon-sized things. Like use a kid to end slavery. And bring justice to those who’ve been treated unfairly. And end poverty by helping kids. And cure diseases like AIDS and cancer. And rescue young girls from lives in the sex trade. And bring peace to war-torn countries.
And He likes to use His people to get stuff done. So dream big moon-dreams. And when you end up with a handful of stars, keep going because you’re not there yet. Even when it gets hard and it hurts. Even when you fail a couple (or a couple hundred) times. Even when you really question why in the world God gave you your particular moon-dream because it may as well be impossible. Even when people say that you should maybe think about finding a new dream that isn’t quite so hard to reach.
Lately, I feel like all I have been doing is waiting. And guess what? I hate it! I didn’t realize how hard it is to wait. We are so used to living a society where we get everything as soon as we want. The IPhone is the perfect example. We can have internet at any time we want, our pictures, our music, etc, etc. we have e-mail that sends messages in a matter of second. Snail mail is only for bills. Just last week, we were sending letters to each other. There were people who didn’t know how to correctly put their address on the envelope, and I don’t blame them. Snail mail is becoming an obsolete means of communication because people hate waiting. My pastor said this week that he thinks that Patience is one the most difficult Fruit of the Spirit because it is something you have to learn. I agree with him. The other Fruit of the Spirit come more naturally than Patience. Patience is something we have to learn and learning usually involves being challenged. Some people just have patience. Others like me must learn it. And it can be hard.
But at the same time, waiting can be good. It gives us time to think. Is what we are waiting for, really worth waiting for? After we get what we are waiting for, what’s next? What if what we were waiting for wasn’t exactly what we expected? or what if it is everything we expected and more? Then what?
I think a good story about waiting is Abraham’s story. Abraham and Sarah wanted children. God promised them children but they had to wait a really long time. At one point, they get desperate. They get tired of waiting. So Sarah tells Abraham to sleep with Hagar, their servant. This was actually a common practice back in the day, since women were looked down upon when they had no children. Abraham slept with Hagar and she became pregnant. She had Ishmael, who wasn’t necessarily part of God’s original plan. Ishmael reprensents Sarah and Abraham’s mistake and impatience. They had to wait some more and trust God’s promise and they did finally get their own son, Isaac.
The problem with waiting is that once we become impatient and we get tired of waiting. We forget to trust God. We rather get our answer NOW! So, as human beings, we decide to take things in our hands and then we screw things up. I think maybe one of the reasons we don’t like waiting is that waiting requires us trusting God to take care of things. It requires us to take leaps of faith. I know that leaps of faith are hard to take, when God isn’t somebody we can see physically.
There is a beauty in waiting. When we can calmly and patiently wait, we trust God to handle whatever is going on. If its college applications, relationships, job interviews, tests, problems, worries, doubts. I know that I am not done waiting, nowhere near done, and I am still going to get impatient. I am going to want to take things in my own hands. I know that waiting isn’t going to get any easier. But I also know that I have a loving, caring God that is going to help me wait and challenge me so that I may learn patience. I guess it all comes down to waiting for that too.
I’m back….sorry I haven’t been posted anything in FOREVER!! I agev a job now baysitting & do web design stuff. OS that work keeps me really on my toes. I also am preparing for SAT this spring so I’ve been doing extra studying. Anyway…I found this really great verse & thought I woudl share it w/ you:
"The Lord will stay with you as long as you stay with him! Whenever you seek him, you will find him."
2 Chronicles 15:2
Do you have that one thing that goes with you everywhere? Something you simply cannot function without? For me, that’s my cell phone. It is always either in my purse or in my pocket, or sometimes even just in my hand. My phone is what keeps me connected to the world.
Yesterday, I went out of town and, unfortunately, had no service where I went. I felt cut off from everything. I was practically lost, not able to get in touch with anyone. Have you ever felt this way?
The bigger question is, have you ever felt cut off from God? If you went a whole day without connecting to Him, would you feel lost? Is God bigger than your cell phone?
Connect with God today as you go through life. Don’t forget that you can never go out of service with Him; He is just waiting for your “call.” Pick up your spiritual phone by reading your Bible and praying and see what he will do in your life when you connect to Him.
Have you ever wondered how life would be different if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead? If the first thing that comes to your mind is There’d be no spring break or chocolate bunnies, think again.
The Bible actually talks about the what if’s regarding the Resurrection. First Corinthians 15:13-19 tells us that if Christ wasn’t resurrected, everything we do is in vain.
If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, we’d have no hope of eternal life with Him. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, our faith would be useless, and there would be no forgiveness for our sins. Just think: We’d have no reason to keep going to church or reading the Bible. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then all the Christian martyrs over the last 2,000 years died for a lie.
If Jesus hasn’t conquered death, we’re all in big trouble. This means we’re all destined for an eternity in hell. Think about the millions of believers who have died trusting Jesus as their Savior. If Jesus hasn’t risen, every single one of them has perished. If in fact Jesus hasn’t risen from the dead, we’re a miserable people, because we have no promise of being raised from the dead ourselves.
The resurrection of Jesus means that God the Father gave His approval to the claims and the works of Jesus. These claims would have been blasphemous if Jesus weren’t truly the Son of God. But the Resurrection authenticates Jesus and His teaching. The empty tomb should assure us forever that all the things Jesus taught were true. If Christ hasn’t risen from the dead, He wouldn’t be alive now, and we’d have no one to represent us before God.
Ultimately, there would be no living person to live within us and give us power. Jesus’ resurrection guarantees both His promise to us and His authority to make that promise when He said, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die (John 11:25-26).
Your life can have meaning, your sins can be forgiven and you can live forever with Christ, because He’s alive! Have you accepted His resurrection as fact? Is He your Savior? He wants to be! In fact, you can seek forgiveness for your sins right now.
Dear Jesus:
I admit I’m a sinner. Will You forgive me for my sins? I want to place my trust in You. I believe You died for me, and I also believe You conquered death and are alive right now. I want to live for You, Jesus. Thank You for Your gift of eternal life. In Your name I pray, Amen
If you prayed that prayer, you’ll want to talk with your pastor about being baptized and becoming discipled so you can grow deeper in your faith. Tell another Christian that you’re part of God’s family now, and ask him or her to pray for you.
There is nothing in life that can compare to growing up in a large family. Personally, there is not a single thing I would change about the size of my family.
I’ve grown up in a family of nine children. Yes you read that right, nine children. I’m the middle child of nine and the oldest daughter. My place in the family comes with many benefits and just as many disadvantages. Once people discover the size of my family I get the usual questions. The most common question being, "What is it like growing up in a large family?" Well, here is a glimpse into what it is like growing up in a large family. When you are part of a large family you get used to people being around you 24/7, it is just a fact of life. Growing up I’ve never had a room of my own, I barely have a closet of my own. I would have to move to a foreign country, to finally get a room of my own. When I got there the quiet would drive me nuts, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be long before I was wishing for a family member to invade my personal space.
When you have eight brothers and sisters there’s not a lot you can get away with. You have so many other suspects around you that when you say "I didn’t do it" you’ll probably be caught guilty soon enough.
My mom knows the name of every single one of us but sometimes is not able to match up any of us with our name. When trying to get our attention my mom will look at someone else and say there name instead and got through the whole list until she gets to you. And maybe by then she’ll forget what she wanted you to do in the first place.
Ever gone out to eat and been forced to wait till tables opened up for your multi-family party? Try dealing with this on a regular basis. Every time my family decides to eat out we are forced to wait for several tables close together to clear. The staff loves dragging several smaller tables together to accommodate us.
“All the same mother and father?” This is one of the most annoying and rude questions we get regularly. Yes, all nine of us have the same mother and father, we are not a combined family and none of us are adopted. Still, this question is highly annoying when it is the first thing out of a person’s mouth after finding out how many siblings I have.
You cannot be a member of a big family without having some level of tolerance. Having so many siblings and still staying happy depends on you possessing some tolerance. The tight family relationships that come with a large family tends to come with characteristics such as self-reliance, creativity, a sense of responsibility, and the ability to negotiate.
Growing up in a large family is a unique thing and the experiences that come with it are not at all common. Being in a large family gives you something to talk about all the time. In my family everyone is usually supportive of each other and the goals and dreams they set out to reach. It helps to know that you have so many people behind you ready to encourage you. At the very least if any of my sibs decides to run for president they know they can count on ten votes. God has blessed my family with so many things not just hilarious memories and best friends. Growing up in a large family is something that I will always cherish even if I am sometimes the last to choice what I want out the batch.
Elizabeth