WOW!!!!

I cannot believe how time FLIES!! It is already Spring Break at school!! :) That means that when I go back on Tuesday I only have ten days of school left! It seems like just yesterday I was just getting started at LCU! I have really enjoyed this semester but I am so ready for next semester because one of my close friends, Desiree is transferring there too! YAY!! :)

Hopefully we will be able to take lots of classes together since we are majoring in the same thing! Well as far as spring break goes I didn't do a whole lot. Micheal and I went on a fast and furious trip to Oklahoma for a youth ministers conference. We left on Friday morning around nine and got back Saturday night around 11:45. Talk about a long trip but the conference was great! I think that Micheal got a lot out of it as far as ideas to help him out with his youth group but I got a lot out of the teachings as well. A lot of the teachings were about dying to yourself and carrying your cross daily. So I am intentionally waking up every morning and throughout the day commiting my entire self to God. I want my life to be a living sacrifice! It is so encouraging to know that I can let go of everything and give my life to God. Throughout the conference I kind of had a revelation. For a long time I have been praying and asking, "God what do I need to do?" But I realized that I don't necessarily need to pray and ask what I need to do but I need to pray and ask God to help me die to myself. When I die to myself and commit my life as a living sacrifice to Him he will guide me and direct my paths because I can't do it MYSELF!!! That gave me such freedom and I know that more I continue to grow in the area of dying to myself and giving my life to God the more I will understand it!! :) A scripture that is really helping me learn to let go of what I want and trust what God wants are Romans 12:1-2. I really like this verse because it gives a very clear understanding of what we need to do in order to see God's good, pleasing and perfect will prevail in our lives. We have to give our bodies as living sacrifices, keep from conforming to the pattern of this world and to be transformed by the renewing of our minds! I know that a lot of people, including myself, are sometimes scared to lay down our plans and truly tell God that we want his will to be done in our lives and not our own. We tend to thing that as soon as we say that God is going to send us off to some remote country and make us live some horribly depressing life! This scripture contradicts that COMPLETELY!! God LOVES us and he knows us better than we know ourselves, therefore we can trust the fact that His plan for us is not only good but it is better than anything we could ever have planned for ourselves! God is so WONDERFUL! I cannot wait to see what God does in my life as I continue to take myself out of the equation.I am expecting GREAT things to take place because I serve a GREAT God!!! :)