"The Gift of Singleness" by Ben Stuart

My friend Mel shared this sermon with me and it was so encouraging! After listening to it was just stunned. I went back to my room and downloaded it from iTunes. So, if you are also struggling with singleness or maybe you just want to listen to it, it's available for free on iTunes podcasts from Breakaway Ministries. After you listen to it, if you do listen to it, leave me a comment and tell me what you think and what really stuck with you. Do you consider singleness a gift from God or a curse from God? Something to ask yourself as you listen to it.

Lara Logan of CBS News Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

Lara Logan of CBS News Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

The sin and hatred in this world just breaks my heart. It breaks my heart to think people every day fear for their life and that injustice such as this is continuing every day. Yet we only hear about it when someone famous such as this is assaulted. Each day, each moment there are unheard voices experiencing this torment and they do not have soldiers to rescue them.

Valentine's Day

So something that I fail to talk about a lot on here for various reasons are my struggles, which is such an important part of my walk with Christ as I have noted in a previous blog post. But here's something I can share with you all. So throughout my teenage years just like any other teenage girl I had a few crushes in high school and such but for the most part, and there have been one or two exceptions, but for the most part I have been sincerely content in singleness. And since coming to college and coming to faith, this has not been something I have struggled with a lot. I have been content in where the Lord has me right now - being single. I saw friends of mine struggle with this and sympathized with them but to an extent I did not know what it was like to truly struggle with singleness especially now. Lately, this is an area I have begun to struggle in. It has been so much harder now because I am fighting to be patient and wait in the Lord's timing, allow the Lord to lead the right guy to me, allow the right guy to initiate and step in to his role as the leader. It has been hard to fight my motives and initiatives and old methods of wanting to pursue the guy. So of course, today being Valentine's Day and meant to celebrate love, I found it a little hard. But today I saw myself just wallowing in the fact that I am single with no potential prospects even in sights and now that I think about it, this is so convicting! An entire day meant to celebrate love and I did not spend it with the my true love, where I find my true joy and the "person" that loves me to no end and so much more than I could ever know - Jesus. Because of other struggles my time with Him has been affected and I am realizing that it just makes things harder. I know I cannot deal with my struggles on my own and yet I attempt to anyway. I do not allow myself or Jesus the joy of running to Him and allowing Him to comfort me and take my yoke. Rather than running to Jesus in prayer about His love for me, being content in His love for me and my struggles with singleness, I wasted the day thinking about the fact that I do not have a guy in my life. Wow, so I have just told Jesus that His love for me is not good enough, that I need love from an earthly guy, that I need an earthly guy to tell me I'm beautiful, to cherish me. So basically I spent the whole day slapping Jesus in the face over and over again. Wow, again I see how sinful I am and even more so how my heart is deceitful above all things. (Jer 17:9)

Update?

Not sure about a title for this one, I just feel like it's been a while since my last blog post. So, a couple of things I've learned lately, or rather the other day. This semester I've begun to experience some hard things in my life and pretty much the first time I've really had suffering in my life since I became a Christian. They always say that whatever you run to in times of trouble, that is what you worship. When I have strife, I retreat; I run to myself, I don't spend time with God, and I tell my friends sometimes out of need but other times out of a feeling of obligation. I claim that I cannot get through my time of trouble without God but then I retreat from Him. I think I just haven't been sure as to how to handle this. It's easy for me to continue on in life as if nothing is the matter, but at the same time I know I cannot let this consume me. So, the other day I knew and felt like I really needed to spend time with God. I know I cannot handle this on my own and I just needed to run to Him. So my time with Him was just listening to praise music on Pandora and writing in my prayer journal. The Lord truly reveals a lot to me through writing in my prayer journal; He reveals sin in my life, He reveals struggles, He reveals lies, He tells me truth. And I learned that I never truly believed God could comfort me because He is not, in a sense, tangible. I believed I could find comfort from myself or from my friends, but of course they could not give me the comfort I truly needed. I had been looking at my situation as hopeless, I could not see the light at the end of the tunnel, I just haven't been able to see how God could glorify Himself in a situation that His word speaks against. Until God reminded me of Romans 8:28, where He tells me that He works all things for the good of those who He has called upon. God uses our sin for His glory and allows us to know more of Him through our sin sometimes. OF COURSE He could use this for His glory and He will because He is sovereign and completely in control of the situation, and although it is sinful He WILL use it for His glory. He revealed to me that this is my hope. I'm not always going to see the kind of light at the end of the tunnel I want, it is not my place or role to know the ending of some situations and this is just one of those times. He revealed to me that although I do not know what the outcome is, my hope is not in the outcome but in Him! So comforting!