Monday, February 28, 2011

John 17:9


“I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.” ~ John 17:9

Jesus gives the prayer in John 17 specifically for His disciples and for a specific reason. It was not the time to pray for any other than His disciples. However, this does not mean that Jesus never prayed for anyone but a disciple!
If we are supposed to pray only for converted brethren but not for our unconverted countrymen, how can we follow Jesus' many other examples and commands about this topic? For example, Matthew 5:44-45, 48:
»But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. . . . Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.«
What a statement! He says praying for people outside the church is part of what defines us as children of our Father in heaven! Those who hate us and spitefully use us are certainly not fellow church members or converted believers, yet our Savior commands us to pray for them! There is perhaps no clearer passage on this topic!
In fact, how many of those whom Jesus prayed for and healed were "in the church" or had God's Spirit? Probably none of them! How many were worldly sinners? Certainly most of them, maybe even all of them!
Later, while hanging on a stake, Jesus practices perfectly what He preaches, once more praying for people of the world: "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do" ~ Luke 23:34
What clearer example could we have?
In fact, though Jesus did not participate at all in any of the world's evils, He lived His life among the people. As the son of a carpenter, He interacted with the public constantly. He never shied away from the people of the world. He enjoyed people, weddings, and parties enough to be accused—falsely, of course—of being "a glutton and a winebibber." He felt comfortable accepting an invitation to dinner at the house of a Pharisee—He was even bold enough to invite Himself to dinner at the home of Zacchaeus, an ill-reputed tax collector.
How do we fare among the world? Are we comfortable with our "unconverted" neighbors? Would we accept dinner invitations and attend social occasions? Jesus, our Elder Brother, did. Jesus was not like the Pharisees—the very name means "the separated ones"—who acted "holier than thou." Yes, we should separate ourselves from the ways of the world. Yes, we should live a holy life (1 Peter 1:15-16). After all, we have the Holy Spirit. But we should not be like those "who say, 'Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am holier than you!'" (Isaiah 65:5).
God says of them, "These are smoke in My nostrils."

by Berean, daily verse and comments.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

A good day.


It's been more than 2 weeks since the semester started and I must say this semester is quite different. I figured out my schedule and I like it. I have a lot more free time that I had last semester because of a different program and it gives me more time to spend with God which is the discipline I’m willing to learn this semester.
I specially love my Tuesdays: I get up, go to breakfast, have devotions and then… I go to CCA where we have classrooms for kids and where my “work place” is. I spend 3 hours up there every Tuesday morning. It’s a part of my servanthood class (8 hours per week) and I have different responsibilities this semester. I’m Lynn’s Teacher Assistant and I help her with everything, literally – I went to get her coffee today :) but I also help her teach!! I worked with Mikayla today; she’s 5 and she’s the cutest ever. We worked on her reading skills and her pronunciations and then I read 2 stories to her. It’s a special time I have with her and I noticed my relationship with her is different than with the other kids because we have a teacher-student relationship while with others I have a grownup-kid relationship or friend-friend. It’s different and it’s hard at some moments because… I don’t know. At the beginning I thought we just didn’t click but it’s not that. Because I’m her teacher, she has that respect for me that you don’t have for a friend, if that makes sense. I like that I’m being respected and I love being in a position of a teacher! I just LOVE it!
I got to be a teacher today again, first with Mikayla but then also with her sister Leah. She’s 9 and she seems older because she’s mature. I’d say she’s 11.
She was waiting for her mom to be done working with Mikayla to help her with her math but since I was free, I worked with her. It was challenging, that’s for sure! Not the math part but the language part! We were working through a workbook and expressions in English are so different than in Slovene! It took me some time to get used to it and Leah was a big help, trying to explain what certain words meant. But as I said before, I just love being a teacher and I really hope that’s something God has for me in the future. We’ll see :)
I also got to talk to Pam Markey, she’s our MTP teacher (Missions training program). We have a class at her house every Thursday morning but it doesn’t seem like a class, it’s more like a tea party! She is amazing! She offers us coffee, tea, someone usually bakes a pie or muffins… and then we discuss a book we’re reading (From Jerusalem to Irin Jaya or something like that) and talk about different missionary principles.
She said she wants to meet us and talk to use to get to know us a bit better, to hear our stories… and I met her today for about an hour. I told her my story and then I told her that I have Africa on my heart (it’s been a big burden since I got back to College). I also told her that Slovenian people are on my heart as well but Africa won’t go out of my head and it’s going to be an at least year long prayer about it because at the end of the year I have to do a 30-day outreach and serve to a church wherever I want. I really pray God opens the door for me to go to Africa.
Time with Pam was really nice, it’s always nice to hear + see how people are still amazed about my story. You know, I’m used to it and I’ve shared it so many times by now but when people hear it for the first time, I love seeing the expression on their face :)

That’s all for now, I’ll share more soon. Our days are pretty much the same but some cool stuff happens from time to time as well :)

Stay tooned! ;)

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Krissy's Story

I found this website where you can listen to a lot of GOOD messages about Christian life and how to live it as a woman.

This one is one of my favorites.

Krissy's Story

Sunday, February 13, 2011

When you say "I am so blessed" or "It was such a blessing" ...consider this.



Found this on one of my schoolmates' friends' blog and thought of sharing it with you.

Friday, February 11, 2011

He's strong when I'm weak.

Elijah was a unique man but no different than all of us. God used him in a big way but Elijah still had ups and downs, he feared and was insecure.
Elijah experienced victory; he prayer, God answered, people responded! He showed people who God really is and that He's the one they should be worshipping!
Right after that, he got a threat from Jezebel, king Ahab's wife, and got scared. He ran away and when he was full of emotions, fear, when he was tired, God took care of him. He sent an angel to touch him, wake him up and feed him. That food was enough for him to live on for 40 days and nights.
When Elijah was weak, he depended on God and that was a perfect way for God to show him how strong He is.

When I was at home during the break, I struggled with feeling responsible to take care of my mom. I felt like I wasn't suppose to leave home, not even for an hour, because that would mean my mom would have an opportunity to say yes to the temptations and weaknesses she has and if she would say yes to them, I would feel guilty for not staying at home, protecting her from all of those things. I put a lot of burden on myself and so many times I felt like a parent to her instead the other way around.
Trying to protect my mom was so hard for me that I fell into a depression because I knew I can't save her but I felt guilty for not saving her, if that makes sense. I shared my struggles with one of the missionary ladies from my church and it was amazing that God »told me« to share those things with her; she went through very similar things when she was younger. She was a real blessing to me, trying to help me and tell me that it's not up to me to save my mom, that Jesus is the only one that can do that. It's so funny that I knew all of the things she was telling me but I still didn't surrender my mom, I didn't offer her on the altar and ask Jesus to save her. I did pray and I asked Jesus to save her but I had to surrender myself to Him as well and admit that I can't have things under control, that I can't save my mom, that I can't say »no« to her temptations instead of her.
At the end of the break, maybe a week before I came back to College, I was sitting in my room, trying to pray (it was really hard for me to pray about my mom and her situation because that made me think about it and I didn't really want to do that) and at one point I got it. I realized that I can't always be listening carefully to hear if my mom will open herself a bottle of wine, I can't always be listening to hear her going on the balcony to secretly smoke when we all know she does that, I can't always be listening and be ready to stop her + help her not to do things because it's up to her and I'm not her saviour! She's not 5 years old and she's not my child; she's my mom and she's 56 years old. She's old enough to decide for herself and the only thing I can do for not being imprisoned with her is to pray for her and ask God to show me or tell me if I can do anything else. But otherwise, it's not my burden, it's not my responsibility. That doesn't mean I don't care for my mom, that I don't love her… it hurts so bad and I would do anything for my family to get saved! But I'm not the one who's going to save them, Jesus is!

Elijah prayed to God, told Him he's tired and he showed his weakness. He gave an opportunity to God to show him His strenght.
When I gave up on being my mom's guardian and savior, when I surrended myself and my mom to God, that's when God put peace in my heart and was my comfort. I know He's my mom's Savior, I know He's still waiting for her to choose Him, He promised that to me. And even though He didn't show His strenght in saving her yet, I know He has His own perfect timing and He's going to do it. I just pray my mom's heart would be open, soft and willing to trust the Lord because He really is the only one that can help her.

Monday, February 07, 2011

The beginning

Today was the first day of classes, woohoo! I was really excited to finally start with them because of the very boring weekend. We didn't really do anything except listening to the rules and stuff which I've heard at the beginning of the last semester.
We had registration on Saturday and I chose these classes:
- Romans
- Apologetics
- Joshua
- Spanish language
- Missions leadership
- and all the other ones that we all have..
.
We had the first class of Romans this morning. Our teacher is the director of the College and he's an amazing teacher. He told us what he expects from us and it's not that bad. He did an introduction of Romans and I already love it!! Last semester he was teaching a class called Life of Paul and since Paul wrote the Epistle to Romans, he knows a lot about his life and the history of the Epistle.

My M199 class, the servanthood class, stays the same as last semester. I'll be working with Lynn with kids but this time I'll have a lot more responsibilities and more work! College has a lack of interns this semester so I'll be kind of like an intern to Lynn with Childrens ministry and teachings. At first I wasn't that excited because I wanted this semester to be different but I think God is trying to tell me that I should work with kids (I was questioning this because I wasn't sure if I really want to do that kind of ministry). Some students might think I have a huge privilege to work with Lynn and the kids (which I do!!) but I think they might think I don't really do much. I don't really care what they think but my servanthood class started today with cleaning children's toys :) I do everything Lynn asks me to do which is literally everything. I'm ok with that because the work is dynamic and I don't get bored but I just wish people here wouldn't think I don't do a lot.

God's been putting Slovenia on my heart since last August. We were at the Performing Arts camp and I had a discussion group with a bunch of girls from Velenje. They told me some pretty sad things and I couldn't stop thinking about them. I started praying about Velenje and then got an idea of making an outreach there. I can't really lead an outreach to a town where there's no church, especially no Calvary Chapel church but there is one really close - in Celje! During my Christmas break I went to Celje to Calvary Chapel church and talked to their pastor Justin who's been a student and an intern here at this College. I told him that God put Velenje on my heart and that I'd like to lead an outreach to Celje and their church because there's a lot of young people in Celje from Velenje (they go to school there). He told me they'd love to have us and that if we come for 10 days, we could do stuff in towns around Celje as well, which means we might go and do stuff in Velenje! This is very exciting because I've never been to Velenje before and I'd love to go!
When I got to College, I talked to Lisa, the lady who takes care of mission trips, and she said she has to get an approval from the pastors but there's a good chance I might organize + lead an outreach to Celje this semester! :)

I think my relationship with God got better since I arrived back to Hungary.. partly because of the Christian bubble we're in, partly because we're always a part of worshipping God, talking about Him and learning about Him. It doesn't really matter what you do here, it's all about God and that's what I love the most about Bible College.
We've all been feeling pretty tired, we're not sure why, and I've had a feeling for 2 days now that I'm getting the flu again because of the pain in my body. I'm trying to rest more and go for short walks to get some fresh air. I really don't want to get sick so that would be one of my prayer requests; that my immune system would be strong enough to go through this and keep me healthy.

I'm really thankful to be back at College. It's such a huge privilege and I still sometimes wonder how did I deserve to be called here.
God is amazing and graceful.

Friday, February 04, 2011

First day back

I'm back at the College!

It's nice to be back, it seems like it's been forever since my last time here but it's only been a month and a half.
People are slowly arriving, it's nice to see familiar faces and good friends again.
At the end of the 1st semester everyone said every semester is different and right now I know what they meant.
People are mostly the same but girls are staying on a different floor this semester + we have different roommates and different rooms. I'm staying in a room for 12 people but there's only 6 of us staying there which means I get to have 2 closets for myself :) that's a huge priviledge and it's amazing because I have so many things with me :)
My room is gonna be super fun because of the girls staying in it. We got a new student from Columbia that's in my room and she's gonna help me with my Spanish :) she's a funny lady, a bit older than us.

đI'll try and update my blog more this semester to let you know what's been going on and what's God doing in my life.
Thank you for all your prayers!