Lovely

I have been just so overwhelmed lately with joy... and it's quite simply the best. The reasons for my joy?

1. The cross is behind me, everything I could ever have done to attain a right standing before God is DONE.
2. My God is faithful. This is insane. Really. *more posts on this to come...
3. Boasting in my Weakness
4. Future glory
5. The AMAZING people God has surrounded me with here.

Haha, sometimes I am just sitting doing homework, and I get distracted by joy. I don't know if you have ever experienced that... but its just so neat (understatement...of the year)

Also, God is answering some prayers right now in an insane way!
We have been praying with one of my friends (Kyle, who I mentioned before...) that his parents would be able to support his desire to serve God overseas in a tribal setting (they were not too thrilled with the idea at first) but... God works miracles and he got a call the other day that they were totally behind him!!!

Bethany and I are learning heaps about communication, as stressful school situations and life in general has created in both of us lots of selfishness and well... we were just both getting on each others nerves... something that has never happened before... haha. The awesome thing is that we were able to talk through everything as it happened, and are both learning an insane amount about Godly friendships, communication and selflessness (haha... hmmm, think God is preparing us for something...lol) We both love eachother too much to let ourselves get in the way of friendship, and its cool to see a different side of love come out in both of us. God also allowed us to have a fabulous time together at the beach yesterday, filled with lots of laughter. It was awesome!!!

Anyway, its just been such a hard-but-worth-it delight to see the fruit of God's hands working in out hearts. It keeps us on our knees a ton, but, we also are experiencing amazing joy.

Dont be afraid of hard times.... don't freak out thinking it is something strange that 'if you only fixed this one thing, made new friends...etc' happens. Chances are its going to be harder than you ever though, but worth it more than you will ever see (and i am not just talking about petty little friendship problems... I am talking about the hard stuff.... the stuff that makes you cringe to think about... that stuff... that's usually the stuff God uses. )

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children then heirs-heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Romans 8:15-17