Fellow readers,
Today was my first day working up here in Cookeville, and I had to be at the store by nine. Well, like any normal human being would do, I set the good ole' cuckoo clock for about 8:14 or so. Did I mention in my first post about my roommate making noise early in the morning? It is very sad to say, but I spoke too soon. I don't even know why I am even distraught by this point about this, because it is like clockwork everyday since we moved in on Friday. When 7:15 rolls around, I am awoken to any kind of noise that can be made in a dorm room without using your mouth. So, today, at 7:15-a whole hour before the earliest I wanted to get up at-there was a nice, wholesome, smacking of a knee into a desk. Did this wake me up? You bet your bottom dollar it did. This was followed by a murmur of some sort that I was too haggard to care to figure out. Nevertheless, I was able to fall back into a nice slumber. For the next, ehhh...hour or so(maybe more, well probably more), my roommate left the room-to later re-enter-about five or six times. This would have been fine, but I am not too sure this kiddo understands exiting and entering quietly. He goes full guns a blazin' in and out locking the door behind him each and every time. You're probably wondering, why did we need to know that he locks the door every time he leaves when Andrew is still in there. Well for one, I think that is a little weird(insert a chuckle). I mean, it is not like I am going to just let someone walk in and steal all his stuff. But the main reason I mention such a tedious little thing is for the fact that when you lock the door, it makes a good bank vault sounding lockage. So, every time he would leave, I would wake up to the lock. Every time he would come back, I got to have a nice two-for-one special(unlocking is just as loud, if not louder). Now, I know what you all are thinking: "Man Andrew sure likes to use parenthesis and likes to think he can read minds." But, I like to be very descriptive in my writing so you all can get the full experience. Furthermore, I will not be complaining about my roommate in every single post. I just like to get the ball rolling here with a nice anecdotal experience to lighten the mood, you could say. The rest of my day today went like how a usual Tuesday should go for me this semester: I wake up, go to work as long as I can before I go to class; after my first class, grab some lunch around three then chill 'til my 4:30 class with my sis; get out of class and go eat dinner with the clan and friends; chill after dinner and hang out; and end the day with a nice run/workout at the fit with my broseph. This is also a nice mirror-image of my R-day as well. At some point in these days I will read my Bible and also pray throughout the day about anything that comes to mind. I like to think(and this also stems from a teaching from my youth pastor The Huff, shout-out also to exitseven youth group) that if you pray continuously throughout the day, you will be keeping a nice little convo with man upstairs. And as any nice dialogue goes, both parties will participate. What do I mean by this? Well, if you are keeping a good buzz session going with the Lord, you will find that He will speak to you as well. You will start to hear Him more and start to hear His directions He has for you. If you don't know what you want to do with your life right now(assuming you are college age) don't worry. Rather, start to pray about guidance and direction and just keep an open confabulation with God and just pray about anything you think of throughout the day that you want to pray about; and soon, you will begin to uncover the path He has set out for you. Coming into the final month of my summer between senior year of high school and first year of college, I had no definite decision on what I wanted to do with my life. I hadn't even decided on what college yet. I had some choices out there that I had thought of, but I never really had a plan, nor had I really felt strong enough about any of them to make a decision on it. To this point, I had prayed here and there about it, but never really consistently or full-heartedly. Once I finally began to say that I really needed to pray for this and just really seeked His guidance, I finally had a dream one night. Now, I'm not saying that He will always come to you in a dream or anything like that, but for me He did. I had this dream and long story short, I was here at Tech, ministering to people and i was wanting to be a high school principal. That next day, I enrolled at Tech and got accepted. But His voice didn't stop there: I began to just think of things about when I was a principal and started to really have a plan for myself. These thoughts came to me whenever, I had one while I was in the shower one day. He will talk to you whenever as long as you are talking with Him.
Thanks. Signing off.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Day Uno
First blog ever...here it goes.
Today started out to the sound of my new roommate, to whom I know nothing about at all(#notmuchofatalker), rummaging through bags and the stuffing of closed-cell extruded polystryrene foam(a.k.a styrofoam) from his new printer back into its packaging. This went on for some time until he finally got it to fit in the box-only to lead to him setting up his new printer and hearing it go through an obscene amount of diagnostics tests to ensure of its capability to perform the day-to-day operations of the standard printer. A pretty snazzy new alarm eh? Well it worked, except for it going off three hours before I needed it to. So, I finally get out of bed-when I planned on-and checked my email just to see who is offering me what. Then, something detrimentally fantastic happened. An email from the professor of my only class on Mondays-more specifically, today being the first Monday, the first day of school-appeared in my inbox. Lone behold was it there none other than to tell me that my only class for today has been canceled. The detrimental part unfortunately is for her and her family for her son is very sick and was in the ER so please, everyone, PRAY for her and her family. Anyways, so there was no class for me today so I gleefully closed the lid to my laptop and jumped in the shower(roommate is still in room). After the daily hygiene routine, I come back to a locked dorm room. It is great to have a roommate who locks up so our stuff is not stolen, unfortunately he did not think about me not taking my key with me to the showers. Long story shortened, I end up in the main lobby of the dorm in my boxers only to find my roommate sitting there watching TV. #awesomemorning.
Moving on to the Word:
I later opened my Bible to read some passages for the day. I am currently in Romans and I read a passage from Romans 4. By this point in Romans, it is discussing righteousness and unrighteousness and the Law. It mentions throughout Romans 2:17-29 about knowing the Law and teaching it to others but sort of being a hypocrite, you could say. Romans 2:21"you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal?" The next couple of verses go through other contradictions. What I take from what this is saying is that a lot of times, we-as Christians-often times focus on sharing God's words with everyone else, that we forget to share it with ourselves. Are we any better than those who we are trying to minister to if we don't even follow what we are teaching? From a college student's perspective, college is a tough environment to try to minister to people. Heck, it's a really tough environment considering all of the things going on: clubs, partying, drinking, sex, the list goes on. With all that going on you tend to think, or at least I do, they're not going to want to listen to someone trying to tell them about living for God when they know a lot of the stuff they are doing is wrong. But besides ministering to others, it's hard to minister yourself. You have to deal with all of the previous mentioned things as well. And on top of that, you don't have your parents taking you to church to make you read your Bible or anything like that. With everything I have mentioned, you can get caught drifting, straying. That's sort of what this blog is about. How to stay strong in your faith no matter what environment you get in. I am fighting this battle. I am here, right now. The Bible says in Romans 3:23-25 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." So if you are reading this and you are a college age student or soon going to be, have as much fun as you can at college, it's supposed to be fun. But, do not sacrifice your beliefs for fun, that's not the kind of fun you should be having. I look forward to continuing this journey with you all.(don't worry though, it will get better, I am still getting the ropes of putting it all in writing) Thanks. Signing off.
Today started out to the sound of my new roommate, to whom I know nothing about at all(#notmuchofatalker), rummaging through bags and the stuffing of closed-cell extruded polystryrene foam(a.k.a styrofoam) from his new printer back into its packaging. This went on for some time until he finally got it to fit in the box-only to lead to him setting up his new printer and hearing it go through an obscene amount of diagnostics tests to ensure of its capability to perform the day-to-day operations of the standard printer. A pretty snazzy new alarm eh? Well it worked, except for it going off three hours before I needed it to. So, I finally get out of bed-when I planned on-and checked my email just to see who is offering me what. Then, something detrimentally fantastic happened. An email from the professor of my only class on Mondays-more specifically, today being the first Monday, the first day of school-appeared in my inbox. Lone behold was it there none other than to tell me that my only class for today has been canceled. The detrimental part unfortunately is for her and her family for her son is very sick and was in the ER so please, everyone, PRAY for her and her family. Anyways, so there was no class for me today so I gleefully closed the lid to my laptop and jumped in the shower(roommate is still in room). After the daily hygiene routine, I come back to a locked dorm room. It is great to have a roommate who locks up so our stuff is not stolen, unfortunately he did not think about me not taking my key with me to the showers. Long story shortened, I end up in the main lobby of the dorm in my boxers only to find my roommate sitting there watching TV. #awesomemorning.
Moving on to the Word:
I later opened my Bible to read some passages for the day. I am currently in Romans and I read a passage from Romans 4. By this point in Romans, it is discussing righteousness and unrighteousness and the Law. It mentions throughout Romans 2:17-29 about knowing the Law and teaching it to others but sort of being a hypocrite, you could say. Romans 2:21"you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal?" The next couple of verses go through other contradictions. What I take from what this is saying is that a lot of times, we-as Christians-often times focus on sharing God's words with everyone else, that we forget to share it with ourselves. Are we any better than those who we are trying to minister to if we don't even follow what we are teaching? From a college student's perspective, college is a tough environment to try to minister to people. Heck, it's a really tough environment considering all of the things going on: clubs, partying, drinking, sex, the list goes on. With all that going on you tend to think, or at least I do, they're not going to want to listen to someone trying to tell them about living for God when they know a lot of the stuff they are doing is wrong. But besides ministering to others, it's hard to minister yourself. You have to deal with all of the previous mentioned things as well. And on top of that, you don't have your parents taking you to church to make you read your Bible or anything like that. With everything I have mentioned, you can get caught drifting, straying. That's sort of what this blog is about. How to stay strong in your faith no matter what environment you get in. I am fighting this battle. I am here, right now. The Bible says in Romans 3:23-25 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." So if you are reading this and you are a college age student or soon going to be, have as much fun as you can at college, it's supposed to be fun. But, do not sacrifice your beliefs for fun, that's not the kind of fun you should be having. I look forward to continuing this journey with you all.(don't worry though, it will get better, I am still getting the ropes of putting it all in writing) Thanks. Signing off.
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