Fellow Readers,
Hey there. How are ya'll doin'? I hope all is well. Halloween has come and gone, and now, onto Christmas! Wait, we are forgetting Thanksgiving! It seems that all stores, and a lot of people I know, are thinking about is Christmas. I work at Kirkland's and we literally had our Thanksgiving decorations on sale for 75% off the day of Halloween. Just sad, however, this meant that all the Halloween candy was on sale! You better believe I went out and snagged me some Reece's! Anyways, so tonight was the big "Family and Friends Day" at Kirkland's. This is a fun little debacle that Kirkland's puts on every year around this time as a "sneak peek" of their Christmas decor. The big kicker is it is technically invite only, and that invite gets you 25% off your entire purchase. The whole night-7:00-9:00 PM- there are door prizes and giveaways and all sorts of shenanigans and what nots. Well, my parents, and Ashlee and my grandma, decided-after I asked and suckered them into coming up here-to drive on up to Cookeville(I say up when referring to any place other than Hendersonville, even though Cookeville is directly east of the ole H-Vegas) and see the rest of the crew that go to school up here. It turned out to be a really fun little shebang, actually. This was the last time we, as in my brother and sis that go here with me, get to see the old broad before she leaves us for the holidays-all three of them(Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years)-to go out to Oregon to spend time with our family up there. Some of you may be a little shocked that I would call my grandmother an old broad, but that's the kind of relationship our family has; we make fun of her, she dishes it back out, we are just really close and call each other names and that sort of stuff and I am truly thankful to be so close with all of them. God has truly blessed me with a family that I get to call my best friends and hang out with them a ton and actually thoroughly enjoy hanging out with them. Anywho, back to the elderly lady. This will now be the second time ever that she has left us for the holidays(first being the year before last) and we are truly going to miss her. So she mustered up the energy to drag her butt up here to C-town and say goodbye to her grandchildren, and she surely didn't just pass on that nice little discount she was getting while she was here. My family managed to win three door prizes and Brittnee also managed to be the closest to guessing how many peppermints were in this gumball machine, so she got to take home that sweet lil' gem as well.
The Message:
With this blog, I have been covering sin mostly. When preaching-for lack of a better word-about sin, I can't just speak of it from the outside, or just from the Bible, I must speak from my own personal battles and experiences with sin. I can't just write scripture in this blog and what I think about it with no real life accounts, using the blog as pedestal or something of that nature. I am not without sin. No one is. If we say we are, we are lying. We repent our sins and are forgiven through Jesus Christ, who died to take on our sin. So, here we go. Of recently, I have been in a funk; well, more of a roller-coaster actually. The roller-coaster's name, Righteousness. It seems like I am just fluctuating between leading a good, Christian life and falling into the grasps of sin. I will feel good, reading my Bible, praying, talking with God, loving, really just livin' right, how we are supposed to. I would feel like people could meet me and just know there is something about me, that something being God. But, I've been building myself up on a faulty foundation. Have I been reading my Bible? Yes. But, have I really read it for growth and learning and understanding, or have I just read it to, well, just read it? The answer, sadly, leans towards the latter. I want to read it for all those things, but sometimes I find myself just trying to "get it done," cause that's what you're supposed to do right? Read your Bible everyday? Well, no actually. That is where I've been getting it wrong. You're not supposed to read it everyday; no, you are supposed to STUDY it everyday. Study. So many times-and I say this from me, but also from people who have told me this as well-we find ourselves thinking the first one, reading it. A lot of times, when I am reading out of it(not studying it) it is so easy to get distracted. Not like flat out distracted where I just stop reading it, but it can be as simple as starting to think of something while reading it, continuing to read, but not focus on the word I am reading. I am reading it with a sense of, "Hey, I have to read this chapter for the day, or however much I decided I was going to read, and then I am done." Well there is so many things wrong with that train of thought. First of all, we have the before-mentioned reading not studying mess going on. Secondly, it is almost as if it is a big ordeal to have to read, that I would be counting down the time 'til I am through reading it. Tres-ly(for those Spanish speakers out there), is it really that good to have a preset cap on how much you're going to read? It doesn't sound that good. When I do all this stuff, like I stated earlier, I am building myself on a faulty foundation. That faulty foundation begins to crack, and then the devil seeps into those cracks and starts to spread them 'til it finally breaks all the way. That is what the devil is doing 24/7. He is constantly trying to squeeze himself into any crack possible, anything to tempt us and try to break us. He is crafty, sneaky, venomous, and so many other things. He will put thing after thing in front of you, temptation after temptation. Eventually, if we have built ourselves up on a faulty foundation, he will succeed, and we will crack and fall into sin. I am not removed from this. My weakness, lust. Is this personal? Maybe so, but testimonies aren't just colored pretty and full of goodness all the time. The devil will bring back things from my past; dark times in my life where he previously won, such things as porn, and heavy lusting on every attractive girl I see, things done with a girl or whatever it may be. Why not? He knows I am weak there. I will pray about it and fight it off, but eventually, because I didn't really study what I read, I will break. I give into temptation. Then I am left in defeat. I just went down the big drop in the roller-coaster. I'm left there, wondering why? Why did I let him win? Why was I not strong enough. Well there is the reason why. I am not strong enough, not by myself. I find my strength in the Lord. With him, I am strong enough to defeat blow after blow from the devil. The problem lies when I don't lean on the Lord. When I don't start asking for the strength to overcome the temptation shoved in my face. So my message to you all is: Call on the Lord in everything you do. Call on Him when you are about to do something you've never done before. Call on Him when you are about to take a test, just ask for recollection of what you already have learned. Call on Him to just be with you. Call on Him for guidance. Call on Him for strength. Just call on Him. If we are constantly talking to God, the devil can't whisper in our ear like the snake he is. And if we STUDY our Bible, we will remember what we have read, learned, and we will recall it when the situation arises and we will conquer anything thrown our way. We cannot make it without Him. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."-Phillipians 4:13.
Thanks for reading.
Signing Off.
