{Prayer}

From today, I have exactly 22 days until I go back to Mississippi to begin my second semester of college. I have been hoping, thinking and praying that this break will be one of renewal and restoration. I am beyond thankful that I finished my first semester without too many difficulties, with good grades and a good GPA, and many new relationships built, but to be completely honest, I am sufficiently drained. I need God to renew my energy physically, mentally, emotionally, and most importantly, spiritually.

Tonight, after a long phone conversation with a special man, I went outside on my deck. As I sat there beneath a blanket of twinkling stars in the chilly December air, green tea in hand, my thinking turned into praying. I prayed and thought about many things, from school, to people, to myself and my relationship with the Lord. As my mind landed on the last subject, I really began to evaluate myself.

"Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you fail to meet the test!"
{2 Corinthians 13:5}

Through this "examination," I began to see how I spent time with God this semester. When I think of spending time with God, I tend to thing of reading the Bible, going to church, and praying. Reading the Bible: check. I love reading my Bible. There is rarely a day that I go without reading at least something in God's Word. I love to read my favorite verses that I have underlined in my Bible, and I love to send verses to friends everyday as a little piece of encouragement to remind them that they're not alone. Going to church: check. I have found an awesome church to attend in Madison, MS called North Ridge. There are lots of college students and young families that I get the joy of worshiping with every Sunday, and I look forward to it every weekend. Prayer: Hmmm...

Prayer is an area I have been struggling with for quite some time now. When it comes to prayer, I am seriously A.D.D. A lot of times this semester, I will try praying before I go to sleep at night. Whenever I try that, I always wake up the next morning realizing I fell asleep mid-prayer. Sometimes I try praying as I'm walking to class. One thing wrong with that is that it takes about 3 minutes to walk anywhere on campus, so that ends up being a pretty short prayer. Either that, or I end up getting distracted or running into a friend and talking to them.

The past year or so I have come to an awareness of my "A.D.D. prayer life". I realize that it is something that needs to change, but every time I try to change it, it seems that I fail. I came to an understanding tonight though, that this does not just need to change, it is going to change. During this break, and at the Passion conference in a couple weeks, and throughout 2012, I am making a commitment to myself and to God to "pray without ceasing".

"Pray without ceasing."
{1 Thessalonians 5:17}

"Continue steadfastly in prayer..."
{Colossians 4:2}

"I desire then that in every place the men should pray..."
{1 Timothy 2:8}

God does not desire half-hearted, lukewarm people who have no desire to talk to Him, simply doing the bare minimum in order to go to heaven. He desires humble children who passionately seek His face through prayer and reading His Word.



Let's fall in love

So, it's been a while since I've written. I have been so ridiculously busy it's insane. But I really am enjoying senior year so far. Of course changing my mind a lot. So far, I've applied to Belhaven, Auburn, and South Carolina. I'm trying to decide on at least one or two other places to apply and right now I'm considering TCU, UNCSA, and maybe possibly even Julliard, though it's all up in the air at this point. Anyway, Right now I'm trying to focus on falling in love with God, which is harder than it appears, but here's just some stuff I've been thinking about lately.
-taye


How do you fall in love?

Beginning this summer, during my time at Camp Marannook, I decided that I wanted to fall in love with God, and that I wanted to work on that over my senior year of high school. However, it has been a significant struggle for me. When I think about everything that Christ has done for me and how deep His love is for me, it seems foolish that I cannot find it in myself to fall madly in love with Him.

A couple of nights ago, I was lying in bed attempting to pray and as my mind wandered off somewhere I found myself thinking of love. These thoughts reminded me of my "goal" of falling in love with God. I got to wondering why I struggling so much with it, when I began to think: "How do you fall in love?" I realized that I was trying to force myself into falling in love with God without spending a lot of time talking to Him or in His Word. No wonder it was not working!

When two people fall in love, they do so while spending a lot of time together. They talk, they write each other notes, they dive in and dig in to figure out everything there is to know about the other person. I was not doing any of these things with God. I realized that relationships on earth are used to help us understand how to have a relationship with God. It is kind of like babysitting provides you with examples and experience on how to take care of your own child. You learn. Relationships on earth show us how to have a relationship with God and vice versa.