It has been a while since my last post, so I thought I would throw another post up here while I had time. I just got back from a ski trip with K-Life, which was a lot of fun. I tried snowboarding for the first time, which was very bumpy but also very fun. The theme of the trip was being set apart, and I thought that was a great idea that gets looked over a lot. I have been trying to be holy (set apart) lately because one of my professors brought it to my attention very well. I may never be completely holy, but that is no reason to try. My professor's view is this: Can you be holy for one second? If one second, why not two? Why not a minute? An hour? A day? This really encouraged me, so I thought that I would share it with the few people who might glance at this. Have a Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year!

First Blog...Get Excited!

Obviously, I have decided to start a blog. I hear that blogs are fun productive, so I thought I would give it a try. For any readers sakes, I will try to limit this site to legitimate thoughts and posts and try to avoid pointless ones. Actually, scratch that; I have too many random thoughts to guarantee that none of them will be pointless. Anyways, shall we begin?

I have recently been really down on myself because I just can't seem to get out of my habitual cycle. I am having trouble breaking out of the mold that is my life. I just kind of go through the motions of Christianity and always end up disappointed. There are times when I truly live it for a short time, but I have yet to make that time as much as I would like (which would be infinite). I always end up side tracked by any number of things.

The result of this cycle is a whole semester of school in which I have produced very little fruit. I have not grown nearly as much as I had hoped I would in my first semester. I figured I would be past my juvenile ways, but no, they are just as, if not more, prominent than they were a year ago.

I have been trying to meditate on James 4:7-10, which is "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts you double minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Turn your laughing to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up."

This verse really hit me hard. Its simplicity is amazing. Submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will leave you. Come to God and he will come to you. Cleanse your hands and purify your hearts. From there it kind of threw me for a loop.

Why would James encourage grieving, mourning, and wailing? My guess is that we are to grieve over our sin and unfaithfulness. If we truly realize the wrong we have done, will we not grieve over it? It seems as if we should be upset if we truly believe that we have defied the God of the universe. I feel like that grieving goes hand in hand with humbling yourself before the Lord. When one realizes his sin enough to mourn over it, he is humbled because he is ashamed. God then, in grace and mercy, lifts us up. Man, would I like to be lifted up!

Maybe the reason I do not feel lifted up is because I do not grieve over my sin. It has almost become routine to just accept sin. How bad is that? Many times I do not even react to my sin, and I definitely do not remember the last time I grieved, mourned, or wailed over it. So, with that in mind, I have been praying for a heavy heart. I have been praying that God would convict me of my sin, and that I would no longer have a heart of passivity towards it. I want sin to impact me. I want to be so impacted that I grieve over it.

Well, those are the thoughts of the day. Hope they were helpful!