Fatherless, yet Not

Tonight I watched the movie Courageous, it was a great movie and after watching the extra's I loved the heart of the director and the reasons behind the movie. I must say as I watched and amazing movie about men being fathers I was reminded of the absence of my own earthly father. It spoke to the hurt in my heart, at this moment I have not heard from my dad for about six weeks. I wish that our relationship was not this way, I wish that my dad was active in my life that would desire to protect and cherish me. Then I am reminded of my Heavenly Father is perfect in his love for me! That He rejoices over me, not because of me but because of Christ and his sacrifice on my behalf! That I have significance because I am made in his image, and I look like both my earthly father and my Heavenly Father it is so great!

It is great that the Lord has reminded me of his faithfulness but I must be honest I would like to have someone on this earth that was a dad to me. Then I am reminded of my step-dad who pasted away last december he was great. I could always depend on him to be there for me to support me and affirm me. I miss him often. I am also reminded of the men from church who take the time to care for me and give me counsel. The Lord has blessed me in the fact that he is my Heavenly Father and by all the great men who have blessed me with their kindness as spiritual fathers.

Sophomore Year

I am not on facebook right now, so I thought I'd update you on life. I'm in my sophomore year at Moody-Spokane and if I told you I absolutely loved it so far this year I'd be lying to you. This year has been hard. I know your wondering why, I'm going to tell you:)

For living this year I was living with a family and it was good I was afraid. I was afraid of getting to close to them, I was afraid of life becoming to personal and I was uncomfortable because I was not close to campus and my peers. All of these things were true but they were also cover-ups for my hearts fears and mistrust. I was not use to the Lord giving me such good things such as friends that would accept and love me no matter how tough it got. I ran away and by that I mean I moved out and into a college house with a lot of girls where I could hide and not get close to people and keep my guard up.

In the mist of moving houses I moved churches. I moved churches out of frustration and immaturity. I left because I did not like the way the pastor handled his dislike of the Bible College student attitude. He handled it by being sarcastic and a bit harsh toward us Bible College students. Instead of me talking to him I just left the church and went to a church that I had been going to bible study at last year.

This year as a sophomore has been hard because I've had a hard heart toward the Lord and his people. What I mean by that is that the Lord has had lessons for me to learn and I simply did not want to learnt them. One lesson He wanted me to learn is that I can trust him and that he is good. I had a difficult semester academically because of one class that was a lot of information gathering and detailed information at that. The prof was super smart and expected us to be as smart as he was and I just wasn't there and so I felt discouraged most of the time.

So due to my self induce isolation and lack of desire to learn from the Lord this last semester was hard. Even in my disobedience I see how the Lord blessed me. I was never allowed to walk away form the Lord. The Holy Spirit kept me and guarded my heart from utter disobedience and walking right into destruction. I am thankful for this valley because I see my Father's care for me and his endless pursuit even when I run away.

Over break my Father allow me a time of rest and I was able to learn from my mistakes for the last semester. So as this semester has started I have been blessed to be able to be in community more with other believer's and through that being propelled to be with my Father is secret and pray to him in secret. I have seen growth spiritually in the fact that I want to commune with the Lord and that I want my life to be his and that means my time, money, thoughts and sexuality and purity to be His and His alone!

Hope you enjoyed reading!

Angel

Freedom in Christ!!

The Gospel is amazing!! It is liberating! And those are to things that I often forget that God has chosen me apart from anything that I have done, apart of my social status, apart from my family. God chose me because of his sovereign choice and he sent his Son to the cross for my sins not because I deserved it but because of His loving plan for me as his daughter. Nothing that I do can take me away from my Heavenly Father because he paid the price for my wandering heart with Jesus blood. So with that I have been praying for liberation from my idols and the bondage of past hurt especially dealing with past sexual abuse. God has blessed me with liberation from my idols and has healed the area of past sexual abuse I am going to continue to work through the hurt and the pain but also resting in the fact that God has given me the gifts necessary to get through this hurt and that my identity is not in my pain and that I am still in Christ even though I've been victimized.

My Father is also showing me that he alone is infinitely bigger than my pains,hurts and past and that has been so freeing. I'm glad that the God we serve wants to use all of our stories and use them to bring glory to himself. He alone is worthy of the glory for our lives because he created us for his glory alone! That makes me so glad that in whatever I am doing I can bring him glory.

Hope you are well and thanks for reading

Angel

Hello from the West Coast

So it has been a while since I last posted I'm not on Facebook so I thought that I should update ya'll on what's going on. I've been going through a lot but its been hard. If you didn't know my step dad passed away in November and that has been really hard for me I have missed him a lot. Its hard for me as I walk through things in my past I'm in counseling and its been good but I did not necessarily want to work through but it was not forced I don't think. I want to be authentic in all that I am doing and what better place to do it then in counseling. I started a new semester a while ago and I am on academic probation which is fine a lot of people give me this like sad look when I say that I am on probation but for me it has been a good thing helping stay focused I sometimes lose track of what is important but God has been good.
I'm working and I am really thankful that I have a job but the owner of the place I work at is really moody:) Yes I know I go to moody and I have a moody in the emotional sense that I work for. It can sometimes be annoying. In this job situation I am really learning to find my identity in Christ and not in my job which is what I have done in the pass. I am lerning to rest in the saving work of Christ and not find my identity in my performance which has been an idol of my heart for a long time and man do some things die hard.
Not a long post I am still working through things in my heart and I want to figure out what is appropriate to talk about and share with ya'll as I work through things and feel more ok with what has happen I'll share. Love you all and thank you for reading

Midterm Season in!! And out it goes!

This past week I had midterms!! Scary time but good. I got to put to the test all the stuff I've been learning from my school books hopefully I did well. I've been working and going to school and so since I've been doing both things one thing would be forgotten about because I still haven't gotten this whole time management thing down. So studying kind of got forgot about for a while. Midterms came and I realized I did not study as much as I wanted to. So I did a couple intense study nights before my midterm. I retained most of the information but I realized how blessed I was to only have on midterm because the philosophy I had is a bad one.

One of the homework assignments I really appreciate is Kingdom Experiments in Spiritual Life and Community where we could pick something to fast from and I picked two things to fast from and that is facebook and baking. I choose to fast from these two things because even though they are good they had become a distraction to me and the things I need to get done like homework. I would sit on facebook and procrastinate instead of do homework or I would bake instead of do homework. I still really like baking but since I've been fasting I've felt so much freedom.

Things I've learned from this homework assignment

• you can't run form problems
• God is the only on who will satisfy
• as humans we easily pervert wonderful gifts and make them gods
• time management is important for homework and fun
• Dealing with relational problems can be rewarding you just have to be willing to put time into them.

Thanks for reading my blog even though it is silly talk

Angel

Reflections of My past month in Spokane, Washington

I have been here in Spokane for a month now today and here are some of my thoughts.

The sky-line is beautiful. My classes are good I need to get caught up on homework. Already which for me is a bad sign I need to find my study style and timing in which I study best. So my reflection:

Its really dry in spokane compared to minneapolis.

People don't really water their grass.

Lots of my Professors like Piper and so do my classmates.

Lots of people like me which makes me happy.

Living in a house with 5 other girls is interesting.

I'm sinful and am not always kind

My allergies act up a lot

My asthma acts up a lot also

I got homesick often

There is an Acts 29 church out here which I really like its a young church meaning there is not a lot of older people there.

I like my roommate

She is nice she was a missionary kid in china

The housing area I live in consist of 35 other girls so it is kind of like a dorm which is nice.

There is a women here by the name of michelle that I really like she is 25 likes to rock climb, bolder, white water raft, run, camp and lots of other stuff I think she is awesome and that God placed her here to minister to me.

What I am learning:

I am prideful

I don't like to ask for help

I can be a loner

I have self pity parties sometimes

I procrastinate

I need to think outside of me

I need to rely more on God and less on myself

God is an amazing provider and Father

God's love endless

His mercy is new every morning

That I can walk by faith

That God is Faithful

That God is Love

That God is interested in me as His child

that I need to got to sleep earlier

That I need to do what I know is best for me school wise

Some other things I'm learning is that consistency is a good thing, I have a lot of convictions and have not put them into action. God has given me passions for urban ministry and I just don't know how to get started.

Things I hope to get out of my moody education

For my head knowledge to be in my heart and shown by my life.

Prayer request that I would be graceful and filled with grace for the people I live with

violence

I was reading the Chicago tribune and most of the stuff was about Violence on the south side of Chicago. One story was about a 17 year old boy being charged with the murder of his 5 year old cousin. The 17 year old did not shoot his little cousin he just brought the gun in the house and hide in his little cousins room. The 5 year old and his twin were sen to bed when the family heard a shot from the bedroom. The 5 year old's twin brother came out of the room saying his brother had been shot. I scrolled down to the comments and read almost all of them and for one thing people are cruel. First thing people do is insult parents and families and the community. And at this point I am angry as I write this because this sad event did take place in the black community and I feel like people should not make what they think is educated comments if they have not walked in someone else shoes. I'm sick of this high and mighty attitude that comes from people. Let us stop looking at everyone so negatively, pray for people that are different then us and be helpful in a Christ exalting way. we are no better then anyone else and we need to stop acting as though we are. Also another note people that live dangerous lives don't always come from families that don't care they just make poor decisions. Fatherless homes don't always create irresponsible,uneducated members of society.