Time

12 Apr

Life without class is strange. I don’t have to stay up late to study and wake up early to rush to class.  No more lectures or discussions. No more office hours, textbook readings, homework assignments, studying, or paper writing. Seems nice, doesn’t it?  In all honesty, I have to say it is! But I’ve learned that having more free time is having more time to waste.  The Bible makes it very clear that time is a gift from God.  Romans 14:12 says that you will have to give an account to God of how you lived your life, which includes how you spent your time.  We have to be aware of this and realize that God does care about what we do with our time.

For the past couple weeks, I have chosen to do what is easier: sleeping in, watching TV, spending a lot of time on Pinterest or Facebook, and sleeping some more… It’s really nice to have more free time, but just a couple days ago I was convicted of how I have been spending that time.  Busy-ness was always one of my biggest excuses for not having enough time to read my Bible or pray, but it is still difficult now, even when I definitely have more time.  Why is that?  Because having more time means having more time to waste.  Since I will be held responsible for my actions, I must actively choose to believe and obey what the Bible says.  Instead of being lazy and doing what is easier, I must endeavor to do what is most profitable, which is not always easy. Of course none of the things I mentioned above are inherently wrong, but it comes down to how much time you devote to these things.

Some practical ways I’ve found helpful to organize my time are:

  • make to do lists (“things I need to do today”, “things that I will do tomorrow”, “long term to do”) and check off things when you complete them – this way you can know what you need to do and how to better divide your time. sometimes I even add the amount of time I want to spend on each thing.
  • use Google Calendar, iCal, or a planner to record your activities and see how much time you spend on certain ones
  • install StayFocusd – a Google Chrome app that lets you set a certain amount of time that you are allowed to spend per day for a list of websites
  • learn how to say no
  • be okay with not going to every event

Jonathan Edwards was resolved to “live so as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.” I encourage you, whether you are still in school or not, to use your time wisely and in ways that you will not regret.  Time is precious and short, so constantly evaluate how you spend your time.  Let’s use whatever time we have in a way that is most pleasing to God since we are living on time borrowed from Him!

Apartmenting

11 Apr

Q: What does apartment life look like? Was it difficult living with more people? If so, what were some problems that arose, and how did you girls address them in love and with graciousness? If not, what are some tips that you recommend? What are some things that you found you needed or “forgot” to bring?

A: This should be a fun question, I have to be careful since half my co-authors are my apartmentmates ;)  Here’s a few thoughts that jump out:

First off- I LOVE my apartment, I cannot thank God enough for those girls who are some of my best friends.  HOWEVER!!  This does not mean that EVERY apartment needs to be BFFs or that everyone spends 5 hours every night talking into the wee hours of the morning.  Most of the time apartment life is very mundane in that we eat, sleep, clean, rejoice, cry, laugh, study, cook, and get in each others way at times together.  There are periods of time that we see each other A LOT and periods in which we don’t see each other for a few days in a row.  It’s strange because I can’t say enough, and yet I’m hesitant to say anything at all since it is so dependent on who you live with.

Is it more difficult with more people?  Yes, simply being that there are more preferences with more people.  For example, my family waits to wash dishes at certain times like after a meal while other girls were used to washing dishes right after using them; I had to change habits to my new living situation.  I’m sure there are a lot of other examples, some silly, some passive aggressive, etc.  but the verse I always keep in mind is Phil. 2:3 which says, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves;”.  Also keep in mind that openly bringing up issues in humility is a way to sharpen one another and can clear up miscommunications. If you are consistently putting aside your own preferences and looking to serve one another and are slow to anger or assumption making, then you’ll find apartment life  much more enjoyable!

For practical tips on what to bring:
I suggest bringing only the essentials when you start off and then evaluate what you need over time.  This way you’ll avoid having 36 spoons like my apartment (although great for eating ice cream with!) or having more Tupperware than can fit on a shelf.  Some things you’ll need that we didn’t realize at first: ziplock bags, plastic wrap for food, cleaning supplies, and lighting for the living room.

Before my apartment moved in we made a Google spreadsheet with columns for each separate room with a list of items that we were planning to bring.  We color coded the items by person so we knew who was bringing what.  We also had questions to get to know each other like: allergies (Jenny is deathly allergic to mangos!), pet peeves (hair on the floor…), times that we usually sleep, as well as our likes or dislikes.

In short: die to yourself daily, be honest and never gossip about each other, make memories, pick up each others idiosyncrasies, and leave college more godly because of one another than when you first moved in!

Happy Easter!

8 Apr

A brief glimpse of what to expect, thanks for sticking with us through an inconsistent winter, and welcome to Spring!

*yikes! I meant that we’re posting once or twice a WEEK this coming quarter :)

I Deserve

7 Mar

Finish that title.  I dare you.  Actually I can do it for you, since I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the past 21 years.  I deserve to be fed.  I deserve to be loved.  I deserve to be respected, to get good grades, to sleep whenever I want, to have the dishes washed, to be left alone when I feel like it and to receive attention when I want. I deserve your time, your undivided attention, and you better be excited to see me.

Sounds just a tad selfish and all untrue and yet that’s exactly what my heart believed (and is still repenting of!) as I interacted within my friendships and carelessly threw around the blessings God has given me like family, food, and time.  I had forgotten what I do deserve:”For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” and why I don’t have to pay that price: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (—Rom. 6:23 & 5:8)

I had all these expectations of other people and this mindset of “You OWE me blank blank blank because I’m giving you blank blank blank”  I got easily upset and angry when those expectations weren’t fulfilled until finally a friend reminded me, “We don’t deserve anything.”  Ouch. How sobering.  As I start to hold my expectations in open hands and to look at the cross with thanksgiving and joy, it’s incredibly freeing to live as God has commanded.  

So now I double dare you.  Finish that sentence, go ahead, I’m serious- it takes courage to admit your sin and to give voice to the wrongful expectations that you say everyday with your actions and attitudes.  But don’t stop there, as John Owen has said, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.” 

Think ahead!

26 Feb

You might be overwhelmed with simply finishing your midterms, but this post is actually coming LATE to tell you that summer is coming SOON.  If you haven’t given it much thought, replace your next Facebook break with a time to think through what you want to do for the three months you get off before the fall.  Although it might take time now, you’ll be able to maximize your time later, especially since deadlines for most programs are approaching.  Here are some suggestions to get you started:

1. Internship/Work Experience: It’s hard to go wrong gaining experience and getting paid while you’re at it.  Usually the problem is getting hired- my tip is to take advantage of your network and connections and then apply to as many internships as possible.  Expect that for about every 40 applications you send out, you might only get 1 or 2 interviews.  But hey, you only need one!

2. Research and Summer School:  Email your professors to see if they have room in their lab for another undergrad, research what they do so they know you’re genuinely interested in their work (this generally works for engineers, sorry life science/other majors if it’s way more competitive…)  You can usually do summer school at the same time and knock out a hard class when you’re more relaxed.

3. Short term ministry trip: You heard our pastor.  GO.  It is amazing how God can change your perspective of evangelism, missions, and the unity of the body in such a short period of time.  You are able to encourage the missionaries you pray for, form relationships to proclaim Christ, and shape your passionate sending and potential going in the future. Go go go go!

4.Serve in your church/Volunteer: If your home church has a day camp or a youth group and need help, consider serving.  It’s so crucial to be a godly example of what it looks like to stand firm in your convictions while in college to elementary, middle, and high school youth.  I know I’m personally so thankful for college women who came back to counsel me, even if for only one week.

There is an inexhaustible list of what you can do, the point is to at least have some idea of what that is now before it’s too late.  Just to be clear, your “busy-ness” during the summer doesn’t equal “godliness”, at the heart of it is 1 Cor. 10:31- are you doing (and planning to do) everything to the glory of God? And that leads me to the last point: make sure you are growing spiritually and making time with God a priority.  We’ll cover that more extensively when summer is actually approaching, but those three months have been some of my greatest periods of growth and I hope you will be able to say the same.

Can you smell it?

21 Feb
I read an article from the NYTimes and got caught thinking about the similarites we have as Christians to the problem P&G had selling Febreze.  Read for yourself:
 
“The first ad showed a woman complaining about the smoking section of a restaurant. Whenever she eats there, she says, her jacket smells like smoke. A friend tells her that if she uses Febreze, it will eliminate the odor. The cue in the ad is clear: the harsh smell of cigarette smoke. The reward: odor eliminated from clothes. The second ad featured a woman worrying about her dog, Sophie, who always sits on the couch. “Sophie will always smell like Sophie,” she says, but with Febreze, “now my furniture doesn’t have to.” The ads were put in heavy rotation. Then the marketers sat back, anticipating how they would spend their bonuses. A week passed. Then two. A month. Two months. Sales started small and got smaller. Febreze was a dud.      
 
The panicked marketing team canvassed consumers and conducted in-depth interviews to figure out what was going wrong, Stimson recalled. Their first inkling came when they visited a woman’s home outside Phoenix. The house was clean and organized. She was something of a neat freak, the woman explained. But when P.& G.’s scientists walked into her living room, where her nine cats spent most of their time, the scent was so overpowering that one of them gagged.      
 
According to Stimson, who led the Febreze team, a researcher asked the woman, “What do you do about the cat smell?”      

“It’s usually not a problem,” she said.      

“Do you smell it now?”      

“No,” she said. “Isn’t it wonderful? They hardly smell at all!”      

A similar scene played out in dozens of other smelly homes. The reason Febreze wasn’t selling, the marketers realized, was that people couldn’t detect most of the bad smells in their lives. If you live with nine cats, you become desensitized to their scents. If you smoke cigarettes, eventually you don’t smell smoke anymore. Even the strongest odors fade with constant exposure. That’s why Febreze was a failure. The product’s cue — the bad smells that were supposed to trigger daily use — was hidden from the people who needed it the most. And Febreze’s reward (an odorless home) was meaningless to someone who couldn’t smell offensive scents in the first place.      

The article’s focus is on the habits of people and our internal reward system, however I thought about how sin in our lives can be exactly like the overpowering, gagging effect of 10 cats, or that sin can be SO OBVIOUS to everyone else around us.  And yet, we can be blind when we have lived with it so long we have no idea it’s there.  At first it might bother us and occasionally, like the cat lady it can be a problem, but on a day to day basis everything smells great.  With constant exposure, we start to desensitize our hearts to what should be righteously disdainful.  The line that strikes me the most is: “the bad smells that were supposed to trigger daily use — was hidden from the people who needed it the most.”

Is your daily life in desperate need of “febreze”?  As Christians, we have a much more infinitely potent CHRIST who will expose the bad smells that we’ve hardened our hearts to.  So take a moment-examine your heart, ask a good friend, plead with Jesus and freshen up what was never meant to stink in the first place.

M.A.D.E. 3: SAY WHAT!?

24 Jan

I am both slightly nervous and excited to invite you all to our next M.A.D.E. seminar on February 5th at 1:30pm after church (my apartment, please “contact us” for the address).  Nervous because I’ll actually be teaching this time, excited because I love what I’m teaching about and am praying that it will be helpful for all of you as well!

Essentially, we’ll be focusing on communication skills or rather the unintentional habits we have as women to MIS communicate with one another and how we can be more effective within our relationships- all to the glory of God.  Take a moment right now and think about the phrases you say that actually come with a hidden meaning, or the unspoken things you say with your eyes and your mouth and that slight raise of the brow.  We are constantly communicating something and as Christians we should be aware of how we’re presenting Christ in every situation.  So JOIN me in TWO weeks to explore this topic that affects every area of your life.

**It’s also a TEA party!  So come in your church clothes, bring your favorite mug, and be prepared to eat scones!

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