Just What We've All Been Waiting For!

Who is excited to find out who our guest is? I know I am! (Except for the fact that I already know who it is...but I'm still excited!) I have decided to make the grand announcement today...
Who is it? Melissa Garcia from Melissa's Song (follow her blog if you aren't already.-I've heard she has some great things coming up.)

As many of you know, I met Melissa very briefly at Summer Heritage a couple of years ago. By briefly I mean, she told me that she liked my dress and I said thank you. It was that brief. Literally. The next year, I was standing in the lobby at our hotel and saw her standing in front of me. In typical Lauren fashion, I point blank asked her how I was supposed to know her because I felt like I had seen her before. So she reminded me of our encounter the previous year and we began to talk. For a long time. People began to ask us how long we had known each other and mention that we acted like life long friends. They were shocked when they found out that we had started talking within the last day or two. We swapped numbers and we text and FaceTime and all that jazz pretty much all the time. So when I asked her if she would write a blog post for me, she said yes and I got excited! Be prepared to read a post written by her sometime in the near future. (It'll be after Summer Heritage.)
Thanks for reading and be sure to follow her blog! You can find it through the link above or in my blogroll. Check it out. :)

Lauren Bundy

My Strength

As some of you know, I've really been lifting weights and things to get my strength up. Just kidding. The only weight that I've been lifting is a loaded fork.

I just got some insight last night and it pretty much amazed me, so I wanted to share it.

We often hear, especially growing up in the church, that "the joy of the Lord is our strength". What does that mean? I, along with many other people I'm sure, believed that it meant that the Lord would give us joy to strengthen us right? Well last night totally changed my mind about this. Check it out;

The joy of the Lord is our strength.
Our strength is the joy of the Lord.
Our strength is the Lord's joy.

We get strength, when we bring the Lord joy.

We read our Bible. It brings the Lord joy, and it gives us strength.
We pray. It brings the Lord joy, and we get strength.
We spread the gospel. It brings the Lord joy, and we get strength.

BOOM.

I get strength when I bring the Lord joy. You get strength when you bring the Lord joy. So your walk with God is getting tough? Go ahead, bring the Lord some joy. *runs aisles*
Is this just me, or is that not pretty amazing?

Just thought I'd share that tidbit. Be blessed! ;)

All in God's Time

Young people get a lot of pressure. From society. From school. From friends and family. From the government. And even from the church. It surrounds us and is constantly jostling us, hoping to get our attention long enough to change us.-either for better or worse. We get pressure to be in a relationship, to follow after a certain career, to vote a particular way, to be a particular person. Sometimes these pressures have negative influence in our lives and we have to learn to combat them so that we don't succumb to every pressure that comes along.
At this particular point in my life, the pressure gets increased a little bit more. All we hear is, 'What are you going to do?', 'Where are you going to work?', 'Who are you going to be?' and so on. Its strenuous and intense. I'm trying to follow the will of God, but am I? Can I even hear His voice through the crowd of people interrogating me?
And of course, we have to factor in the pressure of the world. Pressure is continually increasing. Gay marriage, humanism, new age beliefs are all on the rise.-and that is barely scratching the surface. There are fights, riots, shootings, and other acts of violence imposed on the people that dare to take a stand. (Why would we stand up when we could be killed or persecuted for it?)
So as young people, one thing that we hear often is that it is time. It is 'time to grow up' or it is 'time to embrace change' or it is 'time to settle down and have a relationship'. We have to be careful what we let ourselves listen to and who we submit ourselves too.
I've thought a lot about this and asked myself some questions, truly wanting to know. Who am I listening to? What are they saying?-Is it something that could help me or does it have the potential to lead my soul down the wrong path? I don't want anything to hinder my relationship with God or inhibit my work for God. I don't want to open the door to a voice that leads me astray and have to live with that for the rest of my life. -And I definitely do not want to get in the way of God's timing. Its too important to me. All His way, all His time. All the time. I mean that.