Uhhhmph!

So it has been a long time since I posted something. That last post was from a long time ago that I just posted! Anyways...a lot has happened since then and I even stopped running because life became so busy and these past 9 months have included extreme emotional upheaval for me and I did not feel like myself until more recently, Praise the Lord. Now I am back to running again and as usual God uses that time to speak to me and I am currently in a place more accepting of where God has me in my walk with Him, Praise the Lord again! On several occasions in the last couple of months or so, God really pointed out to me the discipline and pain I am able to endure while I run. I actually embrace it and take joy in the discipline and pain that ensues when trying to get in shape for running because I know and trust that the outcome will be far better than the journey or process. On the other hand, I struggle immensely with the discipline that God tries to instill in me where the outcome again will be far better than the process. Often I reject it and act out like a child who is disobedient to their parent. Rather pathetic actually, if you think about it! Hahahaha! Anyways, in speaking to me about discipline, God was relating the discipline He uses and compared it to other areas of my life where I endure and accept discipline. He was showing me that His discipline is very similar and only for my benefit. I have had a hard time still accepting His discipline. I say, "But God your discipline is so much more painful. I feel like I can't take it and it's just so much easier to stay where I am at...How come I have to go through all this to enhance my relationship with you?!" I am a stubborn woman. People who know me well will tell you that and I like to do things on my timetable and at a pace that is in my control. God has been challenging this in me. I used to get everything I wanted. Lately, not a chance. This year has presented with failure, after failure, and thankfully ended with God's faithfulness in all the matters. God has also been so good in his discipline as much as I have not liked it. I know that God is jealous for me and wants a deeper relationship with me and He is moving me towards Him and sometimes He has to break the leg of His lamb so that she will follow and depend on Him. I was just hoping He wouldn't have to do that to me! But like I said...I'm stubborn, also foolish, and completely incapable without Him!

Glow! Week 2

*The Creator versus the imitator (Satan)*

June 13th, 2010

For this week we read 1 John 2: 10-11; 15-17:

"10 Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling. 11 But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes."

"15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world--the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions--is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever."

This week Joel talked about how we are not to be of the world. He said that there is the creator (which is God) and then there is the imitator (Satan), and so there are two plans on this earth: the creator's and the imitator's. In the beginning there was 1 plan: God's intent for us was to first love Him and then to love others. With the fall, in came into picture a second plan: Satan's plan, which was to love ourselves or to only focus on ourselves. The fundamental difference between these plans is that one involves living for and with others, while the second involves living only for oneself.

By stepping into a relationship with God, we take one more step into his plan for us. Joel here used a ladder to show how when we enter relationship with Jesus, we take the first step toward our heavenly father and his will. Once this occurs, we find that God starts to illuminate the darkness (sin) in our lives and as we are filtered of the things of this world and step away from the imitator's plan, we start to look more like Him. So, when we lose our sin we start to look like Him. It is here where we can start live our creator's plan of living for and loving others according to God's will.

I absolutely love how Joel gives this visualization of stepping into a relationship with Jesus with a ladder, which represents God's plan. Once we step onto the ladder we can never get off, but we can determine how high or how close we get to our father in heaven, until the day our bodies die and we are perfected. So, as we take more steps toward God the more he illuminates the darkness and rids of it and the closer we get to Jesus and God the father.

God tells us to not love the world nor the things of this world - this follows within the imitator's plan. By abiding in the father, we remain in his plan, in his will. We must see, sense, and say (bring to light) these things that are of the flesh and of the eyes and are of pride in possessions. John tells us not love the things/plan of the enemy. We must ask ourselves: Do I have the lust of the flesh, do I have the lust of the eyes, and do I boast of the prideful things in my life? It is here where God can reveal to us the things of the world in our lives. It is here where we can begin to see the darkness that needs to be brought to light and recognized God's plan and steer clear of the imitator's plan.

~ Kara

Glow! Week 1

*Everywhere you go gives you a chance to glow!*

June 6th, 2010

For the past two weeks at New Albany church, my pastor has been doing a series called Glow! I am just loving it so far. During the first week (2 Sundays ago from this day), he talked about when one steps into a relationship with God, therein begins joy. We then have light and because we have light, there is no room for darkness or sin, and because there is no room for darkness, we experience conflict. A war starts to stir where the light meets the darkness and exposes it. This is where we can come to confess the darkness with in us and if we continue to weed out the darkness, then all that is left is LIGHT! And so we GLOW, glow the light and love of Jesus. In order to expose and get rid of the darkness, there is a need for confession. I love the way that Joel defined confession. I think there is a lot of negative connotation for the word "Confession." I don't know about you, but confession is scary. To me it means, you reveal the sin in your life, what is bad to others. But Joel's definition of confession seemed a little less scary. He said, "Confession means to say the same thing that God says about your sin...It's speaking in unison about your sin with God. I don't know about you, but I love this, what is a new take for me on confession. It's coming to an agreement on what darkness is in your life. Many times we go walking around and don't realize the darkness that dwells within us, so it hides and oh does it hide well. By recognizing and revealing that darkness in agreement with God, we can then ask God to remove that darkness from our live. And you see, God hates sin/darkness, He detests it. You know why? Because it is not good and separates you from Him. God wants to be with you, to love you, to grow in you, to be loved and worshiped by you and for you to love others as he's loved you. I find this amazing. It's so simple, but so relevant. Sometimes as Christians grow and maybe become weary, they want something deeper, something more profound. It's like the simple known truth isn't good enough anymore. I love hearing new ways to learn about God and new perspectives on getting know him and how to grown in a relationship with him. It's humbling and creates a deeper understanding of God for me. I love taking somewhat "simple" messages and going deeper on my own. And that's what I'm doing here. The verse that we read from during this week was 1 John 1:1-10 and is as follows:

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life--the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us--that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his work is not in us."

I just challenge those who read this to meditate over this word and let the Lord speak to you on a personal level about what He wants you to take from this passage. As my boyfriend Branden would say, "Get out your Bible and read the physical words on the page that way you can underline and really take in the word." If you are lazy like me, feel free to just read it here, but there is something about taking out your Bible and reading it for yourself (I apologize for any typos).

My Oh My...

So...I haven't written a blog since the beginning of the year and my has time gone by. I survived 2 quarters and managed to not completely go insane. Recently I have been thinking of my negligence to my blog and have now decided, with more free time on my hands, to start it back up. I have been attending New Albany Church, a church that birth March 21st, 2010. This past Sunday, I felt that God was calling me back to this blog and use it for his glory and talk about the things that I learn Sunday morning through my lead pastor Joel Kovacs. His sermons, although somewhat basic, really speak to me and Joel speaks truth in a new, refreshing way and I have decided that I am going to blog about what I am learning through the leadership of my pastor Joel. I want what God is saying to surpass just those who attend church at NAC and share with my own community the way God is speaking through this young man and what he is teaching and growing in me at this new church. God has some things to say to His children in a new way and I want to share it with you all. I will continue this blog later in the week and tell you more! Get excited because I am!

Much love and God bless,

Kara

A New Day, A New Year

Today is New Years Eve. I am excited as I get to spend it with my boyfriend and best friends. With all the people I have talked to today, most have stated that they think this year is going to be even better than the last and that it's going to be a good year for them and they all seem to look forward to it. Me, on the other hand, I am somewhat dreading the New Year. God has me in a season where I am attending school and all I can think of is how stressful the new year is going to be. I'll be doing an internship, which I have never done before and I have to complete what seems like massive amounts of paperwork and I am not entirely sure how to complete the paperwork when I look at it. Some of them are easy, but others not so much. I am also to do a weekly journal and I have no idea what that's going to look like. Two of my days are going to be 12 hour days 8-8 and in reality add 2 hours to that for travel time. I think to myself "How am I going to do this, and still remain sane?" Last quarter was stressful enough! All I can ask for is God's grace in these moments and humble myself. I know that I cannot do this on my own, even though I know I am going to try to because that's how I tend to be in situations like this that seem to me to have a lot of control factors that I will want and feel the need to control. Thankfully I will have my friends, family, and boyfriend to level me out! Please pray for me as I start the new year. I love God so much, and I need his help and knowing my sinful ways, I will try to do this on my own. Pray that acquire the attitude of humility and forfeit my pride through the new year.

One my leaders of my small group gave me this book Humility: True Greatness by C. J. Mahaney. In it he writes "Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him." When you define pride in this way, man oh man, it puts into perspective what exactly you are doing when you are being prideful. This really helps to see how infectious pride can be. It is the first sin and the root of probably every sin that we commit. What's the "cure" for pride? Humility, of course, the most obvious answer! But having true humility and knowing that you are nothing without God, He gives us grace. I have learned that it is this state of humility that God gives us his grace and can transform our hearts!! Amazing grace! I love God so much and I can't wait for him to show me more ways to be humble and how to live it truly. Because right now, pride is not doing me much good other than making stressed! I pray that you too can explore in your heart where pride exists and become humble before the Lord. It is only then can we achieve true greatness in his eyes! I pray for everyone to have their eyes open to this concept, if they already are not, and just a continuance of God's grace and purification of your heart and mine! Praise the Lord!

Tomorrow, Branden and I leave for Atlanta, Georgia for the Passion Conference. I have never been before and feel excited and unsure at the same to go. Mostly excited though. It took me awhile to get to the point of excitement, but I know that God will show up and will do amazing things through me and in me, and also for others. That, in itself, will be exciting. To see what he is doing in others around the world that are my age. It will be great to see! Please pray for safe travels and God's manifested presence in others at the conference and also for Branden and I. We need the Lord so much and I can't wait for him to transform us even more! There will be lots of crying, which I am not looking forward too, but oh well!

I wish everyone a Happy New Year, actually I pray that everyone in the New Year will receive Joy and Peace from our Lord Jesus Christ!

God bless!

For Starters

So, I had this thought several months ago of creating a Christian blog, where what would be discussed is just someone's walk with the Lord and their daily struggles. At the time, I didn't feel like I was supposed to have one, and even now I am not sure. I decided to create this on a whim today, but the thought of creating one has been on my mind periodically for some time. My title "Diaries of a Runner" came to me while I was running and because God has shown and talked to me so much on my runs. I remember thinking to myself "That is such an awesome idea" and at the moment I felt pretty passionate about it! If you don't know me well and you are reading this, you will find that I try to be pretty open and vulnerable with what I go through, but at the same time I mind other's and my privacy.

Currently, God has been bringing up a lot in my life, although I have not been directly dealing with it through Him. Lately, He's been highlighting my selfishness and pride that get in the way of my relationships and loving others. It's been really hard to let some of this stuff go, but I know He will take care of me and be there always as long as I reach out to him.

Just the past Tuesday, I was going on my daily run and, as I was running I got to have the rare experience of running in the snow. This was really neat as I have never ran in the snow. As I was running, I was thinking what was going on in my life and my thoughts are almost always geared toward God. However, I started to notice that snowflakes would ever so often just fall into my mouth (I have a tendency to breathe my mouth slightly open when I run). Somehow this started leading to more thoughts about snowflakes and God. First I thought about how as a child, we often tend to open our mouths and try to catch every single snowflake and delight in catching them. As adults, this no longer happens and we don't take as much delight in the snow or catching falling snowflakes. I also thought about how rare snowflakes are and how special and precious they are; each are like little gifts or blessings. When thinking about this in relating it to God, I felt He was showing me that He is always throwing blessings and gifts our way. They could be as subtle as words of encouragement, comfort, words of wisdom or as tangible as an unexpected check in the mail, an answered prayer. As children, we are so willing to receive what God has to give us that we stand trying to catch everyone He throws our way, we want Him and what He has for us so much. But, sometimes, as we become older, we take advantage of the snowflakes and maybe even ignore them. Every once in awhile the just show up in our lives and we consume it, but then ignore them again. I really felt that God was showing me that He wants to give us rare unique, and precious gifts and blessings like snowflakes and that we should be waiting like children to catch them as the fall down to us and eager to accept them.

I pray for you my friend that you will stand and wait to catch the snowflakes that come your way!

In Christ's Love,

Kara