Free Book by Brian Tome

The title of the book Free Book by Brian Tome has a very accurate title -- It is all about how to gain spiritual freedom in a world full of stronghold and bondage. Tome is very straight-forward throughout the whole book, not sugar-coating anything about it. He uses many scriptural references, which enhance the overall message of the book. He is also very tasteful in the presentation of his own opinions, making known that it is in fact just his opinion. Brian took a sometimes difficult to understand message about spiritual freedom, and broke it down into sections that were understandable for anyone to read, Christian or not.

While the straight-to-the-point, cold-hard-truth style of the book caught me off guard at first, I started to enjoy it the more I read. The book was challenged my way of thought, the actions I take, and the way I want to live my life. It was comforting to know that while I was reading the painful truth, the author could relate with the pain by sharing a personal story about the subject, and how he made it through. This is definitely a book that I would recommend, especially if you feel that you are in bondage and want to know the steps to freedom that God has waiting for you.

I am giving this book five out of five stars. As I thought about what to rate the book, I simply couldn't think of a reason NOT to give it five stars. Hope you enjoy it as well!

Serve to Love, Love to Serve

The days here in Painesville seem to get increasingly boring as we run out of things to do to get fully and completely moved here. There are still a few things we must do, and we could probably get them all done in one day, but it helps if we don't because it keeps us busy.

Josh and I have started reading through Oswald Chamber's "My Utmost for His Highest" Devotional book (we realized when we were unpacking our books that we both have a copy of it). As I was re-reading January 17th's devotional. It was about service, and how when we have a flourishing and intimate relationship with Christ, service should be the overflow of love and devotion. It was pretty convicting. I want to share a bit that I wrote about it from my personal journal:

"[The devotional says that] there is no specific call to service, but it is the overflow pouring from a life of love and devotion. The part that got me though, was the next line -- it says that service is what we bring to the relationship. Woah. This is some heavy duty stuff. My first though was, ' Well, I guess I better get serving! Gotta get that overflow going and moving to make me love God more'. Then I thought about it some more and realized that I had completely missed the point. Service is what we want to do when our relationship with Christ is blooming and flourishing. It shouldn't be a thing we do to try and make us love God more. Because we love God so much is why we want to serve! Because we love him so much that we are willing to go the next step, or even the next mile, to help and please our Lord God".

I know that I don't feel like serving all of the time, and sometimes when I am serving, my heart is not in this kind of place. I am not thinking about why I am doing it. I want to think about how much I love God while I serve. I want to remember that He is the reason for the action, and He is the reason I am even able to serve. I want to have such a strong. loving, devoted relationship to God that I am willing to serve no matter when or where, no matter what type of service it is.

Everything New

These last few days haven't really been too busy, but they have been a bit tiring. Sunday was a great day, it being the first day that we were officially here and Josh led worship for the first time at church, and it was just fun. Afterward, we just came home and took a VERY long nap, then did absolutely nothing for the rest of the day (hey, we spent a long time-- like the two days before that -- unpacking... it was nice to just rest :P).

Monday was more unpacking, and getting starting to venture out and get all the things done that you apparently have to do when you move out of state. Thats what we did today, too. Today, we got our Ohio licenses, which, I would like to tell you, are not very attractive. (Not because of the pictures on them either... :P) To describe them in one word, I would use tacky, but I will also say that they are a light shade of red (Which makes them look pink) with yellow, and weird markings all over them too. And, to top it off, I wanted to keep our MI licenses just for scrapbooking purposes, or something, but they wouldn't let us! Ah well, I guess.

Heat

I am super excited to move. I think that the location will be a big change, and it will be fun to experience a lot of new different things. Here is a list of just a few things I am excited about:

• We will be a hop, skip, and a jump away from the town square.
• There is a town square.
• We both have jobs where God can use our passions and grow us too.
• Our apartment has a fireplace (we can't use it, but it's super cute, and has a mantle!!)
• We can turn the heat up and not have to worry about how much it is going to cost!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• The bathtub in the bathroom has an older style shower curtain bar that goes all the way around the tub.. hehehe
• The master bedroom is HUGE, and it has a little nook/cove type thingy.
  
• We will be living right next to our landlord, who seems pretty cool.
  
• the college is right across the street
• The have a Gabriel Brothers store there!!!!
• We will be living pretty close to the drummer and his family (drummer for the church, that is...)

I am sure that there are more things, but this is just a small list of the things that I am pumped about. Also, Our families are being awesome and helping us move! Yeah to parents :)

Merry Christmas :)

Christmas and such

So, I am pretty excited about this upcoming season. It will probably be super crazy, and so I thank everyone in advance for dealing with the craziness and helping out :)

Tomorrow, Josh and I are doing our own mini-Christmas together.. I am really excited!! We are using some Christmas gift money that we got from some relatives to buy one or two things for each other. Also, we are going to do dinner and a movie: we have free tickets to any show we want to see as well as a gift card to Red Lobster. Mmmm. It should be a pretty relaxing day gong into a pretty crazy weekend.

This weekend, we are headed down to Ohio to talk with the people of the church, and just hang out with them for a weekend. The pastor and his wife are letting us stay with them and their five kids, and already have the whole weekend pretty planned out for us! We are meeting with someone from the church on Saturday afternoon (this guy is the drummer for the church, so him and Josh will probably talk a lot of music stuff) and then we are going to check out some apartments that Mike(the pastor) has arranged for us to look at. Sunday is filled with church activities, including set up and a little farewell luncheon type thing for their current worship leader and her husband. Then, we go check out some more apartments (just one) that Amy (Mike's wife) has arranged for us to scope out. Later that night there is an evening thing at the church for families and such, and then we go back to the pastor's home for some dinner, some sleep, and we leave the next day. Action Packed Weekend, here we come!

Last night, when Josh got home from Midland, he had a guitar lesson with Moses, and so I went along with him (If I didn't go, that would mean having to wait at the church until later, and I had already been there all day.) I was a little curious as to what I would be doing, but when I got there, I instantly remembered that Moses had three younger siblings :) So I got to play "house" and "babydolls" with the two little girls while I talked to Anna (the mom!) for a while. She was very interested about the details of our upcoming move and stuff, so it was good to get some encouragement from her and to have someone to talk to that was older than 8 :)

I was telling Anna about how Josh put a video up of both of us singing on his blog for the Ohio church members to watch.. And I didn't know he was going to put the part of me singing with him in the video... I said something like "he was being a stinker" and Moses' brother was playing with Legos over in the corner of the room. I had no idea that he was even listening, and all of a sudden, in a very matter-of-fact sort of way, he says this, "Yeah, those husbands can sometimes be stinkers!!" I laughed super hard. It was really cute, especially since he is only eight years old!

So, that's my story for now, and I am going to clean the house than go do some more Christmas shopping. Woot Woot.

PS - Pumpkin begs for food now from us. It is really weird.

Los Angeles, Turkey Meatballs, & Grandpa

My last blog was super long.. mostly me rambling on about weird things. Cool. I am at work right now, and I am super bored, so I will be writing an update and stuff...

My grandpa is doing much better than he was doing. After being in the hospital for about a week and in an in-patient physical therapy place in Midland for a little less than a week, he is finally back home and on the slow but steady path to healing and recovery. He thinks that he is going hunting this weekend even. [He shouldn't be going, he just thinks he is].

Also, I have been finding some sweet recipes online lately, and from my weight watchers meetings that I plan on trying, and if they turn out, making them for Thanksgiving dinners. I hope they are delicious.

Last and not least, because the recipes were the least, Josh and I are going to LA this summer! We decided to apply for a program call the IT Project -- It is a 50 day program that is about missions and missions history, as well as learning about the people groups of the world -- mainly the major groups in the 10/40 window. The first 25 days is spent taking a course at the Bible College where we will be staying, and the 25 days is dedicated to getting out on the town, learning about how the people groups worship, visiting their places of worship, and evangelizing to students! We will also get to go to a different church every Sunday to see what kinds of churches are there in LA.. I am super excited!!!

We are some of the first people accepted for the 2010 Project, because we applied so early. We did that on purpose, because this way, we have more time to raise support and money for the trip :) I am very excited for it!

If you have more questions about the trip or whatever, or the Traveling Team, you can go to their website, www.thetravelingteam.org

Steak is to Mashed Potatoes as Jesus is to Christmas

I feel like a lot of things have happened that have been good lately, bu really, it might just be my state of being. My attitude. My thought-process. Maybe.
First of all, this is probably going to be very random and full of weirdness. I'm going with the free-write style today, folks.

I was studying for my exam today in Small Group Communication. It was fairly interesting stuff, and one of the sections was all about nonverbal behavior. It is amazing how much we actually communicate using this stuff! We aren't able to communicate without it; everything from your body language to you facial expressions, to how you breath, to how you sit is all nonverbal communication. Even your time is nonverbal communication. I guess that's why interviewers think that you don't care much about a job if you show up late for the interview.
Anyway, that just made me think about a lot of different things. Like being in constant 'communication' with God. Prayer is our way of communicating with God, as is worship, and other things. I like to write in my prayer journal. Ever since the retreat, I have worked on my attitude toward God, and that in turn has changed my attitude toward myself, toward my classes, toward life in general, toward Josh, and toward the future. It's so cool to just be able to give everything to God.

I don't much like Christian cliches like the one I just used -- Give everything to God -- but it is a very good one, non the less. I just thought of an analogy. Josh isn't usually a big fan of my analogies, but sometimes they are good... :)

Picture yourself sitting down to eat this yummy, tender, juicy steak for dinner. Now, in my mind, steak is to mashed poatatoes as Jesus is to Christmas. So, you sit down, you cut up a few pieces of steak, you eat them, and then you bring your fork down, expecting it to slide in to this nice side helping of mashed potatoes loaded with tons of butter, salt, and don't forget the sour cream.. mmm. But ---GASP---- where are my mashed potatoes!!!?!?!?!?!? Yep, they aren't there. You get a little panicked, and you start screaming, and you may even throw something. Then Your mom kindly says, "Well, they are right there in front of you, dear. You must've gotten too caught up in the steak and forgotten to scoop yourself some potatoes!"

Okay, so where am I going with this... Well
life is the steak -- Pretty good, for the most part
God is the mashed potatoes -- the steak is good, yeah, but it is ALWAYS better with a Large heaping side of mashed potatoes. Life is way better with a LARGE HEAPING AMOUNT OF GOD
Your mom is... well, your mom. But I guess she could be that one event or catastophe in life that makes you realize that you can in any way eat that darn piece of steak without those mashed potatoes. That you can't go through this life without God.
Also, God was there all along.. just like the mashed potatoes. We just had to take our blinders off so we could focus on something bigger than ourselves.. the table... to find the mashed potatoes... God.

I think that this was one of my best analogies yet. This is how I've felt, anyway, since school has started. I think I was missing my mashed potatoes. I mean, I was getting along just fine in life, but it just wasn't as good as it could have been. And God was there all along. I realized this I think during the Fall Retreat, and then it has just been getting better and better. I am not living for myself, but rather for a bigger purpose, something bigger than I could ever hope to be. And sometimes, I don't think it feels that way, because what I possess as far as talents and such seems worthless, but I know that God has a plan for me. And I need to remember that.

Josh has been talking a lot about the Holy Spirit and how it is awesome that the Holy Spirit can intercede for us in two ways. The Holy Spirit has the words to say to God when we don't know what to say or how to say it. And, the Holy Spirit can tell us what God wants us to know. It is so cool that we have the ability to communicate with God. Communication is such a major part of our lives, and I think that it is how God wanted it to be. If we didn't have to communicate, we would never have to talk to each other, and we would never have to leave our houses. Or something like that. Basically, this world would never function without communication, and thats how God wanted it to be. Yeah, He may have made it a little harder for us to communicate with people by putting all these different languages down here, but that, to me, is just a challenge, a motivator to get out there and serve and break through those barriers to communicate the Word to all of God's people.

Think About It.