I came back from the Winter Retreat last night!

Pastor Paul Felix preached about the book of James, and it is such a practical chapter--trials, temptations, genuine spirituality, listeners vs. doers of the Word, a faith without works, and how unedifying the tongue can be. I got a lot of things out of this retreat, but two things really stuck out.

The analogy that Pastor Felix made comparing fishing with temptation made it so clear. If you think about fishing, you think about how STUPID fish are. They swim by the cast out bait and they can choose to ignore it, but they go for that one MOMENT of eating pleasure, and the next thing they know, they're dead fish. Satan is constantly bombarding us with opportunities of temptation to sin against our Lord to bring us further away from Him. Often times we do stumble and fall into Satan's trap, right? We are so... fallible. We say one thing and do another. We love and trust God, and then we blame God. We put ourselves in situations of temptations saying that we are strong enough to resist, but are we? Why are we constantly being so reckless and trusting in ourselves? I need to equip myself with the Word. I need to hear the Word, and actually APPLY it to my life. God rested a burden on me to be faithful to Him, because He is faithful to me.

Another thing that I learned was that faith and works come hand in hand. Yes, we get saved with simple faith, and not by works. This is what Paul says. James, however, is not contradicting Paul. If we truly had genuine faith, then we would have works! A faith without works is dead. I am just so convicted to continually pray for my family, Christian brothers and sisters, and friends to have a living spirit and to have God's sovereignty and love revealed to them. Sometime we just need that wakeup call, you know?

I really enjoyed today's sermon about Phillipians 1:21. All I have to say is fill in the blank...

"For to me, to live is ____, and to die is _____."

Whatever we fill out, is the nature of our heart and the purpose of our living. Only if our philosophy in life to live is CHRIST, then death will be gain because it's MORE Christ. However, if it is anything else in the first balnk, then to die would be loss.

Praise God for a great kick off to the new year!
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Second semester is going to be hectic. Well, at least a lot more hectic than last semester. It'll be a really big transition because ever since second semester of junior year of high school up until last semester of freshman year, I have been in slack-off mode. As in being lazy, procrastinating, and having nothing to do. This semester will bring on CHANGE, but good change.

I'm going to be taking four classes, eating healthy, exercising daily, and taking evangelism training at Eastbay (7+ hours of dedication a week). Those are a lot of committments, but I really want to handle them. It's time to get on track!