Ephesians 1:3-14

I am so excited about this year-these four years!-at a Christian university! My first homework assignment for my computer class is to read Ephesians 1:3-14 and list 11 characteristics that we have since we are in Christ.

Ephesians 1:3-14:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us acceptable in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth-in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased posession, to the praise of His glory.

Obviously there is way to much in that passage for me to go through all of it in one blog post, but I hope that at least one part of it caught your attention.

The part that that struck me the most was the last part:

...having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased posession, to the praise of His glory.

It gives me such comfort to know that now that I have chosen to believe in Christ and I accept that His sacrifice on the cross will now cover my sins, I am "sealed" with the Holy Spirit of promise. God has given us the Holy Spirit to be a comfort and peace to us.

In John 14:26, Jesus states:

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

I love that God has our back. He is constantly looking out for us.

First Day of Classes!

Today was the day we have all been waiting for with both longing and dread: the first day of classes!

It all began at 7:45 when my roommate and I awoke to the sound of music playing in the room next door. We rolled out of bed and hit the bathroom. Anyways, skipping to the interesting part, I walked over to my first class: Macroeconomics. Thankfully it was in a building near my dorm so I didn't have to walk too far and thereby work up a sweat for my first class. That would have been slightly dissappointing.

Anyways, that was an ok class. I sat next to a nice looking girl (at my sister's suggestion :P) and talked to her a little. That came in handy because we later had to find a partner to do a presentation with later in the semester :-/. But the professor seemed like he really wants to help us in any way he can. It doesn't sound like it will be too hard to do well in his class. That's always a good thing!

My second class was significantly later so I went back to the dorm and then went over to Target to pick up a few things.

The second class was Information Systems Essentials. That is going to be a super duper easy class. He would go quite slow and tell us what to mouse over and when to click once or twice. It was slightly entertaining and also quite boring. But I am glad that I will have that one easy class to look forward to!

From there I went straight to my next class which was Integrated Humanities I. The professor was late but she was worth the wait! She was so funny! I think I am going to love that class! There are only 12 people and the entire class will pretty much be reading the textbook and then discussing it together as a class. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it!

So that was my first day in classes! I just got back from dinner with my hall. Tonight is Christian Challenge!

New Student Retreat

Oh man. We got back from the New Student Retreat today. It was incredibly intense. Not merely physically, but spiritually and emotionally.

So you have a basic idea of what we did, I'll lay it out for you. Essentially, we ate, we walked up a mountain to have worship time, listened to a message, and then had free time. This happened four times. There was also an afternoon, yesturday afternoon, where we had "Olympics" in our FOCUS groups.

Getting to the more important part though, the messages were incredibly challenging.

If you look down and see what my last post was about, that will give you a deeper understanding of what I was feeling as I went into the retreat. I have woken up each morning thinking, "Today is a new day. Who knows what may happen today."

The theme of the retreat was Philippians 1:6 which reads:

...being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

Each of the messages focussed on a different part of this passage.

The first speaker talked about God's power and greatness. He is so large and so vast in power and wisdom and goodness and love that there is no way we can ever comprehend Him. Still, He loves us and died so that we would be able to spend eternity in His prescence.

This was powerful. Especially as I lay on the ground the next night and looked up at the thousands of stars that I could see with my own eyes, not to mention the ones across the galaxy, or in another galaxy altogether.

The message the second morning challenged my way of life. I realized that I hold onto a lot of things to make me feel better about myself. While I hold onto them to make me feel more secure, these are the very things that hold me back from actively pursuing my relationship with God. My main stumbling block, of course, being guys and flirtation. I decided that night to completely give up that part of my life. The part including the pursuit of guys and trying to please myself with what they have to offer me. Don't get me wrong, I am a virgin, but I hope you understand what I am trying to get at. It is so easy to become caught up in a guy when your focus could be on so many other things that are more constructive -namely God and the plan He has for you.

I realized that God loves me with a perfect love that no man will ever be able to give me. God cares about every part of me: my physical state, emotional state, spiritual state. While a man would have these things in mind, they never leave God's thoughts for one second because somewhere it states that God's thoughts toward man outnumber the sand on every beach. God never forgets about me, why should I waste time and energy pursuing and earthly man when I could be discovering all the perfect oportunities that God has for me.

Well, I have to get to bed now. First day of classes tomorrow! I hope I survive!

The List

Late last night I facebook chatted with one of my very long time friends, Danielle. She helped me so much to sort through my feelings. I'm so glad to have her as a friend. She told me to make a list of things that I absolutely have to have in a guy, such as "He has to love the Lord," and then whenever I start thinking of a guy I will compare him to the list. If he is missing even one quality there is no use in getting bent out of shape over him.

People have told me to make a list like this before but I've never believed them. This time though, I thought I'd give it a try. So here is my list thus far:

Absolutely must have:
He must love the Lord!
He must have visible faith (act on it)
He must care about children
He must have a vision for his future
He must have family envisioned in his future
He must be a hard worker
He must not be an easy flirt
He must not drop sexual references in ordinary language
He must have a sense of humor (and understand my humor)
He must be knowledgeable in or at least care about what interests me

Painful Memories

So, I just got back from "Clash and Bowl." Obviously, we dressed up weird looking and then went bowling. It was a lot of fun. But then... I don't know what happened... It suddenly hit me that the last time I went bowling was with Ryan. He was a guy that I saw a lot of a year ago. Now that I look back on our relationship, I would almost have to say that we were dating. I wont get into all the details, but I just felt really really sad all of a sudden. It brought back so many memories. The songs playing in the bowling alley were not helping any either. Finally Akon's "I want to make up right now now now, I want to make up right now now now, Wish we never broke up right now now now, We need to link up right now now now" song came on and that was too much. People must have thought I was like mad or something because they all kept asking me if I was having fun. I wish people would have to guts to just ask what was wrong. I wish people actually cared. That thought just took me further into my misery because Ryan was a person that I could tell anything and everything and he always listened to me no matter how incoherant I was being. Once, I was working with a girl I really could not stand and I was having a really bad day and he drove from home to see me. He always knew exactly what to do or say, or what not to say (which is much more important).

Anyways, that's how I'm feeling right now...

First Baptist Church

Ok, so I went to a First Baptist Church this morning at the reccommendation of Kyle, my FOCUS leader. I must admit though that there were a few things that slightly threw me. These are things that I admit I really don't know much about, they are just things that came up that seemed strange to me.

First of all, they used a verion of the Bible I have never heard of before, let alone used. I was brought up reading the New King James version whereas they used the English Standard version. At first this threw me quite a bit because the pastor opened to 1 Corinthians 1:2 and began reading and I accidentally opened to 2 Corinthians 1:2. While the two passages are very similar, I was horrified at how much more the pastor had in this one verse than was in my Bible. I thought, "What have these people done?? Why have they added to the Scripture??" But then I realized my mistake and that relieved the majority of my worries. I must however look into this English Standard version and see what it's all about.

Secondly, the pastor, who I might also mention is going to be one of my professors this semester, did not merely read through a passage and talk about it as I am accostumed to doing. Instead, he went through a topical study titled "What is the Church?" This contributed to my next point which is:

Thirdly, the messaged seemed pretty shallow. Sure, there was a lot of talk about how our lives should be in accordance with what we believe in because we have been called to redemption, but it seemed surface to me because he only read a couple verses and the rest of what he said was merely coming from his own opinion. I'm sure most of what he was saying was Biblical, but I would have liked him to have read more verses that expressed the point he was making.

So that is my first impression of First Baptist Church. I will probably go back again one or two more times before deciding if these are issues that I am ok with.

Maybe Kyle will be able to explain to me the reasoning of using the English Standard version and topical teaching.

Day iii

Orientation week has been CRAZY so far. I really should be getting to bed because I have to get up for church in the morning... and I have to remember to eat something on the way because the caf doesn't serve breakfast on the weekends... just Sunday brunch. Anyways, it's been incredible so far. Sure, I'm pretty much a loner and people talk to me because they see me being a loner, but it's fun! I meet all sorts of people!

Too late to go into details now... but I'll try to fill you in tomorrow afternoon when we have some free time. Tomorrow I'm going to church all by myself which has the possibility of being very scary or very awesome. We shall see. I'm going to the church that my soon-to-be Bible teacher is the senior pastor of and my FOCUS leader told me that he is an awesome pastor. Somehow I have a feeling I'm not going to like some things he's going to say though... I looked him up a little and he seems very Calvinistic... which I have problems with.

Anyways, more on that tomorrow. I must get to bed. It's 1 in the morning!!!

I just ate my final dinner here at home. So sad, and yet so funny because 1) we went out to eat 2) it was this little hole-in-the-wall Mexican food place called Celinda's we go to every week and 3) I'm most likely going to be coming home nearly every weekend so it's really not all that sentimental.

Now I must make sure I have everything! I'm going to move the six boxes that contain my entire life down to the garage tonight. Then I am going to make sure I have everything that I'll need in the morning... And then in the morning I am going to put all THAT stuff into a small duffel bag. Whew. Does that sound good to you? I can't think of a better way to go about this nonsense.

17 Hours and Counting Down...

In just 17 hours I'll be moving into my dorm!!!

Please pray that everything will go smoothly.

I believe nearly everything is packed (except for the things I will need to use in the morning).

I think we are planning to be out the door by nine :)

Only One Day Left at Home

This is so exciting! I only have tomorrow here at home and then I move into my dorm room on Thursday!

Here's my perfect plan for my last day at home:
Wake up in the 8 o'clock hour, put on my bathing suit, wash the car that is about to become mine :), go to the pool with my mom, swim, tan, read Anna Karenina, return home, shower, pack a few more things, eat lunch, read Anna Karenina, do laundry, organize some more, possibly run some last errands, watch Gilmore Girls, eat dinner, complete the packing, call my sister, watch an episode of Lost, go to bed.

Sounds perfect right?

Mall Fun

Ok so I ended up going to do laps at the mall :) I did two laps and was about to reward myself by flipping through a new Ted Dekker book in the Barnes and Noble inside the mall when I heard a very loud siren. I looked out into the main mall area and saw flashing lights. At first I thought that meybe someone had walked out of a store without paying for an item. Then a male automated voice came over the speaker: "Attention. A fire has been detected in the building. Please proceed to the nearest stairs and exit the building. Do not use the elevators."

So that was the end to my excercise.

...So Little Time

Just three more days until move-in day!!!

I'm beginning to regret having done absolutely nothing this summer... :(. I should have taken advantage of the time that I had to make some last memories.

But it is too late for that now. I am packing, packing, packing! I think I have six boxes stashed away in my sister's old room. Mind that not all of them are full yet, but I am definitely well on my way to being able to move out tomorrow!

Maybe I should take advantage of the fact that I still have three more days... I should go wake up my mom who is snoozing on the couch and try and get her to take me somewhere... or maybe we could go to the pool or beach... or if I can't wake her, I'll go to the mall!

I started making a mental list of things I want to do "one last time." Going to the mall is definitely on the list. Not that there's something I need to buy, mind you, but because of all the memories I have there. I'll explain later if I get into a drowsy, self-pitying mood.

I Want to Get Married

I want to get married.

This may seem odd coming from a girl who hasn't even begun her first year of college yet, but it is the truth.

When I was young. ...Younger than I am now, I wanted to stay single forever. Be a career women. Never have children.... I've always had a fear of small children. ...Anyways, now that I am older, I have realized the error of my ways.

I'm probably much too idealistic in my views of romance, but I want a guy who will sweep me off my feet. A guy who will just be there for me. A guy who will care enough about my life to ask me about it, yet gentle enough to hold me when I need him. A guy who will take me places. A guy who will hold a meaningfull conversation with me about God and how great He is.

These are all things I look for in my men.

You may be wondering what this has to do with college. Well college is the place where you meet your soulmate! Of course!

I wanted to get this out there so that when I do meet Mr. Perfect, I will remember this day realize that God had a plan for me after all.

PS. Six days until move-in day!!!

Ramblings of a Bored Teenager

Well, forget what I said in my last post. I just couldn't keep myself away from blogging again. I realized that the packing process is a large part of the going-off-to-school process.

That's what I did today. I went over to Target for the fourth time this week to get shaving cream, an extension cord, shampoo, a desk lamp and some lotion (among other things).

Then I went home and packed up all my big old t-shirts that I have accumulated over the years: CSF, YABA, And various "Senior Girls '09" ones that will suddenly transform themselves into pajama tops for the years ahead.

The Blog

In a matter of eight short days I will no longer be merely "Laura", but rather, "Laura the College Student!"

I will be leaving the nurturing sanctuary of home and journeying a great fourty miles (according to MapQuest) to attend California Baptist University. I will be experiencing life away from home for the first time and attempting to overcome it with a Bible and a blog.

Can you tell I'm trying to make this interesting?

I will return when I have moved into my petite dorm room and met the stranger that is to be my mate for the next eight months.