My "Innocent" Sin of Busyness and Striving

One of my biggest struggles is the need to always be doing something—something productive, something meaningful, something worthwhile.  In this sense, checklists are my best friend.  I feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when I can check something off one of my lists.  In fact, the longer the list and the more I’ve accomplished, the better. 

On the other hand, however, checklists are the thing I dread most.  An unchecked list screams of my failures and inadequacies.  And somehow, no matter how much I check off, the list never seems to get any shorter.  In fact, it’s just the opposite!  The more I check off, the longer it gets and the more frantic and frazzled I become. 

And yet, as much as I hate these lists, I can’t seem to give them up.  And this is what I’ve realized—the fact that I can’t give up my lists is a major indication that I don’t own them.  They own me!  As much as I hate this desperate need to always be on the move, I don’t know how to live any other way.  I can’t cope if I’m not doing something, not improving.  I have become enslaved to this go-go-go mentality and lifestyle, and as I strive to earn my keep, I feel a sense of worthlessness each time I find myself beginning to slow down. 

Unsurprisingly, rest is almost nonexistent in my life.  I feel so guilty when I take a break or a breather that I can’t even rest when I’m resting.  Take working out, for example.  Rarely can I just lace up my shoes and go for a nice jog outside.  That would be too selfish of me.  I don’t deserve a break.  I can’t justify working out simply for the pure enjoyment of exercise.  So what do I do instead?  I bike or I elliptical.  But I don’t just bike or elliptical. I’ve found a way to be productive even in my working out.  I’ve become the master at going through flashcards on the bike.  Textbook reading on the elliptical?  Check.  And so, you see, I’ve managed to kill two birds with one stone—by studying while I work out, I can get the benefit of a workout without the guilt of being unproductive.

While some might praise these efforts as an indication of hard work, dedication, and discipline, could it be that my strivings and inability to truly rest reflect the deeper state of my heart?  Is it possible I have fallen prey to the seemingly “innocent” sin of busyness and striving? I believe so. 

I am so guilty of resting in the gospel of self-improvement.  John Bloom put it perfectly in his blog post, “Sexy, Successful, and Smart”:  

“The world has a gospel and preaches it all the time: be sexy, successful, or smart and you will be saved. What you will be saved to are the heavens of others’ esteem, desire and envy — and the various perks that usually come with it. What you will be saved from are the hells of others’ rejection and indifference — and the various undesirable extras that usually go with them.

The more you have of sexiness, success, or smarts — and, even better, of all three — the more assurance of salvation you have. According to this gospel you are justified by others’ approval. You are sanctified by self-improvement.

But it’s no gospel. It makes big promises that prove empty. If we achieve the approval we seek, we soon realize it’s no salvation. Approval today usually turns to rejection or indifference tomorrow. Even sustained worldly success doesn’t produce sustained satisfaction. This gospel leaves almost everyone feeling condemned.”

And so, it seems, I am in reality running headlong into self-destruction at breakneck speed by striving and failing under the world’s empty gospel of self-improvement. 

My pastor from back home, R.W. Glenn, recently spoke at the Desiring God National Conference.  In his sermon on work and rest, my pastor spoke on the constant pressure we feel to always be “doing.”  As he explained, “the cry of busyness is more or less the anthem of our culture.”  And what are the implications of this?  We live in a “meritocracy”, whereby our identity is bound up in our achievements and we are addicted to merit. The problem with this, however, is that the Christian faith is not a system of achievement—it’s not a “do” faith, it’s a “done” faith.   Christ has done what we could never hope to do on our own!  Needless to say, my pastor’s sermon had my name stamped all over it.  After listening to my pastor’s sermon, I realize that my confessional theology and my functional theology are often at odds with one another. I see very much of myself in the following quote by Bryan Chappell which my pastor referenced:“After initially trusting in Christ to make them right with God, many Christians embark on an endless pursuit of trying to satisfy God with good works that will keep Him loving them.  This belief, whether articulated or buried deep in a psyche developed by the way we were treated by parents, spouses, or others, makes the Christian life a perpetual race on a performance treadmill to keep winning God’s affection.”

In my functional theology, how I actually live every day in my actions, I see now that I am guilty of acting, thinking and behaving as though Christianity is about what I do for God.  I guess I’ve never really considered the possibility that the reason behind my frantic schedule is that I may be frantic in my relationship with God and not resting in the finished work of Christ for me.  I have been driven by a perpetual quest for something.  Maybe some of you have as well. But is there somewhere we can find rest?  I don’t mean the superficial, unsatisfying rest we are all too familiar with.  I mean deep, true rest. Indeed, in Christ and the Gospel we are afforded this kind of rest, rest which frees us from our strivings—Christ has broken the chains of our enslavement! For me, I am slowly realizing that I can’t be more accepted by God than I already am at this moment, and instead of working to earn the acceptance of God and those around me through my achievements, I need to work on resting. I know this won’t be easy.  I’ve already established habits and thinking that are engrained into me and which won’t be easily uprooted.  My prayer, however, is that instead of focusing on myself and the worldly gospel of self-improvement, I will day by day come to remember more of the Gospel of Christ and all that He done for me.  I don’t need to strive towards becoming accepted by the culture because I am already accepted by the Creator.  As my pastor put it, “The only list of accomplishments the Father sees for you is the one amassed by Jesus, who said, ‘It is finished!’ ”  And I praise God for this, for I know that on my own I can add nothing to the finished work of Christ!

“Let us therefore strive to enter that rest…”

(Hebrews 4:11)

Pride, Unbelief, and the Failure to Forgive

“But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” (Matthew 6:15)

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.  […] For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:37-38)

In response to being forgiven by God, shouldn’t our hearts overflow in love and forgiveness towards others?  Shouldn’t we be so in awe of the underserving mercy God has shown us that our lives are characterized by an outpouring of grace towards others?  Why then, when we are wronged, do we feel a driving need to call out the unjust?  Why do we hold grudges, and why do we possess the urge to defend ourselves and show others the offenders’ true colors?  Why does anger and resentment eat away at our souls, and is there a better way to respond when we feel unjustly aggrieved?

For myself, I am learning that the gnawing I feel within to have vengeance and set things right stems mainly from a heart of pride and unbelief.  One of my greatest idols is man’s approval.  I’m a people-pleaser, and as such much of my identity is wrapped up in how others view me.  While being a people-pleaser may cause me to appear humble, the reality is that my people-pleasing behavior actually stems from a twisted sense of pride—pride that demands others respect me and hold me in high esteem. Any slight against my character or person is thus a danger that threatens to destroy my world.  How do I respond to such slights?  Anger.  Bitterness.  Resentment.  Despair.  I believe also that my failure to forgive arises from a heart of unbelief which manifests itself in two ways— unbelief in who I am and unbelief in Who God is.  What do I mean by unbelief in who I am?  I mean that I fail to recognize how sinful I really am—I write my sins off as trivial compared to the sins of others, refusing to believe that I’m really that bad.  What a lie.  And then there’s my unbelief in God which doubts His sovereignty, goodness, and justice.  And what does this cause me to do?  I take matters into my own hands.               

C.S. Lewis writes on the problem of forgiveness in the following:

“. . . you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart—every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out. The difference between this situation and the one in such you are asking God’s forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough.

As regards my own sin it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men’s sins against me it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought.

But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine percent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one percent guilt which is left over. To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian character; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life—to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son—how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night ‘forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.”

If I cherish and nurse a grudge against a fellow man, how can I dare approach God and demand mercy? If I—a depraved and sin-soiled sinner—demand justice when I am slighted, how much more should the holy and all-powerful God of the universe demand justice when His name is scorned?  Why should God have mercy on me if I fail to render to Him that which I demand for myself from others?  He shouldn’t.  In fact, the intensity with which I hold others guilty bears testimony to the fact that God will hold me guilty for my sins against Him.  It seems then that Christ’s command to “Forgive that you might be forgiven,” is not just a suggestion—it’s a rule!  I like how John Piper states it when he writes:

“God treats us in accordance with the belief of our heart: if we believe it is good and beautiful to harbor resentments and tabulate wrongs done against us, then God will recognize that our plea for forgiveness is sheer hypocrisy—for we will be asking Him to do what we believe to be bad. It is a dreadful thing to try to make God your patsy by asking Him to act in a way that you, as your action shows, esteem very lowly.”

And so, what can I take away from this?  If, in my pride, I hold fast to an unforgiving spirit, I am proving that I do not trust Christ and His way of life, for how could I withhold forgiveness for mild offenses when my monstrous debt against the most high God has been paid in full?  I know I can’t earn Heaven by forgiving others, but my prayer is that I will cease to be like the unforgiving servant Jesus spoke of in Matthew 18.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, may I come to resist revenge against those who have hurt me, grieve at their calamities, pray for their welfare, and seek reconciliation so far as it depends on me. 

“When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered he did not threaten; but he trusted to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 1:23)

Sweetly Broken

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.” ― A.W. Tozer

Well, it finally happened.  Stubborn and strong-willed Sara Seeland has come to the end of herself.  I’m hopeless and helpless to save myself. It’s been a difficult day.  A difficult week.  In fact, I admit it’s been an incredibly difficult summer.  In spite of all the things God has taught me, I’m exhausted of still trying to “do life” in my own strength.  I am drowning in my self-sufficiency.  The reality of the situation is that in my recent flounderings to remain strong and independent, I have actually become increasingly needy.  Needy for Something and Someone. 

While I believe firmly that God uses these barren times of frustration and loneliness to invite us into deeper communion with Him, I have not accepted that invitation.  Rather, I have forsaken this incredibly opportunity to immerse myself in the gospel and have instead pursued fulfillment in those things which cannot ultimately satisfy. Take relationships, for example.  As beings designed after God’s own image, we are created for community with other beings.  This community, however, should not come at the expense of deep and intimate communion with God.  This summer, however, I have sacrificed that communion for community—I have turned towards others to fill that which only God can supply, and when they fail to satisfy this deep need I have within, I isolate myself in frustration and despair.

I am deeply convicted by his sermon, “The First Dark Exchange: Idolatry”, in which John Piper preaches on Romans 1:21-23.  This passage reads, “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.”  I am ashamed to admit I have absolutely suppressed the Holy Spirit’s promptings within me.  Instead, I have pursed the “pitiful substitutes” that Piper describes in his sermon, and as he himself states, “That is the fundamental problem with the human race. We do not acknowledge, value, treasure, savor, honor, or make much of the greatest value in the universe, the glory of God. That is our wickedness and our disease and our great mutiny against God.”  Piper argues, “The created universe is all about glory.  The deepest longing of the human heart and the deepest meaning of heaven and earth are summed up in this: the glory of God…The universe was made to show it, and we were made to see it and savor it.  Which is why the world is so disordered and as dysfunctional as it is.  We have exchanged the glory of God for other things.” I am indeed guilty of this “dark exchange”, in the midst of which my speculations have become futile, my heart has darkened, and my own perceived wisdom has masked the true foolishness of my exchange.

Christ is indeed the answer to the psalmist’s question, “Whom have I in heaven but you?” (Psalm 73:25), and yet I have failed—refused, in fact—to embrace this reality.  I am so thankful, however, that God has not left me to myself.  Despite forsaking Him and running headlong into self-destruction, Christ has chased after me and assumed the cost of my deliberate sins upon Himself.  His radical sacrifice is beyond my understanding, and yet I do know this:  I have reached the end of myself, and now it is He I must finally turn towards to save me from my Hell-bound race.  But I feel cold and distant, and I am ashamed of my meager, half-hearted attempts to return once again to His side.   And so my prayer, like Tozer, is this: “O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.”  May I once again experience the sweet communion that comes only from fellowship with God, and may He humble me through this such that I am evermore reminded that He alone is the one true treasure that my heart and soul yearn for.  

Like HERE to Piper's sermon, "The First Dark Exchange: Idolatry"

Humble Pie

I am so incredibly thankful for Romans 8:28.    This process of sanctification is long and often trying, but I am so grateful that the God I serve is One who breaks into my brokenness and pieces me back together with the transforming power of His grace and mercy.   

What was my most recent “break-through”?  It was my last post, titled “Lists: Your Plans or God’s?”.  Actually, the “break-through” did not occur until several days after my posting.  It was then that God quickly brought to my attention the rotten state of my proud heart.  Through His Spirit and the words of other believing friends, He removed the scales from my eyes and allowed me to see that while the things I wrote in my last post may have indeed been true, they were not written in a spirit of grace and humility.  Rather, my last post was an arrogant response to the seemingly proud and conceited “list mentality”.   I am so convicted by Luke 6:45 which reads, “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”  And what was the attitude of my heart?  Pride, and it manifested itself in my self-righteous post.  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! I do not have everything figured out, and I am increasingly realizing how incredibly prone I am to the sin of thinking I do!

I love how John Piper portrays this battle between the Spirit and the flesh in one of his sermons. He states:

Picture your flesh—that old ego with the mentality of merit and craving for power and reputation and self-reliance—picture it as a dragon living in some cave of your soul. Then you hear the gospel, and in it Jesus Christ comes to you and says, "I will make you mine and take possession of the cave and slay the dragon. Will you yield to my possession? It will mean a whole new way of thinking and feeling and acting." You say: "But that dragon is me. I will die." He says, "And you will rise to newness of life, for I will take its plan; I will make my mind and my will and my heart your own." You say, "What must I do?" He answers, "Trust me and do as I say. As long as you trust me, we cannot lose." Overcome by the beauty and power of Christ you bow and swear eternal loyalty and trust.

And as you rise, he puts a great sword in your hand and says, "Follow me." He leads you to the mouth of the cave and says, "Go in, slay the dragon." But you look at him bewildered, "I cannot. Not without you." He smiles. "Well said. You learn quickly. Never forget: my commands for you to do something are never commands to do it alone." Then you enter the cave together. A horrible battle follows and you feel Christ's hand on yours. At last the dragon lies limp. You ask, "Is it dead?" His answer is this: "I have come to give you new life. This you received when you yielded to my possession and swore faith and loyalty to me. And now with my sword and my hand you have felled the dragon of the flesh. It is a mortal wound. It will die. That is certain. But it has not yet bled to death, and it may yet revive with violent convulsions and do much harm. So you must treat it as dead and seal the cave as a tomb. The Lord of darkness may cause earthquakes in your soul to shake the stones loose, but you build them up again. And have this confidence: with my sword and my hand on yours this dragon's doom is sure, he is finished, and your new life is secure."

I think that is the meaning of Galatians 5:24, "Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." Christ has taken possession of our soul. Our old self has been dealt a mortal wound and stripped of its power to have dominion. The Christian life, the fruit of the Spirit, is a constant reckoning of the flesh as dead (piling stones on its tomb) and a constant relying on the present Spirit of Christ to produce love, joy, and peace within. The difference between the Christian life and popular American morality is that Christians will not take one step unless the hand of Christ holds the hand that wields the sword of righteousness.

I am so thankful that I am not alone, for I know how helpless I am to save myself.  If I want to destroy this dragon within me, I need Someone great.  Only He who is within me possesses the power to bring about my sanctification, and I am so thankful that my God is committed to helping me destroy this dragon that rears its ugly head of pride and self-righteousness.  

I am not naïve enough to think that the battle it over.  In fact, I am so aware of my sinful and needy state that I have no doubt I will continue to sin in this area.  By God’s grace, however, I don’t want to give Satan a foothold.  My prayer is that I will awake every morning and prostrate myself before the foot of the cross, for it is there that I am safest.  May God continually keep me on my knees before Him, and may I never forget my own desperate and needy state!  And when I do fall and fail, may He grant me to humility and confidence to boldly confess my sins. 

In my pride I was blind to my own self-righteousness and utterly convinced that my last post was justified.  Indeed, the words may have been, but the heart and spirit behind my words were not.  The following prayer from the Valley of Vision fits my situation perfectly. 

"Self-Knowledge"

“Searcher of Hearts,

It is a good day to me when thou givest me a glimpse of myself;

Sin is my greatest evil, but thou art my greatest good;

I have cause to loathe myself, and not to seek self-honour,

for no one desires to commend his own dunghill.

My country, family, church fare worse because of my sins,

For sinners bring judgment in thinking sins are small, or

That God is not angry with them.

Let me not take other good men as my example,

and think I am good because I am like them,

For all good men are not so good as thou desirest,

Are not always consistent,

Do not always follow holiness,

Do not feel eternal good in sore affliction.

Show me how to know when a thing is evil

Which I think is right and good,

How to know when what is lawful

Comes from an evil principle,

Such as desire for reputation or wealth by usury.

Give me grace to recall my needs,

My lack of knowing thy will in Scripture,

Of wisdom to guide others,

Of daily repentance, want to which keeps thee at bay,

Of the spirit of prayer, having words without love,

Of zeal for thy glory, seeking my own ends,

Of joy in thee and thy will, of love to others.

And let me not lay my pipe too short of the fountain,

Never touching the eternal spring, never drawing down water from above.

-The Valley of Vision, p. 122f

This is such a powerful reminder that I am not above reproach.  Even more so, however, I rejoice that God uses even my most miserable failings to bring about my sanctification and ultimately His glory.  What a promise we have in Romans 8:28!   

Choices

“[E]very time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.” -C.S. Lewis

Each day I make hundreds of choices.  Maybe even thousands.  Most often, these choices are not major in and of themselves, and yet despite their seeming triviality, C.S. Lewis challenges me to rethink such presuppositions.  A whole is almost always composed of much smaller entities. In this case, it is my day-to-day decisions.  This quote from C.S. Lewis is quite powerful and really has me thinking.  Why do I choose the things that I do?  What motivates me?  I am not naïve enough to think that my decisions are completely unbiased or unmotivated by something at their root, for they are indeed. The question is, what?  And whatever my answer, C.S. Lewis makes it very clear that it is by no means inconsequential.  Rather, it is of high consequence!  I am either choosing paths that lead me towards God and eternal joy or away from Him and towards eternal damnation.  This life is only a mere shadow of the next, and the Heaven or Hell I find myself in here is only a foretaste of what is to come.  Ideas have consequences.    My ideas have consequences.  My decisions and actions have consequences—eternal consequences!  This is no trivial matter.  I think it’s time I start examining even the smallest decisions I make and pray for both the awareness and wisdom to discern between those things which are of God and those that are not of Him.  There is a war raging around and within us, a war for our hearts and minds and souls.  If Satan can lead us astray in the small things, he gains a foothold and runs rampant.  Oh God, let me not be led astray in the small things.  Let none of us be blinded to our own sin and wandering hearts.  Keep our hearts and minds and souls stayed on You.  Through the power of Your Spirit, lead us step by step, day by day.  Change us into heavenly creatures for Your glory, and let us not become the hellish creatures that hate you.  Save us from ourselves, oh God!  Save me from myself!       

Two Great Things

Wow.  I haven't been on here in a while.  So much has happened over the past several months I barely know where to start.  This past semester especially has been quite the whirlwind.  In the midst of all the busyness, however, God has been so abundantly faithful as He has worked in me in so many profound and exciting new ways.  I could ramble on forever regarding the things that God has taught me and shown me these past few months.  Right now, however, I will only touch on two areas.

The first thing God has really brought to my attention is the extreme awareness of how short my life really is.  This may sound morbid, but it isn't meant to be.  God has just really impressed upon me a sense of urgency to serve Him with every aspect of my life and in every moment of my life.   My life is like a fleeting vapor, one moment here and the next moment gone.  In fact, one hundred years from now, no one on this earth will know or even care who Sara Seeland was.  I need to stop living for this world and for my own vain pleasures, and put an end to the mindset that I will allow God to use me later in my life once I have "settled down."  No!  The time I have right now is precious, and there is no guarantee that I will be granted tomorrow.  My life is not my own, and beginning now I want my short breath of life to radiate that reality.  I went to spend and be spent for my Lord and Savior and to take every thought, deed, and word captive to Christ as I wholeheartedly follow Him.  I want to possess a heart that is so deeply rooted in Him that I am willing to follow wherever He leads me.  My life is so short, and I don't want to waste a moment on my own vain pursuits.  I so desperately want to glorify the Lord with my use of time, classes, relationships...everything!!!.  I want to be pursuing Him wholeheartedly NOW.  I am so thankful that God has opened my eyes to the light of eternity, and my prayer is that I will not lose this sense of urgency.  I wholeheartedly wish that God will use me, however He chooses, for the advancement of His kingdom.  

The second great thing God has shown me is that I was created to delight in Him.   Somehow, in making God my Lord and my Savior, whereby I have always sought to glorify Him and honor Him with my life, I have somehow missed that the key to all of this is delighting in Him.  I do not know how, but I have misunderstood this for so long, and I have therefore never truly delighted in Him.  Christ stated, "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me."  If my heart is unmoved, my woship is vain and empty nothingness.  That's a chilling thought!  I fear that my greatest enemy has been my own misguided virtue.  I have sought to reflect the worth of God in my outward actions, but I have misunderstood that the  essense of true worship begins with the heart.  If I am simply pursuing God out of pure duty, it ceases to be worship.  Yes, there is an element of duty to worship, but there is so much more.   God has been so merciful, however, that though my longing and delight are so meager, He continues to draw near to me.  Thankfulness can't even begin to describe what the Holy Spirit has been doing in my life as my eyes are opened to God's glory and my heart is transformed such that I delight in Him simply for Who He is.  I have this new and longing hunger to see and know God better, a hunger that is so much deeper than previously.  And now, like never before, I can pray with the Psalmist, "O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is" (Psalm 63:1).  As I stated earlier, I realize that my longing and delighting are still so meager, but I am so excited for how God is transforming my heart to one that earnestly desires to worship and glorify Him by delighting in Him.

I am so blessed for the ways in which God has worked in my life this past semester and I am so excited for the ways in which He will continue to do so.  My prayer is that God will continue to lead me as to what He has for my life and that He will continue to direct me as I pursue Him.  As I seek to be open to what God has for me and where and how He is calling me, I also pray that I will day by day grow in my love for Him, love which not only manifests itself in obedience, but also in true delight.