Finding Perfect Peace

I started praying about peace in March, after taking a grueling midterm by which I felt trampled.  I've gotten significantly better at not finding my identity in test scores and grades since the start of this blog in middle school, but I am not perfect.  This class was a night class, meaning that we met only once a week on Monday evenings. 

The Thursday after taking the midterm I was walking around the quad, killing some time between lunch and my biology lab, praying about this exam.  I was so panicked, so frustrated, that this would be the black mark on my transcript, and I felt God asking me "So what?  So what if you didn't do well?" and I felt this peace fall over me as I realized that the score I received on that midterm really did not matter.  It did not matter in the sense that it does not define me or change me in God's eyes, and it did not matter in the sense that it would not impact my future unless it was part of God's plan.  If God wants me to be somewhere in the future, a poor midterm grade will not stop Him from bringing me there.

From there on out I saw signs of God's sovereignty and felt His perfect peace countless times, and so when I began a short devotional study that encouraged its readers to choose one word to focus on for a year, God gave me the word "Peace".  At first I thought this was great, I would no longer be filled with anxiety and stress on a regular basis, and I would find my rest in the Lord.  Then I realized that when God wants to change you, it isn't that easy.  It's easy to ask Him to take away worry and replace it with peace, but it isn't easy to find peace in conflict with those around me, or to have peaceful thoughts towards a driver who cuts me off. 

I remember a Bible study, several years ago, in which one of the leaders told my peers and I that she had been praying for more patience.  She shared that she expected God to give her greater patience, but instead God gave her a greater number of frustrating situations.  At first she fell into the frustrations and continuously lost her patience, then she realized that God was giving her these situations to practice being calm and patient.  Prayer and developing as a Christian is not a genie-in-a-bottle-your-wish-is-my-command relationship with God, it's one of continual development, guiding, molding, and shaping.

When I consciously began focusing on peace about a week and a half ago, I expected God to take away my stresses and show me how to find peace in Him, but He is showing me all kinds of ways to express peace, and bringing me into all kinds of situations in which I need to find peace.  Asking God to grow me isn't an easy process, but I am sure that it is worth it.  I had been focusing on Philippians 4:7, "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus," but I needed to look to the verse before it, Philippians 4:6 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."  God provides, but I must turn to Him and do my part as well. 

Peace is not just a feeling, but a way of living, and God is teaching me that through hands-on experiences.  I don't always succeed in these tests, in fact I hardly have thus far.  I don't realize that He's trying to mold me until after the fact, but I will grow, and He will lead me.  Is God calling you to grow in some area?  Choosing a fruit of the spirit to focus on is a great way to start: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).  It won't always be easy, but it will be worth it.

I Love You More

My senior year in high school will be starting in just a few days, and it seems like all of a sudden, there is very little in life, other than trying to plan for college and summer reading. 

The pre-college process is stressful.  I am currently looking at a short list of colleges, all of which are Christian colleges, and there are so many different details and options that have to be weighed when trying to choose the one that I want to go to.  Of course, if you know me, or if you are familiar with this blog, you'll see that I have a constant desire to know the future, to have life planned.  I have this deep urge to be able to plan everything in my life, and right now, not knowing where I'll be living or going to school in a year is quite daunting.  I haven't even visited all of the schools that I'm considering yet, but already I feel like I should have a college picked out. 

I'm so worried that I'll make the wrong choice.  What if my favorite school ends up being the most expensive?  What if I can't tell which school God wants me to be at?  Even worse, what if it really doesn't matter to God which school I go to, so long as I'm still following Him?  And how am I supposed to find extra time to pray about this process with school starting in just a few days, with my most challenging schedule yet?

And then, once I've figured out where I'll go to college, how do I figure out what I'm going to do there?  How am I going to decide what I want to do for the rest of my life?  What if I do what I love, but then I can't get a job?  What if I do what will lead to a lucrative career, but end up hating it?  How do I make all of these decisions before I'm even a legal adult?

On Wednesday, after I had just gotten home from a college visit, and feeling the pressure to know where I'll be in a year, I turned on the radio in the car, and this song came on.  There was an initial peace that fell over me when the song began, and the first verse said "I am with you wherever, and where you go is where I am."  The chorus was another part that really spoke to me.  "I love you more than the sun, and the stars that I taught how to shine, you are mine, and you shine for me too, I love you.  Yesterday, and today, and tomorrow I'll say it again, and again, I love you more."  It was like God telling me to calm down.  If He can set the stars and the sun to shine each day and night, He will surely guide me through this process.  He will guide me to the right decision, whether or not it matters to Him exactly which college I'm learning to use the gifts that He gave me to use in order to shine for Him.  He will also guide me towards finding what exactly it is that He wants me to shine with.  He loves me no matter what, and I am His.

Fiftieth Post: Two Posts Too Early

When I started this blog way back when in May of 2009 I had no idea what it would become. It started as a "Read it and Weep" type of diary that I had given up on after maybe three or four entries. Then, over a year later in November of 2010, I deleted those initial posts and began a Gratitude Journal, figuring that that's what this blog would be. Now it's a web page that God is using to use me in this world. It feels kind of crazy.

This was the kind of post that I hoped to write as my fiftieth post, not my forty eighth, but I think that it's time for me to write it now. God has used this simple blog to change my life. Sounds crazy, doesn't it?

Since I began blogging I've grown so much closer to God, and I've learned so much about Him. He taught me to always have my eyes, ears, and of course my heart, open to what He wants me to hear and to share. God has taught me that He can use me to reach other people, even in simple ways. Can you believe that Abby's Abstracts has had 1,998 page views since creation? I can't.

Every post was a lesson that God sent to me, and a lesson that I may not have learned if I didn't process it while writing a post. And you know what? God has blessed me with each of you who read this blog, because it's very likely that if nobody ever read what I wrote, I wouldn't bother writing it after a while, and I would have missed out on all of the lessons that God had in store. So thank you, and thank God!