Dancing in the Sunshine

Have I ever mentioned how much I love changing seasons?  Spring is especially refreshing.  It makes me want to go splash in the creek, have a mud fight, write, read and pray in the grassy field in back of my house, crank up the music in the car and roll down the windows feel the warm breeze messin' with my hair.  I'm dreaming of long days, with not a hint of speech writing, chemistry formulas, or algebraic equations.

Now that I've got you longing for warmer days... We can at least be grateful to God for the wonderful changes He has already manifested!  There are robins, the geese are flying North, bugs, and the grass is even beginning to grow back.  And this weekend we were hit with our first major thunderstorm, it was incredible.  Thunderstorms remind me how gigantic God is!  Glorious.  I've already been able to enjoy rollerblading last week!  I really enjoy doing that, wonderful fresh air rushing by, the sun shining on your path, and I get to enjoy the Iowa landscapes.

June 3-13th of this year, I have the amazing opportunity to go to Guatemala for a ministry trip with my youth group at Walnut Ridge.   It's called Adventures In Missions.  I absolutely can't wait to see what God is going to do throughout the whole process!  He has already been involved in it. Let me explain.  At youth group we started to pray that God would lower the price of the plane tickets.  And even as the gas prices are increasing, God showed himself wayyy bigger than our economical state, and let us get our tickets for $320.00 for each person round trip.  That was down over $100 dollars from what the group thought was a reasonable price.  Prayer works.  That really helps to increase faith, if you ask me.  God saved our group as a whole around $3,000!

What will we be doing in Guatemala?  We will be sharing our personal testimonies, singing, and teaching children, do some service projects and hopefully encourage and help the full-time missionaries a lot.  There will be some other activities like sightseeing, and a bit of shopping. But I can't wait to minister to the people-especially the children there!

Now I can't help but think that it would be hypocritical if I was so excited to see what God is going to do there when He's doing great things here. I need to be open to serving right here in my own town.  Having a servant's heart is a challenge. For me at least.  I want my will to be what God wants in my life!

Please pray for our trip. Your prayers are greatly coveted.

• Pray for those who are going on the trip to have unity and the attitude that God would want each of us to have. 
• Pray for the people that we will be in contact with in Guatemala, that their hearts would also be prepared. 
• Pray for our leaders-Nik and Kristi Payne- that they would have increased patience and stamina. (Who are we kidding, it's not a breeze taking about 16 teens on an international trip!)  
• That God would make Himself so evident, real, and glorified!

Thank you for reading and praying. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments! I like getting mail. :)

Faith

[By Faith] "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1, ESV) 


[Jesus, Founder and Perfecter of Our Faith]
    Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 
(Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV)

Hebrews 11 through the first part of chapter 12 it's really hitting on faith.  I love the caption for the passage as well, "By Faith" and "Jesus, Founder and Perfecter of Our Faith."  Amen!  Don't you love how faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1? It looks like a  simple sentence but it's well worth taking the time to muse over. 


What is faith?  It is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  So it looks like faith is related to assurance and conviction.  Faith is not always easy to have, as humans I think we would rather see it "with our own eyes." But it's what God calls us to do, have faith in Jesus, in His life, death, and RESURRECTION!  


Oh, what about how we use the word "faithful." You would think this would mean full of faith but no, we use it as meaning: consistent, constant, reliable.  Does this usage have any ties with it's root word faith?  Something to think on. 



I also noticed that what I need is built right in my name: Cally Faith Reed.  And I looked at the header as I wrote the last paragraph, and there it was again: Faith's Findings my blog's "title, name" or "theme."  I named it that way mainly because of the fact that Faith is my middle name, and I'd be posting my finding thoughts, ideas, memories and whatnot on the blog.  (Also, I did quite a bit of jewelry making back in the day, and a finding was the metallic part of the jewelry, the part that held it together, the clasp. I thought it was cool that it had some crafty meaning as well.)  But now I find yet another meaning the phrase holds: that in your faith walk, (your relationship with Jesus) you discover many new things along the way, and I hope never to stop learning new virtues and aspects along the way.  May the Gospel and anything to do with God and His Word, never grow to be "old-hat," boring or bland to my soul.   Ask God to revive a thirst for His all-quenching, satisfying truth.  


Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 
(John 17:17 ESV)