Facebook: A great friend, An even greater Enemy

I hate Facebook...
Wait, I mean, I love Facebook.

Oh goodness it is a war within me. Too often I find myself on Facebook when I should be doing much more productive things. It is so frustrating because I know if I just shutdown facebook I would get done so much faster, but I love learning about people, looking at pictures, and chatting. It is so fun. And it is such a waste of time. How do I fight this evil enemy? I don't have wireless internet at home so there is no way I can go on the internet while I'm in my bedroom doing homework. It is great. Bless my parents for not falling into our begging trap of, "Please can we get wireless, life is so much better that way." But, when I'm at school I can get internet anywhere and I almost always have my computer with me. In order to defeat this distraction I promise myself I won't take out my computer, or I ask friends to make sure I don't take out my computer. It is very helpful. This morning I got to school early and on my way I said I wouldn't take out my computer until I was done reading one of the books for one of my classes. Since I didn't take it out it only took 40 minutes to finish. Which really feels amazing cause now I'm done with that.

Enough about facebook, let me tell you about God's movement in my life...

God has used the car accident a couple of weeks ago for my good. He used it to test my faith in Him, to show that even (especially) when stuff goes wrong there is a need to trust Him. If I trust Him than my prayers to Him seem very worthwhile.

Prayer has also been huge. I use prayer more throughout my day than I have ever before. I find myself silently praying while I'm talking to someone so that they feel more loved and cared for. I find myself trusting that God will answer prayers and then seeing Him answer them. When I don't have words to say I pray He will provide answers and words.

God has given me close friends who love the Lord. This is awesome and very encouraging. When I get to talk to friends about Jesus I get so excited and I love Jesus more and I love my friends more. This has been an awesome experience.

I wake up each morning and read my Bible and although it is a habit God has been moving so that I do it willingly and joyfully each morning. It's hard to read names in 1 Chronicles, but with God's help I see a couple words that draw me to pray each day. God did awesome things with those names in Bible times, so He can still do awesome things with those names today.

John Piper is preaching on the gospel of John right now and I'm amazed at how much God is using him to help me love the gospels more. I can't wait to be done reading the Old Testement so that I can read Luke and John explicitly.

I'm fighting many sins. One sin is idolizing people. Too often I put friends first because I love being with them. This means that I spend more time thinking about and spendinng time with friends than I do with the Lord. I find myself making having friends be God. This is really hard for me becuase I love friends and I think friends are vital to my growth, but I have to be careful no to make them my idols. At a school like Bethel it is very easy to make myself an idol too. Too often I find I'm comparing my sin to other people's sin and making myself better than them, I'm idolizing myself. I need to constantly remind myself of the truth of the gospel and know that I did not deserve Christ one bit. I deserved eternal damnation in hell and God's justice and grace prevailed in giving me eternal life! This is so awesome and humbling. The humility is what I need to bring with me each day as I walk around campus, go to class, and spend time with friends. Christ was humble in His sacrifice I must be humble to show the weight and joy of His sacrifice.

In the humility and joy of Christ,
Greta