A week pursuing God...

So yesterday ever since I woke up, I had this intense feeling that God was trying to get my attention. I spent a while praying, contemplating, listening...but felt like I wasn't every truly giving God all of my attention because of all the distractions on my mind. I also haven't had the time with God these last couple weeks that I wish to have each day. So this led me to my decision that I am going on a fast this week. I have never fasted before, but felt lead to do it, so I will be fasting until Sabbath - just liquids and some fruit to keep me from my propensity to pass out :-) I'm also going to cut my study time in half each day, and use the extra time to completely focus on God and my relationship with him. I think it is going to be difficult but also very rewarding. I don't expect necessarily that God is going to reveal some amazing thing to me...maybe all he wants is for me to see how such a daily focus on him can change my thoughts and keep me looking up more. I just ask that you keep me in your prayers this week. I just realized that God sure picked the right week to challenge me in making time for him as I just received my French course that adds 3 credits to my already full class load. AND I am starting my 2nd job tomorrow that will probably add about 20 hrs. of work to my week. But I'm determined to do this - this week.

Part of my goal...

"The place where we must always register God's presence is in our minds, our thoughts and feelings, our inner being. That means that my job in my spiritual life is to learn to continually focus my attention on God...the practice of spiritual life boils down to one single statement from Scripture: 'I have set the Lord always before me.' Psalm 16:8"
-Now What by John Ortberg (one of my favorite authors)

Romans 12

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you:

Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.

Embracing what God does for you
is the best thing you can do for him.

Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.

Instead, fix your attention on God.
You'll be changed from the inside out.

Readily recognize what he wants from you, and
quickly respond to it.

Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Memories

Little things here and there send my mind whirling back to memories of last year. We just dissected pig lungs in my EMT II class and the clamps and scalpel in my hand felt strangely familiar. I can see a vision right now of Dr. Bond doing a gallbladder surgery and suddenly hitting a bleeder that shot out spurting blood all over both of us. He kept trying to clamp it, but the area was too small and deep to get his hand into. So while holding pressure on it, he gave me a quick 30 second lesson on what I should do, handed me the clamp and had me stick my small hand down into the hole and clamp it off.

Today I was washing my hands in the dorm bathroom. When finished I realized there was no more paper to dry my hands off with. As I walked back to my room with my hands held up dripping, I started having visions of scrubbing in to surgeries in the outer room of the OR in Bere and then learning to kick with my foot just the right way on the door handle to open it so that I could enter without contaminating my hands. (It didn't work on my dorm door)