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TheChi24
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Name: Chi
Country: Swaziland
Gender: Female
Interests: i love God with all my heart, and i love my friends and church, i'm slightly obsessed with the lord of the rings and pandas, and i love music, taking pictures of the sky, and going to the beach! i'm also addicted to starbucks
Expertise: NOTHING AT ALL! :-p
Message: message me
Member Since:
7/17/2005
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| Well it's been about 8 months or so since I last updated, and I figured it was time I amended that! Poor xanga seems to be fading into the background of obscurity.  Anyway, I've been meaning to update for a long time but it always takes me forever lol.
The subject of holiness has been on my mind for quite some time, and I think it's something the church in this country should really start thinking about more often. When I had to read Charnock's Discourse on Holiness for the credentialing class, it really opened my eyes to a lot of things.
I think the thing that stood out to me the most was what he said about what we do to God when we sin. First, "Every wicked work declares a man an enemy of God." But then he also says, "It is no light thing, then,…to join issue with the
devil in stabbing His heart, and depriving Him of His life."
So when we sin, we don't just harm ourselves, but we stab God in the heart! The Most Holy and Righteous God, who is King and Ruler of the Universe, and yet chooses to love us, who are no more than steaming piles of dung in His presence, isn't merely offended when we sin. Our sin doesn't just irritate Him or cause Him a little twinge that He shrugs off. No, every sin we commit is sending a dagger through His heart. And also, we aren't doing it alone. We are joining with the devil! So not only are we, God's beloved children, stabbing Him in the heart when we sin, but we are doing it while in league with His absolute enemy! As if it wouldn't be bad enough to be stabbed in the heart by one's child, without the child having joined with one's greatest enemy! And we have the audacity to make excuses for our conduct! We say that God's rules are too strict, and that He shouldn't expect us to be able to uphold them, and we can't help it if we sin because it's our nature. While it is part of the fallen human nature to sin, if one has been born again through the precious blood of Christ, then one has also died to the sinful nature! And it is true that in ourselves and our own strength, we cannot be expected to uphold the laws that God has given us. But we don't live in our own strength! We have the strength of the Omnipotent God to sustain us! That alone destroys any excuse we might give for sinning. So if one claims to be a Christian, one must live a holy life. There is NO excuse for being anything other than holy!
Just to clarify, I'm not claiming to live a holy life all of the time and I'm not pointing a finger at anyone, this entry is as much for myself as it is for anyone else.
Why do we sin when God commands us to be holy? When we sin, we are in essence proclaiming that we know better than God and our standards are better than His. We are also saying that we love the sin more than we love God. Charnock says, "Every act of sin is spiritual adultery, denying God to
be the chief good, and giving that prerogative by that act to some vile thing."
Holiness is not something to be scorned, or shrugged off, or something that we'll start thinking about later. Think about Jesus, our loving and perfect Saviour, hanging on the cross, His body torn and bleeding and disfigured by beatings, enduring unspeakable physical agony, to say nothing of the spiritual agony He went through. The perfect, unblemished, holy Son of God made Himself man and took on ALL of our sins! And amidst that agony, His Father turned away from Him. He came to save mankind, and mankind beat Him, mocked Him, spit on Him, and scorned Him. Now imagine Jesus as I just described, dying for us, and imagine each sin we commit is as if we come up to Him, and we are side by side with the devil, and we stab Him in the heart who is already enduring suffering unimaginable. I don't understand how we, I included, can continue to sin! We ought to be bowing at His feet in humble gratitude and complete adoration. And something else to ponder: Even though we have done such horrible deeds, God still loves us and will forgive us any time we repent.
Well I think I'm done now, I'm very passionate about this subject as you can see! I love you guys!
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| Praise be to the Lord, to God our Saviour, who daily bears our burdens. -Psalm 68:19
I was reading this verse tonight and thinking about it, and I realized that God doesn't just take our burdens sometimes, but every day! Also, He can't carry my burdens if I hold on to them. He'll only take them if I surrender them to Him. It needs to be daily, perhaps even hourly or every minute, that I surrender everything to Him. Pastor's sermon was very good on Sunday! But it's really almost comical how many things I've had come at me since then. I've had a hard few days, and I was thinking about it today and it made me laugh. Of course satan is going to try to trip me up after I've surrendered things to God. Which is why I need to surrender daily. Anyway, just some thoughts! I love you all so much, you are my family! 
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| Hey! I felt like updating again! I have to leave soon to babysit till 10 lol thats a long time to babysit. But I bet I'll have fun It's rather gloomyish weather today. Yeahhhh I don't have much to say lol I'm just trying to waste time cause I'm bored! I'm really enjoying the credentialing class on Tuesday nights, it's so interesting! The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know very much lol it makes me want to learn more I finished reading The Book of Lost Tales II today, it's in the History of Middle Earth series by Tolkien. It's a bit of an accomplishment for me lol I think I started it in like April or something outlandish like that. Well I suppose I should leave soooon, I love you all so much! I'm praying for you, please pray for me as well I don't see my brokenness anymore when I'm seated at the table of Lord... | | |
| The church dedication was today! It was such a fun and amazing day! There were sooo many people there it was crazy. But a good crazy lol. It was great to see Pastor Michael again, I wish he didn't have to leave!  We will kidnap you one of these days, Pastor Michael! You'd better keep a sharp eye! So yeah the service today went great, everyone did a fantastic job and everyone looked so amazing lol I took a ton of pictures. It was a very memorable day, at one point when we were singing Holy, Holy, Holy I almost started to cry because it just really hit me how blessed we are and how God has met us in such a great way. It's hard to believe sometimes that it's actually our church now!
I'm quite exhausted, I was at the church for almost 8 hours today! I need to go to bed I have to babysit a 2 year old at 9 tomorrow morning lol. I love you guys so much!!!
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| I decided to update, since it's been like 3 months lol. Summer went by really fast! I'm glad it's fall though, I love the weather! For some reason the fall always makes me want to go to Starbucks more haha I go there so much.
So things have been going pretty well for me, I feel like I'm kind of in a transition stage and right now I'm just waiting. It's kind of hard sometimes, but then God reminds me that this is where He has me right now, and I need to make the best of it. I've started working for my dad, and I really like it. He doesn't have a lot of work for me right now though, but I think it'll get better. I'm still babysitting for the Merrills lol I love those kids so much I'm really excited for the church dedication! And Pastor Michael coming up woo! The church is really starting to grow, it's quite exciting. I know God is going to do some great things through us I've started the credentialing class and I really like it, we have a wonderful and very smart teacher I love learning about that stuff, but it kind of makes my brain hurt sometimes lol.
Well I think that's about it! I love you all so much, more than I can say! You are truly family to me
Oh I just remembered, today is Talk Like a Pirate Day! Yarrrr...
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