Honor Academy

I've been thinking a lot about the Honor Academy today. This past October I went to Acquire the Fire and I filled out an application for the HA without thinking too much about because they said it was free to apply if you did it that week. So I did that got some reference forms filled and finished that up. I had a phone interview and then, maybe 10 days ago I got a call that I was accepted!

Casey was blogging about all this last June. I guessing it was pretty much the exact same story, with ATF and all. But I never gave much of a thought to what it was all about.

But I've been accepted and I'm so excited about it! If this isn't where God wants me to be than I have no idea where else and He could want me. The biggest thing is money. It's $7800 bt that's more like $9000-something for me because I'm Canadian. Plus things like flight tickets and other smaller things make it all add up. And I know God can provide. Now I just have to wait for my acceptance package... exciting!

Casey, can you tell me if any of these names sound fimilar? James Sipes. Chelsea Arnold. A girl named Laura interviewed me. And the girl who's been contacting me lately spells her name Allyson but I don't know her last name yet.

The Museum

Today I went to visit the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. Honestly, kind of boring. Mostly landscape art. I guess it's kinda cool to see original "masterpieces" as they call them, but I don't know any crazy group of 7 fan I could tell in a far country that I saw them in person. You know the group of 7. It's a lot of their work that I saw. I thought Lawren S Harris paintings were really pretty. I'd put a picture of one here but the real ones would put them all to shame too easily. What's the most famous piece of original art you've ever seen?

I want my blog back.

I miss you guys so much! And if nothing else I want to at least explain why I suddenly stopped.

Last June I got caught up in thinking about everything I would be doing in the summer. I started journaling a lot, which I have continued doing. And I thought about the differences between blogging and jounaling.

There were a lot of things I didn't know. Like, I didn't know why I blogged, or anyone for that matter. Why do people post personal things on the Internet? That's crazy. How can someone come to trust online friends as closely as (sometimes more than) other friends? I did and I didn't know why. That frustrasted me a lot. I didn't know why someone would send me a gift just from getting to know me through my written expression through blogging. And yet, that happened. It's over my head a bit, just something I couldn't and still don't really get.

So before heading off to Thunder Bay for the camp I did I was sincerely planning on returning home to type up those journals. I was planning on typing up my whole summer here but that wouldn't have happened anyways because of the massive amounts of eternity that would take. Reading it alone would take a week if you were reading during all your spare time.

But my resistence to blogging grew during the summer. So I started posting vague, short summaries of events, rather than the details. I began to feel like no one was reading and eventually I just stopped. Sorry.

I've been missing you guys a lot! No lie, and for a while. Since I quit, I started another blog. What I really wanted was to come back to this though. I'll tell you what it is, it's no secret. But it's not like this blog. I refrained myself from letting myself often writing personal things. It's www.bottleoffanta.blogspot.com, check it out if you want. Doesn't make a difference to me anymore.

If you still pray for me at all, then thank you. If not, no worries! Don't go kicking yourself saying, "I'm so sorry! I thought you were dead so I started praying for your family instead!" Just kidding. Seriously, let's not joke about death. Mom just came to my door in tears for my aunt who has three brain aneurysms. She's not dead but my mom very worried about her because the doctors don't know how to treat her yet. And today, I just found out that a grade 10 at my school committed suicide yesterday. I never knew her but it's really awful.

That's all besides the point. I want to start blogging a bit more again. Maybe just slowly at first. As you may have guessed, a lot has happened since Semptember 15, 2008, so if you want to know anything just ask. Or about my summer too. Or if you missed me too, then please, please leave me a comment! I miss the community here sooo much. I love you guys, Steph.

Prayer and its' Power, (well really it's God's power)

POST #100!

Last Sunday, September the 7th, I went to my dad's church. There was a really great guest speaker. His topic was simple: Persistent Prayer, and he spoke from Luke 18:1-8.

Luke 18

The Parable of the Persistent Widow

1Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. 3And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'
4"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' "

6And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"


I don't think he said anything I didn't already know but the way he put it revolutioned my thoughts. And since then I think I can honestly say that I have been praying more.

If you are a follower of Christ, tell me, are you sick of this generation that goes on without a prayer? I mean it's just as Scripture says, if a horrible judge like that described in the parable would grant a widow, the least of society, how much more would our good God answer the prayers of his people whom he loved enough to let his Son die for? Why are we not petitioning to him all the things we would like to have changed around us, more than just our trivial lives and needs?

I'll tell you friends, that widow was desperate, and we too need to be just as desperate! Desperate for our nations, and high schools, and so much more, our friends who don't know Jesus! Let's not sit around waiting for things to get better on their own, because they won't!

I'd like to be praying more for the girl who struggles with drugs and sometimes even cutting. And a friend's mom who needs to know that there's a lot more to Jesus than church (holds little importance at all!).

Does anyone want change? Does anyone want to unleash God's awesome power? Is anyone willing to spend time wrestling with God until we receive blessings? When the Son of Man comes back is He going to find a faith in his people that says we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, if we are asking according to his will? Why are we, the body of Christ, not meeting together to spend hours weekly to simply pray persistently for justice to be done on earth?

Tell me.

Eyes

Connection.
Every person longs for it.
Can it be explained?
A world of people.
Diverse lives,
And diverse stories.
Love is more than a feeling,
But could a stranger
Love another stranger
If it were simply so?
Do we choose to love?
Do lives cross?
Is it possible that
Your close friend knows
How the stranger feels
Without knowing it?
What really happens when
The eyes of two
Strangers meet?

Written by the suggestion of DFS, hope you like!

Read Me

I wish I could put up something interesting to grab everyone's attention, but I really have nothing to say. Umm... there was the drama of one of my friends moving away for about two days and now she's back to stay. The first youth event was last night and we went bowling and I played decently.

My life is a bit boring at the moment. That not particularily a bad thing though. I have cousins visiting from BC at my house right now. They're 3 and 1 years old, I think. Cute kids... I've been a bit sick this past week but I'm almost better.

I'm gonna type up part of one of my very recent journals.

09.04.08:Hmm... how often is it that I turn to my journals to record the daily events of my life? I try to encorporate as often as I can my thoughts and feelings about those things, but alas, this is what they've become!

For once, I would like to write something that forces you to think about what you're reading. I don't really know how but I think I miught like to try.

A thought crossed my mind today as I say th the doctor's office's waiting room, I tried to get it on paper but my mom saw what I was doing and I lost appetite.

What happens when the eyes if two strangers meet? Eye contact is said to be a personal thing, so even if thtat glims only lasts a split second, have you not shared something personal with someone to whom you fing yourseld completely unfamiliar?

And another thing, does the colour pink mix with the Y chromosome? The idea is still new to me but being the artist that I am, I like it. Green isn't a clour only reserver for boys, and likewise, neither is pink for girls. My brother owns a pink shirt that he wears, but I wouldn't expect much from my dad for a long while yet!
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And feel free to just drop me a line any times...

If you want a great website to check out . There's all kinds of neat ideas, and it's added to frequently.

Bleeding Love

I absolutely love Leona Lewis's song Bleeding Love. I can't embed the music video here because the option was disabled for that video on youtube but you can watch it for yourself and interpret what you think she wrote the song about. But I'd like to just show you possibly a different perspective on that exact same song.

LYRICS:

Closed off from love, I didn't need the pain
Once or twice was enough and it was all in vain
Time starts to pass, before you know it you're frozen

This part (for me) is like distance from God and how nothing comes from that situation. And the less time you spend with God, the less it feels like his presence is with you until he almost becomes frozen.

But something happened for the very first time with you
My heart melted into the ground, found something true
And everyone's looking 'round, thinking I'm going crazy

Coming back to the relationship with God, falling in love with him because you can see the way things are truly supposed to be. And people who don't know that love think that it's crazy because they don't know.

But I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you
They try to pull me away but they don't know the truth
My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing

The first two lines are self explanatory. The last line is when you choose to cut yourself off from God. Also, a vein is the stream of blood flowing to the heart, not away. And everyone knows you need blood to live.

You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open

In Ephesians 6, you can do a word study on the word sword and find that it's actually more of a scalpel used for operations. So "you cut me open" is like God changing us or pruning us to bear more fruit.

Trying hard not to hear but they talk so loud
Their piercing sounds fill my ears, try to fill me with doubt
Yet I know that the goal is to keep me from falling

Again, people who don't know God can say a lot of things about our faith to make us doubt because they don't believe themselves. But the goal is to just keep striving after Jesus.

But nothing's greater than the rush that comes with your embrace
And in this world of loneliness I see your face
Yet everyone around me thinks that I'm going crazy
Maybe, maybe

This part is pretty self explanatory. Embrace equals an embrace, maybe like the dream I've blogged about before. Or even just confirmation of his love towards us. God never leaves us alone even when we feel that we have no one. Crazy is the same thing as above.

But I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you
They try to pull me away but they don't know the truth
My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing

You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open

And it's draining all of me
Oh, they find it hard to believe
I'll be wearing these scars for everyone to see

The cost of following after Jesus will demand everything you are and have. They find it hard to believe that it's worth it. The scars could go two ways. First scars could be the visible change in the way you live, even a physical change depending on a persons testimony. Or it could be living in a life that only takes pride in the scars of Christ.

I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you
They try to pull me away but they don't know the truth
My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing

You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love

You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love

You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love

That's all. I love it. If you didn't before, than maybe you will now.