YAY! I haven't had the chance to blog in sooo long and I am so excited to get to again. As usual, I have quite a bit to say...surprise! lol. So I will get started.
First of all, Team Van Hook enjoyed a FABULOUS 12 hour long road trip to and from Chuck's hometown of Fayetteville, NC. Muchas gracias to his wonderful family. Everything was perfect, and my butt thanks you tremendously for all of the food spoiling you gave us ;) No really, we had such a good time, and the road tripping with the littles honestly wasn't terrible. (The new car seat that we got JulieAnne saved us...for REAL! She loved it!)
Next order of business...God has been revealing some awesome AWESOME things lately to me...I'd like to share.
1) Paul! Cool dude. As I've been reading through his books of the Bible, I have realized how important it is for us to know Paul. The main reason is this. His credentials. If anyone knows about Paul, which to be quite frank, I never really cared about who Paul was as an individual, I just knew his stuff in the Word was good. However, I believe that Paul made it to the "Bigs" in the Bible for a specific reason. I never realized that Paul was like Jew of all Jews. Like the main Christian persecutor EVER. Like gangsta thug nasty Jew man. Ok... I think you get my drift. So yea, God chose Paul, specifically so that people in the future (like us crazy folks today) could be confident that if God would CHOOSE Paul for such a huge ministry and purpose...then He can, will and DOES choose us as well. NO MATTER WHAT. Murderer, crack addict, prostitute, Christian hater, bible burner....WHATEVER YOU ARE....GOD LOVES YOU JUST THE WAY YOU ARE, AND HE WANTS YOU! Yup. It's kind of one of those aha or duh moments. Anyway. Just cool watching how God used Paul so greatly....which leads to numero dos.
2) The whole Jewish thing. I won't get too much into this. However, I have learned a lot through my Journey in the word about God's people. Jews & Gentiles. Law vs freedom. etc... As Paul was instructing the people to recognize that they don't have to live by the Old Testament laws anymore, because Jesus came as the ultimate sacrifice to free us... my eyes were opened to some things that I guess if I would've paid more attention at Johnson (ug I hate myself seriously for not) then I would have already known. But anyway, reading through Galatians I turned to Chuck and said "Why don't these people get it babe? What did they not understand about Jesus coming to give us freedom from the law? How could they not have known it was the real Messiah?" and the questions continued for oh about 10 minutes...lol. Finally, I shut myself up with another aha moment. I thought back to the beginning...in Exodus when the Moses brought down the 10 Commandments. When he came down to share the laws that God had given him, the people were going buck stinkin wild down there. Worshiping idols and all sorts of junk. That's when it all began. They were hard-headed and stubborn from that moment on. So my realization was that is how it's supposed to be! The answer to my questions was because God said so!! lol. Until Jesus returns for all His believers, will they "get it!" Well...I'm sure there's a TON more to it then that...but for me... it was a bunch of new cool thoughts that I thought I could share on here. I love learning. Period.
3) Be like Jesus. This idea has been confirmed multiple times lately. A very simple and wonderful though. Especially at this time of year. But in all situations lately, instead of responding the way Rachel wants to respond I think the old school phrase WWJD. For Christmas, I really REALLY REAALLLY want one of those bracelets that I used to rock back in Middle School for me, Chuck and Kennedy even. I firmly believe that if in all things we simply attempt to be like Christ then a whole lotta problems would fix themselves! How would Jesus parent? What kind of spouse would Jesus be? Wouldn't Jesus make it more important to give than receive at Christmas time? :/ What kind of friend would He be? Would He care how clean His house was? How much money He made? ... and so on. Just some stuff to chew on this holiday season!! Some stuff I'm really searching my soul about lately!
ok...well! I have a WHOLE nother blog to do SOON about how our family is going to do an advent wreath/calendar with a twist this year. Guess I'll hafta save that one for hopefully tomorrow...or if I'm lucky after this crazy youth hang out night, I can crank that one out tonight. By the way...side-note...PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't think I write all this stuff on here to be "holier than thou" or "better" or anything like that. I am not. I am sooo imperfect it's not EVEN funny! But, I know that I am encouraged when other people share, and I myself am encouraged when God shares with me, so I just want to give back and share with whoever reads this. AND...if no one reads it, I still feel better just having got it all off my chest :)
Stay tuned for my next post which I will so cleverly entitle "Advent"ures :)
Pray for us....it's crazy youth night (how bout we already have 14 kids on our youth group...Praise the Lord!)
Peace In the Middle East
~Rach
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