I would first like to update you on where the Lord is taking me this next fall and then I would like to share with you my heart for this blog in the upcoming 9 months!
On September 12th I will be on my way to Colorado Spring, Colorado to participate in a secondary school run by the same organization that I went to Australia and Cambodia with! It is called, School of Biblical Studies or SBS. SBS is a 9 month course spent studying through each of the 66 books of the Bible 5 times. The instructors teach an inductive approach, where we will observe what the text says, then interpret what we believe it is saying, and then apply it to our lives and the world around us. This is a very intensive course with up to 10 hours a day spent studying and lectures every other day. When praying about what to do this upcoming fall, I told the Lord that I wanted to be stretched and challenged to trust in him and to completely surrender my life to him. Well whoever says God does not answer prayers should just come talk to me because boy did he answer this prayer! I will openly admit that I am a slower learner and get stressed about heavy work loads very easily... ask my teachers. But I believe this is an area of my life that God wants to have victory over. I also know that by committing to this program I will be putting myself in a spot where I can only trust in God and he will be the only one able to give me the strength to get through it. That my friends is a beautiful place to be that I would willingly sign myself up for in a split second! All this to say, this next 9 months will be very challenging but I know without a doubt it is where God wants me and as long as I am in his arms and at the center of his will it is going to be one heck of a year! Yay God!
With such an intense work load, I will not have much time to give blog updates but I feel as if God has lead me to take a different turn with my blog for the year. I would like this to be a prayer blog! After Jesus had casted out a demon from a little boy, the disciples had asked why they were not able to do the same when they tried. In matthew 17:20-21 Jesus answers them by saying, "Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you." I believe this same lesson applies to my next journey. I have much faith that this is exactly where God wants me to be and I have no doubts of what I can do through him! Though I may be a little scared and nervous I will hold on to the faith I have, even if at times it is only the size of a mustard seed. And with that faith I WILL move mountains... or plow through this course! But, as you all know, that is not always the easiest mind set to maintain when you are buried in books and have an assignment over the book of Genesis due the next morning. So that is where you come in! I want to have prayer warriors behind me during this season of my life! The enemy will try to tell me that I cannot do it but with faith and prayer, together we can stomp on him and let him know that we serve the God who created him, SO BOOM! Please join in praying for this journey that I am about to venture out onto. If this goes as planned, I will be posting prayer requests as I go through SBS and I ask that you support me through prayer. These request will be coming at some of the most humbling, vulnerable, and tough times in my my life. They will be honest prayer request so please know that I truly appreciate you taking the time, however long you have, to just simply lift me up!
I know I will be blessed by all the answers to prayer that will come during the hard times! And I know you all are prayer warriors and I ask that you pray with the faith that God hears your prayers and answers them! We serve an amazing, faithful, and loving God and he wants the best for us, He would never set us up for failure and he will not start with me, he will be my rock during ALL hard times.
Thank you so very much again for committing to join me in prayer. At anytime if you would like to leave and encouraging comment, know that your words mean SO much to me! I love you all and will miss seeing you during this time away!
-Autumn
