Into His Marvelous Light

I would love to share how blessed I’ve been in going through 1 Peter. I’ve been trying my best just to inch my way through this book so that I really absorb what I read. Yesterday, on our great day of giving thanks, I was blessed with 1 Peter 2:7-12.

Now, what I loved most about my reading that really spoke to me was in verses 9-10. Peter is telling the church the blessings that God has given them as believers.

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

Praise God!! What a passage! What first really hit me was that Peter tells us that we are a “royal priesthood”. Wow. Now, for an OT reference here, it used to be that only the tribe of Levi were to be the priesthood. Their nation was appointed that duty and so only from that line could be so. But what Peter is doing is he is breaking past this and showing that as gentiles, we now, through Jesus Christ, are also as such. Earlier in the chapter, in verse 5 he repeats this, but what he points out through this is that we are able “to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”. Again, wow…. Only through Jesus’ blood are we able to do this, and what a privilege it is be a part of this new covenant.

Now the next thing that just blew me away was again in verse 9, that the power and purpose of our salvation is to declare the glory of the Lord.  “…that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.” I think its so important to remember what God has taken us out of. If we see where we were and how greatly he has saved us, then what other motivation do we have but to proclaim his excellence? And even so, what a privilege to even be able to do that as His priesthood? I really think that in reading passages like this it is such a compounded blessing because we are able to see what Christ has freed us from (darkness), what he has freed us to (holy priesthood and a marvelous light in Him), and the privileges of that freedom (declaring His excellency).

I pray this may have even ministered to you in some way. Remember that you were once without mercy but because of the blood of Jesus Christ, you now have that mercy. So today, declare the glory and the praises of the Lord. It is to Him that we owe all of our praise, thoughts, and glory.

STDs/STIs, fun fun fun

Well today I learned a plethora of information that not only shocked and appalled me, but moved me SO much so, that I felt the need to write a blog post about it.

In my Health and Fitness class today we went over STDs, which have now been given the politically correct name of STI because a disease is something with clear, diagnosable symptoms and in terms of STIs, “once infected, a person may or may not develop signs or symptoms indicative of disease”.

Now, I’m not exactly 100% sheltered. I grew up in public school and did indeed get to cover sex ed., what an STD is, how to practice “safe sex”, etc., etc. I even had a pretty good idea of what kinds of STDs are out there: gonorrhea, syphilis, genital warts, HIV/AIDS, chlamydia, etc. This, I would venture, is fairly common knowledge. However, the things that my professor (who is a reliable source and has a doctorate in kinesiology), was telling us today in class, I for one had never heard before. I’m going to basically rattle off a series of the facts that I found to be most shocking. The purpose of this is really only to spread awareness, truth, and to really see what common society actually knows about sex and STD/STIs. If I’m not the norm in being shocked by these things, please let me know, but really, my first reaction to most of what I will list was simply, “Wow……..”

- Gonorrhea and chlamydia can cause arthritis, sterility, and gonorrhea can cause heart problems

- Generally only 20% of people infected with STIs show symptoms

- You can get infected an endless amount of times with any bacterial STI, and viral STIs will never go away

- Stage 4 Syphilis can cause heart disease, blindness, insanity, and brain damage. The previous stage has absolutely no symptoms at all

- You can contract syphilis from kissing

- Most people infected with HIV won’t show symptoms for 10-12 years

- The HIV virus generally cannot be detected from 2 weeks up to 6 months, and even a test cannot be fully negative until tested periodically for one year

- For this last point, I’ll just post a link to something called a “Sexual Exposure Chart”. Now, as the site explains, this chart is assuming that the people you’ve slept with have also slept with the same number of people. I suppose I just wonder how many people have slept with 12 people, because if those 12 people also slept with 12 people, you’re looking at quite the number, but I’ll let you see for yourself……. http://www.sm12tlk2.com/sexual-exposure-chart.html

Now, the point of this, again, is to just shed some light on a subject we’re completely surrounded by in the world. So, take a look, think about the fact that STDs are on the rise in America, despite the use of Sex Ed., and that about 75% of the time you may not even have symptoms to know you are infected.

Just think about it.

it’s been a while….

Ok so this isn’t exactly a great post, but just wanted you to know that I’m alive and well and will TRY to post soon.

God bless!

bc hey girl hey

Ssssssoooooooo due to a kind of connection my sister has with a friend who works for BC Footwear and Seychelles, I got featured on the BC Footwear site in their “hey girl hey” section. Feel free to check it out and don’t forget to check out their killer shoes too!
http://www.bcfootwear.net

transition

this week is the week i begin school.

the summer is officially over, but for some reason i don’t really mind. i’m quite interested in seeing how my classes will be this quarter and sincerely hoping i haven’t overloaded too badly. 5 classes isn’t too much, right? the way i see it is that i should load up now before i get burnt out, then i won’t be regretting it later.

i got a livescan today and the man to did it told me he’s never had such a hard time getting fingerprints off anyone in the 5 years he’s been doing them. wow. tragic. he also told me that my fingerprints looked like those of a 50 year old. again, tragic.

on a lighter note, the women’s retreat was absolutely fabulous and i was SO blessed. the Lord really revealed truth to women’s hearts and my favorite part of it was being able to pour into my sisters in Christ and taking my eyes off myself (for the most part) for the weekend. i mean, honestly, you can’t be 100% selfless on these retreats simply because God is usually uncovering some junk in your own heart that you need to deal with, but spending time with women i hardly see was just amazing. life gets in the way sometimes and i’m blessed the Lord gave me the money and opportunity to go this year.

to end, since i know that personally, i never have too much of an attention span for reading online, i’ll leave you with a verse and a photo.

"And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us." 1 John 3:23-24