I want to be a tree by the water

"Blessed is the man who TRUSTS in the Lord, whose CONFIDENCE is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not FEAR when HEAT comes; its leaves are always green. It has NO WORRIES in a year of drought and NEVER FAILS to bear fruit."
- Jeremiah 17:8

I sense that this upcoming year will be a particularly hard year where I will have to confront my fears. My hope is that I would trust in the Lord and find my full confidence in him, not just for the crazy stuff but even for the practical things. God, would you provide me with:

A new church to love and serve
Sisters to help me continue to grow
The ability to speed-read and write awesome papers!

Comments

Delirious

delirious (adj): marked by uncontrollable excitement or emotion; ecstatic; filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy (1 peter 1:8); me I don't think I had a personal relationship with God until 2 weeks ago. There have been a lot of formative moments and experiences in the past 6 years of me considering the existence of a higher-being, 3 yrs of being a Christian, 1 year of living by faith, 6 months of serving on church leadership, 1 month of dire circumstances, each of which have been challenged and supported by specific instances in my life.* But it's only been 2 weeks of finding pure joy, satisfaction, and freedom in Christ (alone). Though it's been 6 years since I first stepped into a church building and 3 years since I accepted Christ, I was always afraid to admit that I didn't know what grace, freedom, repentance, or Jesus meant--in terms other than the ones I had heard or read--it was always a theory and never a reality in my own life. After years of doing chur

And just when you least expect it..

Today I went down to the food court with another intern and as I opened my box of sushi, I hesitated. Feeling as if there were too many eyes on me (I only ate with one other person -_-), I questioned whether I should pray before my meal, in fear of social rejection. After I prayed, she asked me if I was a Christian, and I awkwardly responded that I was. Then she said, "Finally! What a relief to know that there are other Christians!" WHAT THE.. I couldn't believe it. Here I was, sitting with a co-worker that I had simply exchanged cordial greetings with, now talking about God haha. Even though I was scared and honestly did NOT want to pray, God used a habitual thing like that to open up opportunities for me to invite her to small group and share my faith. Crazy how He works when you least expect it.

Honesty

If you're my friend, teammate, lifegroup member (or you have any context with me at all), I've probably hurt you. I've probably hurt you in the way I approached you, made you into an agenda, or seemed disinterested in our friendship at times when we weren't being "purposeful". I probably gave you the idea that I didn't value our time together unless we were doing something "productive"--and in all honesty, you were right--you read right through me, and knew exactly what I was thinking. Ever since experiencing God (personally) for the first time three weeks ago, I've seen how my skewed relationship with God has affected so many other parts of my life. Before, I saw having a relationship with God as a list of tasks--in my warped point of view and biases of being an already-too-task-minded person, if I wanted to know God, I needed to read the Bible, persevere in prayer, get involved in biblical community, and serve the church. If I did all these

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