The Blog Returns!

So, I have material for another blog post. I may have material for some more after that. Before jumping right into it, I thought I'd post about the fact that I'm beginning to post again.

It is amusingly ironic that this blog, created originally to chronicle my college experience, basically disappeared as soon as I actually experienced college. There's a lot to say about college; it's incredibly fun, and incredibly busy. Perhaps my experience will be further explored in further posts. The reasons for its disappearance are many and are rather subtle; in the end it just became something that wasn't very important to me.

God has really been speaking to me recently, over the past two days specifically, and it's because of this that I'm posting again. I had spent a long time without reading the bible or praying very regularly, with a definite feeling of something lost but not quite enough motivation to seek that lost closeness. This began changing because of numerous small motions on the part of God, but it most specifically began yesterday in Zondervan Library.

As I was in the midst of an inductive study on Ephesians 6:10-18 (for Intro to Christian Educational Ministries class), it became clear to me that I had uncovered enough interesting information to form a blog post. That was the beginning of the train of thought that will culminate with my next blog post. The ultimate goal of these inductive studies is an Application to be directly applied to our own life, and (in theory) actually carried out. I am no foreigner to the idea of such applications, having heard a plethora of lessons and sermons that ended with one or more such things. My pattern in the past has been, usually, thinking about it, maybe even doing it a little bit, but not really implementing these sorts of things. As I wrote my application for this passage, I resolved to be sure that that would not be the case.

Part of my application involved praying every day, at specific times. As I finished writing the application at 8:45, I wrote "the weekly time for Saturdays would be 9," printed my assignment, and headed to the prayer chapel to practice what I preached. Once there I prayed, out loud, for the first time I had with such sincerity in a long while. I prayed through the passage I had studied and then began laying before the Lord all the thoughts and insecurities and hopes I had kept subconscious previously.

It is hard to describe that experience, or describe the change in general attitude that followed. I re-found the closeness with God that had only ever been one intentional step away. I resolved to, yes, actually pray through this passage every day. It has become clear to me that, as long as I approach life in this recently re-found fullness, I will indeed have experiences to blog about. So here we are.

Church today was fantastic, as the presence of God was experienced and a lot of relevant truth was spoken into my life. I have resolved to live with a different response to these sort of experiences, to actually live differently because of them. This blog is a way of chronicling those efforts. I think I'm back to posting about what this blog was originally about, finding how to worship everywhere and in every way. My experience worshiping through study and prayer has lead me to worship by, well, blogging.

Thank you for reading this, I hope the relating of my experiences will inform you regarding the posts to follow and, hopefully, be used by the Spirit to bless you in some way beyond that.