Procrastinating...as usual

Hey!

Not much going on in my part of the world at the moment. I've been locked up in my room attempting to study and ending up wasting more time than usual! In our two weeks of scheduled exam time, all three of mine end up on Monday and Tuesday of the second week! Oh well...short and to the point.

I'm writing this blog, because I was reading one of my new favorite blogs Stuff Christians Like and saw a random entry for a prayer request for some of the same things I faced when I was getting my study abroad stuff together. We all know I was super frustrated at the time! Anyway, I sent her a comment and noticed a piece of scripture on her site:

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. (1 Peter 3:15-16 NIV)

In my March blog, I didn't really devote much writing to the actual impact the Young Adults Camp had on me and instead talked about a lot of the fun things we did. I have to admit that, at the time, I was thinking how my friends and people back home would think I was going "religiously nutty" and think I was getting weird. Thinking about that now really makes me realize that I don't live the most Christian lifestyle. I'm not horrible by any means, but I don't broadcast my Christianity either. Everyone's always afraid to insult the person next to them, and I'm no exception. A lot of my friends don't go to church (I don't go a lot either and I tend to use that extra morning as a chance to catch up on sleep) or aren't religious, so it's not often on the forfront of my mind. It takes me awhile to make friends and I've never really gotten superclose to people at church, or I've felt like an outcast/crazy Pharisee. I've always felt that many people in the churches and groups I've gotten involved with completely condemn those that don't follow everything to the T, and end up becoming hypocrites.

Back to the camp story: the church I go to here is pretty much the same as back home, except that there's a big emphasis on speaking in tongues while you're praying. Now, I was taken aback a bit when I first heard that, and the thought of practicing speaking in tongues is still a bit off to me. If God wants you to speak in tongues, I feel like He'll just *BAM* make it happen. Anyway, when we went to camp, the last night the pastor called out a few of us and said what God had told him. Now, I'm slightly skeptical about this type of deal most of the time, but in this case, I was one of the ones called out. Not really a big deal until he said what he said, which was something that had been hanging out on my heart for awhile. Little joke about finding an Aussie boy, then about how I would be a foundation in a church, even if I wasn't the one in front of the congregation every Sunday. Now, some of you may say that it's completely generic and all that jazz, but at the time, it was what I was needing to hear and it had been on my heart for awhile. Anyway, since then, I've been trying to study the Bible as often as possible, and in the past 3 months I've read and actually comprehended and taken notes on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and most of Numbers, as well as 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings. Those last four are random, because I just felt some random compulsion to read 1 Samuel, home of the story of David and Goliath. Now I'm back at the beginning, and my goal is to read and take notes on the entire Bible. Hopefully I can keep it up when I get back home, because it's been really rewarding, and I feel better about actually reading it because it's been one of my goals for a long time.

Anyways, getting off topic. Back to the scripture above. "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." I don't know how I would answer that to someone who doesn't really believe in what God's saying. God is good, gave his son to die for our sins (reading the Old Testament has made me realize just how forgiving He is since giving us Jesus)...that's a pretty darn good reason...but I don't know how well it would fly with some people. I mainly started reading the Bible to give my faith a more solid foundation, but the more I read, the more questions I have, and I definitely don't feel confident being one to instruct others on Him. I hope that one day that will change, but I've got a lot of personal growing to do before then!

Completely random post done for now...back to studying for finals. Wish me luck!