Last one of September!!!

I feel that a lot of people expect a lot of me out of life. I try to be funny with friends, try to sound smart in bible study, and try to keep my happy face on at all times. I’ve recently discovered I’m very good at these performances but they aren’t me. I’m usually not that funny, I don’t have much at all to give in bible study, and there have been plenty of times where I just want to fall apart. I think this is true of a lot of people. We all try to be other people depending on our peers. We try to fit in with our friends; try to be smart in class (whether by talking a lot or not speaking at all), and we try to act strong like nothing affects us. We are a people who want to be accepted by all. We need to be a people who want to be accepted by the One. Saying how to perform for Him is to easy. It’s just simply acting in a way that pleases Him and wanting His will for us. If only acting that out was that easy. I honestly don’t know how to perform just for God and I’m not even sure it’s possible but I think we all need to make the attempt and find that path on our own.

Q’s

            1) How can we be sure of God’s calling (secondary) for us?

            2) What separates a good daydream from a bad one besides the obvious of if it glorifying to God or not?

Sorry it's late!!!

               

            One of the hardest things to do in life is to keep it balanced. We must balance family life and work, friends and family, balance oneself, or even the checkbook. One may even say life is a balancing act.  This “balancing act” transmits into our faith just as it does into the rest of our life. Oswald Chambers comments on the balance between honoring God and serving Him. He mentions how we, as Christians, can become to obsessed with trying to serve God and often lose sight of our purpose, to worship Him. God created us to love and praise Him. While we worship him in multiple ways, we need to branch out to other types of praise as well. For me personally, I am, what is called, a naturalist. I worship God by marveling at his creation and love being immersed in it, particularly stars. However, I have the hardest time worshipping him any other way. I hate singing praise songs, I never focus on serving for God rather than for me, and I keep forgetting to have quite times. I am very unbalanced in my Christian life and so are many college kids. All the pressure for us to try our best just takes up all our time. We spend hours studying, working, and volunteering so that we can leave college ready for the real world, but in all this we forget how important God is and that he wants us to spend time with him instead of spending time for him. Again we have to be cautious and not spend all our time with him instead of for him. Our life requires a careful balance between these two.

            1) Can anyone actually be successful?

            2) If we don’t live/ believe the words in a “praise” song, should we still sing it or should we keep silent at that line?

Post number 3!

(I’m super sorry this is so long!!!! I just got so into writing!!!)
The hardest question for me to answer is what do I want. Many look at this and see nothing particularly hard. “I want food, money, fame, love, acceptance, etc.”, but my answer isn’t any of there. In fact, I have no clue what my answer is. I know the cliché Christian answer is that, “I want whatever God wants“, or something along those lines, but I don’t think I can even claim to that. Don’t get me wrong, I feel like I have a purpose for my life, I just don’t think I know it yet, nor will know it till it’s already upon me. Life is about overcoming struggles but there are plenty of those times where we don’t even notice we are struggling. We are just living our lives and clinging to that fake world of stability. We don’t like to suffer so we many of us refuse to believe that we actually are. As a result, many people don’t get what they want. They fail their dreams and cling “to remembrance of perfection like most do after they break it”*, to quote a Relient K song. That’s why I don’t have a want, so my dreams aren’t crushed and God can use me without my own passions getting in the way.
(Man you just love these tough personal questions…)
One of my favorite aspects of myself is my love for kids. For some odd reason, God has just put this joy in my heart whenever I’m around and playing with them. I think this started through my church’s vacation bible school (VBS) program. I probably went once in my elementary years but I decided I wanted to help in the summer before 6th grade. I was assigned as a game helper, which was fantastic because I just played games all day morning long. I came back my 8th grade year as a group helper. The kids were split into groups and would travel around to all the different locations and such for their activates. One older person was put in charge of the group with one or two helpers. I really loved this job because I got to be with the same kids all week instead of seeing each one for about five minutes a day. The following year I was, again, a helper but my Junior year, I finally got to be a group leader. It was this year that it really struck me how much I love working with kids. I had a misfit group of a bunch of kids from different age groups who all got kicked out of other groups because they were to large. Everyday I’d have someone new, another kid or a helper, and we’d all just have a lot of fun. One of my favorite mementos is my group picture of that year. I wish I could describe to you how much that week meant but I just can’t get it in words.
Before I go super way over my word limit, I have to talk about Brandon. Last year I started volunteering in the preschool at my church. Now this kid, Brandon, just kind of attached himself to me. At first I thought he was just a really nice kid but one day his sister came in. She asked me if he was being all crazy like usual and I gave her a confused look. She then descried to me how Brandon is usually off the walls and doesn’t pay attention to other teachers and I was just speechless. Brandon had been super respectful for me and he made sure the other kids his age listened to me too. Just the other night, his mom e-mailed me and told me how Brandon kept asking where I was and how he got so excited when he found out he was going to the same school building as me.
Kids are just part of my passion now. While I’m getting a degree in secondary education, I’m still very much interested in helping with the younger kids.

* “Curl Up and Die” by Relient K.

Memory blog.

My memory by Shane Buxman
One of my least favorite things about myself is that I can hardly remember events in my life. However, one event has stuck out, the earthquake in Haiti. Out of all my memories, I can recall this one perfectly for the length on the quake. I was watching a movie on the balcony with my two brothers and sister. The movie was “rat race” and it was at the part where Whoopee Goldberg’s character was in the sonic car. As the room started to shake, we all just thought it was a truck. It went on for a couple seconds before I realized something wasn’t right. The thought “earthquake popped into my brain and I knew exactly what to do. I ran to find a table. I ran down the stairs and met our mastiff about half way. He was freaking out trying to stand, I continued into the kitchen where I saw the fridge spilling stuff everywhere, I could have sworn it was going to fall, I paused for a moment trying to remember where the table was, turned left, paused in the next room again, then turned left and dove under the table. I crouched under it as I watched the bookshelves fall and our freezer shake. I couldn’t here anything except the roaring and all I was focused on was watching the books fall. Finally it ended and I came pout of the table and walked outside where I saw my siblings run. I still heard nothing (why my family say they heard tons of screaming), and then my brain goes back into super spotty mode. I’m sure I remember this because it was one of the few times I can recall nearly dieing. I remember my other near death instances just the same but this one was the longest.
1)What happens in our brain that causes us to remember some things and not others?
2)Why does fear create such clear cut memories in one person, but blocks out the memory in other people?

Response to Danielle Sallade's essay

By Shane Buxman
In Danielle Sallade’s essay, “Human Flourishing”, she describes a normal college student’s life as full of work, study, involvement, work, etc. All this amounts to college kids exercising so much control over their lives that become burnt out. Sallade condemns this type of lifestyle for a Christian and I have to agree with her.
For one, this control is man trying to earn praise by man’s standards, which is completely against what we should be doing. We were created to praise and love God and to follow His will. If God wants us to have a high paying job or be the president of the United States, then He will get you there. One doesn’t have to join every club, sacrifice days of sleep, and sacrifice personal time with God in order to make this goal for God wants you to focus on Him and He will get you there. If God wants you to volunteer as a teacher full time, He will provide the food and necessities that you will need as long as you focus on Him.
God wants us to work so that we can praise Him with our hands, but He also wants us to rest so that we can praise Him with our hearts. If we are constantly going, we don’t make time for a quite time with God and without this quite time, one will quickly burn out and find no joy in their success. Our greatest success in life, as Christians, is to live God’s will, not to have a lot of money at the expense of our sanity.