Since I've last updated, days have passed in school and I'm down to the last 3 1/2 days! I'm very ready for this year to be over. It's been a good year, but a challenging year. Teaching at a new school, 4 preps all of which I've never taught before, and teaching some patience-testing 8th graders has really made me stronger as a person and as a teacher, but has also been tiring. I'll be ready for an easier schedule next year, although I know God always brings the challenges along. Without them, how do we grow?
I've been very proud of John lately. He was offered the job at Paideia, accepted it, and has been a few times to get his course outlines and textbooks. He'll do a fantastic job at this school. He also has gained even more clients in his tutoring business and continues to do a phenomenal job developing his own business in this way. Last week he delivered the message to our high school youth group and spoke very eloquently about different types of Christians while using a "Secret Agent" theme. I can't do it justice here, but he did a great job, especially for his first time delivering a message. Even though it was a wonderful experience, we talked tonight about how he's definitely very gifted as a teacher and God's calling him more and more to that arena of ministry rather than pastoral. Regardless, he did a great job and let the Holy Spirit speak through him.
Tonight, our friend Scott had the opportunity to preach and he also did a great job. Actually, Scott and his wife Fiona are our roomies for a few nights! They moved out of their apartment yesterday and are going to be in Austria helping his parents move for the next month. When they get back, then they'll move into a new place, but for now they're staying with us. It's been a lot of fun :) Anyway, Scott talked tonight on the plague of frogs and how the frogs were parallels to problems that we let linger in our lives without doing anything to change it. Pharaoh had the opportunity to pray to have the frogs go away, but he decided to put it off until tomorrow. It challenged me once again, and John as well, to think about our challenge and problem with overeating and how it's our frog problem that we continuously put off until tomorrow when we could have freedom today. Once again, God told me to fully rely on Him to get me through these trials (Fully Rely On God) and not on my own strength like I do time and time again.
This is what I meant when I'd talk about habits again. It's a "habit" I need to break and it's sooo very hard to do so--especially on my own. This morning in Bible study, we read a passage by Oswald Chambers that really spoke to me. It said "If you get into the habit of doing a thing in the physical domain, you will do it every time until you break the habit determinedly; and the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will get to what Jesus Christ wants, and every time you will turn back when it comes to the point, until you abandon it resolutely.
God, we want to abandon this "frog" resolutely. We pray that You once again give us the strength as we are challenge to do what Jesus wants and not what our own flesh desires.
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