I don't like taking notes in class. I may list some of the things of importance and maybe even go so far as to explain them briefly, but I find that when I try to take notes, I can't keep up. Then I end up just missing everything the instructor says because I'm so intent on trying to catch up on all of the things they had said earlier. I find that if you are impossibily behind, you will remain behind forever if you keep on trying to catch up. Sometimes it just takes omitting some of the past and focusing on the present.

There is an impossible amount of things that I would like to catch up on now. Things that have happened this summer that I have wanted to write about. Feelings I have wanted to get down on paper. Ways the Lord has blessed me. It seems that I had to make a fairly broad description of what has happened in my life this summer, and am going to have to move on to writing about the present.

There is one thing I wrote down on paper one night that I don't feel I should keep to myself. Well, when is there anything I want to keep to myself? I wrote this about two to three weeks ago:

Father,

Thank you for your many gifts: Your son given so that I might know the sweet blessing of grace. Thank you for your Spirit, which has instilled deep within me a desire to know you more fully and to obey your statutes. As I focus on what I deserve and what I get, I am humbled by the fact that I deserve death as an object of your wrath. Then instead of death, I receive an abundant life that constantly tastes of the sweetness of knowing you. I am slowly coming to the realization that you are not something to be used to improve any aspect of my life. Rather, I am the one that is to be used. However I am used, that is not for me to decide. I invite you to put me to death so that I may live in you. Kill my flesh and help me to desire your Spirit. I am crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who lives but Christ lives in me. Test me by fire Father, so that I might not falter in the race marked out for me. Give me strength and endurance as I beat my body and make it my slave. With your help I will win the prize that you have promised me. I will not be put off. I will not be delayed. I will be a frame that reflects the masterpiece that my author and creator will be perfecting till the day my life ends.

As I state my desire for the Lord, my mind speaks in assurance and boldness. I know in my mind that this is what I desire for my relationship with God. My heart desires what my mind does, but it is afraid. It is afraid of what the future is going to hold. It is afraid of where God has called me. Most of all, it is afraid of failing.

I am unable to do this with my own strength. God help me to be like King David. Help me to be a man after your heart.

Josh

�Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross� For I consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart.�

Hebrews 12:1-3

I was thinking a little about how I could change the original text of this letter to make it sound clever, but I found the more I made myself out to be clever, the less I made God out to be great. All my life I have found that there was respect and popularity behind my walk with the Lord. I have also found out that since my walk with the Lord has produced this, that means that I've been doing it wrong.

"If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, 'A slave is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me."

John 15:18-21