NIPTO, Day 166

I'm going to start this off with something fun. BABY SEALS!

Aren't they cute??? I thought so.

(And I sounded like a seal barking this morning when I woke up and would cough... You really wanted to know that, I know.)

Yesterday was fairly uneventful... I got most of the things on my to-do list crossed off.
I blogged, I listened to Tammy Smith, I finished The Princess Bride, I walked, I made signs for my room from  quotes from LT (Not on my to-do list, but it kind of was). And I started thinking about what I'm going to talk about on Sunday... which could be translated to a post for liveGrounded.

I really start driving school on Monday... Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday from like... 8-12:15? Crazy. It's going to be a long 6 days, but it'll be good to get it over with... Then there are the in-cars... which scare me a little bit... (I don't turn the "right" way... My hands are not in the right position or whatever =P)

We went to lunch with Kasey&Bethany today! They called and said they were in town so we got together for a last minute lunch at Chiptole :) It was nice to hear what they've been up to&to catch up in general. :)

Now. I must be productive...

SO... I guess it's NIPTO?

Acts 8:9-25
 ⁹Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, ¹⁰and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, "This man is the divine power known as the Great Power."


Soooo there's this guy. And his name is Simon. And he's a sorcerer. And people thought he was amazing. 


 ¹¹They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his magic. ¹²But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. ¹³Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.


Oh wow. I'm amazing! haha (I didn't read ahead, and I said that they thought he was amazing... and then it says that he had amazed them) Wow. I'm awesome like that =P (or not.)
Anyways! They followed him because they were like "Hey! This guys' cool. And he amazes me." But then they believed what Philip said and everyone got baptized and believed and all that jazz. Simon the sorcerer himself believed! And then he started stalking Philip. HAHA (Sorry. I think I'm funny... I apologize if you think I'm uber lame!)




 ¹⁴When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. ¹⁵When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit,¹⁶because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. ¹⁷Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.


Coolio section here! The church in Jerusalem heard that the people in Samaria were believing in God, so they sent Peter and John to do what they do best: give people the Holy Spirit. :)
So that's what happened.



 ¹⁸When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money ¹⁹and said, "Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit."
 ²⁰Peter answered: "May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! ²¹You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. ²²Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. ²³For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin."


Sooooo Simon sees that they're handing out the Holy Spirit and he wants to know where he can buy some. Then Peter gets in a tizzy and tells him off because the Holy Spirit can't be bought by money. It's a gift. But I think a lot of times we do this too. We're like... okay, so now what do I have to do. What do I have to give in return? Nothing. It's a gift. Sure we have to give ourselves to God, but we don't have to do anything to get the Holy Spirit. 



 ²⁴Then Simon answered, "Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me."
 ²⁵When they had testified and proclaimed the word of the Lord, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages.


Simon realized what he had said was wrong and asked Peter to pray for him so he could be forgiven. 
Then Peter&John went back to Jerusalem and stopped in villages and taught along the way.




Thaaaat's about it. I'm making a playlist of songs that we sang at LT at the moment... I'll probably post that on the next post... and maybe just on my blog in general so when you go to my blog there's music playing... :)

Hope you're having a good day!

NIPTO, Day 122

AHRGGGGG.
no. I'm not a pirate. I'm FRUSTRATED!
WordPress (another blogging site) is being extremely frustrating. I want to log on so I can work on some posts for liveGrounded. Buuuut it's not letting me log in... and my password-reset emails aren't going through. Uhg. I'm done with that for the night!
Today was mostly uneventful. I cleaned a bit this morning... watched most of Harry Potter 3 this afternoon with Hannah... went to my piano lesson, came home, ate dinner/watched the next to last episode of Chuck, facebooked, watched So You Think You Can Dance... and now, 2ish hours later, I'm blogging... not knowing how it got to be 2ish hours later!
Something exciting on SYTYCD is that a guy from Wapakoneta (aka kinda hick-town-almost-everyone-is-a-farmer) Ohio made the TOP 6 GUYS! So that's really exciting!! And Nigel got lost in Ohio. From Columbus to Wapakoneta, it took him 4 hours... that's normally a... 1 1/2-2 hour drive? Yeahh...
My grandparents live about 15 minutes away from Wapakoneta... also affectionately known as Wapak (pronounced Wa-puck. It's great. Don't you love Ohio accents??) Nigel couldn't pronounce Wapakoneta to save his life! (wa-pu-kon-etta... that's pretty much how you pronounce it. Katie could probably give you a much better phonetic version. She is taking phonetics right now :)
Yeah. So I was/am excited about that :)

NIPTO, Dear NIPTO
It's late and I am tired
Shall we "git 'er dun"?



Ephesians 1:15-23
15For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

Red flag/Question: Do we give thanks for other people who are faithful? Do we do it enough? Do we do it at all?? 
Get this: He has "not stopped giving thanks for [them]" Uhm... WOW. We take other Christians for granted. We take people who are faithful for granted. We should be thankful for them. We should thank God for them. We should pray for them. We need to be a community who gives thanks for each other!


17I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

This should be our prayer for others. That God would give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. Not for any old reason though. So that "you may know him better." BETTER. Not get to know him... know him BETTER. They're already acquainted with this person of God. But to get to know him better, we must have the Spirit inside of us.


18I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 20which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

I don't know about you, but I need to learn how to pray more like THIS! 
We have this hope that God has called us to. But we might not see it if our eyes are closed! Our inheritance is enormous. And God's power is great. And we can tap into that power. The power that GOD exerted when he raised JESUS from the dead. The power that placed Jesus as God's right-hand man. 
This power is above rules set by other authorities. It is above other powers and other dominions. It is above titles that can be given to it. Not just now, but in the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and YEARS to come!

22And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Everything is under Jesus' feet. And Jesus is the head over everything for the church. The church is his body. It fills him. It fills he who fills everything in every way. It's so crazy and exciting! 
I'm discovering that our God is a crazy and exciting God. He's not dead. He's alive. He has a sense of humor... sometimes we don't find it funny though! He loves us. And there's nothing we can do about it! Which seems funny. But it's true.

Okay. I've got another kind of sacriligious thing... Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows clip! Trailer really. But it's sweet. I'm excited for these 2 movies!

Awesome, no? Yes? YES!

I thought I would also include this. I love this song :) Enjoy! 


Adios amigos!




P.S. Did you spot the poetry in my post? ;)

NIPTO, day 121

Helloooo. I'm sitting here. Watching Sense and Sensibility (the BBC version). NOT laughing at my sister. (I laughed just a little bit when they were getting the ice situated on her cheeks. But I wasn't laughing at her?)
She got her wisdom teeth out today. They said it went well. She ate some Jell-o a little bit ago... She's just kind of chilling now. We finished The Princess Diaries and are watching Sense and Sensibility now :) 3 hours is a nice long time for a movie. Ahhahahaha I forgot that Sir John was Mr. Weasley!

Booooo the second disc wasn't the right one! Somone didn't check them before they returned them to the library! *sigh*  So we are going to have a Harry Potter marathon. Numero 1 is in now :)
Daniel Radcliff was itty bitty!! SO cute hahaha.


Okay. It's night time now. I cleaned my room some more today. I took the mattress off of my bed. I vacuumed underneath it which was FANNNTASTIC.
I'm bunking my beds sometime soon... so that's exciting. Rearranging rooms is fun! :) Clean rooms are the best! ... if only I could keep it clean now...


liveGrounded went live today! That's super exciting! I'm looking forward to writing for it :) Go check it out! It's sweet.

NIPTO today! Woot!
Ephesians 1:11-14
¹¹In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, ¹²in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

I was talking about God's will yesterday. And it comes up again. Everything "works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will." Nothing that happens is outside of God's will. And everything goes according to his will so that everything can be for the praise of his glory.


¹³And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory.


When you heard the word of truth you were included in Christ. Having believed you were marked in Christ with a seal, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit guarantees our inheritance until we are redeemed. It's crazy. All of it. Simply CRAZY!







This might be a little sacrilegious...
But this was fantastic. Glee has good music, okay??



I'm going to go to sleep now. Or get ready for bed... and clean everything that was on my desk off my bed and onto the other bed... *sigh* cleaning is a crazy process!
I'm going to try to blog in the morning tomorrow. Which might mean actually setting an alarm. *GASP* I haven't done that yet this week. I also need to practice piano. HEH. I'm not sure if I'm going to Encounter tomorrow either... I'll have to ask about that!
Good ________ <-- Time of day!

NIPTO, Day 85

Good morning! It's actually warm out this morning! Hallelujah! (And you know I don't throw those around lightly =P)
I woke up on my own without an alarm this morning and it was glorious! I don't particularly like alarms... Mine is my phone buzzing next to my head... but chances are, if you call me in the middle of the night, I'll answer it... or I'll ignore it because I think it's my alarm! haha

I'm going to try to go to bed early tonight. I sure hope it works. I've been going to bed after 11 for too many nights in a row and it's catching up to me. I don't want to get sick (like H and my dad...) so I've been drinking lots of water and now I'm going to attempt going to bed earlier. And if I go to bed earlier, I'll be able to get up earlier and still get more sleep!

I don't like the first bowl of Raisin Bran... there tends to be a dearth of raisins. (I love the word dearth. It's just fun to say...)


Okay. I'm assuming that this week we're supposed to read Romans 7&8. Just because we read 1&2, 3&4, 5&6 in the weeks leading up to this. So I'm going to take it as a pattern and go with it!



Romans 7:1-6
 ¹Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know the law—that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? ²For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.

I imagine two people literally bound together. Like by the wrists. Then I imagine the bond being cut when he dies. It's a vivid picture in my mind. This picture represents us and the law. We are bound to the law while we are alive. But once we die (and not really die (we'll get to that in a second)) we are no longer "bound" to the law. It's kind complicated and I'm not sure that even I get it. But it works for now.


³So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.

So it's okay for a woman to get married again after her husband dies. Not okay to get married while he's still alive. But once he dies, she is released from the law of marriage. Interesting.


 ⁴So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.

We died to the law when Christ died for us and we believed that Christ died for us. We believe this so that we "might bear fruit to God"/enlarge his kingdom/share our faith with other people. I have something to admit. Sharing my faith with other people scares me. A lot. But it's so important. I'll go into this a little bit more in my next post (which is going to be notes from last night's Encounter62)


⁵For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.

I look at this and go "huh???" because our sinful passions were aroused by the law??? It's so confuzzling. BUT it isn't really that confusing. Thinking about it, if there is no law, there is no sin. But when you put restrictions on something, isn't that the thing you want to do the most?
  
⁶But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

So we've been released from the law. Does that mean we shouldn't obey it at all anymore? Nooo. We should still uphold the law (Romans 3:31- Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold it.) We still uphold the law. But we aren't bound to it anymore. Make sense?


I decided that this post was getting too long to do last night's Encounter62 notes here, but I'm going to post that later today (tonight probably... heh.).
That post might also be published on a website called LiveGrounded.
LiveGrounded is a website to Engage, Equip, Empower, and Encourage teenagers and young adults. A friend in Cleveland started it and asked if anyone would be interested in doing devotionals, and I think that what was said last night at Encounter would be a good Empowerment tool. So you can click over to LiveGrounded and check out the specifics. It's really cool! (If you're interested in doing a devotional (you don't have to do multiples!), let me know and I can connect you with the right person!)

Hope you have a fantastic Monday! (I know I'm looking forward to mine!)