(written on a scrap of paper in the middle of the night...posted a few hours late.)

So, it’s 1:50 in the morning and the birds are chirping. Who sings at 1:50 in the morning?! You never realize how frustrating chirping birds are until you are trying to sleep...or maybe it’s cuz you just finished a stress management project for your health class. Oh great...now I hear the train. We’re living in an industrial rainforest! I’ve decided, CBU is definitely a nocturnal community. No one sleeps, not even the birds. Next time you feel like going to Disneyland, save yourself the $70 and come to OUR Tiki Room.

Shut up birds! Shut up train! Goodnight.

God’s been doing a big work in my life lately. I feel it. He’s definitely humbling me. I don’t know why, but since high school, I’ve had this strange pride issue going on. I hate it…and more than that, I hate admitting it. Kinda like Moi’s song "Superman" says: "And I, I wanted to fly like superman does, and feel tremendous." I think that’s what I was feeling. I wanted to feel tremendous. Because God has spared me from falling into intense sin, I’ve had this "I’m tremendous" thing going on. It’s awful! Who am I to think something like that?! It is not my goodness that has kept me safe. Not by any means! I’m a weak loser, kept safe only by the grace of God! I am nothing…and on a scale weighing my nothingness against God’s everything, I am even a smaller nothing. This pride issue is definitely Satan’s favorite scheme (after all, he is a pro at that…haha). Satan uses it to minimize our trust and our faith in God. He knows that he doesn’t have a hold on our lives because we belong to Christ, so he plants pride in our lives, getting us to place ourselves on a pedestal. This only lowers God’s pedestal. Bad news! I’m learning that each and every day! Even if I am doing it unconsciously, I CANNOT lower God’s pedestal by raising mine. God is an infinite God. He deserves 100% of my praise and trust. Even 99.9% wont do. It must be 100%. It’s an all or nothing deal.

Funny how a song I don’t remember ever hearing before just came on shuffle on my iPod. See, I told you He is trying to tell me something!

I want to know You.
You are all I want.
I want to know You…more.

I desire to know Him more, because I know I will never know Him nearly enough! I am little me, and He is an infinite God!

"The truth is, feeling small may not be so bad if in recognizing our smallness we come to realize the wonder of God—a God who is beyond our ability to fully describe or imagine, yet someone we are privileged to know, love, and embrace. Looking up from our tiny estate we are faced with the supremacy of a God who not only is fully capable of running the entire cosmos today—a task that doesn’t tax Him in the slightest—but of sustainting the affairs of our lives as well." -Louie Giglio

Church tonight was AMAZING! Usually, Palm Sunday gets kinda overlooked, but tonight, it definitely didn’t! A message about baptism and repentance seemed very fitting!

It’s weird to think about…baptism is our outward sign of repentance, right? It’s to follow the example Jesus set forth and to show others that we are getting rid of our old sinful nature and becoming clean. Well, if that’s what baptism is, then why did Jesus, a perfect man without sin get baptized? Simply to leave us an example? No. This was something I never thought about before. Pastor Neil said it well. "He who knew no sin stood in the place of those who knew no righteousness." POWERFUL! We, the guilty Christians, knew no righteousness. Every action in our lives is deserving of death. How can a sinner like me be seen as pure in the eyes of God? Only by taking on the righteousness of Christ. As the words of a very famous hymn so eloquently put it, "He breaks the power of cancelled sin, He sets the prisoners free. His blood can make the foulest clean, His blood availed for me" (O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing).

Tonight was a very humbling night, indeed.

Thank you, Jesus, for cleansing the life of a wretched sinner like me. Thank you for forgiving me and setting me free.

funny quote of the day: