What is our ending?

At the end of it all, I wanna be in Your arms.
Cause Your love is beautiful. So beautiful.

1 Chronicles 28:9

I love this verse. I know that it was said to Solomon, from his father David, but the truth of it is awesome. I love it.

"...know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind; for the LORD searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever."

To me, this is beautiful. David tells his son at the end of his life, know God. Those simple words are so powerful. To know God takes time and energy. To fully know Him as Lord is beyond comprehension. First of all, it's crazy to me that we can truly know Him. Why does the God of the universe choose to love us and allow us to know Him? Because of who He is. We have the opportunity to intimately know God.

We need to also serve God with a whole heart. Simply surrender everything. We sang a song in church today that made me think of this. The part said, empty-handed but alive in Your hands. The fact of the matter is when we surrender everything and are truly empty, the Lord fills us up with Him and we are alive through Him.

The Lord searches all hearts. He knows everything about you and me. He knows the intents of our heart. He knows why I really said what I did. He knows whether I am serving Him because it is an overflow of my heart or if it is for my own selfish gain.

The last part of the verse is simple and to the point. If you seek Him, He will reveal Himself to you. But if you choose to reject Him, He will reject you. It's an easy decision, I think. I am so thankful that He gave us a choice. I am so thankful that if I call out to Him, He will hear me and will allow me to seek Him.

David was said to be 'a man after God's own heart'. I think that it shows, just in the last advice he gives his son before he dies. The truth of this verse can apply to everyone of us. It reminds us of God's love, His grace, and His overall character.

Comfortable?

Is being comfortable a good thing? Many might look at that and say, yeah it's all about me and my comfort. I don't think that I want to be comfortable. I don't want to live my life only doing what is inside my little comfort bubble. I think that some of the times that God uses people the most is when they are willing to be used by Him and step out in faith. Is it comfortable to move to a big city where you don't know anyone, but all you know is that the Lord is urging you to? No. Is it nice to have to give up little luxuries during the day to make yourself more productive? No, but it's worth it.
I sometimes fear that I am getting too comfortable. I have a nice living situation aka free, I have a job, the government practically pays me to go to school, I have a close group of godly friends. All of this is wonderful, but am I too comfortable? I asked my pastor the other day to decide my life for me. Ha. That might sound funny, but my pastor knows me and I have a high level of respect for him and his advice. I talked to him about what I should do for college next year. Sebring looks like an awesome option. I would maintain all the things that I listed above and I would have an awesome church to call home. But am I too comfortable?
I bet that you are tired of the seeing that word. I've only used it in every other sentence. What does this mean for me though? I need to step outside what I am used to and what I am comfortable in. I need to be willing to go that extra mile to talk to someone I don't usually talk to. I need to do whatever God directs me to do with my life, whether it is living in Sebring all the rest of my life or if it is marrying a missionary and living in Africa. I don't know exactly what the future holds, but I do know that I do not want my comfortableness to lead to apathy. That's the worst thing that could happen. I do not want to be too comfortable that I lose sight of the plan that God has for me.
I guess it's all about living my life with an open hand. I have to be obedient in the situation God has me in now, but when something comes up and the Lord wants to move me...I want to be ready to listen and obey. When He takes something out of my hand, I need to be willing to let Him fill it back up.

"To You I give my future, as long as it may last.
To You I give my present, to You I give my past."

The Inside

1 Peter 3:3-4

"Your adornment must not be merely external- braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God."

It's the inside that matters. It doesn't matter what's on the outside or whether you have the best outfit on. The Lord looks at the heart. That's a scary thought sometimes. My heart is far from perfect. But God looks at my heart and sees the blood of Christ that renews it and makes it clean. It's all about: My heart, Christ's home.

The Very Thing I Hate.

"Every day the choices you make say

What you are and Who your heart beats for"

I am a sinner. After so many years of going to church and being saved I forget that. Not that I think I am perfect, but I consider myself to be somewhat mature. I've studied God's Word, not like I know everything, but I know how to study it. I struggle with things, but it always seems to be inside of me, personal. I guess I kind of pride myself with being able to hide my emotions well. Pastor Randy once told me to have a few close friends and only break down among those few. I think I do that. I struggle with things, but they are never really evident outside things. Except this...
The other day I realized what an unproductive day I had. I talk to people and tell them that I am busy all the time. A good busy. Then I realized any free time I had was mostly wasted. I have a problem. I was reading 2 Peter 1. This chapter contains a list of fruits or evident things in a believer's life that would show they are walking with the Lord. I read them and evaluated myself on each one.
Fail: Self control aka impulse mastery. It's the 5th one on the list. Because I choose to waste time or lie around, I am hurting myself. I need to be decisive and make a choice that glorifies God. So at the end of the day I can say, Lord I spent this amount of time talking to You or I told someone else about You or I spent this time in Your Word. I will have to answer for it all. Every second that God gave me. And with that in mind, there is an urgency to settle this issue and be the light that I need to be in this dark world.
Romans 7 verses 15 and 19 have been on my mind a lot. This is exactly how I feel. The good I want to do is not what I do. Which means...I am a sinner through and through. It is only by Christ's death and resurrection that I am able to be fully accepted.
*Lord, give me the strength to do what You have called me to do. Let it ALL bring glory to You.*

Our Recent Adventure

My family and I made it to PA on Sunday, around 3 in the afternoon. What does that mean and why should you care? Well, we left on early Saturday morning at 1:30. Normally the trip takes about 21 hours or so, but this trip was like any other we have ever taken. Let me set the scene up for you and then go into the details.

Picture this: 2 parents. One is driving and only slept a little on Friday night to "get him going" on our straight through no stopping to sleep trip. 4 kids. They all get along, quite well, but after awhile can get restless. 1 Yukon. Exactly like a suburban holds 9, but with all of our stuff, it felt like more. 1 trailer. Weighs the car down and holds all of our luggage and presents. No visibility out the back window.

Alright so here is what happened: Most of us slept through the morning, dad drove and we were on our way. We reached South Carolina in 8 hours, making pretty good time. We stop to eat. Get back on the road and sit in stop and go traffic for an hour. Then we hit snow. Lots and lots of snow. North Carolina was beautiful. Then we hit VIRGINIA! This is our most hated state, sorry Lindsey. It takes 5 hours or so to pass through. The scenery was lovely, but the roads were getting bad. After dinner, around 5:30, we get back on the road. We were in stop and go traffic for 4 hours.

*At this point you are probably saying, man that sounds awful, poor Eshelmans. WRONG!!!! There is so much more.*

We called our grandparents and said, we are about 5 hours away, expect us around 3 in the morning. O that we were so lucky. At around 11 the roads got exceptionally awful. I was texting Shaheen and asking her to pray because with a trailer and precious cargo, it was getting a little scary. Then we stopped. Complete stop in the middle of the interstate. Apparently a tractor trailer had jack-knifed about 1/4 mile in front of us. So, everyone, including us, turned off the cars and waited. Then as time wore on, people started to go to sleep. It was late so it's understandable.

Me, being the kind person that I am. I volunteered to be the look-out. I had slept ALL day so I said I would let my dad know when we started moving. He slept along with everyone else in the car. We turned on the car every hour or so, to let the heat run and thus warm our freezing little Florida bodies.

1 o'clock, no movement. 3 o'clock, nothing. 5:30, nothing. Okay, we've got to start moving soon. We've been sitting there for about 6 hours. 7 o'clock. Sunrise, someone comes to our door and says, try to make it on the shoulder of the road. The roads are CLEAR but all the truck drivers have fallen asleep and have been sleeping all night! Are you kidding me! We were stuck for so long. Almost 9 hours to be exact and everyone just didn't wake up. Come on.

So, we left. The roads were still awful and we found a place to eat breakfast around 10. Still in Virginia, the worst state ever in my humble opinion. Then we got back on the road and arrived around 3 in the afternoon.

What a trip! My family has now survived blizzard/snowy conditions. Yuck.

Sorry this is so long and I hoped you enjoyed my summary of our adventure. We will be telling this story for months to come. Ha. :)

Just a few statistics from our trip.

My mom figured out that we went 71 miles in 11 hours.

The average temperature was around 30 degrees, and we were sitting in the car...freezing. God bless heating in a car.

Number of layers I had on during the night: 1 shirt, 2 jackets, one blanket, gloves, socks and shoes. Lovely.

All in all though, praise God that we made it here safely and that we had fun doing it. I don't know if I could have made this trip with anyone else. Ask Shane about our "Let us move" song at 5:30 in the morning. (It's a variation of "Let it snow") He loved it.

Faith

Tonight, I was listening to my brother's iPod. Along came the song, I will rise by Chris Tomlin. I love this song. I really liked it when it first came out, but it recently took on a sad connotation. This song was the final song played at my Pap's funeral in July. It was a really appropriate song though.

Anyways, so tonight I heard it and I was a little sad, but one of the lines really stood out to me. The line says, 'my faith shall be my eyes'. I love that. Faith is seeing things as God says they are, and not how I think they are. Literally taking my faith and belief in the God of the Universe and using that to see everything. Every person who I encounter, every situation that I am placed in, every thought that I have... it is all supposed to be looked at with God's view in mind. I need to see sin as sin. I need to see that person that might annoy me as a lost person who needs a Savior. I need to take my thoughts and hold them captive so that they will be pleasing to my Lord.

It is so cool to me when God speaks to my heart at a weird time. For instance, I was not so much of a happy camper this evening. My plan: just put Shane's ipod in on the ride home and sulk. That's right, I wanted to think about why I was mad and why I had the right to be. It was awesome that God had other plans though. He took that anger, which was sin, and turned it into me learning something about not only me, but about a principle that I should apply everyday.

I have noticed that I write about mainly songs or what other people say that impacted me. In the very beginning of GCBI, when I made this blog, I started out with the Word. I want to get back to that. Not that I think songs or other stuff like that is bad, but I want to have my foundation in the love letter that my Creator has for me. So, I will hopefully be putting up a blog that is about what I have been reading and studying.

More to come...Daniel 3 probably. I love that chapter. Read it. :)