Am I Placing My Eyes on GOD?

Oswald Chambers said that, "Christian workers fail because they place their desire for their own holiness above their desire to know God...God cannot deliver me while my interest is merely in my own chracter. Paul was not concious of himself. He was recklessly abandoned, totally surrendered, and separated by God for one purpose-to proclaim the gospel of God." I love this quote that read in "My Utmost for His Highest!" Sometimes, we (myself included) get so caught up in our own desire to be holy and more like Jesus that we start losing focus and are only caring about ourselves and our own growth. We say things like, "I want to be more humble, I want to be more generous, I want to have more patience, etc..." Which those thngs are great, don't get me wrong! BUT, it's us trying too hard...I think if we align ourselves with the Lord and continue to seek after him and desire to walk in His footsteps then those things will come naturally into our lives and we can stop trying...Humilty, generosity, patience, etc. will flow from every area of our lives when we are running to the cross! So I need to make sure that I am placing my eyes on God because if they are not then nothing else is going to matter because if I don't have Him as my focus then that means I am just depending on myself!

So this past Tuesday was really exciting...I went to my normal ministry at Mercy Center to work with the refugee kids. My friend told me a couple of hours before that I was going to have to give a 5 minute bible story to these children. I was super excited but then I got freaked out for a second because I did not know what story to teach them, I only had a couple of hours to prepare something, most of these kids are Muslim, there is a huge age range, and the story was going to be translated into Arabic...So I had to keep this story simple and to the point! I just prayed that God would show me what story to tell them! I bgean to feel so privledged and honored to be able to have 5 minutes to speak some truth into these kids lives! So I ended up picking the story of when Jesus feeds the 5,000 people with only 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread. The kids were actually pretty good at listening and during the story, some of them realized that they had heard it before, so they got really excited. It was amazing because afterwards, this little 10 year old girl came up to me and the guy that had translated it into Arabic and asked us again how many people Jesus had fed and she was amazed...The guy spoke a little bit more to her and then she said she wanted a bible! Praise the Lord! Who knows, maybe this little girl will go home and tell her parents, etc...It's a dominoe effect! One of the Muslim parents even came up to me afterwards and said thank you...which is huge because talking about Jesus to these people, especially thier kids is not really allowed! So now , I am going to be sharing a story with the kids every Tuesday night...Super exciting...So be praying for that! Otherwise, the weather is beautiful here, it's in the 60's, I got to go to Port Rafina yesterday and to Kalamaki beach on Sunay which was absolutely gorgeous...Picture a rocky beach with beautiful blue waters and mountains/hills in the background! Amazing!