What if...

Danny and I went for a really long time without a church home not too long ago.  We felt God leading us away from our church in Rome because we really wanted to serve in our own community. So a couple of years ago, we started the journey to look for a new church home.  It was so hard for us because we had to so many great friends and family at our previous church, so when we visited new churches we just felt so distant.  Then, we both jumped back into school and honestly just became lazy and stopped looking.  We were miserable not having a church home and really started praying about finding where God wanted us to be when we graduated last summer.  In early winter we began visiting the church where we are currently members of.  The funny thing is this is the first church we visited when we were looking around and God always kept bringing us back here- I think we should have taken the hint a little sooner.  Anyways, I give you all that background just to say how thankful we are for the church family we have now and we are so excited about all that God is doing!

In our ABF (just a fancy acronym for Sunday School), we have all been asking the question "WHAT IF?"  What if we prayed more, loved more, invited our friends to church, lived out our faith...well, if we did these things wouldn't we see God move mountains.  I mean we say we think He can do it, but do we really believe it? We have had some really awesome times together recently and we have seen God move mountains.  We have friends expecting their first baby that they have prayed so long for, we have seen miraculous healing, needs met, and just God showing up in so many situations.  Yet, there is still a lot of hurt in our class/church and a lot of our friends facing some huge mountains that need moving.

In our women's bible study, we began a new series a couple of weeks ago called Conversations with God.  The first week we had to have conversations with God about taming our tongues- can you say ouch! Imagine a room full of girls discussing how we need to talk LESS- yep, it's something I think will take lots of practice for me.  This week, we are talking with God about His edited version of our life and how it might not be what what we want our story to look like. As I was reading in Jeremiah this morning, I was brought back to all the hurts and situations facing our class.  God told Jeremiah to go to the potter's house and watch him work-waiting on a word from Him.  (Sidebar- Isn't it awesome how God can use any situation to help us learn more about Him?) While there, the potter was making a bowl, but it got all messed up so instead of throwing out the clay- he molded into another pot.  "Just like clay in the potter's hand, so are you in MY hand" Jeremiah 18:6.  WHAT IF...we let God be the potter in our lives?  Life may not look like what we want it to, but it will be the life that is best for us.

I keep praying and believing that God will move the mountains in our friends'/families' lives and until then I just have to trust that He is the potter and WHAT IF I let him mold me into what He desires...

God has blessed us beyond belief with such a sweet church family and I am so thankful for these girls that I have to walk through life with.  Here is a picture of just a few of them that are so special to me!