Fruits of the Spirit

Thursday night 14 young college women gathered in my apartment for our first Bible study of the year! We went around the room and introduced ourselves saying our name, where we are from, our year, what we are studying, and a little interesting fact about us. There really wasn't anything too special about the introduction, but it was neat to see that God has brought such a unique group together!

I offered a few areas that I thought may be of interest to study this semester and as a group we have decided to study the fruits of the spirit in Galations 5:22 and relate it to our walk as Christians. While we were discussing topics, God also put on many girls hearts the desire to study the bible for guidance and direction in how we can share our faith. We know that we are to emulate God's love as christians and share the hope we have in Him, but often it is a struggle. So, we now have a starting spot for where God will lead us and my prayer is that we can grow in recognizing the fruits of the spirit and how we can use them to share God's father-heart for the world.

While I was looking for some topics and ideas for the bible study I stumbled upon this youtube video. I enjoyed watching it and made me reevaluate what parts of my life I invite God into while I am at school. Just thought I would share it. : )

Creative Expression Bible Study

Well, it's September and my journey has brought me back to school and thrown me right in the middle of campus life. Before leaving for South Africa, I co-led a bible study for Campus Crusade for Christ on campus and I am excited to be back and leading a bible study again this semester! While praying for different ideas for a bible study, God kept leading me back to the creative expression times we had in our discipleship training school in South Africa. Before this journey began, when I thought of creativity I thought, “What! Creativity? I love to color but anything past that and I am lost.” However, the staff in s.a. placed a high value on it and challenged my views. We talked about God as the perfect and best creator! Think, he made such simple things like flowers to beautiful complex creations like the human body and think how amazing all of that is for us! Now, if we are all made in the image of God, then aren’t we all creators in some sense? Since coming back, the realization of being creative has surfaced in many aspects of my life from trying to be creative in cooking dinners, decorating the apartment, studying for classes, or even in conversations with other people. To others it may not seem different from how I have been in the past, but believing I can have a creative approach to things has helped boost my confidence and helped to put some spice in typically boring tasks.

Now back to the beginning of this story. While praying for an idea for a bible study, I feel God is guiding me to lead a creative expression bible study. I am not exactly positive where God will take it and I am incredibly nervous with how it will all work out, but I have peace knowing God is in control. One journey through Africa is over and now this is a story of a new journey, trusting God to lead a group of young women towards knowing and loving Him more.