the past repeats itself

when i say the past I dont mean like wayyyyy back then but i do mean sky ranch past. It was really cool seeing some of the verses come up recently in Sunday School at church. Recently weve been doing a quick runthrough of all 66 books in the Bible just to get them memorized and have a brief understanding of them all and although I cannot point out all the verses we've come across, I can tell you that a lot of what we learned at camp has come up week in and week out. The greatest thing about it is that I'm already familiar with a lot of what we've been talking about!

Keep looking for the past to repeat itself. It will show up if you look! That's my two cents for today.

Read some Acts this morning

I am a few chapters behind but plan on being caught up shortly. This morning I read Acts 21 and 22 and was blown away by Pauls courage. He went into the heart of persecution in Jerusalem because HE knew that is exactly where he was suspose to be. Everyone was telling him not to but he listened to the voice of truth isnside of him. He had so much credibility as a Jew and as a Roman and yet still they would not even listen to him.

I am encouraged to be courageous in the face of stress, persecution, failure, lack of confidence, or whatever the devil may throw in my way for I KNOW I am where the Lord wants me to be

paul inspires me daily.

can i just say that paul's willingness to follow where the Lord is leading him, through persecution, beatings, and trials, just brings joy to my soul? how inspiring. may we all be this way. be joyful and patient in persecution, trusting in the Lord to bring us through in perseverance. it's all, ALL of it, for His glory. :]

can i get an amen??

Giving Thanks

Hey Quest,

Tomorrow's Thanksgiving, and this time of year I feel really grateful about everything that I have. And so I was wondering if all of you would like to comment or post, and just share what all of you are thankful for. You don't have to if you don't want to though. Please feel free to write anything you want!

sharing

hello quest,
i have begun the reading plan over with a friend at school, we are in the gospel John right now, and it is SO COOL to be able to do this over again with someone outside of Quest...and to teach them and help them along the reading plan, and to see them get to fired up for the Word and hungry for it! she is blazing through it, she loves it and she is diving into it...it is the coolest thing to witness. Also she is kind of new to the Word so she is learning SO much through this reading plan and things about Jesus that she didn't ever know...like the fact that people witnessed Jesus's miracles and still didn't believe? the fact that they questioned Him, "well what should make us believe you?" and he's like "uh...have you not seen? obviously you do not know GOD..." amen to that Jesus.

It's just really cool, how people sat with and ate with and walked and talked with Jesus like He was any other human being. I think so often we think of Jesus as this being up in Heaven (which, He is) but forget that He was real, He was birthed into this world in a humble state, He walked and talked and ate and performed miracles in front of people's faces...and yet they still had disbelief?! It goes to show how much stronger and larger our faith has to be, that we don't and won't witness Jesus in the flesh nor His crucifixion or His miracles like they did, but we still believe. Thank you Jesus for allowing me into YOUR kingdom and for helping me in my disbelief!

Check and Mate

"the God who brings you peace will soon defeat Satan and give you power over him"
thank you Lord! Hallalujah! I don't know about you but that makes me want to kick something, its so exciting!
Heres some thing I have learnd about Satan:

1.) He hates a spoken word.-How many of you know that when we think something thats cool, but when we profess it to Jesus, the devil gets angry! how angry? ANGRY! Start speaking, when you pray and when you think something or you want something to happen...START SPEAKING IT INTO EXSITANCE!

2.) He hates it when we confess, sometimes I don't want to confess I am wrong, I'm extremely stuborn. But when we confess that we are wwrong and we grow from that, He gets steaming mad! There is power iin confession guys! You don't even know! When you confess that something, it's not entirely gone, its there for you to start working on and for the other person to hold you accountable.

3.) He corrupts-remember when a few months ago when I was totally convinced that the Devil was the reason for sickness and he was sickness. Well I was wrong, I was asking and researching this a few weeks ago, and heres the thing "the devil is the king of corruption" The Lord may let us get sick to test us, but the Devil will corrupt that and take it to the next level. Its like a big game of chess between the Devil and God. The last pwan the Devil will try and use is God, He will try to fill your minds with "God doesnt love you' and "he's not real", but can I tell you something? The KING has one more move! It's not over until Check mate!

Those are the things I have learned about the Devil but hahah OH! man! GOD HAS GIVEN US POWER OVER HIM! I AM PUMPED! Next time you Speak something into exsistance, confess something, or Remember the love of the Lord and how real he is, The devil will get fighting mad, and will try to corrupt some more, but THE KING HAS THE LAST MOVE! and the KING has given us power over the Devil!

checkmate.

Just want to say...

I have been so encouraged by this blog this past week. You guys getting on here and posting about how God is teaching you through his word is absolutely incredible and inspiring. I love each of you and cherish our friendship. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedules to post on this thing... don't stop

I don't wanna be "that girl" anymore...

"Do not change yourseleves to be like the people of this world, But be changed within by a new way of thinking. Then you will be able to decide what God wants for you. And you will be able to know what is good and pleasing to God and what is perfect." - Romans 12:2

I have a bad habit...this habit is a little something called: sarcasm. The worst habit in the entire world! Guys sarcasm...to me...is not good! It tears down and cuts out. It tears down someone or something, its cuts out the encouragment and love that I am supposed to show people. Gaw! But I don't wanna give it up...at all! I feel like that's why the only people like me, like Lila told me the same thing last year, and it's true. I feel like the only reason people are friends with me is because I am not afraid to be silly and because I am so "sarcastic" and they like it, but obviously thesess arent my REAL friends, but my school friends, and I love having them because they think I am funny, which is always a confidence boost, and they are the people I have to talk to all day. When I read this I felt so so so convicted, I can't tell you how many times I told this verse to people this summer, it's on my backpack, i shared it in the circle during "candle time", small group, and even behind closed doors! BUT MAN! I AM SUCH A LOSER! I told them this verse but did something completely different. I wasnt even applying to my life! GAW! Guys like I don't wanna be like the world, sarcasm is of the world, think of the world we live in, its a sarcastic world, our generation? a sarcastic generation! and I'm no better than the rest of them I am not set apart from them, and I am supposed to be, I am supposed to be different, I am supposed to be set apart, and I am not. Guys I don't wanna be held back by this anymore, in order to reach my full potential in Jesus, I have to get rid of the things that tie me down. I'm done with finding my confidence in what others think of me. Like I wish I wouldve noticed it before, but I am just so glad I have now! I'm ready for a boost in my relationship with the one I love, and this is how I am going to have to get that.
This is what I got out of Romans 12.
What did you get out of it?

-Madi

Romans 11

Hey Quest!

I am so pumped that we are keeping this alive and allowing God to work in all of our lives though it! So Romans 11 says a lot to me. The part that got me the most excited was verse 4, God says that he has 7,000 men who have not bowed a knee to ba'al...7,000! I have been in this place before where i have said "God im all alone, there are no other christians at my school, at my job or wherever i go." This is so encouraging because this blog proves that WE are the 7,000. To each other, we represent those 7,000 that are still faithful to God. it is so easy to look at our schools and our cities and say that there are no other christians like us, but God is telling us we aren't looking hard enough. We have this opportunity that others do not have, to look at this blog and see for ourselves how many others are posting and following the reading plan. We have an opportunity to read each others posts, pray for each other and pull encouragement from each others words. God is the only one who can give us courage, but this battle is so much easier if we don't try to do it on our own. We are not alone.
My second favorite part is where David prays that people would stumble so they fall into salvation...how cool is that?! A lot of times i know God reaches me the most is when i fall or when i break under pressure. its almost like God has to break us before he can put us back together and leave out selfishness and pride and all other human nature we fight against. What better way to be broken than in the presence of God??! I have a perfect example, I play bass for my youth group's band. Tonight i showed up and everyone got there early and set up already. So i started to play and my mind went blank, whats going on ive played these songs before, i know how to do this? After practice was almost over i felt completely lost and i didnt want to hold everyone back so i asked my friend to play for me. i felt like such a failure, i thought i let everyone down. Then service came and i had the most amazing time with God ever because i was broken and empty. God will never waste your hurt.

I mis you all terribly!

-Lila

It's Been a While...

Hey everyone. It's been a long time since I've gotten on here and posted.
Football season is over now so I'm going to try and do everything I can to whip myself back into shape. If you don't see a post from me at least once a week, call me up and crack the whip!

A promise

Here the thing guys, I have not done a good job posting on this blog or keeping up with reading plan, I want to be a leader, and I have failed epicly. So I am making a promise to you that I will post, I am going to post every other day, and if I miss a day I will post twice in one day! I don't want this to die, I love this, it holds me accountable and lets helps me understand things in different ways. My goal is to get others posting to! I dont want the same 4 people posting on here, thats alot of the reason why I quit in the first place, but know more, I want to encourage the other questies to post also, at camp I felt like everyone had so much to bring and to offer when we discussed, for example session 9, wow! when all the kids who had been there more than one week had there own time during my ride, i hung to almost everyones word, i was bewildered by the wisdom they had and the power they posessed. I'm not AM NOT! going to let this die!! I know we are all busy, I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW!!!!!!! but its worth it, I think to help us we could start a fast, I want to start a fast for sky ranch and for quest specifcally, how many of you know that quest is something amazing and has touched our hearts in more ways than one, and has opend up doors and opprotunitys? I KNOW IT! well i say every Friday we fast lunch, we spend that time in prayer or in the word, and we just take that time to remember the awesome things that the Lord did at quest and is going to do through quest, now dont feel pressured to join i jus know that this has been on my heart for a while and i want to share that with yall. I plan on calling people from quest, well the ones i know, tonight and checking on them and asking them about the blog! I'm not going down with outh a fight, and as sad as it may be, one thing I am good at is fighting! SAVE THE BLOG!


sorry.....i got a little excited!!!


all my love, and all of his
-Madi

Apostasy

Hey Quest,

So, the blog is a little slow lately...but we can change that. Right after camp we were all posting like crazy, excited about what God was doing in our lives and excited about the accountability we had with each other, I mean I was and I'm almost posative all of Quest was. Apostasy is "falling away" and the pastor at my parents' church is doing a series on it right now. I don't know about everyone else but when I quit posting I fell away from God. I was still reading my bible, but not consistently. This blog is awesome because it gives us a community of people who are thirsty for what God has for us. Its not that we love God any less or that we dont want to spend time with him, we just get wrapped up in our own lives and loose sight of what is eternal.
God has convicted my heart and I feel strongly about this blog and what it does. We all made a commitment to stick with this blog and we thought we would. This is the very thing I did not want to do, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't quit no matter how busy I became. Somwhere between work, school, church, family, friends and everything else I compromised with myself that I didn't have to post twice a week, then it was twice a month and then I was making up excuses not to post on the blog. Please hold me accountable for posting and most of all following hte bible study and I will hold you accountable too. If we want to start revival in our schools and cities, we need to revive ourselves first.

I hope all of you are doing well!

don't let this die

what are some things we can be praying for each other?

post to comments

sad

sad that this is dying

however

in contrast to my previous post...Romans 2:17-24 is very convicting, in that if we say we follow God and teach others about Him and preach and try to be an example of Him, we have to ask ourselves, are we doing the very things we preach against? and i know that i am guilty of this (we all are) but i need to do better at making sure that if i'm posting or leading a small group or teaching others about Christ that my heart and mind are in check.

Romans!

ok ok so ROMANS is the book we are currently in...This is what my Bible tells us about Paul's letters/Romans:

We can learn from Paul's letters a great deal about Paul's faith and his understanding of what Jesus Christ means for the life of the ordinary Christian. Romans was written to pave the way for Paul's visit to a church he had never seen, but whose help he needed as he began to preach the gospel in the western Meditteranean world. Roamsn is one of the fullest statements of Paul's faith. He tries to show how Christianity is rooted in Judaism, but is a fiath for all of humanity. Romans is a book full of the power and grace of God and has been a source of inspiration and renewal in the church from earliest times to the present.

I think it's interesting when Paul writes in Romans 2 about God's righteous judgment. It says plainly that "for it is not the heareres of the law who are righteous in God's sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified." Man...because we know Christ and follow Him and His laws (despite our remaining shortcomings), we are justified in His sight! Now, that is crazy to me. I am constantly beating myself up it seems for what I do wrong but someone said something the other day that made me think: Do you forget or fail to remember that those sins, those things you do wrong, are forgiven? Is that why you won't come to the surface about them, talk about them, or confront them?

Let us never forget the power of the cross, that we are forgiven and made righteous in His sight because of our belief and our faith in Him.

prayer request (:

Hey Quest, if you get a chance, please pray for my friend Lauren...THANK YOU!


By the way, how's everything going with everyone's Timothys?!

Have a good week!
-Haley

Ephesians 3

Hey everyone. Sorry, this post is behind in the reading plan, but I just got around to it. It's not gonna be some long winded thing, just a quick little observation.

Alright, when I read through Ephesians 3 two days ago, I saw this little verse. "so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ." (Ephesians 3:17-19). First off, I want to say just how awesome that verse is. Hearing that verse is just amazing. But when you got through the verse, when you look at the wide and long and high and deep part, those aren't just adjectives to describe His love. Well, ok, they are. But they all have there own individual little meaning. Like, take His love is wide for example. You can take that to mean that His love covers us, all our experiences, and it covers throughout the entire world. His love is long; It is everlasting through our entire lives and even farther than that if you can imagine that. His love is high; He loves us in our moments of joy and celebration and victory. His love is deep; He loves us when we are troubles, in those funky moods, when we think we have nothing left.

When you go through all these, there's really no time left where God doesn't love us. He's always there for us, and His love never ceases. I think that's so awesome. When I hear something like that, I feel that little spark of excitement in me. It's so cool hearing stuff like that.

I hope all of you are doing great. Keep on posting guys; I love this blog, and I love seeing what all of you have to say. Thanks everyone.

Lets get Real

okay. So I went to my friends youth rally tonight, and AMAZING, I saw two of my fellow campers there haha :) besides the point (even though that was really cool!!!)

So we go...and there were probably well over 20 kids saved tonight. Now I go to my youth group regularily on Wednesdays, but this feels so different. These kids are hurting, they are desperate for something and they don't even know what it is. When I walk into my youth group, I know they are people who will build me up in christ...but I feel like there are high expectations. That God's way is only one way. But that's not true, countless times in the bible God challenges the laws we establish as our society determining what is and isn't acceptible. Hosea, married a prostitute!!! How do you think the church would judge a Godly man walking in with a prostitute?

That's my point. As a church body, we judge. And I'm not saying this is always true, in fact, without my church I wouldn't have the encouragement to be keeping up with this bible study. But a lot of the times, the people walking into the church are just as hurt as the ones I saw tonight. Maybe we don't have the bruises or emotional abuse to show for it, but all of us are hurting. All of us have a story of how God loved us, and how we came from broken people to feeling whole with Jesus.

But we still don't have it figured out. Every time we walk in the church we put on some front like we are so holy, like our lives are in a good place. True, I can't think of anything BAD that happened to me today...but society determines what is good and bad. to me, bad would be getting sick, a bad grade, tripping down the stairs and breaking a leg...but to God... bad is that I didn't take the opportunity to witness to the girl sitting next to me in English class who I have known since middle school. bad is giving up on my quiet time this morning when I didn't understand it.

Wow. when I am around broken people, I feel so free. I feel like no one will judge me and there are no more burdens to take my struggles to the cross. You know what that means? God was in that place tonight :) with God we are free, and for the first time in a while I felt truly FREE tonight. did I make some life-changing decision? no. But I should have. Every day we are called to change our lives and make a new decision to follow him.

That is what God laid on my heart tonight and I just wanted to share that. Sorry if there are spelling errors, I wrote it in a hurry ;) love you guys!!!

It's a good day (:

I'm so happy right now! In English class, we had to read a book about a famous woman, and I chose Mother Teresa. Today, I had to get up in front of my entire class and talk about Mother Teresa and how her story related to me personally. This was such a challenge for me because, as I've explained before, my school is no Sky Ranch...meaning not everyone has found God yet.

Before giving my speech, I was completely freaking out and falling asleep at the same time (I barely got any sleep last night) BUT somehow I was able to get up there and talk with so much confidence and wisdom. I just know that most of those words that came out of my mouth were not of my own thought...I had said a prayer to God for help before I gave the speech, and in one way or another, I felt as if He was speaking through me. Just felt like sharing that with you!

Always rely on God when you feel like you can make it through, and he'll be there to support you every step of the way. (:

Praying for you always!

-Haley

P.S. I'll be posting something soon about this book...I learned SO much from it.

P.S.S. Lately I feel like I have three timothys. Is that okay or is two more than enough? Help?

sunday morning encouragement

Psalm 73:23-26
Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me with honor. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I had a dream two nights ago that the rapture occurred and the heavens opened, it was like a bright white light and you couldn't see anything around you-- it illuminated the entire sky and earth. Everyone that saw this and knew the Lord knew what was happening and I was standing on a building with others and we jumped off and ascended into the sky. As for others that did not know the Lord, they watched us do this with curiosity and tried it but fell back down to the earth. I remember feeling extremely peaceful during my sleep.
Then in my dream I remember being in heaven with someone, another girl...I don't remember who. But the Lord wanted us to go back to earth during the tribulation and be believers and try to help people know Him so He sent us back. I remember the transition between heaven and the world. I remember being shocked and seeing the earth--it was destroyed. Buildings had fallen everywhere, it was dirty and rubble and trash abounded. People walked around like zombies and they had NO CLUE what was going on. This girl and I found a group of people, a family I think, and began spending time with them to try to evangelize.
That is all I remember dreaming about but I thought it was fascinating and I also thought it was real until I woke up. I really thought it had happened...
Heaven is going to be SO AWESOME, you guys. Like, everything that happened down here and every grade on a paper or every mean thing someone said about you seriously doesn't and won't matter ever again. I remember thinking that when I was in heaven in my dream--thinking, wow, none of that even mattered compared to THIS! for eternity!

just wanted to share with you all. have a wonderful week.