How do I have a quiet time with God?

Today I wanted to share how I have started having my quiet time with God, and how you can start having a quiet time too!

What is a quiet time you ask? Well, it's simply some quiet time that you spend with God, reading the Bible, journaling, or praying. 

It really is important to spend time with God everyday, multiple times a day if you can! Even if you think it doesn't matter, because you are still young, or because you don't understand everything in the Bible, it is important. I know how hard it can be. I'll be honest, it wasn't until recently that I really started reading my Bible and praying daily. Some days I end up just speed reading through whatever chapter of the Bible I'm on before rushing to start a busy day. But I know that isn't the best way to really connect with God, and develop a close relationship with Him. And isn't that every christian's desire? To grow closer in their relationship with God?

What you need: 

• A Bible
• A journal, notebook, or even just blank paper
• A pen or pencil
• Worship music (optional) 

My quiet time things

As you can see from the picture, I like colourful pens. I choose two different colors, then write with one, and underline main points or important details with the other. 

1.  Gather your supplies. I usually have my Bible (I use NKJV) and journal on a shelf above my bed, but if I need anything else, I make sure I have it before I start. Along with the items listed above, I like to have some type of dictionary nearby in case I want to look up the definition of a word. It really helps me dig deeper into the Bible! You can grab whatever else you want during your quiet time. 

2.  Find a quiet place to have your quiet time. I choose my bedroom, because I won't be disturbed there (normally...), but you may have other areas that work better for you. In the summer I hope to be able to start having my quiet time outside. 

3.  Turn on some worship music. This isn't necessary, but it may help get you into a "worshipful" mood. It really doesn't matter what band or type you listen to, just so long as it isn't too distracting from reading the Bible and journaling. Today I was listening to Laura Story's "God of Every Story" CD. 

4.  Grab your Bible, and choose somewhere to start reading. I recommend choosing a book of the Bible and sticking to it all the way through, instead of just jumping around everywhere. But either way works! It's up to you! Read a whole chapter, or just a couple of verses, depending on how much time you have. I started reading Psalms today. (It's going to take awhile to get through!)

5.  Pick out a verse (or more than one!) that stands out to you. Write it out in your journal, then write some thoughts about it below, applying it to your life. This is probably my favourite part of my quiet time. Date the page you are writing on, and don't forget to include the reference for the verses. It will be cool to look back later and see what you were learning about at a certain point in life! 

6.  Pray. You may want to write out a prayer in your journal, or you may just want to talk to God. Talk to Him about whatever is going on in our life. Thank Him for the life He has given you, even though it has its rough times. Ask for help for whatever situation you are going through. Just talk to Him, and enjoy the time spent with your heavenly Father. 

This is how I have started doing my quiet time! I hope I have given you some tips for starting your own quiet time with God if you haven't already started. This isn't the only way to have a quiet time, and different things work for different people, but I just wanted to share what I do and give you some ideas for yourself!

Do you have a daily quiet time? How do you spend that time? Where is your favourite place to spend that time? 

Blog post ideas!

As you've noticed, I have not been very active in posting. Like, ever. But, I'm working on changing that this coming year! Now, I can't promise to start posting regularly right away as I have a crazy workload right now, but I will be trying to post more actively in the next month or two. In order to do that though, I need some topic ideas! I have some ideas, but am always open to more! That said, if there are any topics you want me to write about, leave a comment and I'll give it a try! Also, hopefully coming in 2015, are some other types of posts including tutorials of all kinds and guest posts. If you have a tutorial you'd like me to try, then comment it below as well as any other ideas for my blog. 

I hope you have been enjoying this holiday season!

Happy New Year!!

An Exciting New Year

Well everyone, we have made it through another year! I hope it was a good one for all of you. We are here at the beginning of another year. Our attitude as we approach this new year will make a major difference in what we will accomplish this year. There are two different ways we can look at this year.

With Indifference

We can approach this year with an attitude of indifference. We can think that it's just another year full of work, another year with the same old things happening, that this year is nothing special. If we are looking at this next year in this way, it will be just another year of work. Another year that we don't accomplish anything really great. Just another boring year in our lives. But it doesn't have to be this way. We can choose to look at this next year another way.

With excitement

We can approach this year with excitement. We can look forward to a year full of adventures, excitement, and new things. New things can be scary, but they can also be exciting. We can look forward to having another year to accomplish things we've dreamed of doing. We can cross more things off our bucket lists, visit new places, meet new people, and continue to learn and explore new things.

Sometimes we look at our futures and are scared at what they may bring. But in those moments we can remember that God has our futures in His hands. Here are a couple of verses that I think are great reminders as we begin a new year.

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God knows our future. He has plans for our lives. Even though we may not know what those plans are, we are assured that God knows them. And He will reveal His plans for us in His timing, when we are ready for them.

Deuteronomy 31:8 “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

God will never leave us alone. He will always be right there carrying us through whatever hard time has come our way. He will also be there in the good times, just walking next to us rejoicing in the good times.

Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” God has also promised to give us strength. We can do anything and everything God wants us to do, because He gives us strength. We can't do everything on our own; but we can do it with God's help. God won't tell us to do something that we can't do. Even when we think it's too difficult, if He has called us to do it, He will give us the strength and ability to do it.

As this new year begins, I want to encourage you to get excited about it. I know that we aren't always excited for another year. But this year can be different. We can look forward to this new year, because we have hope knowing that God has new and exciting things in store for us. We can look forward to the future with hope and joy, without fear because we have a personal relationship with the God of the universe, who controls everything. We can be excited and thankful for this new year, because God has another year full of new adventures for us. 

Busy days with kids!

Good morning everyone!

Today I'm sitting here at my dining room table, breakfast and tea in front of me, blogging at 8:50!! That is a first!!! There is reason for this though... My mom is working with a friend today, so I'm babysitting today. I have a crazy day today! Babysitting, gym day, going to the mall with friends, then babysitting other kids! It's a lot to wrap my mind around. But I'm feeling less stressed about it all than I was yesterday. Today I'm going to share some thoughts and tips about feeling less stressed on busy days; especially days being in charge of little kids!

When you wake up, pray! Pray for the day, for patience, (kids are really frustrating!) pray for peace when things go wrong in the day. I know that's one thing I struggle with. When one kid stops listening, it throws everything off! I tend to get really stressed out, then over react. And that's not ok!

Figure out exactly what is happening or needs to be done. Write out a list of the most important things, and there times if applicable. For example, I wrote a list and had all the start times of everything I'm doing today.

If you aren't motivated to get up in the morning, think of something you enjoy doing to do first thing when you get up. For me today, it was blogging while eating breakfast. I decided that I would get up, get dressed, and make breakfast, then I could sit down with my laptop and blog for awhile. Right now my siblings are watching kids shows on TV, so I am free to just blog and enjoy myself.

Coming to mind as I tell my little brother to sit down on the couch, if you tell a child to do something, make sure they do it. I told my brother to sit down and stop touching the TV, and I waited until he did. If kids think they can get away with anything, they will. Be firm, but gentle.

Try and get the most important tasks done first! Today, I have decided I'm not going to expect to get any schoolwork done, because it's just not going to happen. Instead, I will make sure I spend quality time with my siblings, and get any housework done that needs to be done immediately.

Realize that with kids, not everything is going to get done, and that is fine! Sure, it's not ok to just sit around being lazy, but understand that if you're a student, it's impossible to get all your work plus babysitting plus whatever else done.

And last but not least, just have fun! These crazy days of babysitting siblings will pass by quickly. Soon it will be you with your own kids. Just relax and enjoy these times, and don't worry if not everything goes according to plan. Take things as they come, and just go with the flow! (Even if that flow is the flow to losing your mind even faster.)

An awesome weekend!

Hey

I have had an awesome weekend!! There's nothing like a Friday night party with friends, followed by a sleepover :D My friends are the best! We played games, we laughed, we ate, (I got something in my throat and coughed for two minutes) we went outside in the wetness, ate candy, watched a movie, and danced around to Toby Mac and other artists!! In other words, it was an awesome party! (anyone who thinks home schoolers don't party, think again. We party hard, but in a good way!) After the party, I slept over at my friend's house. (same friend who hosted the party.) After we got everything cleaned up, we had tea with her mom, and had some great conversation. Then went “to bed” and talked for 2 more hours... Finally we went to sleep around 1:30. Needless to say, we were quite tired today!!

Later after I was back home, my mom, little sister, and I went shopping. Thrift stores are normally great, but didn't have so much success with what I needed today. Party because I wasn't in the mood to sort through racks and racks of clothes that weren't organized well at all. I did buy three scarves though, so that was nice!! (Seriously, don't pay 20 bucks for a scarf! Get one at the thrift stores for less than 5!)

Tonight, I started writing my NaNoWriMo novel! For those of you who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it was founded by someone on the cliffs of insanity. Oh wait, no it wasn't. But the person who found it might have suffered from insanity! (By the way, auto correct thinks I mean noncriminal. I assure you, us writers aren't criminals, no matter what may appear in our search histories!) NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. So basically, participants write as much as they can of a novel, without editing. The goal is to encourage people to just write, without critiquing too much. It's just to have fun, and get a story out of you! For people who want their writing published, it's an opportunity to work really hard to get the first draft out. I'm doing the young writers part of the program, with a word count goal of 20,000. That is just a brief summary of NaNo. It's really a lot crazier than that! I might write another post going into it more.

Anyways, that is what has been happening in my life this weekend!! Tomorrow will be lots more writing, and... studying for science and Bible tests on Monday... whoopdeedoo... I hope you are all having a great weekend!!

Our relationship with God

Hey everyone!! 

Today we had some exciting visitors! A girl that used to live with us when she was in college, came back with her family for a visit!! I may talk more about that in another post, but Anna brought a bunch of her family with her and we had a great visit. 

They are a wonderful Christian family. And it shows! They prayed for us multiple times. And their prayers weren't just "thank you God for this family and bless them." You could see they meant what they were saying as they prayed for our family and each of our futures. Later when they were getting ready to leave, Anna told me she was going to get her father to pray for me. So she led me over to the vehicle he was already in, and asked her father to pray for me. And he did. I've never really had someone pray for me, or 'pray over me'. He prayed for my future, that I would find the right husband, that I would follow my dreams, and that I would stay close to God. That last bit got me. How well am I doing at staying close to God? Well, I have to honestly say I'm failing. Some days, I will pray and read my Bible, and I will learn some things about Him. Other days, more often than not, I will just forget about praying, forget about my Bible, and go on with my day. And when Anna's father prayed that I would stay close to God, it hit me again. If I am straying from God now when I'm a teen and still at home, how will I do when I'm off on my own? It's time I do something, and something more than just go look at some blog posts about growing closer to God. It's time for me to actually do something. How about you? Are you struggling with your relationship with God? Then, maybe it's time for you to do something about it too. We can work through this together. Having a close relationship with God takes work. You can't just snap your fingers and expect to have a perfect relationship with God. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. But, digging into your Bible, and praying, and taking time to just be with God, will help you grow closer to God. So what are we waiting for? A written letter from God? Well, open your Bible. That written letter has been on your shelf waiting for you to read it. 

New Ideas

Hey there

So, I've been thinking about this blog for the last couple of nights. I really want to start spending more time writing posts and stuff. So, I came up with a list of ideas of post ideas. Some of these could be weekly or monthly things, and some just once or occasionally. Therefore, without further ado, here they are! Now, I'm not saying for sure these things are happening, but they are some ideas.

Devotions (likely once a week or once a month, a little devotion written)

Fashion (tips, tricks, diy projects, etc.) 

DIYs  

Cooking/recipes

Weekly journal/recap

Book reviews

Movie/TV show reviews

Special series (modesty, dating, etc.)

Inspiring quotes (a quote then practical application or thoughts about it)

Organization

School

Family

Friends

Here are some ideas. What do you think about them? What ones do you like? What ones not so much? I want to hear what you think! After all, what's the point of writing posts if no one is going to read them? So leave me some comments!! ALSO would you like to get involved and write a blog post for me to post here?! If you would, then leave a comment and I will get in touch with you! I know that some of you have blogs of your own, and I would love to share the word about them as well! So send me a link, and we will see what we can do. Maybe I could even start doing blog reviews! Comment your thoughts, I would love to hear them! (well, read them!) I can't wait to get some feed back on some of these ideas! I'm really excited to see where this blog is going to go in the future :D

Have a great day!