Spiritual Emphasis Week!

So I have been writing what I have thought about each day, as each day went on so don't get confused :) When I say "today" its not all one day! Its four different days :) Maybe I will color code them for you! (: 


Today was the first day of spiritual emphasis week and it was awesome!! Dutton played for us and were really great! Greg Speck is the speaker this week which is really exciting!! He has such great messages and has all of us laughing at the same time :) His talk last year was simply amazing and I'm excited to see whats in store for this week! The theme for spiritual emphasis week this year is "I Surrender" so its about surrendering our lives to Christ! Today Greg talked about how when he was a senior in high school and through a crazy injury, he wasn't able to play football anymore which was the main thing in his life, and this led to him accepting Christ into his life! I have a story that is somewhat similar, but not as intense :). 

Last year, I was cheering pretty much every day. I had school cheer on Mondays and Thursdays, competitive cheer on Wednesdays and Sundays, and cheer privates on tuesdays! So I pretty much only got off Fridays and Saturdays. Cheer was seriously becoming an idol in my life! I was starting to find my identity in it, rather than in God. I felt like a lot of people knew me as "Courtney the cheerleader" instead of "Courtney the Christian," and I was okay with that. Cheerleading was becoming a hugggee part of my life. So, in November I lost cheerleading. It was the last game of the season and I was looking forward to it all year because we were playing FBBA, my old school. So we were in the cheer room, and I was being dumb... to fast-forward this story I'll just skip to the part where I hurt my knee! So I fell on my knee and sort of just laid on the ground for a while.. I figured it was just a hyper-extended knee, so I took some advil and put some ice on it. It didn't hurt thattt bad and even though I felt a "snap" in my knee whenever it happened, in my head I told myself I wasn't going to be a baby about it and not cheer! Haha so I tried to walk it off and cheered at the game. That night it started swelling up and hurting a little bit more. My parents were really worried so one week later I got an MRI. I figured nothing was going to be wrong and maybe I just sprained something. What I thought as a hyper-extended knee that would get better in the morning, turned out to be a torn ACL, torn Meniscus, and bruised bone. I had surgery in January and am now just getting back into the cheerleading world. So for a while I was kind of like "God, why would you take away the thing that was my world?" and He was like, "Well Courtney maybe because it was your world!!" Haha :) But through my injury and some other struggles last year, I really became so much closer to the Lord! I learned to lean on him and to put him FIRST in my life always!! Its soo awesome to just trust the Lord and know what what He is doing in your life has a PURPOSE!! He knows what He is doing! Whenever your going through struggles it is soo difficult to understand what God is doing in your life! Later on, you'll be able to step back and see what God was doing in your life and thank Him for it! But while your experiencing difficult times in your life, the best thing to do is to just trust in the Lord! He wants what is best for us and he KNOWS what is best for us!! 


DAY THREE (SKIPPED A DAY)


"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." 1 John 14:18

Day three of spiritual emphasis week!! Today Greg talked about the four ways to live a surrendered life and they were: 1. Never ever fear your enemy 2. Starting now, live a life worthy of the Lord 3. Always speak the truth even if you have to suffer the consequences and 4. Safeguard the weak and the helpless! I don't know what other peoples feelings for this message was but it wass so amazing and it made me realize so so much! If you don't go to Houston Christian and your interested in listening to any of Greg's talks at chapel, you can go on itunes and subscribe to Houston Christian's free podcast and all of our chapels are on there.. Greg's talks should be up in a week or so, they are so great and funny and I encourage you to listen to them! :) Anyways the thing I liked the most that Greg talked about was living a life worthy of the Lord. We exist to glorify God!! We need to make God look "good" in everything we do! We can make God look good by the way we live and talk and act!! Something I loved that Greg said is that "Your yesterdays NEVER determine your tomorrows!" And I feel like the world is telling us this lie that we can't change!! The world is telling us that we are going to be the same tomorrow as we are today and yesterday. But through God's grace and love we can completely change our life!! Greg came and spoke to my practical missions class after chapel today and one of the things he told us is that after he became a Christian on a Saturday night, that Sunday he was a COMPLETELY different person!! After two days of being this new and different person his parents sat him down and asked him about it.. Two months later his parents became Christians!! It is soo awesome how God works through people!! This verse is referring to his first way to live a surrendered life which was never ever fear your enemy! God is always going to take care of us and he has this crazy unconditional love for us that we will NEVER be able to comprehend!! There is NOTHING that God can't do!! This verse says Perfect love casts out fear. The holy spirit in side of each of us gives us all power over fear. Never doubt the power of God! For there is none more powerful than Him! In the talk Greg gave last year about spiritual warfare, he said that the two things satan wants most is for us to fear him and for us to worship him. Don't fear satan for we have an AWESOME God on our side that is SOOO much more powerful than him!!






Today was AMAZING!! Greg spoke again of corse and today he talked to us about our highest calling, which is to LOVE God and to LOVE people! Greg talked about the five ways to love one another! Service, Words, Gifts, Time and Touch. After his talk, he had us stand up and genuinely go around and go apologize to the people that we had been rude to before. To go around and give people hugs and let them know if we appreciate them and if we love them (I say if because we were being genuine!). I thought this was soo cool! I've never seen us students at Houston Christian be so vulnerable and loving to each other before. It was just incredible!! God was totallyyy with us today at chapel!! Some of my good friends were crying just because they had been keeping things on their hearts and grudges towards other people for soo long and today they finally got to go talk to those people and let them go. Some of my other good friends were crying just from Greg giving them a "dad hug" because their dads maybe have never shown them love or have never been there for them. I just want to say right now that as much as some people may not like Houston Christian, I LOVE Houston Christian and I LOVE the people I go to school with! As a school we all went through a totally humbling experience today and it was so awesome to be a part of it! Something I thought was really cool is that Gregs talk totally related to the first chapter of the book my D-Group is reading, Captivating. Its an amazing book that I recommend to any girls!! (Boys there's a book called Wild at Heart by the same authors for yall) haha, so thats what happened today :)

About this verse - I don't know about you guys but I LOVE to LOVE people!! :) I love encouraging people and building people up! (maybe thats why I'm a cheerleader? or maybe I just like to do the flips(: ) anyways, I absolutely love making new friends and creating relationships!! For anybody reading this, if anyone is, if you want a friend to talk to or you need someone to be praying for you I would just adore to be that person!! But of corse I always have those days when I'm not 100% smiley courtney! Or when I am sarcastic (that happens alot, really need to work on that!) but I strive to be someone who shows Christ's love for others! Today, Greg challenged us to for the rest of the day not say one negative thing about anybody, and I challenge you to do the same! Think of the differences you could make in your schools, in your work, in your group of friends, if you were just always positive and never talked bad about anyone! Like what Greg talked about to us yesterday, we can make a difference! and you can BE different starting now!! 




Today was such an amazing day!! It's my brothers 20th birthday today.. can't believe how old he is!! Today was also the last day of spiritual emphasis week :( but it was totally awesome!! and today was the day that the Mustangs beat the Bulldogs!! (and also included the cheer/silver spur bus breaking down...awesomee) :) So overall today was great!!

So this verse is a verse Greg had us turn too today. Today he talked about CONTINUING to live a surrendered life. One thing he really hit on was that feelings NEVER last!! If you have like a retreat with you church saturday night you get alll these feelings saturday night and your soo on fire for God! But then sunday morning rolls around and you don't feel Jesus anymore. An example Greg used is if we ate everyyday how we eat for Thanksgiving! That'd be crazy!! Then he said that every once in a while God is going to give us a Thanksgiving of feelings. The main thing is that we need to follow Jesus no matter how we FEEL! because feelings never last. To live a surrendered life, we also need to walk with God. I think its really, really awesome how no matter what God is always going to love us. If I don't read my Bible ever, God is going to love me just as much as if I read my Bible every single day! I don't read my Bible so that God will love me more. I read my Bible because I LOVE God!! I don't walk with God because I want Him to love me more. I walk with my King because I LOVE Him! The third thing Greg talked about was to be HOLY. Positionally, we are already holy because of Christ's death for us. The problem is that we aren't ACTING holy!! God is always speaking to us, the problem is that we don't listen! One of my favorite songs by Addison Road says, "I've tried to hear from Heaven, but I talked the whole time. I think I made you to small, I never feared you at all. If you touched my face, would I know you? Looked into my eyes, could I behold you?" I absolutely love this song and think its so true. I think its crazy how if we won a prize to go spend a day with someone famous we would do it in a heartbeat! We would change our schedule so that just for that one day we could hang out with that celebrity! Guys, We have the opportunity and the gift to spend time with the AMAZING God!! Not for just one day, but for eternity!!To surrender your lives to God. To walk with God and be holy! I hope yall had an amazing day!