spring...or summer??

sisters. <3 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlhRF8JaqzMr8AWzpekJholqJUjiPBhU0tei6qnVnlFdNvwgFaNznSjLklqVHavMs9cIxQ6ELyrz8ZvETntPbD3ADizg7SOPJsfSDdVhkOuqDA8NqgonPPahZh2KUHPaW7N_vRrGXDeTeT/s1600-h/IMG_1190.JPG">
check the burn.
typical.
us & mom!!
cute...took this for summerflamingo2 and tropicallinz!

pale before....lobster later. :(
the siblings at Uncle David's 60th birthday party!!
sisters!!
Jake's parents :)
my Camus birthday cake!!! ;)
birthday waffle jake made me...yum! :P

Well, i had such a great 24th birthday last week!! jake made me breakfast in bed (total shocker since he doesn't really love cooking), i got 2 cute beach totes (and am now prepared for LP!), my d group made me a "Camus cake" (complete w her tooth that sticks out!) and got some money for shopping!!! I can't wait to go shopping, it's seriously my fav thing to do and also a common negative coping mechanism for stress for me. FYI, i used to go to old navy and tj maxx every friday and buy a little treat after a test at furman, and i got a mani and pedi every two weeks. Love it. Anyway, my birthday was awesome! i went to one of my favorite restaurants in downtown Greenville for dinner, Smoke on the Water, and this past weekend spent a day at Edisto w my family. It was so relaxing, and perfect weather for walking and sunbathing :) the best part about it was the dial up internet connection we had so i couldn't get online but spent time w everyone and read instead. Something i've been thinking a lot about lately has been fighting sin. Before i was a Christian, i didn't fight sin, and if i did, it was because of another sin: people pleasing. Now, as a Christian, i still struggle not with being legalistic and doing good works for God, but being lazy and cheapening the grace of the gospel, the death that Jesus died on my behalf. I have been memorizing Romans chapter 6 to remind myself that i am no longer a slave to sin:

¹What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ²By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. ⁵If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. ⁶For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,^{a]" style="line-height: 0.5em; ">[a]} that we should no longer be slaves to sin—⁷because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

⁸Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. ¹⁰The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

¹¹In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹²Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. ¹³Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. ¹⁴For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

Slaves to Righteousness

¹⁵What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. ¹⁸You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

¹⁹I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. ²⁰When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. ²¹What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! ²²But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. ²³For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in^{b]" style="line-height: 0.5em; ">[b]} Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yet I am constantly reminded that I don't fight sin for God, but along with God. In the Christian life, even with most Christians I know, we are constantly exhausted, trying to do things for God like share our faith, lead Bible studies, be a good wife, yet the only way I can do this to the Lord's glory and not my own is if I am knowing Him more through EVERYTHING in my daily life. John Piper says that "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." Not in doing work for Him, not in our righteous deeds which Isaiah 64:6 calls "filthy rags", but in Him. Therefore i can share my faith out of the power of the Holy Spirit, or i can share it with no joy but out of obligation. I know that God wants me to be fueled and run by His power and not my finite human strength. So why is this so hard for me to do?

John Calvin says, "“The human heart is a factory of idols...Everyone of us is, from his mother’s womb, expert in

inventing idols.”

Ken Sande says that "An idol is not simply a statue of wood, stone, or metal; it is anything we love and pursue in place of God, and can also be referred to as a ‘false god’ or a ‘functional god.’ In biblical terms, an idol is something other than

God that we set our hearts on ( Luke 12:29;1 Cor. 10:6), that motivates us (1 Cor. 4:5), that masters or rules us (Ps. 119:133), or that we serve (Matt. 6:24). Something within creation that is inflated to function as God. All sorts of things are potential idols, depending only on our attitudes and actions toward them...Idolatry may not involve explicit denials of God’s existence or character. It may well come in the form of an over-attachment to something that is, in itself,perfectly good...An idol can be a physical object, a property, a person, an activity, a role, an institution, a hope, an image, an idea, a pleasure, a hero - anything that can substitute for God.”

We as humans have so many idols. I am not exempt because I am a Christian-i have the idol of working FOR God and pleasing Him and others. The reason why i often work for God is because control and perfection are two of my idols, along with many more.

Do you know what your idols are? Have you ever stopped to think about what your heart runs to for satisfaction, approval, worth besides God? This is a great article on the heart as an idol factory by CJ Mahaney. If you answer the questions he asks, the Holy Spirit will reveal many things to you about yourself. It is awesome to be reminded that we are truly only satisfied in our God.

copy & paste this link:http://www.metronorthpca.org/documents/idol_factory.pdf

here are a few pics from the weekend!! :0)