your grace extends to call me friend

Hey

So i'll keep it short because i need to get back to calculus but it's felt like a pretty monotone 2 days. I guess it's not necessarily a sign that it's been a bad 2 days but more like it's kind of more quiet and calm compared to last week. I think a lot of my focus is now geared toward school and not just the academics but the people who I've seemed to lose contact with last week because I was never home and I didn't have a lot of time to talk with them.

I guess there's a lot of things that God's subtly teaching me through school and I'm glad that it's a little slower and that I can have some quiet time during my school day to spend with God, even if that time's a couple minutes during lunch praying. I'm also really trying to evaluate myself on my complaining and godless chatter.

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life

- Philippians 2:14-16

Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly.

- 2 Timothy 2:16

It's so easy for me to become tempted to talk about nonsense and even gossip when I'm not surrounded by believers and it's something I've been trying to think about this week. Also, with the complaining I can feel myself do it sometimes, to my friends about some course that I'm actually not doing bad in or about tests that I actually don't mind and it's sometimes because maybe there's nothing else to talk about or to extend a conversation.

And these past couple of days I feel like I've forgotten the immensity of the first commandment that Jesus gave to us.

He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'

- Luke 10:27

I feel like I've forgotten what all means. I feel like I've been loving God with my heart, keeping Him in mind. But not all my heart. I yearn for Him and want to spend that time in devotions with Him, but it's hard to tell sometimes whether he's at the top of my list or not. And I know that it's going to be impossible as long as I'm human and as long as I sin but I'm praying for discipline and that heart.

My post feels scattered all over the place. Overviews without specifying kind of like drawing pictures without shading them in and leaving them full of blanks. And maybe that's okay because maybe I don't even know what's going on fully. I know that God'll reveal to me what his will is as it goes on. I just pray i'm listening and looking. Looking forward to tomorrow. It's been a week. Sometimes I feel like that's too long.

p.requests:
- heart to yearn after God above everything else

thanks
-Chris