Building a Fire

I love fires. Not the out of control kind that burn down forests or buildings, but the kind built in the cabin in a fire place. The warmth, although not my favorite temperature, can be cozy. I am entranced by the flicker of the flame. I love positioning the wood just right so the flames get higher and higher. I like the bright golden flames that show the fire is really going. I just put a new log on our fire and it is crackling and popping in a burst of golden fire. I love it!
This week has been nice but I've had so much homework that I really have worked on it every day! I can't wait for Christmas break when I don't have to do homework for 3 weeks. I'm going to read lots of books for fun. I am looking forward to that but it's hard. I miss Copper a lot. It has been hard this week without him. I cried the minute I got home. It just isn't the same. But I know that he wouldn't have been happy and I would not want him in pain.
I've been thinking a lot about next May. I am coming up on the end of my second to last semester(meaning I have one, count it, ONE!) semester left of College. How? Seriously, how? I don't know. You always grow up dreaming what it will be like to be an adult and not have to go to school anymore and let me tell you, I'm very ready to stop school for a while. But I am still applying to graduate school at Appalachian and UNC. I am also looking into moving out to Colorado or going on an extended missions trip (but still praying about that).
I want to grab hold of the opportunity that this last semester at Asbury offers and learn all that I can from the people I'm with and through situations God puts me in. I have learned a lot this semester but as I admire the fire, I am not one to go easily into it. I am in a refining phase. And let me be the first to admit that I am kicking and screaming and refusing to go about change easy. God isn't doing anything but asking me at this point and I'm a big whiny baby. But I know that I'm getting somewhere. If life is not all tied up with a bow, it usually means God is bringing me to a new place. In the learning there is pain and in the pain their is growth and change for the better. I have so many things I want to better myself on but that, I think, is the key point of what God is teaching me. It is not me or anything I can do. Holiness is not up to me. Grace is not something I earn. I am not called to perform for God. He loves me for who I am and I can't earn his love. Or approval. I know that he cheers me on and is proud of me when I get lessons he is trying to teach me. But his opinion and love for me are not based on my actions/thoughts/attitudes. And thank goodness cause sometimes I know those things would get me zapped with holy wrath. I am still trying to live each day in surrender but I find that I'm quite good at making up excuses to wait until tomorrow. Help me Jesus surrender today. I want to be a daughter who looks to you for my strength and to make me holy and quit trying to do this all on my own. I want to "pray continually," talking to you throughout the day but also Listening. May that be my aim these last 3 weeks of this semester. To live in total abandonment of trying to please you, Jesus, and to just know you. To make it my life goal to become more like you through time spent with you. Consume me like a fire. Refine me in the fire. And let your Holy Spirit burn within me.
The fire here is dying down, but the fire of God will constantly burn in my heart. Sometimes it needs to be fueled with the Spirit's wisdom and less of my own, but I am confident that "He who began a good work in my will carry it out to completion."

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!