Amen. Come Lord Jesus!

It is done!

The New Testament is finished. Not even fully. Not even as much as I would have liked to study it. But I know it better than I ever have before. Now I just need to remember all the main ideas and reasons written and dates and key verses! I've never been one to memorize anything let alone be good at it. If you know me well, you know that I forget everything and can barely remember to get dressed in the morning, let alone remember all these parts of 27 different books!

I wrote a 19 minute long song for my horizontal chart for Revelation! We were given creative freedom for this book, so I took that and wrote out pretty much a paraphrase of the entire book. 19 whole minutes of The Revelation of Jesus Christ!

Revelation has been wonderful. It is not a scary book. It is not so complicated either once you know the original audience's situation and understand that everything in the book is symbolic, not literal (at least that's my opinion and the Early Church's understanding of it). I love this book though, it is a book full of worship, and is basically an evangelistic book. It tells the same story as the gospels only in a few different ways and there are 3 or 4 different views of the same things throughout the book. I love John's style of writing. He is cyclical, quite unlike Paul. Paul is more linear in his writing, like one, two, three, done, whereas John keeps jumping around to the same ideas over and over, but in no particular order.

One major thing I learned today deals with the final judgment. I always thought we'd all stand before his throne and get judged for all the things we have done and though we are saved by grace, we still had to stand up there and have everyone see or hear what we did. That is not the case my friends! It's the people who did not choose God's grace who will be judged for their works, and no one can be saved by works, it's impossible. No one is perfect. Only one person was ever perfect, and it is by his ransom we are saved by grace if we so choose. So, why not choose grace?

The cat has been let out of the bag around campus that I have been considering staying for maybe 2 extra years here in India to be SBS staff. The only thing holding me back is finances. Now, I know that God will provide if it is his will for me to stay here. It's funny though, I came with no intention to stay any longer than I had to, and now here I am with a 10 year Indian visa and an idea, dare I say "desire?", to be staff! I know that I was counting on a giant chunk of money coming from selling my guitar, but that did not work out, and I am thankful that I was able to bring it with me after the Christmas holiday, but I'm struggling. It's okay though, I'm still here, and so far it hasn't affected my situation right now. Please pray for me and if God leads you feel free to give! It is really easy, you can do it online by clicking on the "donate!" button to the right. Someone has used it and it works wonderfully. No extra/hidden charges or fees, it goes straight to my account.

Enough about finances.

I am excited to begin the Old Testament next week! Pray for me to manage my time well for that. Right now I'm not doing a very good job. I am however, better than I ever have been with time-management, but it is not good enough for the Old Testament! I need to actually write a schedule down to the hour at least, maybe even minute. Ya'll know how much I love schedules and am on time for things. Ay carumba.

I watched Slumdog Millionaire the other day, and I would suggest everyone see this movie. I don't know if it's still in the theaters at home, but if it is please go see it! It's amazing and it's even more amazing seeing it in India, but you can't all have that experience yet.

Yesterday was Republic Day for India. It's like our Independence Day, although I didn't see much happening besides our campus's flag raising in the morning and national anthem singing. A lot of people around town were wearing little Indian flags pinned to their shirts, including myself and my British lady-love, Lottie. I truly love this country, and could spend a lot of time here, if not the rest of my life. As long as I was with people I loved doing what I loved by loving God with every part of myself.

Funny, I came to this coffee shop to do homework, but haven't done any for the last 1.5 hours. Mostly because of all the silly things to do I forgot to bring my BIBLE! See what I mean about never remembering? I even remember going up to my room specifically to grab my Bible, and where does that bring me? A ten minute walk away from campus with no means of doing my homework.

Alright, this blog is long enough. I know it has been awhile since I last wrote, and for that I'm sorry. I am afraid it will be even less frequent when the Old Testament begins to take up every moment of my time, but I'll try as much as I can to write in here often! I'm not even sure how many people read this thing anyway.

May the hope and peace of the Lamb be with all of you!

xoxoxoxo