DAY 2

Today has been a weird day. Still slightly feeling anxiety about my situation has led me into a lot of the older struggles that I wish would just leave (but at the same time, I love). Today was the first day of class. We went over the syllabus and just talked for a little while. After that the class went to get Thai food. That was one of the highlights of the day.

Ryan Adams, the director of the school, said something today that really spoke to me in terms of my spiritual identity. He said that he was not an evangelistic type of person. He takes a while to warm up to people and he can't just go up to people and strike up conversation. He had come to terms that that was not something God had gifted him with. That is something that God has not gifted me with (or at least I don't think so). I have never been a person to go up to people and start talking to them about Jesus. I want to build relationship and get to know someone first before I dive into deeper topics. I felt encouraged that God does in fact make people differently and that we all evangelize in our own way. While Ryan might not be the missionary type, he is evangelizing to me by even admitting that type of thing to me.

Other than that, I read the first chapter in the first book, The Gospel For Real Life by Jerry Bridges. It is all about how most Christians don't truly understand the Gospel, or at least the magnitude of it. This is basically the reason that I am at ministry school in the first place. I know that Jesus saved me, but this love that I have for God could be stronger if I was able to truly grasp the magnitude of what the Gospel really means. I sped through the first chapter, which is weird for me (I hate reading, love writing though...weird juxtaposition [sidebar: that's my fancy word I use to make myself sound smarter. Also, the first year or so of knowing that word, I almost always messed it up while trying to say it] I've always had), so I'm hoping the rest of the book follows suit.

So to conclude, I'm still anxious. I don't like not knowing what is going to happen to me. I fucking hate it actually. But God is testing my comforts and limits for the first time really. I had a great talk with Sam, Kansas, and the Batsons (the couple I am living with) over cigars about life and spirituality. I feel like Grant (the husband in the aforementioned couple) is going to be a great help and insight into what I am going through during this journey. He is really jaded by the church, but also very knowledgeable of things of the Spirit and how it practically applies to life. This helped to ease my concerns just a little; I'm just hoping these life long struggles won't mess up the rest of what God is trying to do here.