Anniversaries, Spiritual Gifts, & Nostalgia

Happy Monday!  I can't believe June is almost over already.  Time is just flying away. 

This particular week is an interesting one, to say the least.  Kids camp is this week, which means Chewie's gone.  And my small group host family, which makes up about half of my small group, is in Michigan this week because their daughter/sister is getting married on Saturday.  Therefore, most of my friends are gone.  :(  On a good note, however, one of my good friends from small group is still in town, and I suspect much girl time to be had.  :)

Chewie and I will be celebrating our 3 year (dating) anniversary this Saturday.  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  It's so hard to believe we've been together that long.  I'm thinking about making a special dinner for him.  If you know me, you know this is a big deal because I don't cook.  In fact, it's usually Chewie who does the cooking for us.  But I have a few ideas in my back pocket that I'm thinking about trying for our anni.  Oh, and don't worry about him reading this and finding out - he doesn't have internet access at camp and, therefore, will not be able to read this until after he gets back on Saturday (the day of our anni)!

I'm still looking for a job - story of my life, it seems.  I get asked all the time how the job search is going and if I've heard anything back from anyone.  And I have heard back - my inbox is full of rejection emails.  Haha.  Ordinarily, I think this would disappoint and discourage me, but, for whatever reason, I'm not sweating it.  I know that God has a plan.  

Which leads me to something I've been thinking about recently.  Our church puts out a weekly Bible reading plan that I read every morning.  And one of the recent readings in 1 Cor 12 was about spiritual gifts and using them in the Church.  It got me thinking about my spiritual gifts and how the Lord has confirmed to me time and time again that these are the things he's given me for ministry.  There are two that I know I have for sure: administration & faith.  I can definitely see how I can use my gift of administration in the Church.  However, I'm struggling with how I can use my gift of faith.  Is it a gift that is to be used in more of an oral capacity?  Like speaking about faith to others?  I'm not entirely sure, and I've been praying through it for some guidance.  

I also finished "Lies Women Believe" and really enjoyed it.  I think I might post a more comprehensive review of it on here soon.  Since I finished that book, I started reading "Experiencing God" by Henry Blackaby.  And I'm finding it's one of those books that says simple things that I already know but somehow really convicts me anyway.  It has really challenged me to get back to the basics of what I believe and build on that foundation.  Then I'm reading one other book about fasting that has been an interesting read, to say the least.  It's a subject that doesn't receive a whole lot of attention, and this book is more of a study about fasting than a way to apply it, if that makes sense.  I've learned a lot about fasting from a historical and biblical perspective.  Definitely look forward to a review of that one.

One last thing before I go - my pastor is leaving for vacation soon, and we have a guest preacher for the month of July (as well as this last Sunday in June).  He is a college professor and is doing a series on the book of Colossians.  When he started to preach yesterday morning, I thought I was going to burst with excitement because it was as if I stepped back into one of my college religion classes.  He preaches very much like my religion professors taught, and it was so exciting to hear a sermon/lesson like that again.  Don't get me wrong, I love the way our pastor preaches - his style is definitely easy to love.  But yesterday's sermon was almost nostalgic for me.  It made me miss the days of my Prophets class or Biblical Interpretation classes.  It brought joy to my heart!

Hope you are all having a great start to your week!