Joy

     Lately, God has really been convicting me of a lot of things and one of those things is joy. It`s so easy to be joyful when everything is going your way and you have everything that you want or "need." But we need to find our joy in God, not in this world or just when things are easy. I think it`s hard for us American Christians to focus on God and get our joy from Him when we have so many distracting and comfortable things in our lives. But our joy is in HIM because He redeemed us and He is our beautiful Savior who came and was punished as if He had lived our sinful lives. I think that`s something to be joyful about. But is that where my joy is coming from?? I think a lot of the time it`s not. We need to be joyful in blessings, in affliction, in pain, in tears, in victory, in defeat because our joy comes from the LORD!! This is a verse that God showed me in Psalms that was really awesome:


Psalm 4:7
You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

   I love how this shows that God gives us even MORE joy than our "grain and wine" could EVER give us. And also that it`s GOD that gives us the joy and not ourselves trying our hardest to grit our teeth and be joyful no matter what. We can`t even be joyful without God!!!!! So it all comes back to His grace. God is so amazingly good. Hope you all had a great start to the week and I hope that all of you would be asking for more grace to find your joy in God.



--Rye Bread
 

Wait, T-bird's blogging?

    As you might have guessed from the title, this is T-bird, and yes, I am blogging.  The only reason I am is because Rye Bread successfully motivated me. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I dislike blogging, but I'm just not really a die-hard. I'm more of a die-soft.      Anyway, on to something interesting to read.

 Things that have been going on lately................(1) Our movie fundraiser night! If you didn't know, our church is sending Rye Bread, some other totally awesome guys, girls, chaperones and I on a missions trip this summer. We went last year, served, got served even more, and had an amazing time.  So, this year we're Lord-willing doing it again! So we had our first fundraiser watching the epic animated Ten Commandments.  "I laughed, I cried, it moved me, Bob."---Larry, from Veggietales.   Yes, I did laugh, but no, I didn't cry, even though I got goosebumps. (I get goosebumps from everything.)
(2)School.  No comment.
(3)Drama!!!!!   Rye Bread and I are currently involved in a totally legit play, with a bunch of other stellar friends. Sorry, no sneak peaks, but it's rated PG for mild peril.  JK!!  
(4)Symphony.   Rye Bread plays his trombone and I play my trumpet in Philharmonia at Morningside College(it's not as classy as it sounds) along with some other kids including the one and only Bugg!
(5)Cleaning up.  Actually, this is going on right now, so I've gotta go! 


Hoping this is not my last post, and also hoping that they grow longer,

--
T-Bird

Randomness

   So, this post is just gonna be about random things that I love. One of these would be God`s Word. God has really been faithful in showing me a LOT of awesome things in the Bible pretty much every day. Just stuff that gives me goosebumps when I read it. God is so good to give me what I need through these passages my Bible flips open to.

2) Another thing would be music!!! I have loved music pretty much my whole life. I have always enjoyed writing songs and music to go with them and I wrote my first song when I was 7 or 8. I think that all it had was a chorus, but, that`s kinda what got me started writing. =) Hearing pretty much any kind of instrument makes me happy. Except maybe a sitar. Those are kinda scary. I think I`ve already mentioned this, but the instruments that I play and love are the guitar, bass, piano, and trombone. Music is definitely important to me. :D

3) My friends!! I have some of the best friends ever!!!!! They are the funniest people and I am guaranteed to laugh when I am around them. Like my friend Bugg said, I could probably write a whole blog on them all (maybe)!!! Here are some pictures:

My band buddies. :)

No comment...

Ginger`s probably getting ready to scream, "GO HAWKEYES!" and apparently South Pole was "accidentally" looking at the camera.

Haha, I like this picture. Everyone seems to be focused on the stage but Ginger. =)

  I couldn`t find pics of all my friends, but, they are awesome. :D

4) Another would be my family!  I wanna make this quick, so here are some pictures. My family makes me happy. :D

  This was shorter than I thought it was going to be and there are more things that I would post, but, maybe next time. :) Have an awesome weekend!!


--Rye Bread