Tomorrow!

Hey everyone,

Tomorrow I leave to Orange County to meet my mission team and then off to Tokyo in two days! Immense prayer please! I am so excited to see what God is going to do! He is so good and faithful! I will be keeping everyone up to date on all the awesome things that are going to happen and I will let you know about how the training goes in Orange County.
I was reading Psalm 40 today and is was encouraging and perfect to prepare me for this next adventure. I would love for you to read it and be blessed by God's goodness and grace.
I'm so thankful that you are all part of my life!

Blessings,

In Christ,

Courtney

"For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."

13 days!

I leave on to my next exciting adventure God has for me in 13 days. I will fly to Orange County, California and meet up with my team and have a few days of briefing. Then we head off to Tokyo! I am really excited and yet, it still seems so far off. I am already finished with my junior year of college and made it through my grueling finals, and now I am just spending two weeks in the OKC relaxing and preparing for my whirlwind of a summer.
Please continue praying for my team, the people of Japan, and me.
Pray that I use all this free time effectively and that I continue to spend time with the Lord each day.
Pray that I look at each day as an opportunity to share the Good News, whether here in Oklahoma or in Japan!

God is so good and all Glory goes to Him!

"Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land." -Proverbs 25:25

Thy Kingdom Come in the Land of the Rising Sun! Pt. 2

Hey all! (Notice I did not say y'all, I'm still a Northern Girl to the core..)

I just wanted to give you a quick update on my mission trip to Tokyo! I have less then a month till I leave and it seems like the time is flying by (especially once I am done with finals this week.) I am so excited to serve the Lord over there and I am so expectant of all the incredible things God is going to do!

Thanks to all who are supporting me financially and through prayer! God is so good and I am almost to 100% in my financial support! Only a couple hundred dollars to go. I know that the Lord will provide in the final push to full support because He is faithful!

Please continue to be in prayer for me, my team, and the people of Japan!
Some specific prayer points are:

1. That I be fully dependent on the Lord and allow him to move in his plan.
2. That I continue to re-learn and review all the Japanese that I have learned.
3. That the rest of my financial support would come in.
4. That financial support for my other team members would come in.
5. That my team be unified as a body when we all first meet.
6. That the hearts of the people that we will be coming in contact with in Japan be prepared and open to hearing God's love.
7. That God be the center of it all and above all, that he be glorified!

Thank you all again and be on the look out for further posts about all the wonderful things God is doing! Glory to him!!!

-Courtney

Nomads!

This past weekend I was at a missions conference in Choctaw, Oklahoma called Nomads put on by Heart Of God ministries. It was wonderful! We spent the weekend in tents camping out and hearing from incredible speakers, missionaries and worshipping Jesus. Before I came to this conference, the Lord had already told me that I am going to be in full time ministry when I am done with college, but this weekend really just strengthened my call and gave me more of a vision of what God has called me and all of us to do.

What God has called us to do, we have heard many times. But when I heard it this weekend, it really struck me. It made me realize that it is much harder to do then we think but it is what we must do above all other things and that is to LOVE!

Ephesians 5:2 "And walk in Love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Matthew 22:37 "Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind"

1 John 4:20-21 "If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother."

Galatians 5:14 "The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Our primary goal is to grow in the Likeness of Christ, and Christ loved people. Jesus' goal was not to make us moral but to love us and save us. Jesus gave us a new covenant to love each other. We fulfill all other law by love. Love needs to be our highest goal, above theology, above spiritual gifts and above apologetics. We need to love in a self-sacrificing way. We need to love people and speak truth to them. Don't say anything if it is not out of love. When they curse us, we bless them.

This message was hard to hear because I know that I do not always love and that it is really difficult to do sometimes. I mess up everyday and don't walk in love but the awesome news is, even when I am not loving, GOD STILL LOVES ME! I pray that I can be more like Christ, be filled with his spirit, and walk in LOVE.


Some pics from this weekend!

Waiting in line to get our food!


Eating our food! During the weekend, we had Mexican, Chinese, and Indian food! We also drank a lot of chai!




Having fun at Nomads!

I will run and not grow weary

Praise to God, I finished my marathon! I ran every step of 26.2 miles. I finished in a little over four hours and got 6th in my age group. My dad and I crossed the finish line together holding hands.God is so good and faithful and He gave me the strength I needed to finish the race, and finish well, so that He could be glorified.
During the race, there was one song that I kept singing that gave me strength and comfort. It is called "Forever I will Love You." Thy Lyrics are:

Oh Lord my strength You're my redeemer
Forever I will love You
No one whose hope is in the Lord will ever be put to shame
You are the rock that is higher than I
Your name is above every other name
Hallelujah hallelujah

These words ring true! God,Your name is above every other Name!

I will run the race set before me...

This Sunday I will be running my second marathon. It is the big D marathon in Dallas, TX and my dad will be running it with me. A marathon is 26.2 miles. It is long and hard and requires a lot of training. For my first marathon, I was able to train really hard, this marthon.....not so much. Busyness caught up with me this semester and I didn't have all the time it takes to train for this marathon. So, I need your prayers please! Prayers that the Holy Spirit fill me and give me the strength to cross the finish line, prayers that I run the race with a happy heart, and prayers that I be a light for God. I do not want this race to be about what I can do or my capablities, but I want God to be glorified and people see that I can only do such feats by the Grace of God and the strength and power that He gives me. I will run the race set before me, keeping my eyes on Jesus.

"I can do all things through Him who strengthens me." Phil. 4:13

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closelu, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:1,2

He's Alive!!!

Christ the Lord is risen! He is alive and present today! Jesus was not just some good moral teacher, or some man who died for us in the past, but He is the living God with us right here, right now! Jesus is everything that we could ever want or need! Today, let's not just celebrate what He did over 2000 years ago, but let's celebrate what He is doing in our lives right now! For He has an incredible plan for us! Let's recommit our lives to the Living God and walk in His spirit. I am so thankful that the Lord has provided so many things in my life this semester! He has truly been faithful, never wavering. He has shown me some of the most incredible things in these last few months then I have ever seen in all me life. My prayer is that I continue seeking God and encountering Him in new ways. I pray that He continues to reveal fresh things to me everyday and that I don't just stay in the same place in my walk with Him! Jesus, my rescuer, my provider, my healer, my comforter! Glory to You!

"And on the way, he asked 'Who do people say that I am?' and they told Him 'John the Baptist' and others say 'Elijah' and others 'one of the prophets.''But who do you say that I am?' Peter answered, 'You are the Christ.'"
Mark 8:26-30