25 Day Challenge- Paul's Prison

Hey again all you blog readers. First off, I want to say thanks to everyone who had feedback regarding the issues addressed in my last blog. Even though I fought against a lot of your advice, it sunk in and has helped me gain a new perspective. Sometimes I could listen to all the best advice in the world and not hear any of it, you know? But I really do have an idea now, and in my opinion it's better than finishing out the semester at an all time low.

Last night I was thinking about the Apostle Paul, cuz he's kind of a role model of mine, and I thought about the story where he and Silas were thrown in prison for casting out a demon. It was pretty lame, the accusation was that they were "throwing [the] city into an uproar." Anyways, Paul and Silas didn't mope around or give up, they spent that whole first night while they were in jail praising the Lord. You know what happened? An earthquake shook the prison and broke the chains of every prisoner. Even then, when God had clearly offered a way out for his servants, Paul and Silas stayed put because they saw that the keeper of the prison was panicking and about to kill himself. They assured him that that no one was running (maybe they were too shocked to move) and the prison keeper immediately asked Paul and Silas what he could do to be saved. The next day, Roman guards came and after finding out that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, the guards freed them and "requested" that they leave the city (which they did... eventually). That story is Acts 16 by the way.

We are all in some kind of prison. For me right now, it's school (I'm a little hesitant to compare school to a prison, cuz I understand that it's a huge blessing and opportunity, but the fact is- I don't wanna be there, but I have to be. So it's my prison). Still, I should be praising God in EVERY circumstance, and living after Jesus' example, no matter what injustice I am a victim to (another thing is to not allow yourself to be a victim- know that there's always good that can come out of bad situations). Thinking "WWJD?" showed me that I am definitely NOT being a reflection of Jesus at school. Romans 15:5 tells us "May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had" So, my attitude should reflect Jesus, my work ethic should reflect Jesus, my capability to endure injustice (or at least what I perceive as injustice) without complaint should match Jesus's. It's pretty clear in the epistles that we're supposed to endure hardships with willingness and gladness, because we have the hope of eternal joy and peace, more than we can imagine.

Now for the challenge part. I'm challenging myself with this, and I know it's not going to be easy (hence the word "challenge") but I think I can definitely learn something from it. I know a lot of high schoolers told me that they felt more or less the same as me regarding school, so if you're one of those people, you're welcome to take this challenge with me. Here's what it is:

For the duration of this semester (25 days), I will consider my purpose in attending school to be as follows:

-To share the love of Christ with EVERYONE

-To reflect the Spirit and peace of God by (1) focusing in class- meaning no doodling or writing things not related to the subject. (2) Obeying the rules- God says that leaders are given power for a reason, and we are to respect and obey them. I will obey all school rules, mainly the one about not using my phone during class. :P (3) Working hard- doing ALL of my homework and classwork. (4) Being polite- to teachers, students, and staff, NO MATTER WHAT.

-To encourage and pray for the students around me, and to give whenever I see need.

In addition to imitating Christ in school, I will do my best to imitate him outside of school. For the next 25 I'm going to do my best to not watch tv, most importantly during the week but on weekends too. Computer time is going to have to be cut down too. I'll limit facebook to 20 minutes a day, and... well yeah that's pretty much the only thing I spend significant time doing on the computer. I'm also going to try to avoid caffeine for the next 25 days, because caffeine makes it even harder for me to focus in school, and I suspect it often leads to me getting less sleep than I intend. Speaking of sleep, I'm going to aim to be in bed by 10 every night, ready to sleep (which means no more reading after that). On top of all that, to make sure this is really a growing experience for me and not just a month of torture, I'm going to spend at least a half hour each day reading and studying God's word.

So that's that. Wish me luck.

2 Timothy 1:7 "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline."

2 Timothy 2:4 "No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs- he wants to please his commanding officer."

Ephesians 4:1-3 "As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have recieved. Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.

Philippians 4:22 "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness."

Philippians 3:17 "Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you."

"Do everything without complaining or arguing,

so that you may become blameless and pure,

children of God without fault

in a crooked and depraved generation,

in which you shine like stars in the universe"

Philippians 2:14-15

Hey everybody, what's up? (seriously, what's up? if anyone wants to talk to me about anything, or like, whatever... just email me!)

I just thought I'd fill you all in on what's going on with me and school lately. It's kinda been a hate-hate relationship this year, which is a bit unusual for me.

A while back, I decided to write down all the reasons that I hate school. I ended up writing like, 4 full pages of explanation. It was pretty intense. Basically, here's what I determined:

I am afraid of school. Because
a. I am exhausted whenever I'm at school, because I am sleep-deprived because of 1. waking up early 2. bad time management, causing me to have to stay up late to get work done 3. Even when I get all my work done early, I stay up late just so I can actually spend some quiet time doing things I like to do, like write.
b. The noise and rush of school. I hate being in a rush, I'm always scared of forgetting something or not being fast enough (aka late for class) and the noise just gives me headaches and bugs me.
c. The rules. Those scare me because I never know when I might break one and get in trouble and cause conflict. Conflict makes me want to crawl in a hole and cry, even when it's not about me. I don't even really know all my school's rules, and the ones I do know, I don't always follow. Probably cuz I dont respect the rule-makers.
d. I usually don't do my homework anymore, cuz I go home and I'm too stressed to focus. That means I'm always afraid of getting in trouble for not doing my assignments, basically.
e. I'm afraid of getting bad grades. I've never gotten anything but A's for semester grades, and I know that B's and even C's aren't that bad, but I'm afraid of not getting into the college I want to or not getting scholarships.
f. I'm afraid of being lied to. A few times, i've been discussing what I learned in school with adults and they've shown me that what I learned is wrong. I think that's pretty much the most terrible thing that could be happening in any school system. How are we supposed to know if we're being lied to? It's awful. Like, nightmare material for me.

Then, apart from all the school stuff, I'm afraid that people will think I'm lazy and a slacker and just making excuses why I don't wanna work. I really do want to work hard and learn, I just have no motivation to do my assignments. I dont even get it really.

Another little thing is that I feel like the majority of my teachers don't really care about me or my education, and the majority of the students obviously don't care about me cuz they don't even know me. My friends at school care about me but because of the stress and high demands of school, it's pretty much every man for himself. We don't have time to help each other out or just talk. (Teachers will tell us to do that on out own time. Do they realize that because of the homework they assign, we don't have time of our own at all?)

So that's most of it I think. I don't know if I'll be able to make it to finals at all, just cuz the thought of going back to school in two days makes me feel sick. I've considered homeschool before, and I guess I still am, but I don't really know anything about it so that's kinda scary too. PSEO next year is basically the plan, cuz then I'll get college credits done and be able to get away from high school. The only reason I haven't totally decided to do homeschool is because I'd miss my school friends a lot.

Sorry this wasn't very encouraging or informational, but now instead of explaining this multiple times I can just refer people to this post.


2 Timothy 1:7 "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline."