[Prayer] O-Show Countdown 12 days

For any of you guys who have put on a show, or performed, or competed, I think all of you can agree that the few days or weeks leading up to the event is terrible. Anything that can go wrong usually does go wrong, and if it doesn't... well it usually is the calm before the storm. I don't know if this is the case for some of you, but I firmly believe that in these times, we are under spiritual attack. In Overflow, I can't help but feel like we are being distracted or tempted to be lead astray from worshiping and praising God with unburdened hearts and at full throttle. Maybe it's the stress or the lack of sleep and the consistent bed time of 5am, but I can't help be a little negative and short tempered. I think a lot of us who are preparing for upcoming events feel the same thing. Thankfully for me, even though I've been negative or been stressing over a lot of other things, Lent has been a great. I've been spending more time in prayer and doing devotionals. It's been keeping me grounded and sane.

Amidst all this chaos and confusion though, there has also been a lot of blessing through prayer and fellowship. Whether its God placing images or things in our heads and we have the same convictions, or even if its a strung out sister who has so much stuff to do yet still thanks God for Overflow every day, I can't help but feel blessed to be where I am. It's one of those invincible feelings that because we have Him, nothing is going to stop us from working our hardest over these next 12 days to dance for Him with reckless abandon.

Pray Unceasingly

Lent

I'm getting in to this habit of posting approximately once a month. It's a terrible habit and I definitely need to fix it. By not having posted something in such a long time, my thoughts get all jumbled up and I don't know how to organize and articulate what I really want to say. Lucky for me, I am frustrated and discouraged enough that my mind hasn't wandered off too much.

Looking back these past few years, I have never really challenged myself with lent until this year. Maybe I have challenged myself in the past, but in comparison to this year, lent is definitely much more difficult. In past years I've given up caffeine, anime/manga, eating past a certain hour and some other things. Thanks to a brother, I challenged myself to add something to my life instead of taking things out of my life during lent. The mentality to this being that by challenging myself to increase my devotional time each day, the extra things in life will naturally be filtered out or eliminate themselves in order to stay disciplined and keep to my lent promise. It's been working great and I am truly loving it. However, two days before lent I was also convicted to give up drinking. By no means do I go crazy and go drinking all the time. What drinking usually entails for me is meeting up with a few friends and close brothers and catching up once a week. We share and blow off some steam and its usually a relaxing time.

I was pretty discouraged by some of my brothers tonight. They were aware of my giving up drinking for lent, and knew my convictions/reasoning behind doing it. Even so, tonight as I got dinner with them and caught up, and the idea of going to the bar was brought up, I decided that I would not go so I would not even be presented with the temptation. Thankfully, I have my best friend keeping me accountable and reminded me that going home was definitely the best idea. However, the thing that really irked me was that my other brothers literally tried to drag me with them. I just found it really discouraging that brothers who know what is going on in your life, consciously decide to tempt, distract, lead you away from your convictions.

Accountability is only as strong as you as a group make it. Please in the spirit of lent and fellowship, if you share what you're doing for lent with a brother or sister, keep them accountable and remind them to stick to their convictions. Don't be that person who is trying to lead someone astray. Were supposed to be sacrificing things during lent to remember what God has done for us, and as I'm finding out, it is really hard to do. Don't make it harder on your brothers and sisters.

1 Corinthians 10:13