INVITATION: Memorize 100 Bible verses in 1 year

     Okay Diana, I'm in. I expect it will mean reviewing verses I learned at Multnomah Bible College umpty-ump years ago. I was torn because I had just determined to start memorizing verses in Spanish. But I realize I can do both. When you post the verse on your blog, I'll just take the reference to http://www.biblegateway.com/, scroll down through the translations, click on La Biblia de las Americas, and memorize that instead.
     For those of you who don't know about this, but are intrigued by the idea, check out Diana DePriest's blog, My Walk of Faith or her Facebook. Then, summon all your wandering IQ points and get ready. We start in ten days.

     Question: Do I get extra Brownie points for learning them in Spanish?

When God says no (2 of 3)

    So here I was, my senior year, trying to get the very most out of what I was learning and prepare for the foreign field. I wasn't going to be sidetracked by anything.
     Then I met Eric (Rick).
     You can't trick me, Satan, I thought knowingly. You're trying to distract me. I'm not falling for it--or him!
     I refused to go out with Eric (I told him I didn't want to date until the Lord brought me the man I was to marry), but I didn't have peace about it. The more I tried to avoid him, the more disobedient to the Lord I felt. It was as if God were saying, Stop fighting Me!
     Me, fighting God? How could I be? I felt a little bit of the astonishment Saul felt on the way to Damascus when he thought he was defending God's honor and found out that he was standing in His way. When there was a conflict between missionary service and marriage, wasn't missionary service always the spiritual choice? I wasn't about to let my heart get in the way of my will, and as long as Eric wasn't called to Japan, I didn't want to marry him!
     Now I had to reevaluate my understanding of God's priorities. Maybe God wanted me to marry Eric. It seemed crazy to me. Here I was, begging to be God's instrument and God was turning me down. I was presenting myself as a martyr (which wasn't hard, since Japan was home!) and God was saying, No, go ahead and fall in love!
     Eric was as cautious as I was. We prayed before every date, "Lord, stop this relationship if You don't want it to develop."
     We continued to date throughout the end of my senior year and during the summer and fall after my graduation.
     At last we both recognized that God was in our relationship. At that point, our prayers changed to, "Lord, develop this relationship unless you want it to stop."
     We were married two days before Christmas. I still didn't understand why the Lord would actually direct me to be derailed from missionary service. I assumed it was only temporary.
     It had better be temporary, I thought, because Eric was from--guess where?--affluent Los Angeles! The next thing I knew, I was living in the one city in the world I had reacted so strongly against.

(To be concluded)

Today I am thankful for prayer.

When God says no (1 of 3)

     When the speaker asked for volunteers for missionary service, I was on my feet in an instant. Of course I wanted to be a missionary! That's why I wasn't dating this year, my senior year at Multnomah School of the Bible. I didn't want any romantic entanglements to get in the way of my going to Japan and telling people about Jesus.
     Standing up and going forward was really just a formality. I had already offered myself to the Lord for missionary service; I'd reminded the Lord of my availability numerous times.
     It was just coincidental that my family lived in Japan, that I had spent six years there, had come to know the Lord there, that I missed sushi, straw mat floors, misty blue outlines of tiered hills beyond the rice paddies, shopkeepers sprinkling water on unpaved streets to keep the dust down, men on bicycles, little girls jumping rope with littler girls bobbing on their backs.
     When I found Christ, I knew I needed to take time out to get to know more about Him. I would have gone to Bible school in Japan, but the Lord directed me instead to Portland, Oregon.
     This meant flying alone at age 20 from Tokyo to a country I had not lived in since I was seven. I remember approaching Los Angeles, looking down at all the swimming pools, and thinking, I would never want to live there!
     I knew no one on the entire west coast of the United States. In fact, the only person I knew on the mainland lived in Ohio. But I knew the Lord and that was sufficient.
     I had been at school several days when He began to pressure me.
     It's such a little thing, Lord, I said. So I still have my watch set to Japan time, so what? It helps me pray for the people I know there.
     The Lord kept convicting.
     But I'll be flying back at the end of the year, I reasoned with Him.
     He wasn't impressed.
     OK, Lord, I'll change it. I capitulated and then I knew why He'd insisted. He wanted me in Portland. All of me.
     He waited until I was settled and well into the school year before He gently revealed to me that I would not be staying one year, but all three. I was going to graduate.
      Graduate and return to Japan, of course, I thought. Where the Lord was silent, I filled in the blanks with my own assumptions.
(To be continued)

Today I am grateful for the Bible.