FIRST BLOG!

Whooohooo! First blog, where to start? For starters, my name's Devyn, but as you can see, I also go by Devo, Devo Burrito, among other variations. I'm gonna try and keep this updated but I just started the new school year and I'm gonna try to get a job pretty soon so I'll have alot to balance. Let's see, what else is there about me? I'm sixteen, I'll be seventeen on October 23rd, I'm a junior in highschool, I'm the youngest of two in my family, I have an older brother, Scott, who is 26. The most important thing about me is that I am a Christian.

In everything I do I want to serve God and make Him more known. At school I'm in leadership and hopefully ASB my senior year. I want to make an impact at my highschool and right now my best friend, David, and I are planning on starting a group at school. Once that is more planned out I'll be keeping info about that updated on here. I have a project for myself that I'm working the bugs out of but what I'm trying to do is have a list of four to five things to do each day for my school and for God. These things include (but aren't limited to) finding people who are by themselves at lunch and befriend them, helping teachers, picking up garbage whenever I see it on the ground, basically trying to serve others like God says we are to do, to show them love, and to have a servants heart so they see God's love.

Last week in leadership class I got really excited because we were learning the qualities of a good leader and they all matched up biblically and they happened to be the same things I have been praying about since the beginning of summer. My teacher explained that in order to be a good leader we need to have character, that we need to be the same person all the time and not one person with some people and another with other people. He emphasized integrity and servanthood. Later I was talking to him and told him that we should try to find a way for the whole school to learn this, so now my brain is searching for a way to get this information into the hands of teachers so it can be passed along to the students. Why? Because these qualities (plus a few others) are the same qualities that God says we need to have.

At the conference I went to in Baton Rouge last summer Pastor Joel Stockstill preached on these qualities in a sermon he called "Ten Components of Maturity." Since I go to a public school, a couple of them I wouldn't be allowed to share like Pastor Joel did because we aren't allowed to talk about Jesus at school but I'm sure that I could find a way to get the message across to people in a public school approved way. Just think, if students chose to respect and live out these things, we would be helping to raise up a generation of people living Godly lives. If we could get people to choose to live by some high standards we could make a huge impact on society.

So what are these components of maturity? I won't go into alot of detail but here are the things Pastor Joel talked about:

• Integrity
• Right relationships
• Sanctification
• Wisdom
• Humility
• Discipline
• Sensitivity
• Character
• Discrection
• Tested Faith

I very strongly encourage you to listen to his sermon. You can find it on 220's podcast under the titles of Components of Maturity parts one and two. If you have trouble finding it you can find it on 220power it's under June.

Sorry for going off on a tangent, I just feel really passionate about raising up this generation to live holy lives because, let's face it, right now most teens are living focused on "some day having the perfect life." And what they don't realize is that they aren't going to go straight from living with their parents to making millions right out of highschool. We, being the adults of the future really need to be more mature and learn what it is to work hard, myself included! I have the idea of it but I still need to put it into action. It's like the parable of the two sons in
Matthew 21:28-31.

Well, I should probably start wrapping this first post up, but stay tuned for more information. If you would, please pray for unity in my family, not so much my immediate family but please just pray that God will soften hearts and help bring unity. Also please pray for my parents because I really feel like they are breaking through and I feel like they are going to get saved soon. Please just pray that they continue to grow and pray for protection from the devil's attacks against them. I feel that God has been restoring unity in our immediate family since last summer which is great because we are starting to be accountable to eachother and we are starting to rely more on eachother but outside our home our family (on my mom's side) really needs unification. Thank you so much, I couldn't tell you how much I would appreciate your prayers and if you have any prayer requests please leave a comment and I will pray for you. Or if it's something you don't wanna leave in a comment then you can email me at SnowDevyn@aol.com

God bless all of you, keep serving Him.

In His service,

Devyn

PS: Even since I wrote the part about my immediate family being united, I've seen strong evidence of it. And now we might be taking a trip over to cle-elum to try to help my aunt who is really sick, please pray for a complete healing in her body and her mind. Thank you.