A Submitted Life

Hey everyone!  I would just like to start out by introducing myself a bit.  My name is Cheyenne.  I grew up in a Christian home, but didn’t really become a true follower of Christ until I was a freshman in high school after an awesome trip to the Hills Alive Music Festival in Rapid City, South Dakota.  Now I am going to college at Idaho State University and just finished my freshman year.  I love to read and write, so I was pretty excited when my mom asked me to take over her blog while she is recovering from her surgery.  I can’t wait to share with you guys what God is doing in my life!

Being in college is a lot more stressful than I thought it was going to be.  Between classes, homework, and work, it’s hard to catch your breath.  Luckily, God is the best stress reliever there is!  The first Sunday before classes started fall semester, I went to a small church near campus and ran into a couple of awesome women who have become great mentors to me.  They invited me to Chi Alpha, one of the on-campus ministry groups at ISU.  They meet every Wednesday night during the school year for worship, bible study, and fellowship.  Going to Chi Alpha and a cell group, a small group of girls who meet to live life together and worship God, helped me get through my first year away from home.  I can’t praise God enough for the amazing girls whom I am proud to call my sisters and the amazing mentors I have gained from Chi Alpha!  My cell group has helped me through some pretty rough times and Chi Alpha was always there to give me a break from my studying to worship God!

So, this last week was finals week for me and I was worrying a lot about my tests and projects.  On Monday morning I opened my bible to get a little encouragement from God before taking my Statistics final, a class I struggled with all semester.  I found this verse, “Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed” (Proverbs 16:3 NLT).  This verse definitely gave me a confidence booster and reminded me of what we had been talking about at Chi Alpha all semester.  This semester we were studying how to live a life, submitted to Christ.  I want to talk about a few of the virtues that stood out to me.

The first one is courage.  Living a submitted life takes a lot of courage.  You have to be willing to trust God and follow Him, even when the future is unclear.  In Luke 22: 39-46, Jesus is on the Mount of Olives praying fervently to God to, “take this cup of suffering” away from him.  In that moment, Jesus is so scared because he’s about to be beaten and crucified for our sins.  And yet, he was walking in courage. He trusted in God and in His promises.  He was able to walk in courage because he was constantly in prayer and accepting the strength God had for him.  I’ve had to do the same thing in my life.  Just before Christmas break, my cell group leader came to me and asked me if I wanted to be a cell group leader for Chi Alpha next year.  I was completely in shock.  My first instinct was to say no.  I couldn’t lead a group of girls in a weekly bible study fellowship group!  I could barely talk to strangers!  How could I have the courage to talk to strangers and invite them to Chi Alpha and my cell group?  I took time to pray about it and God made the answer clear to me.  I could do it, as long as I relied on His strength and trusted in His promises.  “Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.”  I committed to being a cell group leader next year, and because I trusted in God, He has already surrounded me with a group of girls to help me and we even already have one girl who is going to come next year!  It also took a lot of courage for me to step up and write this blog.  I will be honest, I’m scared to death that I won’t live up to the legacy my mother has created.  But once again, I’m getting my courage from God, accepting the strength He is giving me, and I am trusting that I will succeed as long as I’m following Him.

My favorite Chi Alpha this semester was when we had a guest speaker come and talk about faith and hope.  People tend to think that hope and faith are the same thing or at least very similar.  Hope is a virtue that deals with the future.  The speaker said, “even though you are losing right now, you’re going to win,” because God has already won the war.  Faith, on the other hand, is the action of hope.  Faith is putting hope into action.  The guest speaker said, “There comes a point where what you believe in the future you have to bring into right now.”  And that is faith.  Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for.”  So if you see a hungry person on the street you can say, “I hope you get some food.”  But faith is going out and bringing that person some food; bringing that hope into right now.  Faith, is knowing that God is going to provide, which was also the last Chi Alpha of this semester.  What I learned through those two lessons is that I have faith that God will provide a way to bring my hope into right now; as long as those hopes are His will.

The last virtue I want to share is shalom, peace.  Peace seems impossible to find in a world full of war, stress, and chaos, but despite all that, we can have peace within ourselves.  What God means when he says we need to live a life full of peace, is that we should have wholeness in every area of our lives.  No area of your life should cause you chaos.  In Matthew 4:16, it talks about how Jesus went and lived in a place that was absolute chaos, where, “death casts its shadows.”  He goes and lives among them and brings peace to them.  We have perfect peace through the Holy Spirit, and Isaiah 32, gives us a promise of a peaceful life.  God promises that no matter what trials we face, we can have peace in them.  We need peace in our lives so we can bring peace to others, just like Jesus did.

These are three of the biggest lessons I’ve learned.  That I need to walk in courage; to have hope and faith, knowing that God is going to provide; and knowing I can have peace even when everything seems to be chaos.  I have all of this because, I have committed my actions to the Lord.

I’m just the daughter of a small town girl, living a submitted life.