God has begun to challenge me to look at Him from the beginning.  A little background on this is, for the past few weeks, I have been so consumed with attempting to know things in my heart because I have so much head knowledge but it never seems to hit my heart.  Anyway, He has been challenging me to go back to the beginning and seek Him through that.  So, I have begun in a few different ways:  reading my Bible beginning at Genesis, looking at the Hebrew names of God and what they mean, and just wholeheartedly seeking Him through prayer.  Each way, He is revealing Himself to me in wonderful ways.  Just in Genesis, I am able to see Him as the Creator He is.  He has begun to show me how He created us in much the same way as He created the world ("God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness" Genesis 1:4).  Through seeking Him out through His Hebrew names, I am beginning to see another side of Him (El Roi, pronounced Eel raw-EE, meaning the God who sees me).  And through prayer, He is continuously answering me and my questions and just revealing Himself in ways I had not otherwise known. 

    It seems like it's a deep version of going back to the basics here, and I absolutely love it.  My small group leader gave us the assignment of looking at the book of Romans and what it had to say about the question we were given during large group discipleship (are we born inherently good or bad?).  And I have read this book over and over again, yet this time, I was able to read it and see something completely different!  God is so amazing!  I feel like the Bible is the only book I will never get sick of!  There is constantly something new in it that I can learn from and grow in.  I have never heard so much of what God is speaking to me before, even though I have read through these same verses in the past.

    But at the same time, God is continuously replanting His word as well as different truths into my life.  I don't know how to explain that really, other than the fact that He just keeps placing Scriptures into my hand either through me reading it or through other people giving it to me.  It seems that, in order to truly seek Him, I needed to get away from the complacency that I had fallen into back home.  Not that I hold anything against home, but it becomes too easy to fall into patterns when you have lived someplace for so long.  Being here is teaching me discipline in so many areas.  I just desire to seek God more and more with my whole heart.  I cannot wait for the next moment I am able to spend time with Him in intimacy, in quiet!  God is good!