How Firm a Foundation

Something I have noticed lately is that I am slowly discovering the amazing truths in the more traditional hymns that we sing in church. Our church has music that varies from the more contemporary worship songs to the traditional hymns (most of which were written a long time ago). I love all of them, but when I was younger I never really understood the hymns. The language in which they were written was different and I just didn't really try to understand what I was singing. Well, I'm sorry to say that I am just now getting those lyrics! I guess I just never paid attention...
Anyways, all of that to say that there is some AMAZING stuff in those hymns!! I love Chris Tomlin and Hillsong and all that, but I have to say that some of my favorite songs can be found in a hymnbook. The past few weeks I've been meditating on the hymn, "The Love of God." MercyMe did a really good rendition of it. It's in my little playlist on the bottom of this page. Scroll down and check it out!
This week, I've fallen in love with the words to "How Firm a Foundation." They are just SO encouraging!! It was written in 1787, yet here in 2011 we are still singing it. :)
Here are the lyrics for you: (I also have the Sovereign Grace version of this hymn in my playlist if you would like to have a listen)

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said
To you, who for refuge to Jesus have fled?

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen you, help you, and cause you to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call you to go,
The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;
For I will be with you, your troubles to bless,
And sanctify to you your deepest distress.

When through fiery trials your pathways shall lie,

My grace, all sufficient, shall be your supply;

The flame shall not hurt you; I only design
Your dross to consume, and your gold to refine.

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

P.S. The last two verses are my favorites. :)

Something to keep you happy

I first want to apologize for my delay in updating this blog. I have been ill with the flu this past week so I did not feel like doing anything at all except lay in bed and try to situate myself in such a way that I would not worsen the pain that plagued my entire body.
Anyways, I thought I might share a few pictures that I find interesting or hilarious or both. Enjoy.
(credit goes to whoever made them)

My personal favorite:

P.S. This song is amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5CF9OJRKkA&feature=feedlik

Disney Horror Films

When I was younger (approximately from age 5 to 10) there were certain Disney movies that I didn't watch and even refused to watch. Most of them were made very early (1940s), but contain concepts and villains that completely freaked me out as a kid. Here are my top three:

1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

By far the scariest movie of my childhood. I absolutely refused to watch any part of it. I never even dared to look at the cover of the VHS that sat in our movie cabinet. There was always this constant image in my mind that gave me nightmares. You could tell me stories about monsters hiding under my bed all day long, but the only thing I would ever be scared of was the possibility that this image might come out of my closet at night or pop up in my window:

I don't think the Disney animators could've picked a more frightening or horrific image than that right there. I would love to meet the guy who came up with this idea, but he's probably dead by now. Gotta give him credit for creativity though. It just so happens that his creativity haunted me for my entire childhood. That's all.

I'm not bitter or anything.

2. Pinocchio

Now this movie didn't scare me so much with horrifying images but rather with the concepts. When I was little, I hated watching any movie/TV show that had kids being captured or tortured (not necessarily physically). In Pinocchio, he wasn't exactly a kid....he was just a living puppet who was captured by an evil puppetmaster and was turned into a donkey against his will. Yeah. That's good for little kids to watch. To this day, I will not watch Pinocchio even if it was the only movie on the planet. No offense to the sick-minded Disney filmmakers.

3. The Black Cauldron

A lot of people have never even heard of this movie before. It wasn't exactly a successful film. It was made sometime in the 1980s I think. Anyways, in our household we used to watch Disney movies aaaaaalll the time. I remember hearing about this movie, but we weren't allowed to watch it and I was never told why.

Well now I know.

I recently found this movie on youtube and watched it (this was about a month or two ago). I will admit WITH PRIDE that I was seriously freaked out. Not even kidding. It probably didn't help that it was really late at night and everyone was asleep but me...and all of the lights were off too. But anyways, that's beside the point.

Just to give you an idea, the plot reminded me very much of the Lord of the Rings. Just replace Frodo with a little boy, the ring with an ancient black cauldron (and a magical pig if you want to get technical), and Gollum with a dog-like animal creature thing named Gurgi. All of this was totally fine, but what really scared me was the "Sauron" of the movie, pictured here:

Yeah...

He is known as "The Horned King," so I was expecting...oh, I don't know, a Maleficent (from Sleeping Beauty) kind of thing.

Nope.

The animation combined with the deep scraggly voice and the eerie castle pretty much did it for me. I was sitting there with chills going up and down my spine. It was just plain creepy.

So there we have it. The three most horrifying Disney films in existence. I highly doubt they will be able to top themselves...but then again, they did come up with Pinocchio and the Black Cauldron several years after Snow White. Who knows?

One last look for the road:

P.S. Sweet dreams.

Just a typical Sunday afternoon . . .

Yesterday after church, Anna, Andrew (my little brother) and I all went over to Me-mama and D-daddy's house. That sentence probably made absolutely no sense to you at all if you don't know them. Our friends the Sheppards have grandparents (aka Me-mama and D-daddy) who live very close to us. This is a picture of Taylor and Cody, the two oldest kids of the family:

Anyways, we sometimes meet them at their grandparent's house for lunch on Sunday afternoons. This time we had a very lovely and very Southern lunch consisting of pork and gravy, rice, butter beans, broccoli, and some pineapple casserole that was, quite literally, the bomb. Oh yeah, and some buttered Italian bread on the side.

After our delicious lunch, Anna, Taylor, and I decided to work on their song (they are performing in church sometime soon). Taylor played her guitar and sang, and Anna played her violin. I just sat there and helped them figure out the melody. :)
It was really fun! They played around a bit (we tend to digress from time to time) and we came up with an alternate version of a Tay Swift song. We call it "We Belong With Thee," a more "spiritualized" version. :)
Unfortunately, I didn't get a recording of that song, but I did make a video of Anna and Taylor doing a song called "Next To Me" by Sleeping at Last. It's a really good song. And they're really good singers/ukulele players (as you can see from the video).

In case you're interested, here is the original version:

Personally, I like Taylor and Anna's version better.

But that's just me.

P.S. "Ukulele" is probably the best word ever. God bless the person who invented that instrument.

Rejoice in the Lord

This morning I went to breakfast at Starbuck's with my friend Kimmy, who is also a co-worker at Chick-fil-a. We had a GREAT conversation about Bible studies and school and how important it is to learn more about God every day. She gave me this really awesome quote that I want to share with you. This isn't the exact quote, but you'll get the general idea:

If we don't find joy in knowing God here on earth, how can we expect to enjoy eternity with Him?

Wow...ouch. That one hit me pretty hard. I guess that's because I just never considered the importance of experiencing joy in God. But we are going to be spending an ETERNITY with Him. So why not find joy in His presence right here, right now?
We are going through the book of Philippians in our Wednesday night Bible studies at our church, and we just finished the passage in chapter 4 about rejoicing in the Lord. I was reminded of that when Kimmy told me this quote.
Here is the verse I'm talking about (Philippians 4:4):

"Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!"

Short, simple, and sweet...but not very easy to obey. :)
My pastor made a comment about this particular command, saying that it was just that: a command. It's not an option. It is God's expectation for every Christian.
I love those verses that don't give you an option (not really). It's so hard to obey them! But what Kimmy said this morning gave me a new perspective that makes it a little easier.
My pastor also said that we should think of the command "rejoice" as "be satisfied." So I thought about putting the two ideas together, which leaves us with:

If we are not satisfied with God here on earth, how can we expect to be satisfied in eternity?

That's kind of a depressing thought. Not being satisfied in eternity? Getting almost there, but not quite? That would be really discouraging.
So I thought about some ways I could find more joy in knowing God. There's a book by John Piper called "When I Don't Desire God: How To Fight For Joy." I have yet to read it, but I will very soon and will let you know when I finish it.
If you're interested, go look for it in a bookstore. It will probably be in there somewhere. If not, there's always amazon. :)

For now, here is John Piper's website that has sermons you can download about this topic, along with lots of other cool stuff: http://www.desiringgod.org/

P.S. The blueberry/strawberry granola yogurt parfait at Starbuck's is really fantastic. Go try it.

Let me explain..

Hi.

Well...I started a blog. I talked about starting one for a long time and actually did at one point. I wanted it to be a themed blog with every post relating to one topic. I sort of didn't know what I was doing and never actually posted anything. I had no clue where to start. So I deleted it.

But here is another blog...and here is the first post of this blog. I was inspired by my cousin Anna (who has a fantastic little blog that you should check out. The link is over there somewhere--->).
She started it a while ago and writes about...life. Just anything and everything that she does or thinks about or likes. She shares videos, songs, and pictures that give us a glimpse into her everyday life.
And that's what I want to do.

This blog will consist of pretty much anything that I find interesting enough to share with the world. I hope to be faithful in updating it regularly so it won't become another abandoned attempt at blogging.
So here it goes.

I'm going to start with explaining a few things about this little blog of mine. First, the title comes from a verse in Psalm 63 which I just discovered today:

Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips will praise You.

I thought to myself, "Well, since I am going to be writing about my life, it would be cool to have the title as a reminder of how much greater God is than everything I write about."
Now my blog may consist of a lot of very un-serious and shallow things, but there will be times when I will post really good verses or important things God is teaching me. Just keep in mind that no matter how random or un-serious my posts may be sometimes, the biggest part of my life is and always will be God. He is greater than everything else combined.

So. You may have realized that my title and the URL address of my blog have NOTHING to do with each other WHATSOEVER.
Well, when trying to come up with a name for my blog, my cousins Anna and Olivia (remember those names...they will probably show up a lot in this blog) begged me to name it "Kate the Great Takes the Bait." I wasn't too keen on the name and they got mad at me because I didn't like it as much as they did. Eventually I decided to put it in the URL address instead.
So there you go.
Are you happy now Anna??

P.S. The awesome music you are hearing right now is coming from the music player down on the bottom of the screen. The songs on there are just a few of my favorites. I will probably add more as time goes on. Feel free to click on whichever song you want to hear and enjoy.
You're welcome.