Believing God Bible study--Week 1

This week I started a Bible study with some women (those that are around my age and single or married but without kids) from the Lin Nan church. I help with this church's English service on Sunday morning. The study we are using is Believing God by Beth Moore.
The format of this Bible study is to meet once a week, then throughout the week there is homework in the form of looking up scriptures and the greek words behind the English, answering questions about what we've read and prayer journaling. It's really great so far and I'm excited to see what God will bring out of it, not just in my life but in the lives of the other 7 ladies that have committed to this study.
This week a big theme was merging your theology with your reality. Now I feel like I have a better grasp on how to do this, mainly through the difficult things that have happened over the past 10 years. But I think God reminded me this week of what my faith was like in high school. Being an idealist I've always had a big view of God. I always knew that He could do amazing things with my life--in fact that was my main prayer all through my teenage years--even though to outward appearances I wasn't anything special. But my problem was that I didn't know how to take my big vision of God and translate it into something that I could share with people on a daily basis. In fact in high school I was a bit of a "God snob". I knew that I was going to go to bible college and be a missionary and live in amazing places helping countless people to know God. As far as my classmates were concerned, they were all small town hicks who were probably going to end up in prison or pregnant before they hit their 20's. Ouch. That right there is a testament to God's grace that He still used me with that kind of attitude.
It's only been in the past couple of years that I've understood that to see the "big" things of God, sometimes you have to be faithful on a daily basis with the "little" things of God. This is so hard for someone like me who likes to think about a wonderful "someday" without being dragged down by the details of how we are going to get to someday. Some areas in my life have been easy to have faith. But there are other areas--areas of life long sins, control issues, projecting my trust issues with people onto God--that have seemed like impossibilities to overcome. But I know "with God nothing is impossible". I want to be more than a conqueror in my life and to continue to become the woman that God intended for me to be. To be honest, I wanted to do this study with these ladies because I could see the need for it in their lives (I don't mean that in a judgmental way, I just mean that as their friend and teacher I know many of the things that they struggle with and felt that this could really help them grow in their walk with God) but after only one week God has brought up so many things in my life where I'm struggling to have faith that it was obviously for my benefit as well.
There's a great illustration that Beth Moore uses in the book that talks about how when she was out walking one day she saw some ducks playing in a puddle. The funny thing was that just over a small hump was a beautiful pond. I don't want to be the duck settling for the puddle when I could have the whole pond! Faith is the key to merging my theology with my reality and living the true life that God has for me.
Week 2's theme: God is who He says He is. Should be good!