From Our Reading...

I felt like there was so much richness in this morning's readings!! From the warnings to have more faith and to listen to the men of God in 2 Kings, to the warnings for backsliders and the encouragement for those who love God in Jeremiah...and then to 1 Corinthians!



I know I posted something about chapter 13 a couple months back, but we read three chapters this morning, and several other things stood out...



From chapter 12:

vs. 4-6 "There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in men."

vs. 22-26 "...those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor...But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it...If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it."

Some of us are weaker, or may not have as obvious of gifts. But GOD has combined us together to work for His glory! He made the body of Christ to honor and glorify Him! The same Spirit is working in each of us...so let's listen to Him!



From chapter 13:

vs. 2,3 "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing."

If we use our gifts that God gave us without love, they mean nothing. If we don't use our gifts with love, we give God no glory. NONE. If we 'sacrifice' for others without love, it means NOTHING. Does that scare anyone else?? If we go about life without love, we are not obeying what God commands. Well, what is love? Well, read the rest of the chapter :) It so easy to trick ourselves into thinking what we're doing is right yet do it without love! Especially in this chapter, the phrases "love is kind" and love "keeps no record of wrongs" stick out to me. How do YOU want to be loved? Told that you're loved and then have something held over your head? I don't!



From chapter 14:

vs. 12 "...Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church."

I was really convicted by this, because I am not as eager to have spiritual gifts as I should be. Yes, I want God's blessings and temporal things (like a job...) but how much do I crave spiritual gifts? How much do I desire to build up the church? Do I desire gifts for the right reason? Do I strive to bring glory to God in everything I do? Definitely not as much as I should...

The Bible is starting to become so ALIVE to me!! So many things speak DIRECTLY to me! And even 'just' the encouragement from 1 Corinthians 13 about how God loves me...AMAZING love indeed!!!

Short Sighted, Please

A more Christian attitude, which can be attained at any age, is that of leaving futurity in God’s hands. We may as well, for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to Him or not.

Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-tem plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord.” It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

C.S. Lewis

Essay "Learning in war-time."

Found in the book The Weight of Glory

. . . . . . . . . . .

hmm, good point. We are young! We always place our hopes and expectations into the future, simply for the fact that we there is a higher percentage of life yet to come than lies behind us. True true. I see how I bank my happiness on what I expect from the future. Especially on the big issues of marriage, family and career. Help me God to be short sighted, happily working in the present time and leaving the future to you.

God's Love

If you're having a hard time loving someone, I found this song really encouraging:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OihvG607W-c

Here's the chorus:
Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see

Especially applicable when we think about Pastor's sermon on forgiveness...seeing others as God sees them...
applicable when we think about witnessing to others...seeing them as people who need God just as much as we do...
applicable when we get so self-centered and self-focused and forget about others around us...

Applicable on so many levels!

Submission

So, this entry is on submission to husbands.
And if you're single, you're probably thinking ok I'll stop reading then.
If you're married, you're probably thinking I have no idea what that means.

Please don't stop reading.
You're right, I don't. :)

But, if ya'll didn't know, I love reading other people's blogs. I have kinda gotten stuck in a mesh of blogs about kids with health problems, high risk pregnancies, etc. And I recently found one, by a Christian woman nicknamed MckMama (and she nicknamed her kids Big Mac, Small Fry, MckNugget and MckMuffin for anonymity's sake). Her last child had severe heart problems, even while in utero, which led to an enormous amount of stress on her marriage and marital problems. She wrote a post on submission, and I just wanted to highlight some of the things I found in there that I thought we all could benefit from:

1. "It isn't my grip on things that keeps our little life chugging along so nicely. In fact, it was at my own hands that the life was being drained from my own marriage. It is God's grip on us, whether we choose to believe in Him or not, that is the only true grip. My grip was just an illusion."
--we don't have control over our lives! God is ultimately in control, and we are to submit and surrender to Him

2. "Likewise, there was and is nothing I can do to guarantee a fulfilling marriage with my husband.Nothing, that is, apart from choosing to follow God's will for my marriage."
--In all areas of life, there is nothing we can do to ensure a perfect outcome. We can chase after all the worldly pleasures we think we will bring fulfillment, but ultimately we will only find fulfillment in doing God's will.

3. "I am beginning to strive to speak nicely to my husband even when he is not doing the same. I seek to respect him even if he is not acting respectable. After all, I enjoy being loved even when I am unlovable! And God always loves us even when we are unlovable."
--Wow, I certainly don't have that attitude, do you? Am I so thankful that God loves me in spite of me that that thankfulness outpours in love for others? When we are married, there will doubtless be times when our husbands are not respectable and unlovable (in our eyes) but we must go against our natural inclinations. It reminds me of Pastor's sermon on forgiveness this past Sunday; we are forgiven SO MUCH that we MUST forgive others.

4. "What if marriage were meant to make us holy and not (simply) happy?"
--Sharon talked last night at Beautiful Minds about how our culture trains us to think that marriage is simply a romantic love, but there is a whole other reality. In all situations God has for us, He has designed those situations for our benefit, and we have the opportunity to please Him by praying that He would make us more holy. Plus...

5. "[I felt like God was saying,] 'Quit seeking happiness in your marriage by trying to find meaning and emotion in every single cotton pickin' thing your husband does or doesn't do. Just relax. Just be. Just serve me with your marriage. Prince Charming can never make you ultimately happy, anyway.' In surrendering my need to be fulfilled by another human being, I thought I'd be left with a bit of a hollow feeling. But the opposite has been true! In fact, I was just telling Prince Charming yesterday that I feel a weightless freedom that I have never known before. To not require him to meet my happiness needs doesn't leave me feeling unhappy"
--A husband CANNOT make us ultimately happy, anyway. That is too much burden on him! Only in God can we find ultimate happiness and fulfillment.


And that's that :) I have so many other post thoughts stored in my head at the moment though...and 2 whole free days of work!! ;)

Encouragement from Him

From Philippians 2:1-4...
"If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."

I was just thinking how this is the purpose of the blog...if we are united with Christ, we should not be bogged down in the sorrow of sin, but we should be shining as lights for Him and be encouraging to others! Someone spoke to me today about how rehashing my sin to others is not an encouragement, but is in fact discouraging and can even be a stumbling block.

So I want to renew my purpose for having this blog be an encouragement to one another--ya'll are admins, so feel free to edit or delete my posts if they are not glorifying to God! But girls, look at how much the verses say we have received--encouragement, comfort, fellowship, tenderness and compassion...how can we not be filled with gratefulness and joy for what God is doing?? Let's purpose to seek Him wholeheartedly!!

Minor testimony, but still wanted to share it...I had an interview on Wednesday for an events planning training program, and one of the parts of the interview was to fill out a personality survey. On the survey, we had to rank ourselves 1-5 on various categories, then the interviewer asked about them. So, near the end, there were 2 categories of "how religious are you?" and "how politically liberal are you?". I ranked myself, then waited for the question on those. I had to pray though, because I could just imagine myself rationalizing, 'well, I put a 5 but really, if something falls on a Sunday, I could make an exception. And I'm not very politically liberal, but what does that mean anyway? If you have a gay wedding to do, I guess I would just quietly not do it. Not really a big deal.'--I tend to try to please people at any cost. So I prayed God would help me be bold and non-compromising and when she went over the categories, she said "Oh ok you're very religious and conservative. That's actually good to be on that side of the extreme" and kept going. Anyway, just a little praise for God preparing my heart to stand for Him.

Bits from The Problem of Pain

I've been reading The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis, and I wanted to share a few things with you from that:

Confession:

As we've been hearing, we must confess our sin. But when we confess, we tend to detach ourselves from the sin. I know I do: "Ok, now I've confessed, and everybody knows, and everybody's forgiven me--and guess what, a lot of other people have been doing it too! So now, as long as I change, I'm all good." When we repent and confess, God covers our guilt, but we can't pretend that it never happened. We shouldn't dwell in guilt, but where we would have seen guilt, we can't see nothing. We have to see God's righteousness and his forgiveness.

The will:

Many of us are realizing that we have to give things up. Some of these things were sinful, but many of them were just things that were too distracting for us, or weren't in God's plan for us. I thought this quote was really applicable:

"In order to submit the will to God, we must have a will and that will must have objects. Christian renunciation does not mean stoic "Apathy," but a readiness to prefer God to inferior ends which are in themselves lawful. Hence the Perfect Man brought to Gethsemane a will, and a strong will, to escape suffering and death if such escape were compatible with the Father's will, combined with a perfect readiness for obedience if it were not."

 When we give things up we usually aren't going to stop desiring them; if we did, there would be no sacrifice. But we have to be willing to do God's will anyways. (By the way, this doesn't mean that we should feed these desires, even the lawful ones, if we know they aren't God's will--why would we just make it harder on ourselves?)

Goodness does not equal kindness:

Lewis observes that today's society tends to equate goodness with kindness, or mercy. Thus, almost any other sin is treated as ok (if not theoretically, at least practically). Lust, laziness, cheating, whatever, are fine--as long as they doesn't hurt anyone. This was an important insight for me because I've struggled with just that thought--"Well, it doesn't hurt anyone, so what's the big deal? I mean, of course a Christian shouldn't do it, but does it really matter for an unbeliever?" At least two things are wrong with this:

1. God's law is always right and true. We shouldn't condone any sin--even ones that aren't inherently cruel. God hates laziness just as much as he does cruelty; he hates hypocrisy as much as he does meanness. 

2. "...Plato rightly taught that virtue is one. You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues. If, being cowardly, conceited and slothful, you have never yet done a fellow creature great mischief, that is only because your neighbour's welfare has not yet happened to conflict with your safety, self-approval, or ease." 

We still may not be able to convince a non-Christian that these other things are just as evil as cruelty, but we at least don't have to approve of it--including indirectly. In a book by George MacDonald, a mysterious, old princess who represents God tells a boy who has seen her "'something not to do...If you should hear anyone speak about me, never to laugh or make fun of me.'

'Oh, ma'am!' exclaimed Curdie, shocked that she should think such a request needful. 

'Stop, stop,' she went on. 'People hereabout sometimes tell very odd and in fact ridiculous stories of an old woman who watches what is going on, and occasionally interferes. They mean me, though what they say is often great nonsense. Now what I want of you is not to laugh, or side with them in any way; because they will take that to mean you don't believe there is any such person a bit more than they do. Now that would not be the case -- would it Curdie?'"

I've been convicted that I have done this very thing--and it's even easier to do when it comes to sin. When classmates tell me how they cheated in some class last semester, I probably don't have to rebuke them, but I certainly should not laugh. 

(P.S. If you need something to read, these are both great books! The one by MacDonald is The Princess and Curdie, sequel to The Princess and the Goblin. I'm almost positive our church library has the Problem of Pain (with the other church books) as well as The Princess and the Goblin/Curdie (in the school YA section, last time I checked), and I have them as well. Just to warn you, both books have some things that we wouldn't agree with, so you have to read critically, but they are still chalk full of very helpful things as well!) :)

The pointing finger

Hi gals,

This morning in our reading I was struck by the verse in Isaiah 58 "If you do away with...the pointing finger...THEN your light will rise in the darkness" (vs 9,10). Then on the way to work, I heard Romans 2:1-4 "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. ²Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. ³So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? ⁴Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?" And it all came together.

As you all know, revival has been going on in our church for some time now. And I hope and pray that we have all been a part of it. However, I have to confess that I have fallen into the habit of "Quenching the Spirit"--even mentally it is a dangerous thing. There have been many people who have had radical change in their lives, and yet I find myself thinking, "This will never last. I know they will fall back into their old habits." Or worse, when they bring a good word or a good example, thinking "Who are they to tell me what to do or how to live? Just (insert amount of time) ago they were living a much worse life than me. What can they have to offer?"

Girls, I know that we all tend to fall into this mentality. Women are especially vindictive and judgmental. But what does God's word say..."you who pass judgment do the SAME things." Who are we to say whether or not someone has changed? Is it not possible that we are just jealous of the change in their life, and we feel upset that they are actually doing BETTER than we are spiritually? Rather than judging them, we should look and rejoice in what God is doing in their lives. I was thinking about the adulterous woman this morning. What worse sin can there be than to commit adultery...And yet, what did Jesus do? He told her, "neither do I condemn you." Who are we to cast that first stone? Are we guiltless? Have we lived such holy lives that we are able to spiritually discern whether others have come to know Christ for the first time or anew?

When I think about Isaiah I get an image in my mind...standing there and pointing..."saved, not saved, saved, not saved...true repentance, faking it." But for some reason, that finger is never pointed at me, examining and judging my OWN life. I pray that when it does, that I can say with confidence, "Saved!" But when I am so busy deciding about the salvation of others, I am too busy to look at my own life. When we have stopped "the pointing finger" and have looked at our own lives, have accepted God's gracious and MIGHTY work in our church, THEN, then and only then can we have our light shine powerfully in the darkness. God is not calling for us to judge others in this time of revival. Yes, we must be wise and we must be aware that Satan is actively at work. Yes, there are those whose revival is fake...But I know that I err on the side of being over-judgmental, of being to certain that everyone else has a fake revival. Yes, be on guard! Stand firm in the faith! Do not be naiive. But give people the benefit of the doubt. If they are wolves in sheep's clothing, it will become apparent. But you cannot learn how to be holy in your own life if you are shining the light of God's grace in everyone's life but your own.

I know that there is much more complexity to this whole situation than first appears. But, let's believe that God is a great God, that He can save and radically change those who were only a month or two ago living in great sin. He is God! He is mighty! He is great! And He is so far above us that we cannot doubt His work. Do not doubt His grace...or "show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience." Let's take MORE time to examine our own lives. I know that I don't want others pointing their fingers at me and saying "she will never last." I want encouragement and support and prayer that my life will continue to change so I can serve God more.

And one last thing ladies. Let us not think that we can pretend and cover this feeling. I know we ALL know when someone is covering up true feelings...if in our heart we are judgmental people, it WILL come across in our actions. And we will not escape God's judgment!

I hope that this is a reminder for us all. I know that some of you truly do have gracious hearts that are so faithful to build others up. And I praise God for you! I know that I personally need to work on having faith that God can change even the worst person! I hope this is an encouragement to live more faithfully before God. Praise Him!