Wonder and Praise

I would like to have seen the world with eyes incapable of anything but wonder, and with a tongue fluent only in praise - Pat Conroy

Indescribable Gift

Love these words from Andrew Murray:  "God held the world so dear that He gave His only begotten Son for everyone who will trust in Him. And how did He give Him? He gave Him in His birth as man, in order to be forever one with us. He gave Him in His death on the cross as surety, in order to take away our sin and curse. He gave Him on the throne of heaven, in order to arrange for our welfare, as our Representative and Intercessor over all the powers of heaven. He gave Him in the outpouring of the Spirit, in order to dwell in us to be entirely and altogether our own.  Yes, that is the love of God. He gave His Son to us, for us, and in us. Nothing less than His Son Himself. This is the love of God. It is not that He gives us something, but that He gives us Someone, a living person, not one or another blessing, but Him, who is all life and blessing, Jesus Himself."

2 Corinthians 9:15. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

Too Much Stuff

"The simple truth is this: you can read all the books and buy all the cute cubbies and baskets and chalkboard labels, even master the life-changing magic of cleaning up – but if you have more stuff than you do space to easily store it, your life will be spent a slave to your possessions.
The second you open your wallet to buy something, it costs you – and in more ways than you might think. Yes, of course there’s the price tag and the corresponding amount of time it took you to earn that amount of money, but possessions also cost you space in your home and time spent cleaning and maintaining them. And as the token environmentalist in the room, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind you that when you buy something, you’re also taking on the task of disposing of it (responsibly or not) when you’re done with it. Our addiction to consumption is a vicious one, and it’s stressing us out.
When it comes to stuff, I promise you, you don’t need more labels or better systems or complicated Pinterest tutorials – all you need is less."
  Madeline Somerville

Seeing our neighbors

"If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in."

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Listening to Your Life and Beyond Word

Lord, help me to really see my neighbors and to see them as You see them.

Decluttering

If I spent as much time decluttering as I do reading about it...my house would be immaculate. I am reading Marie  Kondo's trendy book:

But, I don't expect to take up talking to my possessions any time soon.  It does have a lot of good ideas though.

I like this quote:

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” -Socrates

At home with God

Words from Christine Hoover’s bookFrom Good to Grace: “With Christ as my city, I can traipse all over the globe and never once not be at home. Because I dwell in His grace.”

 Psalm 139 is a gift to us global nomads in this regard. In verses 7 through 10, the Psalmist asks:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

On Questioning God - Laura Story

God doesn’t promise our stories will make sense in and of themselves. But He does promise they will find their greater purpose in light of His greater story of redemption. — Laura Story, When God Doesn't Fix It When We Ask "Why God? Why?" Laura Story, When God Doesn't Fix It: Lessons You Never Wanted to Learn, Truths You Can't Live Without The answer to our whys may be obvious now, or they may never be answered in our lifetime. But even if we knew why, it’s likely we wouldn’t be satisfied with the answers anyway. We ask God why, believing the answer will provide us with some kind of deep soul satisfaction. But too often, we don’t get the answer we want. I don’t think that means we should give up asking questions; we just need to understand their role in our brokenness. Questions can be a great help in mourning our loss, communicating our frustration, and expressing our feelings. We belong to an almighty, transcendent, yet approachable God who loves hearing our questions. Our questions are important to Him, and the Scriptures are full of hurting people asking questions. Look at the Psalms. David wrote many of them when he was broken; and, in them, he poured out some painful and intimate questions. Sometimes David got answers. Sometimes he got silence. But even when David’s questions weren’t answered, his faith in God was stronger than his need to know. Just like David, my why questions allow me to go before my heavenly Father and pour out my heart to Him. They help me process what I am going through. What are some of your why questions? Have you ever talked to God about them? I want you to take a minute and get a pen and piece of paper. Then I want you to write down all your why questions. Start with “Why did this happen?” or “Why me?” Then get more specific. Try to remember each of those why questions that kept you awake at night. For some of you, it may be a single why question that has plagued you for years. For others, it may be a long list of whys that have changed as often as your circumstances. Don’t try to answer them until you have exhausted your list of questions. But stop and do it now. I’ll wait right here until you get back.   * * * Did you make a list? How did it feel to write down your why questions? Was it a relief, or did it make you angry to put your whys on paper? Were your why questions answered? Or did most of your questions go unanswered? Yeah, me too. It’s important to know that nowhere does the Bible promise that all our questions will be answered this side of heaven. God doesn’t promise our stories will make sense in and of themselves. But He does promise they will find their greater purpose in light of His greater story of redemption. If I am honest, I find that as I look at my list, there is a sense of peace that comes from owning my own why questions. But at the same time, I’ve discovered that the longer I focus on why, the less progress I make. When I continue to ask why, somewhere deep inside me the repeated questioning and lack of answers feeds a sense of entitlement. When that sense of entitlement grows, it usually leads to bitterness. But there is an alternative. The disciples asked, “Why was this man born blind?” In this question, they were asking why for all of us. But in His answer, Jesus didn’t respond directly to the why. Instead, He changed the why question to how. Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. — John 9:3 How might this man’s blindness be used to reveal the work of God? Just as surely as He turned water into wine, Jesus turned the disciples’ blame-seeking why question into a God-seeking how question. Man asks why. Jesus asks how. Man asks, “Why did this happen?” Jesus asks, “How might My Father’s glory be displayed through this situation?” The answer to why doesn’t help us heal. But knowing that God’s glory can be displayed, even in the brokenness of our lives, gives us hope despite our circumstances. I promise you will find more purpose and joy in your life if you set aside the why and begin to ask how. How does my story fit into God’s greater story of redemption? Even when we can’t immediately see how our story fits into God’s story of redemption, Scripture promises that it always does. In the Bible, I see a picture of all things working together for good — a good that, frankly, I sometimes don’t understand. Somehow God mourns the death of a three-year-old, yet he also uses that sweet baby’s death to bring glory to Himself. If you don’t understand how He can do both, well, join the club. I don’t know either. But that’s because I am looking at it from my perspective. Without seeing from God’s perspective, I can’t answer how that story or any other story, including mine, fits into His overall story. But the Bible does reveal to us that sometimes God uses things He hates — things like cancer, divorce, suicide, addiction, death, and more — to accomplish the things He loves. He does this regularly and faithfully. It’s only when we bring our pain to Him that we can find our dwelling in Him. However, when we play the blame game, we’re focusing on everyone but Him. If you made a list of why questions before, I want you to turn that page over and make a new list. A list of how questions. Maybe you’ve never thought of how God could use what you’re going through for His glory. Maybe this is new to you. If so, let me help get you started by giving you a few questions: How might God use your current trial to glorify Himself? How might God use your weakness, infirmity, or disability to display His power? How might God use your hard circumstances to show you something about Himself? How might God use your hard circumstances to show you something about yourself? How might God use your pain for a purpose? How might God make this mess into a message? How might God use your current chaos to make you into a man or woman who walks by faith, not by sight? How might God use your situation to show you that true peace is found only in Him? How might God use an untimely death to stir the hearts of others and show them the importance of eternal security in the life to come? Take a moment and ask God for wisdom in writing your own how list. Refer back to your why questions for inspiration if necessary, but know that your questions and answers may be incomplete or even unsatisfying. Now look over your why list and your how list. Which questions have more answers? Which answers do you have more control over? Does one side of the sheet bring more meaning and purpose to your broken story? Some of you can’t even think about how yet, and that’s okay. Stay in why as long as you need to. But when you get to a place or time when you feel that your why questions are unproductive, try coming back to this and listing your how questions. I’m not saying you’re more spiritual if you get to how, but I am saying that the why questions will eventually suck you dry, slowly draining the life out of you. I know this from talking to and observing those who are stuck in the past. They can’t understand why a good, holy God has allowed something bad to happen to them. What I want to gently tell them is that God doesn’t owe us an explanation this side of heaven. There’s nothing in Scripture that tells us we’re entitled to an answer. It’s not that God is secretive and doesn’t want us to know; it’s that we’re incapable of seeing the big picture. You can sit around and ask, Why me? for the rest of your life, and no one can do much about it. In fact, after hearing some of the stories I’ve heard, I want to say, “I get it. If your story happened to me, I might want to go sit in a closet and be bitter at God, too, because that one’s a doozy!” But I also know that staying stuck in the why, or worse, running away from God, only brings more pain and sorrow. You have to run to Him. You have to believe His promises in the midst of your hard situation because not only is that the only thing that will bring you hope, it’s the only thing that will save your life. When people go through the kind of heartache you or someone you know is going through, the only other response is to slip away into isolation and wait until the evil one eats you alive. We have to come to a point where we say, “I don’t know why my life looks this way. But I don’t have to understand why. It’s enough for me to believe that God has a plan and that He has promised He will never leave or forsake me, and He will be by my side through every trial I face.” I know this counters everything we think we want, but there is freedom in not having all of the answers — especially the answer to why. Our faithful and compassionate God allows us to ask any question we want no matter how difficult. Don’t lose another day of your life asking unproductive why questions. When the time is right, move forward by asking how. God is good. He knows what, with His help, we can handle and where we most need to see His work. It’s easy to sign up for a short-term mission project or donate money to a building campaign at church. And it’s true; we can see God working in those places. But would you be willing to sign up for the brokenness in your life, if you knew your brokenness would bring glory to God and enable you to learn to trust Him in everything? We’re tempted to measure our circumstances on the world’s scale, but God’s economy uses God-sized scales. His story is so much bigger than ours, and one day when we see it in totality, we’ll have all the answers we desire. Myth: Contentment begins with understanding why. Truth: Contentment begins with asking how God might use this for His glory. Excerpted with permission from When God Doesn't Fix It: Lessons You Never Wanted to Learn, Truths You Can't Live Without  by Laura Story, copyright Thomas Nelson.

Relying On God

 Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done. 

-C.S. Lewis

People

The majority of our joys, struggles, thrills, and heartbreaks relate to people, beginning first with ourselves and then the people we came from, married, birthed, live by, live for, go to church with, don’t like, don’t understand, fear, struggle with, compare ourselves to, and judge. People are the best and worst thing about the human life.  Jen Hatmaker, For The Love

Becoming Me

I love this quote....
“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of being yourself.” – Anna Quindlen

Hospitality

If your house isn’t perfect, don’t sweat it: the point is for people to leave your home feeling better about themselves, not better about you.  (The Modern Mrs. Darcy Blog)

Yikes, blog....it has been a long, long time.
“If you don’t like something change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” -Mary Engelbreit

Hopeful Service

Wow, it has been a long time since I've blogged.  I suppose December was filled with cookie decorating and Christmas celebrations.   In January I have been focusing on being more healthy and decluttering.  But today, this really hit me because it is my heart's desire to honor God and encourage others toward Him.

 If your sincere intent is to glorify God & bless people in your efforts,
And you are not motivated by self-focused unloving attitudes,
You will see the hand of God move with you as you do your work.
                                                                      (Dallas Willard, “Who Is Your Teacher?”)

So my job is not to move God’s hand or to make my work effective;  my job is to keep a right heart, one that:
• makes God’s goodness, beauty, strength and power obvious (glorifying God),
• intends to bless people,
• is selfless and loving.

People and circumstances were wearing away my belief that I work with God and God works with me. That despair keeps me from trusting that God’s hand is moving even if I can’t see it. I serve the Lord Jesus Christ, not myself, not publishers, not even my readers, students or directees. Jan Johnson

 "May not a single moment of my life be spent outside the light, love and joy of God's presence and not a moment without the entire surrender of myself as a vessel for Him to fill full of His Spirit and His love."  Andrew Murray

So, my prayer today is to cooperate with God in His kingdom work of spreading the Good News of the Gospel of Grace.  I want to impact others lives but I get discouraged when I don't see anything happening.  Maybe it's because God knows I'd be prone to pride and think it was "my works" that were drawing people to Christ rather than His kindness.  I pray to keep a pure heart before the Lord, ready and willing to be His servant.

 Romans 15:13 (NLT)   I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

Thanksgiving Every Day

Edward Sandford Martin (whoever he is) said:

“Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.”

Love

“What the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies.”

Don't know who said it but that sure is a true quote.   Lord, help me to love you above all.

Love

“Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.” Corrie ten Boom

Education

“Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.”
– John Taylor Gatto

Welcome to my table...

“Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.”   Henri Nouwen

I love Ann Voskamp....she has such a great way of wording things....

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/08/how-to-really-send-the-kids-back-to-school-out-into-the-world

 Life is about one thing: Coming to His table and inviting as many as you can to come with you and feast on the only Living Food.

 And don’t live safe. How many times have I thought safe mattered when Jesus died to save us not to make us safe. No one ever got saved unless someone else was unsafe.

  "There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice."     John Calvin

This quote goes along with my morning devotion Scriptures today about praising God.
There is always a reason to REJOICE despite our circumstances.

Psalm 103:1-5  New Life Version (NLV)

 Praise the Lord, O my soul. And all that is within me, praise His holy name. ² Praise the Lord, O my soul. And forget none of His acts of kindness. ³ He forgives all my sins. He heals all my diseases. ⁴ He saves my life from the grave. He crowns me with loving-kindness and pity. ⁵ He fills my years with good things and I am made young again like the eagle.

 

 Psalm 34:1  New Life Version (NLV)

 I will honor the Lord at all times. His praise will always be in my mouth.