First day of Fall and a Deck

In the light of day, every thing becomes clearer.   Have you ever noticed that?  You can see things for what they are. What an amazing blessing about life.  In the the Light of Day and the first day of fall....I was out on my back deck, we have a had a super hot and dry summer, Especially September.  Have you ever noticed what happens to the wood on your deck when its hot?  It shrinks, well all the moisture leaves it and the gaps in your deck become larger.  You may have placed them right next to each other when you built it but time takes its toll.  What if your marriage is like that deck, when you get married you are really close, you don't like to be apart. But as time (heat) is added to your marriage you slowly put space in your marriage. How do you keep the heat in your marriage with out causing the gaps?  As time goes on people change, are you choosing to change with your spouse or are you choosing to change without them.  Each going there own direction.  Lets face it in this busy life it is hard not to become disconnected.  Whether you work at home or out in the world, your spouse is doing the same thing, working.  Both tired, exhausted at the end of the day.  Sometimes at whits end, not wanting to do anything involving conversation or anything else. (here comes that bad dry heat) Why not stop while your behind.  Turn off the TV, talk for a few minutes, make an effort to spend time with the one you love.  Make a date night, before you say I need a babysitter or blah, blah blah.  Who said your date has to be outside the house?  What about pulling out a board game, card game or watching a video together, snuggle up and love on one another.  Life and marriages take work.  Work today on closing the gap, not making it wider.

Worship, Who, What, Where, When and How?

Worship! Who, what, where, when and how; does it really matter?  Well does it? Yes and no, yes well no, umm I am not sure.  Well if you haven't noticed I like blogging about what God has placed on my heart and in my mind.  Sometimes the blog post come fast and sometimes my heart needs to be prepared to share.
     This time it is about worship, does it matter the form in which we worship God?  Aren't all churches the same, are not they all preaching salvation? Yes, some do.  However some believe that there is more than one way to heaven.  I am not focusing on these churches today, I am going to focus on the ones that believe that there is ONE way to heaven, that is through Christ, who died and was raised on the third day.  Forgiving all sins for everyone that will believe. 
           Who are you worshiping?  Like I said hopefully you are worshiping God the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  What are you worshiping, I pray it is not a what but God. 
Where do you worship?  Did you know there is more than one way to do it and more than one place you can go?  Some enjoy and grow in a traditional Catholic Mass, yes I said CATHOLIC MASS.  Why? are they not included in the "Christian" family? Because some of them go to church just on Christmas and Easter? Maybe because they have some many rules.  Did you know that the basis of their Church is still the trinity? What about all the Baptist, Methodist and Lutherans etc. That only go to church on those two holidays too. I dare say that anyone that just chooses  to go to a building "church" just twice a year is probably not really saved. 
       When do you worship?  Is it on Sundays or Saturdays?  Is it maybe in every step you take.  I like to tell my children God takes time for you every moment of every day, I hope you will learn to do the same.  Life, your very life in all you do should be a type of worship to God.  Work, play, cleaning, cooking, helping, exercising all of it. Breath Him in and out.
      Finally, how do you worship. Why, do people chose to or not to go to a place to worship God corporately?   Because they like the way that church worships God.  What if, a Catholic walked into mass only to find people dancing and waving flags as they were praising God?  What is a Baptist walked into church on Sunday only to find it replaced with mass? Ridged and full of rules?  Wouldn't that upset you if you were going some place for one type of worship just to be forced to accept another?  Or fairly enough, my family was invited to a different church to celebrate their dedicating it to the LORD.  It was beautiful worship services, it was also very, very different to what we are used to. But it was how they did it, in their church.  That is very differently than being told to change or you reject Christ.  Some actually enjoy old Hymns, some enjoy contemporary music, some enjoy mass, some even enjoy jumping and dancing in the pews.  It isn't about the type of worship it is about the heart and who you are worshiping.  Who, says you have to change the message or type of service you go to get something out of it?  Maybe change doesn't need to be the style maybe it needs to be the heart.  Bottom line though people are not going to go where they don't feel free to worship they way that brings them joy and glory to the Lord.  I pray you will find just the right place.  If you are seeking I pray God will lead you to the right home.

Empty.....

My old life I would describe as the following.  Lacking, empty, not complete, broken, un-loved, missing, gaping hole, bland, grasping at strings, searching but never finding.  Lacking, although I might have seemed to have it together, with lots wonderful friends, a beautiful daughter and a great family my life was still lacking.  Empty, not complete, broken, un-loved, gaping hole is how I could describe the condition of my heart again, friends, daughter and family my heart was all of these things.  Bland, missing, searching but never finding, grasping at strings was my mental and emotional state.  At a glance you might have seen any of this in my life, even if you really knew me you might have not known.  I was lost, beyond lost.  Totally submerged in the world around me.  Doing everything I could possibly do with out getting in to much trouble.  Knowing there is a God but convinced he hated everything about me.  I mean he totally just opens up the sky and bad things would happen over and over.  I mean why was my life not going just the way I wanted to?  Boyfriends sure didn't fill the lack of love I seemed to be missing.  In fact they kind of numbed me for a while but did not fix it.  Partying like a rock star, was a lost cause.  That became very dull by the time I was 23.  I still went out had fun, drank and partied but in the morning my life was still not any fuller.  I just had a hangover, oh boy!  Then I started trying different exercises...maybe Yoga or one of these things could complete me....No, still nothing! It would work for a while then I was back to the beginning.  Searching in-ward, to find me.  Finally, I thought well nothing else is working, might as well try God.  I went to mass every Sunday with my daughter, I still wasn't getting it.
    You see when you seek God with only half of you, or just part of your heart.  You still can not experience life.  My problem was I knew that there was a god, but I didn't know God.  I knew enough to blame him for my bad choices. They were still mine, made by my free will. He did not make me do any of it, but it was still His fault.  Let me stop here and make a little side note.  Every action and has an equal and opposite reaction.  Science taught me that in elementary and middle school.  Does it really apply to all life? Yes, every part of life.  So was it God's fault? No, it was all mine.  Do good parents discipline their children? Yes, how much more did God love me?  More realistically how could He possibly love me?
     Sometimes the bottom is a good place for you to be.  The only way out is up.  Sometimes to be entangled in a large web, nest or knot is a good place to be.  The only way to escape is to be still.  Silence! "Be still, and know that I am God;" Psalms 46:10a  My problem wasn't my lack of friends or that I wasn't a good enough.  My problem was I didn't realize who or what I was.  More importantly I didn't know who God was.  "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."  Psalms 139:14  If you knew that little secret, that God, made you! He made you wonderfully.  That you are not a mistake, there are no oopses when God is in control. In fact.. "My frame was not hidden when I was made in the secret place.  When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."  Psalms 139:15-16.  He knew my days, my life had a plan, I was here for a purpose.  
   During my searching for God, but not at the same time.  He sent me a man, a husband who knew full well who God was, and where life came from. Where emptiness becomes full.  In fact he saw something in me I had no idea was there.  NO! My husband is not where I found fulfillment, I love and he is the one God made for me.  However I could never ask or demand that he (my husband) be where my completeness comes from.  There is no way any one could ever fill that position.  Nor could my children complete that task.   
   Finally, I with a lot of prayer from my sweet husband God, made himself known to me.  I finally understood, that life comes from him alone.  That through Jesus, who died over 2000 years before, did that for me.  ME! How much had I grieved God before this, yet his love was deep enough to pull up and still love me.  By Jesus dying and rising I have life.  I think when you have full knowledge of what you have done and could be still be doing.  Embracing Christ becomes more of a Sunday thing.  It becomes life, all the way nothing lacking, empty, incomplete, missing.  I have sought and found, my heart is full, not even a little hole left.  Does this mean my life won't have trials? No, then I might forget where my strength comes from.  No, life might not be perfect in the worlds eyes.  But it is perfect in God's and that is perfect in my book.

How much is too much?

  Tuesday of this week during my oldest bible lesson, we read one of the most profound statements, I have read or heard from anyone.  We were reading about Samaria being under siege. The opposition surrounded the city and the Israelites inside were starving....They were eating doves dung and donkeys heads.  The King would walk around the city walls in his royal robes everyday.  While doing this a woman came to him and asked for his help.  "Help me, my lord, yesterday a woman came to me and said, kill your son today so we might eat and tomorrow we will kill mine.  She has hidden her son."  The King tore his robes and there was his sack clothes. For those who do not know they would wear sack clothes when they humbled themselves before the Lord. When they were mourning. 
   This King however did not humble himself completely before God, he chose to continue to wear his regular clothing.  How often do you yield to God completely?  Is is every Sunday, Christmas and Easter (those holidays are actually all about God not Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny), when you are really in a bind, when something bad has happened in your life?  Why is it okay to submit to God just at these times and not the rest of the week, year or your life? Is that the kind life really acceptable to God? Since He created you to worship and serve him, I think not. Are there benefits to knowing God? Yes, his unconditional love, his time and patients, mostly being in his presence.  Does it mean your life is going to be easy? Absolutely not, you will still have life trials and he does not promise to be cake walk. 
   Have you yielded completely? Or just in the some things you really need help in? The profound thought or question I have for you is has your "Church (the building not you) became a social club where men talk about football and the women exchange recipes." I will take even further, is the place you worship where you try to keep up with the Jones' and God is there but not the center of your life or focus?  Are the messages watered down to "draw" more in?  Is that what church is supposed to look like.  God has rules, try your hardest he understands... Church attendance is down and we are losing a lot of young people not because it is not fun enough, not cool enough, or does not play the right type of music.  Church in America's problem is the lack of God in the places we gather to worship, watered down messages, and mostly God has been kicked out of every public place; schools, work, government.  How can you expect to grow the next generation of Christians when for twelve years five days a week, they are taught a worldview that does not line up with the Bible.  When truth is relative and not absolute.  Mostly Christan's are looked at as intolerant, hypocrite, freaks.  Why are we looked at this way?  Could it be the life you are leading? Are you a Christian one day a week and hiding God under your clothes the rest of the week?  Why?  Stop living two lives live one. So what you if you are labeled a freak. Intolerant, because you believe in absolutes, big deal, I would much rather believe in an absolute God and be absolutely wrong, then disappoint the one who created me. Made me just so, for this life I have been blessed with. 
  So what are you going to do different today? Maybe you are already living the life you should, most of us, myself included, have hidden things we need to work on. Yield completely today, and the rest of the year. See what God has in store for your life and your family's.