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Monday, January 22, 2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
I've been convinced
'Been needing a laptop, can't argue that for music and media they are simply the best and most reliable...so this long-time PC user is finally taking the plunge and it will be here next week. Thank you, God, for the resources to finally get it, and thank you, Apple, for refurbishing.
Can't say, however, that I'm taking the total switch, because my desktop is a PC, and that is for personal use. The laptop is for the business/ministry.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
One thing...
A blog I regularly read, called 2nd Cup of Coffee, posted this today and I just so resonated with it that I wanted to share it with you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I kind of wanted to jump on the bandwagon at Laurel Wreath's place for the New Year's meditation thing, but I didn't think I had anything deep or wide enough to sing about, so I'm doing an abbreviation on the theme. I'm calling it "1 Thing." It's a small phrase, but if I were re-naming my blog, I would call it 1 Thing because of what it represents in Philippians 3:13-14:. . .
But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
I joke about my feeble memory, and sometimes I am seriously worried about what lies ahead for me medically because I'm already memory-challenged. Interestingly, though, my mind is weak mainly in certain areas. For instance, I can't seem to memorize scripture very well, and I often forget to buy bagels for the school reading club breakfast, for example. But my absent-mindedness is selective. It skims over the good stuff and pores over the bad. On a daily basis, I catch myself rehearsing the times I failed, sinned, embarrassed myself, hurt others, insisted on some selfish idea, etc.
I think I know why I get stuck in the condemnation loop. See if this analogy makes sense to you:
My sin is like an intruder who broke into my home and assaulted my family or me. The intruder may have been apprehended and taken away forever to jail, but every night, I think I hear him, or see his shadow, or I re-trace the horror of the details of the invasion, and I am afraid again. The truth may be that he is gone, but the memory still has power over me.
I know the truth about my mistakes is that the Lord, in his "compassions that fail not," has forgiven me--my sins are blotted out, dissipated, conquered, by his power. However, he does not erase the occurrences from my memory. Ironically, painful memories and regret can help me understand my weaknesses and help keep me from falling again. But the sin memory can also hold me captive and beat me down like a slave.
However, the truth is, I'm NOT a slave to my past behaviors. The truth is, God apprehended my sin and took it away forever. I am not defined by a shameful list of secret and not-so-secret sins. That's why when I feel that old heaviness coming on, I need to remember ONE THING >>> to forget what is behind and press on toward my destiny, the reason I was created--to glorify God and enjoy him forever. After all, God "thought me up;" I didn't have any say in my existence. For some reason, he wants me to "be."
And if 1 Thing in Philippians 3 isn't enough to encourage you, see if these examples of 1 Thing speak to your heart:
Psalm 27:4 ... One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.
Luke 10:42 ... but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Mary chose to focus on Jesus; Martha, her sister, was fretting about hostess responsibilities while he was in their home. He wants a relationship with us.)
2 Peter 3:8 ... But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. (Do we really think about eternity very often? Are we patient concerning God's timing in answering prayer?)
John 9:24-25 ... A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. "Give glory to God," they said. "We know this man [Jesus] is a sinner." He replied, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!"
I'm asking the Lord to break through the distractions and blindspots of my life this year, to help me focus on relationships and eternity, and to press on to be who he created me to be. Boil it down to One thing that I need in 2007: Jesus.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I kind of wanted to jump on the bandwagon at Laurel Wreath's place for the New Year's meditation thing, but I didn't think I had anything deep or wide enough to sing about, so I'm doing an abbreviation on the theme. I'm calling it "1 Thing." It's a small phrase, but if I were re-naming my blog, I would call it 1 Thing because of what it represents in Philippians 3:13-14:. . .
But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
I joke about my feeble memory, and sometimes I am seriously worried about what lies ahead for me medically because I'm already memory-challenged. Interestingly, though, my mind is weak mainly in certain areas. For instance, I can't seem to memorize scripture very well, and I often forget to buy bagels for the school reading club breakfast, for example. But my absent-mindedness is selective. It skims over the good stuff and pores over the bad. On a daily basis, I catch myself rehearsing the times I failed, sinned, embarrassed myself, hurt others, insisted on some selfish idea, etc.
I think I know why I get stuck in the condemnation loop. See if this analogy makes sense to you:
My sin is like an intruder who broke into my home and assaulted my family or me. The intruder may have been apprehended and taken away forever to jail, but every night, I think I hear him, or see his shadow, or I re-trace the horror of the details of the invasion, and I am afraid again. The truth may be that he is gone, but the memory still has power over me.
I know the truth about my mistakes is that the Lord, in his "compassions that fail not," has forgiven me--my sins are blotted out, dissipated, conquered, by his power. However, he does not erase the occurrences from my memory. Ironically, painful memories and regret can help me understand my weaknesses and help keep me from falling again. But the sin memory can also hold me captive and beat me down like a slave.
However, the truth is, I'm NOT a slave to my past behaviors. The truth is, God apprehended my sin and took it away forever. I am not defined by a shameful list of secret and not-so-secret sins. That's why when I feel that old heaviness coming on, I need to remember ONE THING >>> to forget what is behind and press on toward my destiny, the reason I was created--to glorify God and enjoy him forever. After all, God "thought me up;" I didn't have any say in my existence. For some reason, he wants me to "be."
And if 1 Thing in Philippians 3 isn't enough to encourage you, see if these examples of 1 Thing speak to your heart:
Psalm 27:4 ... One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.
Luke 10:42 ... but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Mary chose to focus on Jesus; Martha, her sister, was fretting about hostess responsibilities while he was in their home. He wants a relationship with us.)
2 Peter 3:8 ... But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. (Do we really think about eternity very often? Are we patient concerning God's timing in answering prayer?)
John 9:24-25 ... A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. "Give glory to God," they said. "We know this man [Jesus] is a sinner." He replied, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!"
I'm asking the Lord to break through the distractions and blindspots of my life this year, to help me focus on relationships and eternity, and to press on to be who he created me to be. Boil it down to One thing that I need in 2007: Jesus.
His mercies are new every morning...
Great is Thy faithfulness, O Lord!!
Just when I wonder if God is paying any attention whatsoever, He tenderly and lovingly shows me in countless ways that He truly loves me.
The holidays are hard for me - since my parents divorced in '96, but especially since I moved back up to Ohio in 2000, Christmas never feels "right". Everything going on celebrates "family" and yet mine never can seem to get along even for one day. What is funny is it actually isn't my parents all that much, though it is hard to get them to decide on what they are going to do, it is my siblings. Anyway, long story short my sister made her own plans to be somewhere else on Christmas, which is just as well because she usually causes the most tension and stress, and my dad and stepmom went down to my stepsister's in Columbus. So, my aunt and I went to my mom's house, where my brother and my nephew spent the night and we had Christmas together. My brother managed to upset my nephew only once with a silly demand and an even sillier punishment, and my grandma complained about us watching "Cars" on DVD only twice. All in all, a pretty good day considering how it has gone in the past.
Anyway, because of that family stuff and because all the hoopla makes the desire to have a family of my own (husband and children, ahem) come out full-force, I also usually feel REALLY lonely. This year, while I did face some of that once again, God new the prayer in my heart and brought back to me some friends from my past (high school) and helped me get closer to other present friends. I don't know why, but friendships always seem to be difficult for me - not necessarily difficult to create, but difficult to go deeper than a surface friendship and very difficult to continue if circumstances of life draw us away from living near one another and seeing each other regularly. I can't say that I'm all that great at keeping up correspondences, but the funny thing is that all of my friends from as far back as I can remember have the same problem. They don't write me much, and I don't seem to either. It isn't on purpose, and it isn't because I don't care or they don't care, it just happens for no real reason.
The other gift of Christmas God brought me is actually continuing to show me that I'm headed in the right direction with starting my Beside Still Waters Ministries business. I just had another church agree to pay me to lead worship on a regular basis on Saturday evenings. It was basically laid in my lap with little effort from me, and I am just amazed. With the money from the cantata I played for at Uniontown, I was able to register my own domain name for the next three years. I only have one page there right now, and the only link that works is to go to this blog, but here it is: http://www.beside-still-waters.org/ . Just so you know, the dashes are important, the name without them was already registered to someone else as was using ".com" at the end instead of ".org" I also got for a little more money an e-mail address using that domain name. I'll be switching all my business stuff to that.
Well, gotta go because lunch is done. God is good - ALL the time!!
Just when I wonder if God is paying any attention whatsoever, He tenderly and lovingly shows me in countless ways that He truly loves me.
The holidays are hard for me - since my parents divorced in '96, but especially since I moved back up to Ohio in 2000, Christmas never feels "right". Everything going on celebrates "family" and yet mine never can seem to get along even for one day. What is funny is it actually isn't my parents all that much, though it is hard to get them to decide on what they are going to do, it is my siblings. Anyway, long story short my sister made her own plans to be somewhere else on Christmas, which is just as well because she usually causes the most tension and stress, and my dad and stepmom went down to my stepsister's in Columbus. So, my aunt and I went to my mom's house, where my brother and my nephew spent the night and we had Christmas together. My brother managed to upset my nephew only once with a silly demand and an even sillier punishment, and my grandma complained about us watching "Cars" on DVD only twice. All in all, a pretty good day considering how it has gone in the past.
Anyway, because of that family stuff and because all the hoopla makes the desire to have a family of my own (husband and children, ahem) come out full-force, I also usually feel REALLY lonely. This year, while I did face some of that once again, God new the prayer in my heart and brought back to me some friends from my past (high school) and helped me get closer to other present friends. I don't know why, but friendships always seem to be difficult for me - not necessarily difficult to create, but difficult to go deeper than a surface friendship and very difficult to continue if circumstances of life draw us away from living near one another and seeing each other regularly. I can't say that I'm all that great at keeping up correspondences, but the funny thing is that all of my friends from as far back as I can remember have the same problem. They don't write me much, and I don't seem to either. It isn't on purpose, and it isn't because I don't care or they don't care, it just happens for no real reason.
The other gift of Christmas God brought me is actually continuing to show me that I'm headed in the right direction with starting my Beside Still Waters Ministries business. I just had another church agree to pay me to lead worship on a regular basis on Saturday evenings. It was basically laid in my lap with little effort from me, and I am just amazed. With the money from the cantata I played for at Uniontown, I was able to register my own domain name for the next three years. I only have one page there right now, and the only link that works is to go to this blog, but here it is: http://www.beside-still-waters.org/ . Just so you know, the dashes are important, the name without them was already registered to someone else as was using ".com" at the end instead of ".org" I also got for a little more money an e-mail address using that domain name. I'll be switching all my business stuff to that.
Well, gotta go because lunch is done. God is good - ALL the time!!
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