This last week we have stayed at Brett’s parents house.  The outlet that we use to plug various things into is in an awkward hard to reach place.  Usually I reach down and try to plug it in and I can’t see anything.  It doesn’t work so well, so this morning I took my cell phone and used it as a flashlight to plug in my hair appliance.  Once I could actually see where to plug it in, a hard job became easy.

Our spiritual lives can be like this story.  We can’t just plug in on our own, we need the holy spirit to shine his light so we can see more clearly.  How do we do this?  Prayer.  If we pray for the Holy Spirit to shine his light into our lives, He will.

¹⁵ “If you love me, keep my commands. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be  in you.
John 14:15-17

While on the mission trip this week, I have been in charge of feeding the kids on the trip.  Now neither Brett or I like processed cheese food slices.  In our own lives we insist on real cheese and because of our feelings about processed cheese food we decided to forgo the ease of pre-sliced processed cheese when buying food for the mission trip meals.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t find large blocks of pre-sliced real cheese and decided to buy a few 5 pound blocks of cheese and slice it ourselves.  Well, I agreed to the idea because Brett assured me that he would do all the slicing.  I’ll have to admit I was ready to buy the rubber cheese just so I wouldn’t have to slice three five pound blocks of cheese.  So I know your thinking that it wouldn’t be so hard if we would just buy a cheese slicer.  Well as these things go we forgot to buy a cheese slicer til after I had already sliced two blocks of cheese.  I say, ‘after I had sliced’ because apparently as Brett discovered a few days ago he does not have the ‘spiritual gift’ of slicing cheese into thin edible slices.  He slices cheese into thick chunky slices that no one wants to actually try to chew through while eating a sandwich.  Since we needed cheese for lunch sandwiches I picked up the knife……after already slicing four, five pound rolls of lunch meat, and began slicing the cheese into beautiful thin slices.  Why do I have to be good at slicing cheese?  If I were bad at slicing cheese, like Brett is, I wouldn’t have just spent what seems like half my time in the kitchen this week slicing cheese!  

We are all good at something.  Some of us are good at cleaning the pulpit while others are good at preaching from it.  Both of the things need to be done and be done well.  The person who preaches well may have not ability at all to clean well, while the person who can clean well, may not be able to speak publicly without putting the entire audience to sleep.  Personally I’d rather not be good at slicing cheese, but it was a useful skill this last week.  Now, at the time I was creating those slices of perfection I was not admiring their appearance nor anticipating the praise and accolades I would receive from the kids who would be amazed and astounded at the consistent depth and perimeter of every slice.  However, in our “thank you” circle at the end of the trip, the kids enthusiastically applauded the meals for the week.  So, even when I didn’t appreciate my “gift”, or it’s being used so much, the end result was it was a piece of a larger blessing, and isn’t that how God uses our individual gifts?  He takes yours, mine and everyone else who gives their time and talent to support the church work, and magnifies it into something we could never create on our own!  But it doesn’t stop there.  Whenever we give of ourselves to be part of something bigger than ourselves, we always get a double blessing in return.

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.  I John 3:18

I woke up early this morning and despite my eyes being open my brain refused to acknowledge that it was time to wake up.  As I was enjoying a very warm shower it crossed my mind that i could easily wake myself up if only I would just turn the water to cold.  It wouldn’t take much, just open up the cold water and shut down the hot.  A simple turn of two knobs.  I did not entertain that idea for long as I do not enjoy being cold, despite knowing I would feel better if I were wide awake rather than half asleep I chose to remain half asleep.

I think sometimes our spiritual lives are like this.  We run along on half asleep as well because we choose not to wake ourselves up and be truly aware.  Most of the time it wouldn’t take much either to “wake” us up; just open up our Bible and shut down the computer, open up our hearts and shut down our pride.  Not doing so can have us walking around spiritually half asleep, missing the “life more abundant” God wants us to have.  Let us choose today to be fully alive in Christ…I know I am.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, Colossians 2:13

Brett and i took the Mission Trip kids bowling this evening.  Just to clarify things, I don’t bowl.  I’ve never enjoyed it so I’ve come to the point in my life where I don’t need to put on bowling shoes and roll the ball just because everyone else is.  I had a lot more fun just watching everyone else.  The kids would pick a ball and walk over to throw it.  I watched gutter ball after gutter ball.  There was an occasional strike and of course everything else in between.

It reminded me of life and our good intentions.  We get up in the morning determined to roll strikes all day long.  We tell ourselves that today we will not eat sugar, won’t drink six cups of coffee, will exercise, won’t swear, will spend 30 minutes on devotional time and prayer with God, will iron and dust and will eat salad three times a day.  We also tell ourselves that we will continue to follow our aforementioned resolutions every day from this moment forward!  Well, we all know how long any list like that lasts.

I don’t know the formula for how to roll a strike every time you step forward to do it, but I do know that good intentions generally are just that…..good intentions.  Truly I don’t think God has a long list of things we must and must not do.  He just wants us to wake up and tell Him that today our life and actions are His.

In Him and through faith in Him we may approach God with freedom and confidence … I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.  Ephesians 3:12; 16-19

I’m in the process of growing out my hair from a pixie to a short bob.  I have a picture that I took in to my hair stylist and she did her best to shape it up while it’s growing out.  It’s kind of pain as now I have to add using a straightener to my morning routine rather than just blow drying and walking out the door.  But I have a new goal and a picture of what I want so I am proceeding with the plan.

I wonder if that is how God feels sometimes when He takes a look at us.  He sees us.  He sees what He wants us to look like.  He gives us a ‘shaping’ every now and again and in the end if we stick with His plan we become the ‘new’ us.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV

I do realize that this is not your typical story of inspiration.  However it is true and did happen.  Today I spent eight hours driving a van full of teenagers on a mission trip.  About half way through the trip the inevitable happened.  The conversation in the back of the van went something like this;  Who did it? He did it.  I didn’t do it, he did.  It wasn’t me!  Oh Yuck, it smells in here.

I’m sure you all know how that type of conversation goes.  No one wants to take responsibility and the conversation just drags on.  After a while I nearly said that I had done it just to end the conversation, but decided that being the driver and being at the front of the van and the offense had obviously occurred at the back of the van they wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

Then, in a moment of inspiration, it dawned on me:  That is what Christ did for us.  He was entirely innocent but he took our ‘stink’ upon himself and died in our place, so that we can live clean and innocent despite our mistakes. Isn’t it amazing the symbolism that come to your mind while driving a van full of teen-agers?  You should try it sometime 🙂

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but receive everlasting life.  John 3:16

An old friend of mine, who I met in Alaska many years ago, now spends most of his time in the faraway land of Honduras operating a mission(www.starofpromise.org) that helps mothers dying of AIDS and their soon to be orphaned children.   Yesterday he left a post on my FB page and mentioned that he was currently in Honduras.  A mutual friend commented on the post that a group of her friends were in Honduras building a church.  I noticed she had spelled the word ‘Honduras’ incorrectly.  It crossed my mind as unusual to have spelled ‘Honduras’ incorrectly as it was correctly spelled just above.  Then I looked at the reply I had typed, but not yet posted, and realized I had also incorrectly spelled the word ‘Honduras’.  Sigh.  Yes.  I do need to remember to remove the Giant Sequoia log from my eye before I start poking, even if just mentally, at someone elses speck of dust!

The following words of wisdom were added by my hubby who is really good at everything I’m not so great at.  One of those things being putting the finishing touches on my blog posts.     

Are you familiar with The 12 Steps?  Many people think they are principles of living only for alcoholics or addicts.   But if you really take a look at them, you will see that The 12 Steps are, in a way, a translation or version of the Gospel.  I call The 12 Steps, “The Gospel for Dummies.”  I believe that if we all followed the path of The 12 Steps, this would be a much different (and better) world.

Step 10 of the twelve steps says this: “Continued to take personal inventory and whenever wrong, promptly admitted it.”  Sounds pretty simple, huh?  Like most things in life, Step-10 is simple, just not easy.  Try it for one day.  Nothing tends to keep us humble like admitting our own mistakes, especially when we do so immediately and sincerely.  I think that’s what Jesus was trying to get at with the whole speck and log analogy.  So try clearing your vision for one day by getting rid of your own specks of dust when you see them.  I think you’ll find life get’s a whole lot clearer.

So why do you see the piece of sawdust in another believer’s eye and not notice the wooden beam in your own eye?  Matthew 7:3 (Gods Word Translation)

Last fall when we moved into our house the flower garden out front looked like an overgrown, half dead, big mess, that hadn’t been touched in quite a while.  Since I was busy unpacking and getting settled in I closed my eyes to the overgrown flower bed and successfully ignored it until yesterday.  The weather was perfect for puttering around outdoors and since I actually enjoy pulling a few weeds I put on my garden gloves and set to work.  After selectively pulling the weeds and grass that had invaded the flowers I added a pretty pink day lily that Aspen had recently picked out at the store. 

I stood up, took a few steps back, and envisioned what the newly cleaned up flower bed will look like in just a few short months.  I wondered if that is how God feels when He works on pulling the weeds in the garden of our lives?  The satisfaction and enjoyment of seeing us become what he envisions us to be…..a beautiful garden, free to grow without being choked by the weeds.

And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the LORD, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those who enslaved them.  Ezekiel 24:37

Yesterday I drove across hill and vale, literally, to pick up some rabbit manure for my garden.  Why did I bother?  Because I have read that rabbit manure is a balanced fertilizer and that it can be applied immediately rather than having to wait for it to compost.  It sounds so easy.  This summer I am putting it to the test.

Now you can always tell what new subject interests me at the moment by what the titles are on the latest stack of books I have checked out from the library.  For awhile I read quite a number of gardening books.  Well, some I read, others I perused and some I just opened, glanced through it and put it in the “go back” pile.  Each book has their own version of gardening, how to fertilize, lay out a garden and so forth.  Some fertilizer recipes sounded rather complicated or expensive, everything from mixing fish and seaweed to cow manure, kudzu leaves and others things I can’t remember now.  Part of me is…dare I say it?….lazy.  Well maybe not lazy in particular, but I do like to find the easiest, least complicated way to do something.  So when I found a book  that suggested rabbit manure as a single ingredient, non complicated way to fertilize, I have decided to give it a try.

There are so many self-help books out there with their version of “how to”.  Now I have read plenty of them and I am sure bits and pieces have rubbed off on me.  At least I hope they have or they were a complete waste of time.  Now, I’m not going to suggest that you not go to therapy, because that can be helpful.  Or that you not read the latest self-help book because they can be helpful as well.  God has all kinds of ways he can help us.  But for myself I have discovered that if I ask God about something….take for example; What do I need to work on next in my life?  What needs to be changed?  I always get an answer.  Not necessarily an audible answer but God sure can point out areas that need to be worked on.  For me He seems to like to do this during my morning devotional time, usually something I’m reading seems to point its finger right at something that has suddenly become quite obvious as a needed change in my life.

Now rabbit manure may not seem the most pleasant way to fertilize.  It can be a little…ahem…smelly and as I spread it on the garden area I try not to think about where it came from.  It would be so much easier to buy a box of pre made powdered stuff from the store and sprinkle it on.  But sometimes the easy way is not the best way.  Did I just say that?

Yesterday I was driving through downtown and saw an unusual sight.  A small boy about three walking with a man I’m presuming was his father and a small puppy.  A very small puppy, maybe about 10 weeks old.  They had just finished crossing the street and were walking up the sidewalk.  Now this may not seem so unusual except that the puppy was not wearing  a leash.  I wasn’t sure whether to be incredibly impressed with how the puppy just followed along and didn’t run off despite all the distractions of downtown or to be appalled that the puppy wasn’t wearing a leash.

We should be more like that puppy.  Just eagerly following our Master without paying any attention at all to the distractions along the way.  He could have easily darted into traffic and been hit by a car, but he didn’t.   I think too often we stray from the side of God and ‘run into traffic’ so to speak.  But if we keep our devotion centered on God following Him becomes just something we do and the distractions won’t allure us.

We must focus on Jesus, the source and goal of our faith. He saw the joy ahead of him, so he endured death on the cross and ignored the disgrace it brought him. Then he received the highest position in heaven, the one next to the throne of God.  Hebrews 12:2 Gods Word Translation