There are so many life lessons we can learn from sports. The applications are limitless and I don’t think that is a coincidence. While playing a game of keep away, have you ever seen someone engage eye contact with the opponent while quickly tossing the ball to a teammate? And because the opponent’s focus was on the wrong target they were fooled. However, that move never fooled this dog when his eye was on food. He was focused!

This guy always had his eye on the “ball”.

This reminds me of how I lose my focus on Christ when daily issues arise or adversity comes around. I pray for healing, for safety, for comfort and God often answers these prayers, but that is not the point. I have taken my eyes off of the ball and placed it on the issue in front of me. 

Time and time again Jesus addressed this issue to his followers. He tried to redirect the focus of people on what matters. He wanted them to keep their eye on the ball. In John 4:10 to the woman at the well who was focused on getting water to drink, He said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” In verse 32 of the same chapter, Jesus’ said to his disciples who were focused on getting Jesus to eat, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” 

Keep your eye on the ball. 

In John 6:26-27 to the people following him to the hillside by Galilee because they were healed and fed he said, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” Then in verse 40 Jesus again tells this crowd to change their focus and look to God the Father and his Son. “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

Keep your eye on the ball. 

I believe that there is a game being played that we know nothing about. It is a game to steal our focus from what really matters. I believe it is played out every second of our life on earth and even shutting ourselves off in an empty room will not help us win this tug of war for our attention because much of the battle happens within us. But this all sounds rather hopeless and depressing. If only we had some power or equipment to help us win this daily struggle! 

But wait! There’s more! In verse 63 Jesus says his Spirit and his words are full of power. “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” So we are better equipped than the enemy. And furthermore when Jesus is offering his final comforting words to his disciples in John 14:16-17 he says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 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. 

And we are reminded that our team has the best uniforms, pads, cleats, helmets and bats. In Ephesians, Paul tells us that we are equipped to win the game. 

Ephesians 6:12-18 NIV

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.

And last but definitely not least, light always wins over darkness. Its power is undeniable. We will win because we rely on God. He has the ultimate victory over the enemy. We see this in the first chapter of John’s gospel when he introduces us to God and his Son. In John 1:4-5, John says, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

So we must remind ourselves day by day, minute by minute that we are on the winning team with the power and authority of God the Father, Christ his Son and the Holy Spirit. We know how it ends. Just take a glimpse at Revelation chapter 22. We are on the winning team and on that we can place all our confidence and remember to…

Keep our eyes on the ball.

Saving Time by Slowing Down

 

Crash! A gajillion pieces of glass are all over my floor and in my flip flops. While jumping into the massive undesirable task of dusting all my glassware I ended up breaking a glass which cost me time and the loss of a glass. Why? Because I was in a hurry. Hurry is often a culprit for a great deal of loss in my life. A few other examples off the tip of my brain are these:

• Stepping on the accelerator only to be pulled over and given a ticket.

• When typing in a hurry and not reading what I typed, I make mistakes and have to go back and correct it.

• When teaching and not taking the time to explain details to my students, mistakes were made that took more time to undo.

• By not taking time with God, I sacrificed my peace for the entire day.

Hurry is moving by habit rather than by design. It is motion of the body without engaging thought. So hurry is simply leaving out that annoying step of thinking before we act. Obviously we would not hurry if it didn’t reward us in some way. It makes us feel like we are winning over our constraint of a 24 hour day. Hurrying gives us a false sense of control over our day.

Saving time by slowing down is counterintuitive. This reminds me of so many of the life lessons Jesus taught which are upside down to what our culture teaches. He taught that to be a good leader you must become a servant. He taught that if we want to be first, we must put ourselves last. He taught that it is through sacrificing control of our lives that we will truly find it. So in that same reverse way of thinking, if we want to save time, maybe we should slow down.

Time is such a precious commodity. We can’t really save it because we will have only the days that we have been given. Yes, we think we can squeeze in more activity by hurrying…sometimes. And it is really peace that is sacrificed for this false feeling of beating the clock. If you have ever been on a vacation where you overbooked yourself and ran from one engagement to another, you know this is true.

How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?

So how do we deal with an overbooked schedule without sacrificing our peace? The answer is to STOP, to say NO, purge our calendar and let go of the things that are less important. Give ourself permission to do less. To do that correctly, we must prioritize. Ask a few questions. What is most important to me? Is it my relationship to God? Is it my relationship with my family? Will this activity matter in 10 years? If the answers to these questions are yes, then it should be a priority in your day.

But what about those things that must be done? Someone has to make a living, do the cleaning, pay the bills, and feed the family. This list of things will become secondary in our priorities.

To deal more efficiently with the “must-dos” maybe we can reconsider our choices in each. For example, is there a closer place of work that will put time back in your day? Maybe that long commute for higher pay is a poor trade. Or is it really saving time to buy fast food? Science has proven that fast food takes years and health from our lives. It forces us to spend more time in the doctor’s office and less with family. This is definitely a bad trade-off. And what about cleaning? Remember my broken glass? Have you ever spent time dusting a curio cabinet? Is it a wise use of time to keep things that we must clean around and trip over? Does any of that stuff add a minute to your life? How much is too much? Maybe it is time to recycle or dispose of some things that honestly are just a hindrance and a time-sink.

If all of this is overwhelming, know that you are not alone. We all have a long way to go to ruthlessly eliminate hurry. Let’s start with one thing, keep it simple and celebrate small successes.

Splagchnizomai: From the Gut Compassion

 Three years fly by in a heartbeat. If you have children, you know. Years that seemed so long and boring as a child, are gone in a flash in adult time. This is why it is so interesting to me to study the way Jesus used his three short years of ministry. He had a monumental job to accomplish in such a short time-frame! Yet many, if not most of the accounts in the Bible are of personal one-on-one interactions. Jesus never hurried and surprisingly, Jesus didn’t choose the most popular and powerful people to build his ministry.

Jesus spent his limited time with lost, lonely people who society rejected. He interacted with each of those people as if they were the most important person on earth. He had a massive job to spread the Gospel to an entire world for all eternity, had three years to do it, and yet he chose to spend his time one-on-one with lepers, widows, women with questionable pasts, liars, cheats and all around insignificant ordinary folks. Why did Jesus use this approach?

This leads me to the Greek title of this blog, Splagchnizomai. I know. This sounds like a word Mary Poppins invented. But according to my source, Lisa Harper, it means “from the gut compassion”. As I understand it, it was used in Mark 1:40-41 to explain why Jesus stopped to heal the leper. Jesus was driven with compassion for the leper who was a forgotten outcast of society. In Jesus’ personal encounters in the Bible, he gave his full attention to each individual as if they were the only person around. He didn’t stop to look at the clock counting down the moments he had left on earth then rush on to the next big preaching event. He took his time with people. And this is one of the many upside-down, counterintuitive ways that Jesus worked.

So what if we applied this same approach to our short life’s story? What if we valued our one-on-one time with people and spent less time trying to scratch and claw our way to a place with more influence? What if we quit worrying about how big, how powerful, or how orderly our life is and start each day with caring for each individual in which we come into contact, whether we deem them worthy or not? What if we made time for others and valued every encounter as holy and ordained by God?

My biggest block to this approach is that I don’t have it in me to love like Jesus with that kind of compassion. Nope, I just don’t have that. Anything I did would be contrived. So first, I must realize deep within my soul that Jesus loves me even though I’m not the prettiest, smartest or most popular person in the room. He doesn’t measure with the same stick that we humans use. He measures with splagchnizomai. He measures with his compassion and not my worthiness. It is so hard to imagine that Jesus would stop what he is doing to tend to me, yet he has never in my life of 64 years ever let me go. He has held me through my darkest night. It is his love and not mine that does the trick. Nothing depends on me.

So all I need to do is to keep my eyes on Him and let go of my earthly ideas of ministry. God did not create me to be another Billy Graham. I will not cure cancer. I will not solve the homeless crisis. He created me and placed me with those he chose for me to love. I must trust his plan. My role is to let Him love through my attention and presence, one person at a time.

Mistaken Motivations

 It is that time of year. The dreaded pleas for helpers in Vacation Bible School fill my soul with fear. True confession: I would rather go shopping in a rattlesnake pit than work in Vacation Bible School. Long story, but suffice it to say the last time I worked in VBS I ended up in the emergency room and was happier there. So why did I volunteer? What sort of insanity drove me to do it? Well, I think it was a mixture of several things including Baptist preacher’s daughter conditioning, guilt and confusion over what God wants from me. I thought He wanted me to prove my love for Him in the most sacrificial way I could imagine. That, for me, was VBS.

Jesus had a lot to say about motivations, especially in His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. And He was always pointing out motivations behind actions like when he compared the prayer of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14. Both prayed but each with different motives. To God, clearly, motivation matters.

Recently, I was listening to an episode in the Things Above podcast called Abba Experience by James Bryan Smith. He was talking about the singer songwriter Rich Mullins and told a story from Rich. It goes like this. Rich was in Thailand and met a missionary and was talking to her. He said to her, “You know, I just want the Lord to use me”. And she said, “Well, forget it”. And Rich was stunned. And then she went on to say, “God doesn’t need you for anything. God doesn’t want to use you. He wants you to love Him”.

This is key. When I was serving in VBS, I was confused about what God wanted from me. I thought He wanted me to do the most sacrificial thing. But that is not what God asks of me. He asks me to love Him above all else. After all, that command made the number one position in the top ten way back in Exodus. And how do you show someone how much you love them? By spending time with them in conversation. By getting to know what they like and dislike, thinking about them all day long, allowing yourself to fall in love. By prioritizing your time with them over all else.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t serve Him. It means a shift in thinking and in our time. We must prioritize our own time with God before we begin to think about serving. Only then can we serve free from ulterior motivations of guilt, power, authority, approval, recognition or a desire to be needed. Only then, will our motivations be pure, filled only with humility and love. Then the realization will be that when you serve it is a privilege, accepting a blessing from God knowing if you serve for the wrong reasons you are taking a blessing from someone else. A sure sign that you are doing this is burn-out and frustration with other people while you are serving.

Also from the same podcast by James Bryan Smith was this quote from Dallas Willard, “You must arrange your days so that you can experience deep contentment, joy and confidence in your everyday life with God”. This involves slowing down, saying no, creating space and margin in your day. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself. Arrange for time to be with God and cast your cares on Him.

One Right Decision

I have been rescued. And I am rescued on a daily basis. No, I was not a drug addict. No, I didn’t suffer from alcoholism. My demons are covert, they are many and I am under the delusion that I hide them well. They vary and come at me from every angle. They resemble self-pity, anger, bitterness, selfishness, self-righteousness and a plethora of other chains all of which stem from pride. Any one thing on this list can destroy faster than a heroin addiction and I am inflicted with these demons on a daily basis. But God…

Yes, I have been rescued today. And I was rescued yesterday and I will be rescued tomorrow if I choose. All I have to do is make one right decision. I have to let go and give it to God. It is a choice. It is the one right decision. To let Jesus take the wheel even though I grab at that wheel during the stressful moments of a day. But making this choice consistently and daily over the last seven years has brought me peace and joy that has rooted and grown. Most of my days I am not aware of this change since it isn’t one of those bolt-of-lightning type changes. But sometimes I am given a glimpse of someone who is like me who hasn’t made that decision and my eyes see the miracle that God has produced in me and I want this so badly for them too. He is cutting my chains off one by one, replacing each with his peace, love and understanding and I am so grateful. 

I am beginning to understand this verse from the Apostle Paul. 

2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. ” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

12 Steps for People Pleasers and Workaholics

 I am a People Pleaser. This is not bragging. Far from it! This is a confession. Everyday I think about what more I could have done or how I could fix something. The problem is that I cannot shake loose of this destructive game. People who love me tell me to blow it off, let it go. They know. I work like a slave to please those around me and it is truly slavery of my soul.

I know now that my slavery began when I started my current job and is closely attached to my deep desire to help those I support. That, in itself, is not a bad thing until helping them consumes me and I cannot turn it off. The instant gratification of fixing someone’s problem has become my addiction. And if I can’t help them, I know someone who can, so I dog that poor soul to help solve the issue.(My apologies to my coworkers.) 

The root of the problem is my values. I am placing more importance on what others think of me than what my Heavenly Father thinks. This is not a new problem and is nothing more than a form of idolatry, holding other’s opinions over God’s. God forgive me. 

Being a people pleaser harms me and those closest to me. First, it destroys my relationship with God because I am listening to the people around me rather than the voice of my Father. There is not enough room in my head for both! Secondly, it can place a huge burden on those who are close to me to be responsible for my peace of mind. Just like family and friends know their loved ones are alcoholics, they also know when they are a people pleasing addicts. There are only so many hours in the day, or days in a life and when I am working extra hours to please, I am denying time with those I love. When I am ruminating over a problem at work, I could be fully present and enjoying my time with my loved ones. And last, it teaches those in my care to be the same way, perpetuating this slavery mindset to others.

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Breaking the Chains

Image by StarGladeVintage from Pixabay

I realize there needs to be a 12-step program for people pleasers. So here are my AA adapted steps:

PPA 12 Steps

1. I admit I am powerless over people pleasing—and that I am a slave to it. 

2. Come to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

3. Make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him.

4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself noting triggers for this behavior.

5. Admit to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs.

6. Be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove my shortcomings.

8. Be willing to admit that this harms myself and those closest to me, and became willing to make amends to them all. 

9. Make direct amends to such people.

10. Continue to take personal inventory and when I am relapsing and promptly admit it.

11. Seek through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God as I understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.

12. Having spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I try to carry this message to other People Pleasers, and to practice these principles in all my affairs. 

The Good Book

 Psalm 119:105 NIV

[105] Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.

One thing that I have been struggling with lately is the pull of reading good Bible-based books in the place of reading the Bible itself. There are so many wonderful scripture inspired books being written right now. I get excited about them and want to spend some of my quiet time reading them instead of going straight to the scripture.  

However, in these faithful book studies, the authors point out that the true source is the Bible and the Holy Spirit speaking to me through it. All other words, from Billy Graham or C.S. Lewis or Henri Nouwen or Martin Luther King or John Wesley, pale in comparison to the words of the Bible itself applied to an open heart by our Holy Spirit. 

Does this mean we should toss the words of C.S. Lewis and the gang? Oh no! One caveat for those books about the scripture is that they can be used as a tool to lead us to the scripture itself. This is why we should continue to read them. But we should be careful that we don’t allot all our precious time to them, disregarding the reading of the Bible itself. We should prioritize and value the Bible above the others.  It is like baseball.  It is good to learn how to steal bases or what to do in a squeeze play.  But it is worthless if you don’t know how to throw, catch and hit the ball. The Bible teaches our heart the basics. 

Hebrews 4:12 NIV
[12] For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

But what if I don’t understand the Bible? How can I read it?  Remember that the Holy Spirit is given to each of us when we give our hearts to God. He is an interpreter. Pray for his guidance and trust that He will show you what you need to find. Don’t compare yourself to others. Look to God. Trust the Holy Spirit and learn from the words of Jesus.  

When I get more excited about reading a book about the Bible than I do about the Bible itself, I have to review the amazing journey the words of the scripture have made throughout history. This reminds me of how God has protected his Word through wars, plagues, fire, flood and decay.  I have to remind myself that the very words I am reading have gone through a miraculous journey of time. I have to remind myself of the fairly recent amazing discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls which verified, magnified and reinforced the truth of the scripture handed down through the ages. I have to see that no other book has endured the test of time like our Holy scripture.  And I have to realize the privilege I have to read them myself. 

Part of Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1. The Jordan Museum, Amman.jpg
From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV
[16] All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, [17] so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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God vs. Genie

I’ll bet you can name three or four incidences where you have lost relationships over misunderstandings.  This is so tragic, especially when friends or acquaintances never learn the truth in spite of your efforts to straighten things out.  This unnecessary loss...this craziness...is what drives me nuts in this life!  I spend way too much brain power trying to figure how to show people my truth. This is where the enemy gets his hooks in me. It was while worrying, mulling, and fretting over a particular instance where misunderstandings led to lost relationships that I read this passage.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 NIV

[3] For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. [4] The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. [5] We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

I have read this passage many times before but today it pointed to something new.  This was the gem that I discovered. I am wasting my battles on a war that is insignificant. Our divine appointment is to demolish those mindsets that set themselves up against God, not against ourselves or our own reputation. Our battles in this life should be about helping people understand God for who he is.  So how about demolishing every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God? That IS what matters! So please play along with me in this blog as I follow God’s word to me.

When I began thinking about it, there are so many false things people believe about God, too many to mention. I will address one misunderstanding and call it God vs. Genie. By the name, you probably know where I’m going with this. A little known fact about me is that I have seen every episode of I Dream of Jeannie at least once. If you were not so fortunate, let me tell you about Jeannie.  It started with an unsuspecting astronaut who, in his space travels, stumbled across a beautiful bottle.  Of course this was the bottle of a real live beautiful bombshell genie named Jeannie.  The very kind astronaut who possessed quite a bit of integrity, decided to keep her but as a secret part of his life.  Gradually, the integrity of the astronaut deteriorated as he learned to depend on Jeannie's skills.  And worse yet, he sometimes forgot to let her out of the bottle except when he got into a jam.  Of course in the end, love overcame and they got married in the last season.  Then there was Dallas... But I regress.

So many times we treat God as a genie.  Oh yeah, we would deny this but think about the way we treat our relationship with God. We pray for something we want badly and if we get it, we attend church that Sunday and maybe even sing a little louder and wave a hand. This is us, mistaking our precious Savior for Aladdin's big blue Genie.  Tell me you have never used God when you were in a tight spot, then when things were good, you place him on a shelf to forget him until the next jam. Oh how we miss the point!  

What makes the idea of a Genie so appealing is that I am in control. He does what I tell him whether he likes it or not. But realize that the Genie is my slave and there is no relationship between us. It is an idol of my creation. Yes, I am in control but do I know what tomorrow brings? Neither does my genie. He is limited by my own vision. His protection is restricted to my awareness. He can only protect me from what I see coming. The more I depend on his magic, the more impatient and self centered I become.  He teaches me nothing. With him, knowledge is a one way street. Stick with the genie-god and I will never grow and mature. 

How do I go about letting God out of my Genie bottle and quit treating him like a forgotten bread machine I got for Christmas?  Jesus addressed this to his disciples in Matthew 16:24.  He said, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me". So this means to surrender your rights to control your life daily. 

What can I expect if I let God out of the genie bottle of my making? First and most importantly, He will be in control, not me. I cooperate with him in his plan. I am his child. He is my loving Father. He protects me and He knows what is coming. He works in ways I never imagined because his knowledge is not limited. He knows my heart better than I know myself. I get to have a relationship with him. He lets me learn the hard way. He is not pushy or manipulative. He does not control me past the point I am willing to allow. He teaches me. I will not be stuck in my ways. I get to grow, change and make a difference. He is patient with me. He has rewards for me.  He knows no boundaries or end. He existed before me and is eternal. And unlike a Genie, He is real and He loves me. 

Oh Lord, please forgive me for treating you this way.  I want you to be in control, not me. I surrender all.

Best Intentions

When meeting with my posse this week, (my posse is a group of ladies who love to get into God’s word), we talked about how difficult it is to start the habit of meeting with God first thing every morning.  We discussed how intentional you have to be to make this decision and stick with it.  We talked about our failures and successes.  But mostly we talked about the difference it made in our lives. 

Change is intentional.  It is a choice. I made that choice about five or six years ago and it is the best decision I have ever made.  I decided to give the first of my day to God and trust him for the rest.  Most of my life I spent time in prayer at the end of a long day.  It was good, but spending time in the morning is unsurpassed.  Why is morning better?  And isn’t that a little legalistic?  I’m glad you asked.  My pastor explained it this way.  Time is valuable.  We fight for it everyday and run out everyday.  24 hours is never enough.  Giving God the first minutes of your day and trusting him with the rest is a huge shift in thinking.  It is prioritizing and placing first things first. It is saying everyday, “God, you are the most important thing in my life.”  Getting up early is a big sacrifice to a night owl like me. However, it shifts the order of my universe when I shove aside everything else and give the first place in my day to God.  

A sweet friend from my posse, Carla Cochrane, started this practice two or three years ago and never looked back. She would tell you what a change it has made in her life too.  We discussed what we could share to help others get started in this radically life-changing process.  In this blog I am going to share with you some of the steps we took to get started meeting God every morning.  Here are our ideas in no certain order.  

Get some Inspiration.   

Watch the movie War Room if you need inspiration to make this big change.  It.Will. Pump.You.Up! For that matter, watch any YouTube clip from Priscilla Shirer.  That will get you going.

Plan your Place.

Pick a comfortable spot that gives you privacy.  Mine is my favorite chair with my coffee.  It could be inside or outside, in a closet or a location in a big room.  Just pick a special spot and set it up.  Do a little nesting there to make it yours and yours alone.  

Choose your Sword.

This time isn’t just output to God.  It is input from God.  It is a conversation between friends that is food for your soul.  Listening to what God has for you is the most important part of this process, and a Bible is the word of God. It is a weapon of offense to help you take on the issues in your day.  You may want to buy a new Bible just for this time with God.  If so, research and go shopping.  His input is so important and there are so many choices of Bibles.  I chose a digital Bible that allows me to see two versions side by side, is lightweight, and is on every device so it is always with me.  There are so many cool Bibles now.  Go to a book store and spend some time shopping.

Choose a Daily Devotional Book.

A great way to start is to find a daily devotional that you like.  There are many phenomenal ones out there.  If one does not work for you, try again.  

Find your Focus.

I can’t focus well if there is any distraction. And sometimes my mind bops around like a pinball in an arcade game.  That is me.  When this happens I stop and write down that thought, then go back to my quiet time.  Some days I fight for focus the entire time, and some days the conversation flows.  I have heard of people who keep sticky notes by their Bible so they can jot down that random thought then get back to their quiet time.  

Journal your prayers.

Try writing down your prayers. You will be amazed how they are answered.  I got this idea originally from reading The Help. You may look back ten years later or a day later and remind yourself how God answered your prayers.  Also, writing them down makes your prayers more thoughtful and intentional.  I often realized how selfish I sounded when I saw it in black and white and writing it down provided a window to see myself without the rose colored glasses.  A little honesty goes a long way when having a conversation with a friend.  I chose to journal in my iPad notes because it is free, is in the cloud and even has a lock feature.  (There are also apps for this but be careful.  I lost over half of my 2016 journal to a bad app.)  If you are not into the digital side, go to a book store where you will find a wide selection of journals in every shape, size and color.

Set your Alarm.

Set your alarm clock 15 minutes early to get started.  It needs to be a time when the house is quiet before the rest of your family takes over your life.  Start small and don't feel guilty about it.  As you get into the habit, this time will grow from God-given passion inside you. 

Give yourself Grace.

If you have an off day, week, or even month, forgive yourself, and take up where you left off.  But start again.  I have a hard time making anything a habit. (Sometimes I still go to bed and have to get up again because I forgot to brush my teeth.)  It takes many failures to get into any habit.  

If you chose to do this, be excited about this decision.  Your life is about to change. I have witnessed the metamorphosis in others and I have seen a transformation in myself.  

With prayers for you all,
Susan

Martha, Martha, Martha!

One of my favorite scriptures is Luke 10:41-42 New International Version (NIV)

⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things,⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one.^[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”  

In my twisted sense of humor I always see Jesus saying, Martha, Martha, Martha! I imagine that he said it with the same exasperated tone of Jan Brady.  Stick with me here.  There is a point.

I love sermons.  I am a preacher's kid and I dearly loved my dad.  I guess that is why.  Some of my greatest 'ah-ha moments' were from sermons.  I had one last night when I was listening to my pastor preach on the above 'Martha' scripture where Martha was busy in the kitchen and frustrated with Mary who was ditching the kitchen duty to talk with Jesus.  My pastor said the point was not that we should do more, but that we should make better choices between the many good things in our lives because there is only 24 hours in a day and life is short.  So my pastor asked us to think about the things that are most important and essential in our life, the most important of the good things. You see, in the story in Luke 10, Martha made a good choice but Mary made the RIGHT CHOICE!  So much of managing this life is ditching the many good choices to make room for the right choice.  

This made me think of the best choice I have ever made in my life.  I chose to get up earlier every morning and spend a quiet time with God (and coffee😉).  This one choice was a game changer yet I didn't make that choice until I was in my mid 50's.  Before then, I spent time with God but at night or whenever it was convenient.  My relationship with Christ  was not a priority but an afterthought. The lack of priority was reflected in all the good things I chose to do.

Why didn't I to do this sooner in my life? I was a believer since I was 7 so I had certainly thought about this.  But here was my thought pattern:

1. I'm not a morning person. I'm just better at night.

2. I'm not a fanatic Christian.  That would scare people off of Christianity.  

3. And on and on...

What was I doing?  I was boxing myself and my relationship with Christ in with excuses.  Like those boxes inside of boxes, I was boxing myself into an even smaller box with every excuse.  I can imagine Jesus saying in the tone of Jan Brady, 'Susan, Susan, Susan!  Mary made the better choice and it will not be taken away from her.  Come on out of all those boxes and let's have a heart to heart conversation'.