Been thinking a lot about eternity lately. That regardless the mess down here, I cannot wait to get to Heaven! Sometimes it's a scary thought when I think about what God say about me and what I've done or not done for Him, but that too, causes me to press on. The things that I think are big down here, are nothing to Him. When we see His face, the things I thought were big won't even matter - or exist. So just focusing on Him and on the future.
2 Corinthians 4:13 – 18 13 It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, 14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. 15 All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. 16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
In honor of the ongoing Olympics, I thought we could memorize these verses.
Philippians 3:10-14
10 I want to know Christ—yes,
to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings,
becoming like him in his death,
11 and so, somehow, attaining
to the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already
obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take
hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
13 Brothers and sisters, I do
not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do:
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal
to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
So today, for my memorizing, I'm sharing another group of verses that I love.
Philippians 4:4-8
4 Rejoice in the Lord always.
I will say it again: Rejoice!
5 Let your gentleness be
evident to all. The Lord is near.
6 Do not be anxious about
anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,
present your requests to God.
7 And the peace of God, which
transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and
sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is
pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or
praiseworthy—think about such things.
Not a super long passage, and one that might be easy to memorize but so difficult to actually do in our day to day lives.
Lately I've been mulling over, okay let's face it - worrying - as to what I should do next year. Right now, I am loving teaching preschool, but I am also loving teaching piano. I have had several people ask me whether or not I'd be taking new students in fall, and so I have started to think about what route I should go. I talked about it, thought about it, stewed over it, but mostly just worried over it. As I was thinking about it again this morning, this passage of verses came into my mind. And I have to admit, verse six was the one that kept coming into my mind. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation BY PRAYER and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. BY PRAYER - WITH THANKSGIVING! Not by prayer with lots of worry. Not by prayer, but still obsessing about it. But it is by prayer with thanksgiving. And i realized, that it wasn't with a thankful heart it was with a worried, stressed heart that I was coming to God. I knew He could show me what to do - but as I was praying, I realized I wasn't convinced He would. I was praying because I was supposed to, not because I was thankful for the answer God would bring me. It was just a force of habit really. And then as I printed out these verses today, verse 7 hit me. AND THE PEACE OF GOD WHICH TRANSCENDS ALL UNDERSTANDING, WILL GUARD YOUR HEARTS AND YOUR MINDS IN CHRIST JESUS. Well, I certainly wasn't feeling any peace when I was praying. But I also wasn't praying with thanksgiving. If I HAD been praying with a heart of thanksgiving (thanking God for the answers He would provide me) I WOULD have that peace verse 7 talks about. Can you imagine? A peace that transcends all understanding. WOW! I am really thinking I have to change my heart when I pray. If I pray with a heart of thanksgiving, God will give me peace that I can't even begin to make sense of. I want that!!! Can you imagine that kind of calm!?!?!?! WOW!!!!
Lord help my unbelief when I pray. Help me to come to you with a thankful heart when I make my requests to you. Help me to truly present my requests to you believing that you will answer!!! Help me to become more like you!
Do you ever wake up in the morning and just find you've woken up grouchy? NO! I'm not talking about my husband who I might call "Grouchy" ('cause REALLY he's not!!!) - ME!!! GROUCHY!! I'm the grouchy bear. I lay in bed this morning thinking about the day and just wanted to stay in bed. I just wanted to be mad. I'd had some sort of a dream and I was frustrated and angry in it, and that's how I woke up. I was ready to tear off anyone's head who DARED come near me. (I know, not quite Christ-like was it :-( )
As I lay there, I thought how am I supposed to show love to my family? How am I supposed to share a spiritual tidbit on my blog, when I feel FAR from spiritual this morning. I lay in bed struggling with how to get over my growlies and I started to pray. I asked God to change my heart. To change my attitude. Still, every part of me just wanted to roll over and forget about getting breakfast for me kids. Forget about wishing hubby good morning. Forget about teaching piano. Just forget about doing anything but being grouchy!
As the moments ticked by, I started to think about what God wanted of me, and I started to have this mental argument with God. "But I don't feel like it. Why can't I have ONE day - just ONE day where I can wake up like a bear and growl at the rest, just the way my kids do at me? Why can't I just stay in bed and be mad?" Well, you can pretty much figure out what happened. I started to feel guilty and started thinking about the amazing things I have in my life. I started to think about all the things God has given to me over the months. All the miracles, big and small that He has blessed me with. "SHOOT!!! God, I wanted to be mad, not thankful!"
So I dragged myself out of bed, and decided I was going to be cheerful. Okay, that's not entirely true. I decided I wasn't going to snap anyone's head off. I figured that would be a start. I made it out of the bedroom, past my husband, past my kids and into our prayer room. (Prayer Room) I sat down in front of the computer, and wouldn't you know it, the song that was playing in our prayer room was "I Love You Lord" and the very lyrics that came on as I sat down were this:
I love you Lord, and I lift my voice
to worship you, O my soul, REJOICE
Take joy my King, in what you hear
May it be a sweet sweet sound in your ear.
YIKES!!!! If that wasn't enough to snap me out of my grouchies. I did have to chuckle how God works out those things in our lives. There was such a battle this morning between Satan and God's angels. But thankfully today, I reached out to God and asked for His help, and sure enough, He spoke to me and stopped Satan's grasp on my attitude and turned what could have been a really grouchy morning, into a morning of praise.
So if you are feeling grouchy this morning, join me in focusing on what God has given to us. I know here in Manitoba with all this cold weather and snow, it's easy to get focused on the negative. It's easy to feel spring is never going to come, but join me in watching this video, won't you? The images of God's wonderful creation, and the words of praise, may just get you out of your grouchies this morning. Praise God - it did for me!!
(PS, after the video, I have included our memorizing passage for today. Thought I might need to mull this one over and over this week!!! Blessings on you and may God's joy and praise be felt in your heart today!)
Tuesday's Choice: (figured this was appropriate for me this a.m.)
Psalm 150 1 Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; 2 Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness. 3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, 4 praise him with tambourine and dancing, praise him with the strings and flute, 5 praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with the resounding cymbals. 6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. PRAISE THE LORD.
So last week Tuesday, I decided I was going to start memorizing verses. Putting God's word in my mind and mulling it over and over as I tried to memorize it. IT WORKED! I haven't memorized anything in ages, but this week I was able to get Philippians 2:1-4 memorized. I know, it's not much, but it's stuck in there.
So this week, I have another passage I'm throwing out there for us to memorize.
Colossians 3:12-17. Again another one of my favorite passages. Join me won't you? And let me know how it's going. Where do you like to memorize? How do you memorize? For me, a couple times a week, I pick my kids up from school and unless you are there half an hour early, it is nearly impossible to find a parking spot. So I go early and that is where I do my quiet memorizing. I type it out several times which helps me. I find when I write/type stuff out, I really have to think about it, and I also can visualize it.
So here are the verses for the week. They are in the NIV but feel free to try them in whatever version you are comfortable with! And let's remember to review our Philippians passage as well. (See Thinking ahead: Tuesdays-challenge) Wouldn't it be fun to be able to recite an entire month's worth of verses??? Let's see what we can do. Blessings on you as you put God's word into our hearts and into our actions!!!! Colossians 3:12-17
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.And be thankful.
16 Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.
17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
~ as you may or may not know, i am a piano teacher. i also have 2 kids and a hubby that would love to have suppers each evening. . . yes. . . prepared by me! ;-) i teach piano three days a week, so each of those days, i try to have supper ready for them to either eat while i am teaching, or to be ready to eat so we can all sit together and have supper.
~ today as i sat looking through my recipes trying to come up with a "new" exciting recipe, i started to think about how much time i devote to getting meals ready. before i could get supper started, i had also gone out and purchased some new piano books for some students. as my mind wandered from making supper to the amount of prep time i do for my piano lessons, i started thinking about how much time i spent with my poet. (See my post on January 3rd http://sharon2kids.blogspot.ca/2014/01/valuable.html about God calling us his poem.)
~ i started to think about how little time i spend actually reading God's word. sure i read lots of great books, and devotionals - other people's writings about His word. but how much time do i actually spend reading HIS words? when i think of all god did for me, what he all gave up for me, i am humbled by it all. and i am humiliated by how little time i spend with him. how little time i talk to him and how little time i listen for him .
~ in Anne Voskamp's blog http://www.aholyexperience.com/ she writes about scripture memorization. what an incredible way of getting into god's word. i did this as a child, and have on occasion memorized scripture through out my adult years, but what an incredible way of getting into god's word. not only are we reading it, but we are mulling over it. over and over. . . and what better way to defeat the devil than by reciting god's word.
~ as i sat and thought about this and about what i was going to try to memorize, i thought about my favorite book - philippians.
So here are the verses, i purpose to memorize this week:
Philippians 2: 1 - 4 1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion,2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
join me on my journey to memorize more of god's word so we can turn it over and over in our minds to be able to have it on the tips of our tongues. so that when we rise up and when we lay down, we will have his words in our hearts and in our minds.
