Trashy Christmas Presents

The other day I wrapped gifts and prayed that those who receive them will be blessed and reminded of the love of Christ when opened.  Afterwards, I placed all the packages underneath the tree where they will sit until Christmas Eve/Day.

As I sat looking at the stack of presents on the ground a beautiful passage came to mind for me. 

 Philippians 3:7–9 (ESV) — 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

The truth is that underneath every Christmas tree is dump heap.  That is in comparison to the riches that we have in Christ.  Now I understand that the context for this passage is about Paul's past and prestigious heritage and not about any current or future blessings.  With that said, it puts the pile of presents in perspective.  It reminds us that these presents are worthless in comparison to love of Christ Jesus.  It also reminds us that God loved us so much that He gave us the greatest present: Jesus!  And now when we receive these gifts/blessings at Christmas time I see it as God showing off.  

So now I ask you to be God's instrument to show off His great love.  Use your time, talent, and/or treasure above and beyond normal this season to show the love of Jesus to someone.  Proclaim the gift of His great love when you give.  Otherwise, we will all just be surrounded by heaps of trashy presents.

Below is one of my favorite Christmas Songs:
The Gift by Randy Travis

Asking For Help

For the last couple weeks I have been going through my apartment looking for a book we checked out from the library.  Last week I realized that we had run out of renewals so I looked online to see how much it would cost to replace the book.  That's when I found out that it is out of print.  As a result, it would cost way more than I would like to replace it.

So one more time I prayed and asked God to let me know if this book could be anywhere else besides our apartment.  That is when the thought came into my head that I needed to go to the library and look for it there.  So the next Tuesday we went to the Library for storytime as usual and I looked for the book hoping that it just didn't get checked in.  I found a copy of the book!  So I took it to the front desk and asked an employee to check if this was checked out to us.  He scanned the book and said it wasn't checked out to anyone.  But again, I believed this to be the book that we checked out so I asked him to please compare the bar code to the book checked out to us.  Low and behold, it was the same book.  Somehow it had got checked in through the system but had not removed the title from our account.  It was a rare and strange glitch.  I praised God at the counter and told the man that I had prayed and God told me to look for the book here.  His response was a bit confused with a smirk.

Now I believe that I forgot about returning that book, along with a plethora of others, and the glitch for two very specific reasons.

1.  That I would have to trust God for help.  I had to call on Him for help and than go a little further in believing what He told me when the system said that the book was not checked out.  It may be easy to say that it is just a little thing, but God cares about the little things such as lost books.  Especially if it helps us learn to talk to Him.  I know that I want my little girl to come to me with anything, big or little.

2.  I believe that the man who worked with me on the situation needed to hear the testimony of God that I shared.  He was a bit confused by it and didn't want to talk about it, but he still heard it.  I don't know if that will lead to him knowing Christ in the future or not.  All I know is that I was being obedient to Christ and that He was proclaimed to someone that didn't know him.

So remember that God cares about the little things just as much as the big things.  And when God answers prayer...share how He worked in your life for the edification of believers and so that He might be glorified before unbelievers.  Because you never know how your story will affect others.

Thank You For Slapping Me...

This year one Psalm has repeatedly shown up in devotionals, sermons, and quiet times.  It is Psalm 141 and it has encouraged and strengthened me.  I'd like to point out just a few of the verses that have impacted me enough to make this my daily prayer.

The first is Vs. 3 & 4:
    “Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips! Do not let my heart        incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds in company with men who work iniquity,          and let me not eat of their delicacies!” (Psalm 141:3–4, ESV)

For me it is extremely important that God watches over the door of my mouth.  For starters, I am around my little girl all day and I want to make sure that I don't say anything bad around her.  However, this goes far beyond my vocabulary.  It goes to the content and emotion in which these words are spoken.  It is a prayer to keep my anger in check, to make what I say count, and to ensure that it edifies her and others around me.

The second is verse 5:

   “Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it. Yet my prayer is continually against their evil deeds.” (Psalm 141:5, ESV)  

This is basically stating: Lord if I mess up smack me...I would greatly appreciate it.  

Now why am I appreciating someone calling me out in sin?  It is because if my brothers and sisters in Christ don't confront sin in my life than I will most likely continue on in it and damage my witness for and relationship with Jesus.  So I pray that if you see me in sin, you will, metaphorically, give me a hard and loving smack across the face.  Don't be afraid of my reaction, be afraid of what God will say/do because of your condoning sin.
**Disclaimer: Don't go up to random people on the street or even in church and call out their sin.  This is something that should follow Matthew 18:15-20**

The last is verse 8:

   “But my eyes are toward you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless!”            (Psalm 141:8, ESV)  

Lastly, I am putting my focus on God and asking Him to be my defender.  I mean, seriously, who better to have your back than God!?  Because I fix my eyes on Jesus every morning, I hope that the smackdowns are few are far apart.  But when they do come I will thankful for them bringing me back onto His path.

I would encourage you to make the entirety of Psalm 141 your prayer for a week and see how it affects your daily life.


And lastly our humor corner:

The video below is from the movie The Blues Brothers.  Warning it does have foul language to prove a point in a comical fashion.  Please bypass if you are worried that this will offend you.

Time Out

Haven't blogged in awhile.  That's a combination of being busy and/or not having anything worth writing about while I had time.  However, that changed the other day while I was working with Sophia to clean up after herself.

It began with a her crayons spilled all over the living room floor.  She didn't want to put them away like I asked her.  I gave her until the count of three or it was timeout.  As you've guessed she ended up in timeout. When she came back to the mess she still did not want to clean up the mess.

As a result, she ended up in timeout a few times.  Finally, I sat in the recliner while she sat on the floor surrounded by crayons and I told her, "We aren't going to do anything else until you clean up the crayons on the floor Sophia.  Now do you need another timeout or will you pick up your crayons."

After this she finally relented and cleaned up her mess of crayons.  While she did cleaned our Heavenly Father had a talk with me.  I was reminded that sometimes when if feels like life isn't moving forward or we are stuck in a rut it is for a reason.  We may be acting in a disobedient manner and not repenting of a specific sin.  It could be that we  are refusing to deal with emotions correctly.  It could even be that we are not submitting to God's plan for our life.

No matter what the issue is, our Father is saying you aren't moving forward to do anything else until we deal with this issue.  Just like I can out wait my darling Sophia, God can out wait us.  So if you feel like you are stuck in a rut/life isn't what you thought it was...talk to God about it.  Ask Him if you are in timeout and why.  Then you can get back to enjoying God, others, and life in general.

P.S.  Don't forget to color something (even without a kid) because it is still fun and relaxing! :-)