That Good Part

". . . do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on —Matthew 6:25" Jesus summed up commonsense carefulness in the life of a disciple as unbelief. If we have received the Spirit of God, He will squeeze right through our lives, as if to ask, "Now where do I come into this relationship, this vacation you have planned, or these new books you want to read?" And He always presses the point until we learn to make Him our first consideration. Whenever we put other things first, there is confusion. ". . . do not worry about your life . . . ." Don’t take the pressure of your provision upon yourself. It is not only wrong to worry, it is unbelief; worrying means we do not believe that God can look after the practical details of our lives, and it is never anything but those details that worry us. Have you ever noticed what Jesus said would choke the Word He puts in us? Is it the devil? No— "the c...

These guys were laughing out loud! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24765324/

Our pastor recently included a bunch of slang terms and their definitions in a study (do you still call it slang or is there a new word for that, too?). I still use a bunch of old ones like dig it, chick, and rocks. My daughter, Muffin, and I decided that we dig "boss" and want to bring it back. I have no understanding of the current text abbreviations, except LOL which I hope really means laughing out loud and some mean kid didn't snow me on it's true meaning. I have a laugh you can hear down the street-sorry. If something strikes me as funny, and most things do whether you intend them to or not, you definitely know what I thought about it. I have a friend who is a snorter, it doesn't take much for her to rip a good snort when she laughs. I snort as well, but usually in sarcastic derision. I am not known for having a poker face, so the concept of having to tell someone what my reaction is (LOL) is totally foreign. I read a variety of blogs, and this morning I rea...

"To make less complex or complicated; make plainer or easier: to simplify a problem." I once took a job that was suppose to be a no-brainer, part time deal, and promptly found myself in the position of in-charge-of-everything. This actually happened to me more than once. In this case, it was a business in which people with good intentions had driven it into a pit. One of the reasons for this was the systems they used internally to track and process stuff. There were folders for folders, files for files, most things were done not once but three different ways-for "backup". This wasn't a complex business, yet in their attempt to be efficient, they were completely ineffective. Charles Hummel (no relation to us French Hommels) wrote a great book called "Tyranny of the Urgent" in which he makes the important distinction between efficient and effective. Read the book, it will be an extremely effective use of your time. The point is, it is possible to hold to...

From the priceless little book "If" by Amy Carmichael. "Perhaps prayer often needs to be followed by a little pause, that we may have time to open our hearts to that for which we have prayed. We often rush from prayer to prayer without waiting for the word within, which says, "I have heard you, My child."

" What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer! O what peace we often forfeit, o what needless pain we bear, All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged; take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer. Are we weak and heavy-laden, cumbered with a load of care? Precious Savior, still our Refuge; take it to the Lord in prayer. Do thy friends despise, forsake thee? Take it to the Lord in prayer. In His arms He'll take and shield thee; thou wilt find a solace there. " Hymn by Joseph Scriven

Wisdom from Elisabeth Elliot We like things to go smoothly and as planned. Very often unexpected things intervene, and our plans go awry. We think we've got "problems." There is another level at which everything that happens is being engineered. "God has no problems," Corrie ten Boom said, "only plans." When ours are interrupted, his are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable) "toward the goal of true maturity" (Rom 12:2 JBP). Believe God. Turn the interruptions over to Him. He is at the controls.