October {Captured Moments}

October
Such a month of joy and beauty. A month of working through some hard things and growing even more to appreciate the amazing blessings that God has given. A month of loving life and living it fully!

1. 10-1C, 2. 10-1J, 3. 10-2G, 4. 10-3B, 5. 10-3E, 6. 10-3H, 7. 10-5B, 8. 10-7D, 9. 10-8C, 10. 10-10B, 11. 10-10J, 12. 10-11B, 13. 10-11E, 14. 10-11R, 15. 10-12E, 16. 10-13, 17. 10-14E, 18. 10-18B, 19. 10-18H, 20. 10-22D, 21. 10-23B, 22. 10-23E, 23. 10-24B, 24. 10-25D, 25. 10-27E, 26. 10-27Q, 27. 10-27Z, 28. 10-28F, 29. 10-28M, 30. 10-29C, 31. 10-30B, 32. 10-30E, 33. 10-30H, 34. 10-31E, 35. 10-31C

Food for Thought

One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.
~John Piper

Hard

Life is hard.

Sometimes it's because I'm being so very self-centered. Sometimes it's because the sorrows carried by others are overwhelming. Sometimes it's because I'm tired. Sometimes it's because I've lost perspective and can't seem to find my way out.

This week just seems heavy. Trying to pick up pieces and carry them to God and leave them there. It's not working out as well as I wish. I suppose there are things to learn in the midst.

The biggest lesson: this too shall pass and God will always be faithful.

The Fight

Be prepared.
You're up against far more than you can handle on your own.
Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it's all over but the shouting you'll still be on your feet.
~Ephesians 6:13

Really glad today that even when I'm not as prepared for the battles as I ought to be that God still gives me help and allows me to have hope that when the dust settles, I might still be standing through His power and strength.

Far more than I can handle...that's how I feel today. Don't know why. It just is.

The Way We Live

We all have...current relationships and responsibilities we can too easily take for granted. If we're wise, we'll see our duties not as unimportant ways to bide our time, but as springboards, launching us into God's plan and purpose for our future.
~Joshua Harris

God's various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is:
Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits.
~1 Corinthians 12:4-7

I love it when I run across two things that both speak to the same topic! These also go along so well with my thoughts of yesterday and I wanted to share them too!

I sense such a challenge in my life and the lives of those I know to make good use of the moments that we're given. Perhaps you wish that you were in a different place, with a different person, in a different stage of life. I hate to have to write it, but our wishing won't change anything!

There's another option for us instead of just pointlessly wishing for things that aren't in our lives at the moment. Instead, what if we fully embraced these moments we have, realizing that every aspect of our lives and personalities and places are things that God himself is behind? What if in every choice we made we remembered the last part of the above verse, that each person is given something to do that shows who God is?

How different would our lives, our thoughts, our world look if we began to live like this? How many of us are created for such awesome things and miss them because we take our moments and days and years for granted, focusing on things that may or may not come and not engaging in the here and now?

I just wonder. For myself and for others.

God, help me be different in the way I live.

In The Doing

We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are.... People do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living.... The happy person is the one who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself.
~ R.J. Baughan

This quote made me think of the following wisdom that Paul shares with us in Ephesians 2:10:

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.

You and I, we've been created to do. We're not just here to pass the time or count the hours. We're here for the accomplishment of the acts of living, the acts of embracing every moment given to us by God for the purposes of His kingdom. We're not here to just be or collect or exist. We're here to live abundantly full lives, enabled and determined by a God who loves us because we are His and He made us for these moments.

I want to make sure that in every circumstance I'm striving to live a life marked by doing and experiencing and embracing. Let my life be characterized by the doing of the works that God made me to do!

Ahoy Matey! *

The man who finds a wife finds a treasure,
and he receives favor from the Lord.
~Proverbs 18:22

A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
~Proverbs 31:10

I'm seeing a lot of treasure around.

Kind of wondering where all the pirates who seek this stuff are hiding!

:)

*I didn't realize how ironic the title was before I chose it but once I did, it cracked me up too much to change it! :)

Desperation

We hear the word desperate often, usually with a negative connotation, usually in situations where there is a deep need of rescue or we're drowning in hopelessness or despair. Those are the times when we get desperate.

Lately I've been wearing out the Hillsong CD "All Of The Above" (seriously, the lyrics from this CD will rock your world) and there is a song called "Desperate People" with this chorus:

This is our love
Hearts joined as one
Desperate for all You are
Lord break down these walls
And see how we love
Desperate for all You are
We chase Your heart

Year after year people will sing this chorus, will hum along, will appreciate the artistry. Yet how often are we really living out lives that reflect a desperate desire in our minds and hearts for Him? I feel as though this theme has been coming up in my life increasingly often and I am really being challenged by questions such as this.

Does my life and the lives of other Christians around me really reflect a sold-out passion for the things of God? Do we truly desire, above everything else, to know Him and chase His heart and allow His desires to become our own? I am convicted of the many times in my own life that this is not the case.

Go back to the beginning of this post though and remember when we usually see desperation...it shows up at the point of deepest need. I need a heart that is overcome with the neediness of my own life and personal shortcoming in every aspect. I need a heart that beats in line with His, that is broken and devastated by the things that dishonor Him and break His heart. I need to recognize that there is nothing that I can do to live the life He has for me apart from relying completely on Him. The truth is that I am desperate. Desperately in need of a savior. Desperately in need of transformation.

It's just that so often I settle for singing the lyrics and not really living them out.

Understanding

"[M]uch of the Christian life is spent trusting Jesus now and understanding him later."
-Jon Bloom

This sentence may sum up so much of the tension I feel as I try to walk in step with the Lord. It's not that I don't want to follow, it's not that I don't love Him. It's just that I long for understanding, oftentimes more than I long to trust.

From the time I was little, my desire for instant gratification has led me in frustrating paths of dissatisfaction and disillusionment. It's been one of those things that I've had to push up against and challenge as I've grown older and I'm no longer as impetuous when making a large purchase or so hasty to complete a task. Yet I still fight against the requirement to trust Him and walk with Him now while knowing that understanding is not in reach, or at least not guaranteed to be close by.

So I grow bit by bit in this walk, learning that it's not really His understanding I truly need, but rather, it's just Him. Or perhaps, more eloquently stated, "Our understanding his purposes in a particular providence tends to be not as important to God as our trust in his character." (Jon Bloom)

*All quotes from this article.