Day 2111 – Habits Form Canyons

This morning, I FINALLY caught up on the current sermon series at my church. (Sunday’s message was exceptionally good too, check out the Luke 6:37-42 sermon about not judging others. I honestly think it may have been one of the best sermons my pastor has ever preached.) In the middle of listening, I posted on Facebook asking friends for suggestions on other sermon series/pastors to check out. One of the things I’ve been trying to do is listen to a sermon or two a day. It gives me a chance to put together a puzzle while I listen, thus meeting two of my needs – the need for godly wisdom daily and the need to clean up a mess of something and put it into order. My senior pastor’s wife suggested that I check out Levi Lusko of Fresh Life Church. I picked a sermon series called Creature of Habit. Oh friends, I found myself in tears through the sermon and very convicted. It’s a great message, so I won’t belabor you with the details. It caused me to think about habits I have, both good and bad. It caused me to delete Farmville off my iPad (again). While, it can be a good thing and does bring me a lot of joy, there are times when it can bring vicious distraction and waste time. I strive to be honest on this blog, and here it is – I spent about 3 hours playing last night. Instead of reading, instead of cleaning/going through things, instead of working, instead of writing. I lounged around for THREE hours playing this game. Now, don’t get me wrong, it WAS enjoyable. I crafted the crap out of things on my farm. But I ended the day feeling empty and under-productive. How timely was this sermon!

I spent a good bit of time after the first message writing down all of the habits I want and the habits I don’t want. What was cool as I went through was that I could think of verses that went along with these habits. I could think of the tiny ways you can choose a good habit. People make comments about our marriage from time to time – how cute we are, how encouraging as a couple, how we trust in God. But these things in us are first and foremost a gracious gift of God. But they are second habits in our life. It is a daily choice to encourage each other instead of putting down. It’s a constant choice to trust God. It’s saying – “God will provide” or “I can’t wait to see how God will work in this situation” instead of saying “How will we pay the bills?” or “What are we going to do?”

The Grand Canyon was made by years and years and years of water forming the great depths. Friends, remember that your tiny choices throughout the day add up to great things….or terrible things. What tiny change will you make today for the better?

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Day 2107 – Our New Home

Two and a half years ago, we moved out of our first home together and moved in my family. What followed was a wonderful season of growth, getting to know my family, growing closer to Christ than we have ever been in our personal lives and in our marriage. I am so thankful for the generosity of my family letting us, well, be a part of the family.

Yesterday, we moved out. There were a number of reasons for this, one of them was that we cut Bret’s commute from 45-60 minutes down to 12. Since the work I do can be from most anywhere, it didn’t matter where we lived. However, the biggest reason we moved is that Bret felt God was calling us to move out because of issues in his heart. He admits that he put off moving out because it was cheaper to live at my parents and because of enjoying the growth in his relationships with my family. But God continued to put on our hearts to move out. So at this time, while we’re not sure where all the money will come from and where God will lead us, we’re excited and having faith to see what He has for us, and the growth that will occur during this next part of our journey. Especially in Bret’s heart.

* Note – Bret was dictating this to me. 🙂

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Day 2102 – Good Friends + The Pop Shop + A Day Outside = Heaven On Earth

Yesterday, we had the joy of hanging out with some very old friends (the very same ones who gave us great relationship advice before we got married and gave me their bouquet) and their daughters. We started our journey at The Pop Shop where we stuffed our faces with grease. Then we took a hike behind their home and spent the rest of the day chatting around a fire. It was a wonderful time of catching up and encouraging one another in our walks with Christ. How wonderful to have such dear friends. 🙂

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Day 2096 – God Shows His Love In The Little Things

Last week, I spent a ton of time going through my old paperwork and receipts. I burned a LOT of them instead of shredding. In the middle of this process, I realized I had misplaced a meal receipt I needed to write off. Now, it wasn’t a whole lot of money but it would still be nice to write it off. I didn’t take the time to go through all of the bags of “to be burned” items and I just assumed it was lost.

Today, I was packing up my laptop bag and noticed a receipt that had been chilling under my laptop for a few weeks (in a spot I never put receipts). I finally pulled it out and wouldn’t you know…..it was the meal receipt! Now, you could look at this and think it’s not a big deal…but in my eyes, it’s a huge deal. It shows me (again) that God loves me enough to do something “small” for me. The fact that the Creator of the universe, Lord of all, cares for my “little” problems.

What “little” way has God shown His love for you today?

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Day 2081 – God Glorifying Himself In Dirty Humans

I was looking back over some of my old pictures and the one below came up. I love this picture. It was taken randomly while we were camping with friends. I decided to pull the image and blog about it in some way. I was struck with the thought that you can see the beams of light so clearly because of the dust in the air.

Let’s look at this in terms of us and God. We are dirty, messed up people. There is so much bad and sin in our lives. But when we allow God to work through us and even highlight our sin, God is shown as so beautiful and we glorify him.

So if you’re feeling pretty bad about yourself today, remember this:

“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” 1 Corinthians 1:27.

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