Psalm 37:7
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.

Confession time! I HATE JANUARY. I mean, I don’t really have anything personally against the month necessarily, but it’s more the whole “here we go again” feeling that unnerves me. Some people look at the new year with anticipation about what’s going to happen next; others dread what might happen. I fall in the “do we have to start all over again?” category. I get a bit overwhelmed at the idea of repeating the cycle, and that’s why I love this verse.

If you read all of Psalm 37, you’ll find that David wrote “do not fret” 3 times in the first eight verses. Hmmm. Maybe that’s important. He also wrote about trusting in the Lord, delighting in the Lord, committing to the Lord, and of course, Continue reading

Matthew 26:39b
Yet not as I will, but as You will.

This morning Parker and Will were up at the breakfast table making quick work of two bowls of cereal and as they finished up, Sydney crawled up in her chair and got ready to eat. I asked her what kind of cereal she wanted and she said she wanted to do eenie-meenie to decide. When she was done, she had apparently picked the wrong one, because she looked up at me, smiled, and said she was going to do it again because she wanted the other kind (which was Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the BEST cereal ever made, but that’s beside the point). It took 2 more rounds before she figured out how to end on the right box, and then she was ready to pour and eat!

Maybe it isn’t such a stretch to think that we often treat the will of God the same way. I mean, come on, we know He has a plan and a choice for us, but so often we just go through the motions of choosing so we feel better about choosing what we want His will to be. We need to be more like Jesus in a lot of ways, but especially in this way: God’s will for our lives needs to be the one and only choice. We cannot manipulate the choices so that we get what we want, and even if we could, we wouldn’t. We need to want what He wants.

Only then will we truly know the peace of living God’s will for us.

1 Peter 4:10a
Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others…

I was gone over the week-end ministering at our state’s Youth Convention and, as a result, heard about this encounter second-hand. Too bad, too, because I would have laughed out loud if I’d have been there. Wendy had the children down at the Albemarle Christian Bookstore (a great place to shop, by the way) and Sydney was running up and down the aisle. Of course Wendy told her that she couldn’t run in the store and it caught Sydney by surprise. She looked up at Wendy and said, "But Mommy. Running is my gift." It took some explaining by Wendy and Sydney’s Aunt Laura to help her understand that some of the customers might not see her or might get knocked down if she kept running. I’m not sure if Sydney completely understood, but she’s five. We, on the other hand, aren’t, so we need to understand the principle she learned that day.

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