Faith journey

Sometimes when our faith isn't growing in great leaps, we just walk step by step through each day, asking God to guide our steps. That will have to be enough, until we slow down, stop, and make Him a priority. As we heard from Haggai yesterday in church, "Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?"

I read an encouragement to make God a priority in a forwarded email, when I read, "Whenever you want to talk, He'll listen. He can live anywhere in the universe, and He chose your heart." When I work every day in cyberspace and don't talk much to "real" people, that's encouraging to hear!

balance

I love the creative process and being able to write and develop curriculum at home, but I also enjoy Bible study. Lately it seems that curriculum writing is the way I "earn a living," and Bible study/writing is on the side. I'd like to find a way to balance the two better, so I can make more time for "Christian" writing. Is anyone else trying to balance Bible study with writing in the secular field?

Serving? - not

Today I looked up the verse about becoming a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). The next verse or two, now that's the clincher.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Cor. 5:17-19)
I like being reconciled to God, a "friend of God," but I'm not sure I'm ready to get in the sticky business of other people's messy lives to have a ministry of reconciliation. Fortunately, God asks us to take small steps at a time...

Quiet Journey

I'm reminded today as I look over this blog that sometimes our journey of faith is like a blog. We may not see or feel there is any action, yet we are learning and growing and reading in our relationship with God, even if nothing shows. Our modern-day pace of life is too hectic -- we often don't have time for contemplation, we just read, pray, attend a church service, but rarely assimilate our learning, or truly partake of God. When we do go on vacation, we have time, but we are too busy resting!

We're talking quite a bit about serving in our small groups, wondering what it will look like and how to get others on board to join in service. In the meantime, I decided to read Philippians again. (I wouldn't want it to lose the life it has!) I'm waiting (?) for the writing muse to strike, I guess, to actually write a Malachi study now that most of the research is done. Maybe I just need a block of creative time when I'm not doing anything else...

Serving.... or not

I spent a fair amount of time last year in Philippians, and determined one of Paul's major themes was service. With our church's emphasis on service this summer, I'd like to keep Philippians current in my thinking. Right now I'm working on a study in Malachi. Last night I noticed it seems to have a theme of "how not to serve." I'll have to give that some more thought, and see if that concept is really there.

Showing God's love

We talked about service yesterday at our women's ministry lunch. We agree "service," or ministry, or reaching out to others, is a good thing, something that should be part of our Christian life. As I considered how to get others on board with this idea of service, I took a quick look to see what Jesus said about it.

"Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. you are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, becasue a servant does not know his master's business. Instead I have called you friends, for everything that I learned form my Father I have made known to you." John 15:13-15

We serve because we are His friends, because we want to, not out of bondage as a servant. Our master's business is to love people, and to draw all men to Himself, and we can help Him in His business as we reach out to others. We show God's love as we serve, because our service does not look like what the world has to offer.

Hopefully, these ideas will make it easier as we embark on a lifestyle of service in our local church community.