Walking It Out

Growing up I can only remember praying a few times.  Maybe it was more but I can only recollect a few times I spent in intentional prayer trying to alter a situation.  I spent most of my late childhood and early young adult life not believing in God.  Therefor, I didn't pray at all.  For much of my time as a new believer in Christ I prayed in a similar way as I did as a child, and if I'm being honest I still tend to lean that way now.   Desperation.  I only really prayed when there didn't seem like I had any more options of fixing or changing something myself.  Isn't the point of salvation that we NEED to be saved?  That we cannot do it ourselves.  I personally feel like this is a huge part of the sanctification process.  We need to continually be in a place where we recognize that we can only grow, change, be successful in our endeavors if we lose our independence.   Ephesians 6:18New International Version (NIV) ...

This New Year's I didn't make any resolutions but I did decide on a goal.  I decided to purchase the One Year Bible, NLT.  It has you read approximately 15 minutes of scripture per day comprised of old testament, new testament, psalms and proverbs.  Overall I like how they break it down and it's made it a lot easier of a goal for me to read the entire bible, which I've never done before because I get discouraged. I've got to tell you, even though I have found this much easier to read and less intimidating, I'm really struggling with the old testament.  Over and over with the God instructed killings of seemingly innocent people.  Killing of women and children due to a husband's/father's actions.  The offering up of wives and virgin children to abuse as they see fit to preserve the honor of the man has me really struggling to understand.  However, we are to look to God for our understanding.  There are a lot of interpretations out there, comm...

My family and I are finding this assignment here in Las Vegas to be a challenging one.  We've gone through many types of struggles and at this point we are looking forward to what's next for us after Nevada.  In the meantime I find myself looking around and trying to figure out how to improve the world around me.  This past weekend we (okay mostly my husband) were doing some yard work.  We (he) dug up some palm trees that wouldn't recover and replaced some of the old plants with new ones.  Part of me wanted to keep going, makeover the back yard so I would actually want to spend time back there.  However, I would have to keep reminding myself that we are here temporarily and we need to watch how much we spend on things that do not add value to our house/property. God seems to speak to me through these small moments.  A small lesson can translate into such a big life lesson.  We all are here on temporary assignment, we don't fit in here on Ear...