Contentment

Week 2 of Melissa Taylor's online-bible study of An Untroubled Heart


Chapter 4 : The Pressure's On
(an excerpt from Micca Campbell's An Untroubled Heart)


Finding Balance in Contentment
...Balance comes when I lay my to-do list before God and allow Him to prioritize my life. My life does not belong to me as a Christian. I shouldn't be the one ordering my days. When I do, my life becomes unstable. When this happens I've learned to do a quick review of my life by using this acrostic on priorities given to me by a friend:
P - Pray. Ask God for wisdom. Ask Him to show you his priorities for this season of your life.
R - Review God's priorities for your life. Study God's word to determine His priorities for you as His child and as a woman.
I - Take Inventory. Examine the activities that consume your time. (what are my true priorities? Are they the right ones?)
O - Order your schedule. Ask, "what is important?" Make the hard choices based on God's priorities for your life.
R - Resist the "tyranny of the urgent". Don't let the urgent keep you from focusing on the truly important.
I - Input from others. Seek input, counsel, and accountability from authorities, your husband, godly friends, and mentors.
T - Take advantage of the time God gives you. Don't waste time. Do all to the glory of God.
I - Identify time robbers. What saps your energy and robs your time? Activities, attitudes, distractions, interruptions?
E - Experience this season fully. Be all there in this season of life. Weep, rejoice, work hard, and celebrate with all your hear. Don't waste time living in the past or future.
S - Sabbaths. Take regular time-outs to refresh, regain perspective, reflect and evaluate, and reprioritize. Make adjustments accordingly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I read through this chapter again, I regain perspective on what God wants me to be. God wants me to accomplish things according to His will. God wants me to accomplish it and not lose my eye on Him. God wants me to take advantage of the time He has given me. God doesn't want me to procrastinate and waste my time being..."useless". God wants me to PRIORITIZE.

It hits me every time. I know I've been always organized with my life and all, but ever since things happened with my life in the past 2 years, I've been...well...disorganized. Life is cruel at times, but we can always count on God. God is awesome. :)

Lord God,
Thank you for opening my heart and mind again to your word. Thank you for giving me resources to constantly remind me from time to time that YOU will never leave my side. Thank you for reminding me to prioritize and be content with life. Teach me to balance life. Teach me to lay my to-do list before You. Thank you for another promise that you have unfolded. Amen.

STAY TUNED.

Hope

What is Hope?

Hope is the confidence that what God has promised will happen. If God said it, don't sweat it. He will do what He has promised. Hope provides me with this confidence: 

• That God will forgive all my sins, He will renew me
• He will give me peace in times of turmoil,
• He will heal my sickness and comfort my sorrows,
• He will fight for me,
• He will guide me, 
• He will protect me,
• He will strengthen me, 
• and He will care for me until all my fears are swallowed up by an undying faith in a God who is more that able to supply all my needs.

Faith believes that God is real, and hope is the confidence that He'll do what He said He will do. 

--taken from An Untroubled Heart; Micca Campbell

Psalms 91:1-4

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most high will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust."

Surely He will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge;

His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

---

Right now, I need to keep reminding myself that it is by His grace that I am here and saved. It is He who keeps me going everyday. It is He who supplies every single need in my life right now. I will keep at it. Move forward. There is HOPE.

December is Here!

I woke up today not realizing that 2011 is about to say sayonara. December is here and December brings me mixed feelings (but more on the giddy side of course!). Don't you like that feeling of waking up to Christmas songs and carols and holiday decorations? Christmas lights flickering and poinsettias  flourishing? Or may be to the smell of freshly baked ginger bread cookies and egg nogs? Or maybe just the thought of starting a new year and put this year behind? Whatever it may be, I love December and so should you.

My lil chihuahua, Pablo, thinks so too.

Share with me your thoughts of December!

...and while you're at it... Remember to Keep CHRIST in Christmas.

Stay Tuned.

I'll take the...

...EASY button, right there.

Have you ever been in a situation (or situations) where you chose to take the easy way out instead of doing good and facing the said situation? Well, let me tell you this, I have (in numerous and countless times!). As crazy and cowardly as it may sound, I am afraid to admit that I've done it in every minute situation up to gigantic circumstances.

As I sit and write here, I think about such circumstances(small and ginormous) that has happened to me in the past and what were the  results of these choices. I sit and contemplate and sigh. I let out a big sigh because of the poor choices I have made.Why did I make such decisions? Well first off, I didn't want to trouble myself into putting too much energy into it. Second, why bother, right? Wrong. And here I say: "If only..."

Wrong. Yes, I admit. I made poor choices and if only I could take it all back and do it all over again, I would. The funny thing about being human is that we never learn. We seem to make the same mistakes over and over again and we just never learn. But hold on, being human also means that we make our own choices, right? Exactly. So what's holding us back from making right decisions? Our sinful nature.

I can go on...and on...and on and list down points, but I will save you the trouble. 

So tell me, would you go back to the same old routine and take the easy route or would you change your ways and say, "No, I'll face my giants. I'll let go and let God."

So instead of pressing the Easy Button... try and press this button right here:

Stay Tuned.

For I know the plans...

 ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) 

For the past two years now, Jeremiah 29:11 has been one of my favorite verses in the bible and I have chosen it to be my life verse. Such a simple verse with such a profound meaning. I have written it, I have said it, and I have tried to drill it in my head but it's so hard to grasp...up until recently. 


Life is Hard. Yes, no doubt... and I learned it the hard way. Two years of this roller coaster ride called life can drive someone to a point where it's just over. I've been up. I've been down...and I am tired. Life is definitely not a joke and so is God.


One word: Stubborn. Growing up I knew what I wanted in life. I knew who to surround myself with and I knew how to live my life. But it didn't go the way I "planned" it to be. Results? Frustrations. Disappointments. Broken relationships. Failures. I was walking through the path where God intended me to, but along the way I diverted and took a little detour. That detour took me in a different places. Places and experiences I never thought that could happen to someone who knew what she wants and how to's in life. Two years in that detour and I've decided, I'm going back. 


"For I know the plans I have for you..." I am slowly grasping the words and drilling it in my head permanently. Disappointments, frustrations, and what-nots? I see all these as part of God's plan to build character in me. God is sovereign and nothing can ever change that. Yes, I admit I've been on the detour and I have had moments where my relationship with God was put on the sidelines, but bottom line, whatever I do, God is still the master planner. He has his blueprint and I leave it up to Him.


Hope and Future. God's promises never fail and I have learned it the hard way and God never promises us to fail...but to succeed in whatever we are doing. Fail once?twice?ten times or more? Get back up and try again. 




Stay tuned.

Confessions

Yes, I will say it again: I have neglected my blog (yet again). I do not have a good enough reason as to why I neglected it, but I will try my best to be on at least once a week.

Let's change it up a bit this time. I promise (..ish) to update my blog more often now as part of my therapy and we'll see how things go. Every week, I'll write a confession about my daily struggle with my relationship with God. I still struggle. Yes I do. 

I have a whole lot of things I want to rant and write about, but I will leave it here for now. 

Stay tuned.

Is Something Missing In Your Life? (by Rick Warren)

(taken from The Daily Hope by Rick Warren)

“I am like a caravan, lost in the desert searching for water.” (Job 6:18 CEV)

If you feel like God is a million miles away, guess who moved? God didn't move; you did.

Do you ever have that feeling that something is missing in your life, but you don’t know what it is? Maybe there’s a longing in your heart, and you feel disconnected from God.

The answer is simple: “[Y]our iniquities (your sins) have separated you from your God;  your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2 NIV).

If you feel like God is a million miles away, guess who moved? God didn’t move; you did. 

When you live on earth, you will sense a disconnection from God, where you feel he is far away. This disconnect leaves a hole in your heart that nothing else can fill. A lot of people look for ways to fill that hole, but they look in the wrong places. Why? Because they don’t know they should be looking for God. In today’s verse, Job described it as being like someone lost in the desert searching for water.

You want something to fill the emptiness, to satisfy the unmet desire. You try to quench that unquenchable thirst. But the longer you continue to look in the wrong places, the more darkness will increase in your life until you get to a place like the one the Bible describes: “They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God but with reality itself” (Ephesians 4:18 MSG).

This darkness is easy to see everywhere you look; in schools, in businesses, in government, in Hollywood — in every area of society, there are people who have lost touch not only with God, but also with reality.

Instead of identifying sin and hating it the way God does, our society laughs at it. It’s popular to make fun of sin. Listen to just about any comedian’s routine, and there will be jokes that make fun of sin. It’s no big deal for someone to cheat on his wife or take drugs or do something illegal. And on top of that, there will be jokes that make fun of people who try to do the right thing. People think it is all good comedy, right?

But when you get closer to God, his light reveals what sin really does. It creates natural disasters and deformities, physical decay and death, emotional distress and disappointment, relational distance and discord, financial difficulties, and spiritual disconnect. That’s no laughing matter.

Ask God to show you if there are things in your life that you are using to fill the hole in your heart that only he can fill.

Saddleback Resources offers a small group Bible study related to these devotionals: The Invisible War-Winning the Battle of Temptation.
© Copyright 2011 Rick Warren. Used by permission.