Weblog
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
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Are you a thief?
I have sat in churches where preaches preached about it.
I have heard conversations between friends where there is debate about it.
Employers write memos about it.
But what does it mean for the Christian?I am talking about internet useage at work, where is the line for you? When do you feel you are exploiting or stealing from your boss?
My husband and I have spoken about this over the years, because often his employers have had pretty strict guidelines about it, coupled with his own personal sense of ethics on the subject. While he has no problem logging on to internet banking to pay a bill (if he has given up his lunch time to work in the office), he 'personally' would never dream of being on Facebook at work.
I am not saying he is right, and as a non-believer he isn't doing it out of any spiritual conviction, it is just his own sense of right and wrong that influences his decisions.
I would be interested in how others work through this issue. How much is too much at work? Where are your own personal boundaries, and when does it cross the border of stealing from you boss (in terms of being payed to surf the net).
Sunday, November 16, 2008
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I wish God would wave at me.
Today in church a gentleman told us a story. He said, that he had been talking to a lady one day and she told him that she was an atheist who went to church each week. Thinking this was some what unusual, he asked her why, to which she replied that she was waiting for God to wave at her and say hello.
This woman, was waiting for God to speak to her, to make it clear about who he was. The gentleman telling the story, told us that this was his reply to her; "With all due respect, you are 2000 years to late, this has already been done through Jesus."
Many people today would love to have an encounter with a living God, yet they 'box' him into to a the way that they would like that to happen. Some of us pray for a particular miracle in our life, bargaining that if 'God would just do such and such then I would believe.'
The bible tells us that the ONLY way to the Father, is through the son. If you want to get to know God the Father, then you need to get to know His son.
Our God is the creator, but you won't find him living in the trees or the water, not according to the bible. God, is spirit, but he is not just any spirit, he is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, indwells the children of God and produces holiness within their character.Hebrews 1 says;
1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself[a] purged our[b] sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
The lady in the story was waiting for God to speak to her, not realizing that he already has.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
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To Encourage the Foolish
The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written,
I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.
So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.22-25While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can't begin to compete with God's "weakness."
26-31Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That's why we have the saying, "If you're going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God."
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Don't give up, don't give in, always give an account for the hope that is within you, in the Grace and Truth of Jesus Christ.
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Friday, November 14, 2008
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Hear your heart beat....
Last Sunday, we all set out to a local cinema to watch
High School Musical 3.
My daughter had turned 12 during the week. She had asked to go and see it, in lieu of our traditional meal out.As we sat munching our popcorn, we were faced (again) with Troy Bolton's (and the other cast members) journey of who am I ?
Should I follow my own dreams?
What are my dreams?
And will my parents be crushed if I choose my own path?
~Riveting stuff~
Yet the lesson was a good one.
As a Christian, as a mother, as a woman, as a wife and as a home schooler, in the early days I sometimes fell into the trap of admiring somebody else and set about trying to emulate their persona. It is tiring, uninspiring and guaranteed to end in failure.
If I didn't wear myself out trying, then sooner or later the person whom I was copying, came crashing down from the pedal stool I had put them on, and all of a sudden my little world was rocked.
These days I am learning the art, of listening to my heart beat.... to the heart beat of our family.
It is ok to be different.
It is ok to be an individual.
It is ok to follow your heart.
It is ok if your 'shape' looks different from the 'shapes' around you.
As a society we like that which is similar to us, we are drawn to it.
And there is nothing wrong with that either- unless it causes us to compromise the uniqueness of who/what we were created to be.
It is important more and more in this day and age, to draw aside and listen to the heart beat, that was woven within for you, knitted together while you were still in your mother's womb by a mighty God.
And often when you do that, you will find, that you begin to walk a road less traveled.
You swim against a raging current.
And that is ok, because if you listen carefully, attune your ear, you can hear your hear beat, loud and strong above the crushing thong of the world around you, and there in that moment, you will be at peace.
Do you ever feel alone in this world, for being truly you?
Or are you comfortable in your own skin?
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