I’ve talked a little about being content before. I find that many people I know, are just not content. What is being content? Let’s pull out the old dictionary and look at the meaning first.
con·tent
2 [kuhn-tent]
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I’ve talked a little about being content before. I find that many people I know, are just not content. What is being content? Let’s pull out the old dictionary and look at the meaning first.
2 [kuhn-tent]
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Knowledge, wisdom, preserving both, discretion, all important things. So important that they are discussed multiple times in the bible. I thought I would look at a few verses where they are all mentioned.
Passage Proverbs 2:8-11:
8He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints.
9Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path.
10When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul;
11Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee:
He keeps the paths of judgement. Judgement is:
[juhj-muhnt]
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In Christianity, a holy person, living or dead; a person who has been saved ( see salvation). Saint is the French word for “holy.”Many churches reserve the title of saint for persons who havedied faithful to their Christian commitment.
Most believe that Saint is the Catholic belief in Saints, a holy person. For most of Christianity, the title saint refers to someone that has been saved. This statement is saying that He preserves the way of those who are saved and follow Him.
9Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path.
Through this, we will understand righteousness, and judgement, and equity, yes, every good path. Righteousness has gotten a bad rap.
[rahy-chuhs-nis]
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http://sp.dictionary.com/dictstatic/d/g/speaker.swf [dih-skresh-uhn]
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I’m going to focus again. And I mean really focus on my intent to focus more on God. To do this, I’m going to go ahead and read through a Psalm, well, part of one. Psalm 19 to be exact.
Psalm 19
1The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
2Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
3There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
4Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
The heavens, meaning the sky, universe, declare the glory of God. Really, if you just look up into the sky, specifically at night, how can you not just love the beauty that is there. I watched a video once of Louis Giglio ‘playing’ the songs of the skies. You can watch it here. It’s really a fun video, though a little long at 14 minutes. Now, along the lines of the skies declaring the glory and appreciate the beauty that is out there…. the next part of the verse says that the firmament. Let’s stop there, the word firmament is not used often, so, I’ll provide the definition:
http://sp.dictionary.com/dictstatic/d/g/speaker.swf [fur-muh-muhnt]
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[tab-er-nak-uhl]
Show IPA noun,verb, -led, -ling.
Ever have one of those days, that wasn’t horrible, but just wasn’t right? That was my day today. It wasn’t a bad day. The kids didn’t fight too much until it was time for bed. They were pretty good most of the day. Work wasn’t horrible, just annoying when you are dealing with application people that think they can get away with saying that when the database went down, the users weren’t impacted, with it’s a database based application. Pretty normal stuff, just annoying. The animals are all fine, except the male goat still favoring his hind leg, but that is to be expected. We got to go to dinner with dear friends at a new place in town. I don’t recommend going. Our friends enjoyed it, but I’m feeling sick to my stomach after eating there. Take that for what it’s worth, since I don’t have great luck at any restaurant. Received a lovely call from a friend that was just calling to check on me and that was a nice conversation. Things just feel off though. Ever have one of those days?
I think this is God wanting me to refocus. So, tonight, when I go to bed, I shall refocus. Count my blessings. They are in abundance.
Good night, and God bless.
It’s late, I’m tired. It’s been a long day. I thought that I would just mention some of the blessings that God has given me. Today, he gave me life, a wonderful family, a job, a job I can work from home, due to said job, a way for me to pay for the home I live in, the school I take my kids to, and food for the table. He’s given me some wonderful neighbors that I can visit with and have a wonderful, intelligent conversation. He allowed me to hear a strange dog in the yard ‘attacking’ the livestock so I could go out there and get the dog out of the pen. The goat is fine, just a scratch, from what I could tell. Again, a blessing. Owner of the dog feels horrible, which I’m sad about. The dog was actually friendly and when I went in to get him out of there, he didn’t snarl, growl, or bite at me. My belief is that he just wanted to play. So, again, a blessing. Today, our annual bonus was announced, it was great, another blessing. I could go on and on. These are just the big things. I’m so thankful.
God bless.
As a Christian, my faith is tested on a regular basis. We’re warned of this in James.
James 1:2-8:
2My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
3Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
4But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
5If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
6But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
7For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.
8A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
My brethren, as in, my brothers and sisters in Christ, count it all joy, meaning be happy, when you fall into divers temptations. As we know from the previous post that I’ve linked, divers means numerous. So, basically, we should be thankful when we fall into temptation.
Verse 3, knowing this, it is the trying of our faith, working, building patience.
Verse 4, but let patience have her perfect work. This means to allow the patience to follow through and be complete. We do this so that we can be perfect… According to dictionary.com, the definition of perfect is as follows:
[adj., n. pur-fikt; v. per-fekt] Show IPA
7For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.
8A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
So do not think that if you waver, you will receive any thing from the Lord, because a double minded man (one that wavers) is unstable in all he does. just look at 99% of the politicians out there, I don’t care which party, and you can see that those that waver, generally are unstable.
So, we should be happy when we are brought to temptation as it helps us build our patience, thereby strengthening our faith. And I know that I am constantly tested and I typically fail in these tests. But I do try to keep my faith and pray on it constantly.
God Bless!
Everyone has a gift. Some know early in their lives. Others take a lifetime to figure it out.
1 Peter 4:10:
10As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
This is a difficult verse for me. As I was saying to a dear friend of mine today, I have no creativity. It was forced out of me during my youth. And that creativity was quashed as an adult to a point that I just don’t try anymore. Why do I mention that? Because it skews my view on what my gift could be. I truly don’t believe that I have much ability to do much, and I don’t do well ministering to people. I never know what to say or do. Although, I do pray on it daily.
So, 1 Peter 4:10 tells us that everyone of us has received the gift. I forget how many categories listed in the Bible right now, it’s 7 or 9 or something like that. I’ll have to research and post on it. Anyway, so we’re all given a gift, and as such, we should minister to one another. There’s that One Another again, togetherness. We are to be good stewards, managers, of the manifold, or many kinds of, grace of God. Wow, that’s quite a bit, specially when you don’t know your gift in the first place.
Now, I may have known my gift, except I didn’t attend those services on Sunday night. At that time there was no babysitting, so I couldn’t go. Maybe I’ll have to look into a study on it, so that it will help me find my gift.
How about you? What’s your gift?
Throughout life, you have lessons to learn. Most kids think that that ends when you finish school. Sorry, it doesn’t. I, for one, am thankful for that. One thing that I do believe is that it is important to keep learning. When you stop, your brain starts to stagnate and deteriorates as you are not exercising that muscle. Sometimes, these lessons are small and subtle, other times, the smack you full on between the eyes.
Job 21:22 discusses this a little.
22Shall any teach God knowledge? seeing he judgeth those that are high.
A little background on Job. In the opening chapter, you find out that Job was right with God and pleased God greatly and was greatly blessed. Satan was talking to God and said that of course he was faithful to God because God had never brought negative to Job’s life. So, God gave Satan full access to Job. He was able to do anything to Job that he wanted, with the exception of killing him. So, he did. Job lost all of his children, all his crops were destroyed, and he became painfully ill. And through all this, he kept praising God. He did not falter, until the end. He started to question why he was being put through this.
This verse occurs when one of his friends is talking to him and he disagrees with his friends assessment about God. He is stating, in a nutshell, “Who can teach God anything? He judges the most powerful.” Basically, who are we to try to tell God anything?
We can learn a lot from Job. As we go through trials and tribulations, these are lessons for us to learn. And how we respond to these trials and tribulations reflects our character and who we are and our relationship with God. If we are not relying on Him, and putting our trust in Him, our reaction would not be as desirable. But if we are relying on Him and putting our trust and faith in Him, our reaction is more positive and favorable.
So, how are you reacting to things not moving as you intended?
A proverb is a profound saying, maxim, or oracular utterance requiring interpretation. It’s an expression of general truth or principle. It’s important to know this as there is an entire book of proverbs that is quite educational. Looking at 3 verses particular tonight, Proverbs 3:5-7.
Proverbs 3:5-7:
5Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
6In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
7Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.
The first verse is fairly popular and rather easy to understand: Trust in the Lord with all our heart, and do not rely on our own understanding. To be clear, the definition of understanding is:
[uhn-der-stan-ding] Show IPA
Today, we had our family celebration for my oldest daughter’s 10th birthday. Her birthday was last week, but we did our family celebration today. Now, I’ve been dealing with a lot of stuff; husband’s migraine for the past 22.5 weeks, with no sign of it stopping, my own health issues, that finally, after 1.5 years of active work, is finally looking like we have an answer to that, but really prevents me from doing all that I need to do in every day life.
So, here, is where I’m blessed beyond being blessed.
My only worry today, was getting there on time, since I needed to go to church to make an announcement about the latest fundraiser for the school. Shameless plug: We’re selling cookbooks. Let me know if you’re interested. They should be in just in time for Mother’s Day.
By the way, not only were we on time, but we were there way early and the first ones there, so I took the girls through the Antique Mall that was a couple doors down.
So, God has blessed me yet again. I’m just overwhelmed by it. Thank you, God, for blessing me continually.