JuanaMikels.com: Choosing Him Marriage Blog Tour!

JuanaMikels.com: Choosing Him Marriage Blog Tour!

Live Life to the Hilt

Book review-Choosing him all over Again

My friend Juana Mikels has written a lovely book about her journey from selfishness to Christ-centeredness, in her experience of leaving her husband because of self-love and discontentment, to coming to Christ, and learning what true love is. It is clearly God's pursuit of her, her slowly coming to faith in Him, and then going back to her husband, because of God's new control of her. I am blessed to recommend it to any woman, as a very good read, and as a help in understanding our own need of Christ as our First Love. The love in a marriage that He may give to us is blessed only if Christ is the True Pursuit and center. Thank you, Juana, for writing a Real Story- the one God gave you to write! 

Live Life to the Hilt: Prayer

Live Life to the Hilt: Prayer

Prayer

Edmund P. Clowney wrote, “The Bible does not present an art of prayer; it presents the God of prayer.” We should not decide how to pray based on the experiences and feelings we want. Instead, we should do everything possible to behold our God as he is, and prayer will follow. The more clearly we grasp who God is, the more our prayer is shaped and determined accordingly. 

Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality. We may be responding not to the real God but to what we wish God and life to be like. Indeed, if left to themselves our hearts will tend to create a God who doesn’t exist. People from Western cultures want a God who is loving and forgiving but not holy and transcendent. Studies of the spiritual lives of young adults in Western countries reveal that their prayers, therefore, are generally devoid of both repentance and of the joy of being forgiven. Without prayer that answers the God of the 
Bible, we will only be talking to ourselves. 

Excerpt from PRAYER by Timothy Keller Reprinted by arrangement with DUTTON, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2014 by Timothy Keller 

I'm slowly learning this.....how often I've come to Him because I'm desperate for Him to answer my prayers, but have not given Him the honour and worship which is due Him. May we look to Him, seeing Him first as the all powerful Creator, the pure and righteous Father, the only Redeemer, who has been so merciful and gracious to us. Job 9 gives much food for thought.....and then Job later says, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust Him!"--Job 13:15

Live Life to the Hilt: Scripture memorization

Live Life to the Hilt: Scripture memorization

Live Life to the Hilt



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From Oswald Chambers, again

"Thinking is the habit of expressing what moves our spirit. In order to think we must concentrate. Thinking is a purely physical process. No one can tell us how to begin to think, all they can do is to tell us what happens when we do think. 
The inattentive, slovenly way we drift into the presence of God is an indication that we are not bothering to think about Him. 

Interest is natural, attention must be by effort. One of the great needs of the Christian life is to have a place where we deliberately attend to realities. That is the real meaning of prayer. "

Oh that we may truly think, focus, and concentrate on what He wants, so that we may become one with Him. Conform me Lord, into Your image!

Reflection Questions: Do my prayers consist only of what I am personally interested in? When I pray, do I think about God or about myself? 

Quotations taken from The Moral Foundations of Life and Run Today’s Race, © Discovery House Publishers

From Oswald Chambers

"We talk about the difficulty of living a holy life; yet we have the absolute simple ease provided by the Almighty God for living a holy life because He paid so much to make it possible. Beware of placing the emphasis on what prayer costs us; it cost God everything to make it possible for us to pray. 

If anyone has difficulty in getting through to God, it is never God who is to blame. We can get through to Him as soon as we want to, there is nothing simpler. The trouble is when we begin to sympathize with the thing that is proud and strong in independence of God. "

O Lord, forgive us for making excuses for not praying. How simpering and foolish and lazy we are!

Scripture memorization

How many of you have said "I can't memorize, my mind is too distracted, or stupid, or too forgetful," etc? Well I have, and my daughter Elisabeth has challenged me by memorizing Ephesians. She was on the first chapter when she was visiting in May and June, and practiced every morning. I thought if she can do it with 4 little ones, I can do it with none at home except my husband!

I'm sending out a challenge to any of my blog followers to do the 2 letter of Peter in 63 days. See The Youversion of Dr. Andrew Davis's challenge- Extended Scripture Memory, or download the little pamphlet which is free on the internet.

I've started today, August 29th, which just happens to be my granddaughter Valerie's 9th B'day. And the younger sister is Jennifer, 2.

Are we Christians hospitable?

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Hospitality vs Entertainment

God commands us to be hospitable. I began to learn this way back in 1977 when I was feeling sorry for myself because we had not been invited to anyone's home after the first welcoming Sunday in Franklin, La. In May, 1976.  Every Sunday we went home sad because we'd not been invited again! Suddenly one day my good husband said "I have an idea- let's start inviting people home after church, and quit feeling sorry for ourselves." Thus began many years of having simple ( red beans and rice!) and some not so simple ( beef roasts, which I have not yet perfected in the oven!) menus for Sunday guests from our churches. What a Godsend- literally. When we focus on what we want, we are feeding the "I" monster, and when we focus on making others happy, God makes us happy. As I read in my father's biography a couple of weeks ago, "We serve a happy God!" Our most Hospitable God.

Become like a little child- Matthew 18:1-4

"By what right do we become a “royal priesthood”? By the right of the Atonement. Are we prepared to leave ourselves resolutely alone and to launch out into the priestly work of prayer? The continual grubbing on the inside to see whether we are what we ought to be generates a self-centered, morbid type of Christianity, not the robust, simple life of the child of God. 

In regard to prayer, we are apt to be apologetic and apathetic, complex and confused; yet what a splendid audacity a child has, and that is what our Lord taught us to have. "

Reflection Question: With whom, or in what situation, do I need to become less self-centered and more God-centered? 

Quotations taken from My Utmost for His Highest and Christian Discipline, vol. 2, © Discovery House Publishers

The above came from my Youversion devotional by Oswald Chambers. I often "feel like" a little child in my wanting fun, or not wanting to have responsibility, or wanting others to be sympathetic with my problems, but Christ spoke of the simplicity and trust and dependence of a little child coming to his father to ask. I pray that I will learn what we all used to be like- trusting, dependent, hopeful, and completely confident that my Father in Heaven is ready for me at any time to ask audaciously...We need not be afraid to ask!