Living My Faith Out Loud

I am reading The Best of A.W. Tozer and he most defintely is one of my favorite authors. I love to read books that challenge me to live a life worthy of Christ. I need all the help I can get! Here are a few excerpts:

The pursuit of God will embrace the labor of bringing our total personality into conformity to His. I speak of a voluntary exalting of God to His proper station over us and a willing surrender of our whole being to the place of worshipful submission…
The moment we make up our minds that we are going on with this determination to exalt God over all we step out of the world’s parade. Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who is above, and his true position will be exposed. Let him be forced into making a choice between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human love and God will take second place every time. However the man may protest, the proof is in the choices he makes day after day.

Good stuff! It made me remember what a pastor said one day, “look in your checkbook and you will see where your heart and treasure is.” He challenged us to add up where our money went for an entire month, which I did. It was very disheartening to say the least!
It is so hard in our culture to see our time, talents and treasures as belonging to God 100%. He has blessed us so that we can help Him to fulfill the Great Commission. Obviously, it’s not a matter of God needing these things, it’s a matter of where our heart is. What is important to us? When we make a purchase do we stop and think to ourselves, “this belongs to the Lord, am I spending it in the best way?” I am cringing even as I write this. When someone asks us to serve somewhere, is our immediate response a grumbling in our heart? Do we think to ourselves, “I am too busy for this!” Unfortunately at times, this is my response. I get so caught up in me that I forget my main purpose in life is to glorify my Creator and be a vessel that He can use.
Another great excercise to see where your heart is, is to add up your hours of where you spend your time. I spoke at our singles retreat a while ago and the subject was being a fully devoted follower of Christ. I made up a little spreadsheet so everyone could log where their time went. It was a hard excercise because like AW Tozer writes, the proof is in the choices we make every day. How much time to we spend on ourselves? At the gym or the beauty salon or getting our nails done? Those are not bad things to do but the challenge is this, of our time, how much is spent on us versus the things of God?
The point of these excercises is not to condemn but to help us to be aware of our choices. The pursuit of God requires us to make choices every day. It requires us to pick up our cross every day. It requires us to love the unlovely, give when we don’t want to, get off the throne and put God back on, give freely of ourselves, put others above us and the list goes on and on.
What will you do for Jesus today?

Being “Auntie Rachel” is one of my most favorite things in the world to be. I love when I walk into my brothers house and all 4 of the kids come running towards me yelling, “Auntie Rachel, Auntie Rachel!” I love spending time with these munchkins and they are definitely the highlight of my life.  Alana, the one with the soccer ball, just started playing soccer and she is pretty good at it. She has really long legs and runs like a gazelle. It’s funny watching kids play though because I am not convinced they know what their supposed to be doing. Today, one of her teammates kicked the ball towards the wrong goal, twice! It’s still fun to watch though!

I get to babysit them tomorrow night again and am looking forward to it. We always have fun but they wear me out. I am so used to having a very quiet house and their house is very, very noisy. They all try to talk to me at the same time too so that’s kind of hard!  

I am going to go on vacation with them this summer to the beach and am looking forward to that too.  I am so grateful for my brother and my sister in law for having 4 kids because I can’t imagine my life without them. One of my deepest regrets is not having children and even though people tell me I still can, I am not convinced that that’s what God has for me. I can settle for being the Auntie though. At least for now.

Do you ever wake up so excited to see what the Lord will do in and through you? I wake up every morning thanking God for different blessings in my life and it is such a great way to start the day. Some days I simply thank Him for the eyes He gave me to see, the legs that allow me to walk or the fingers that allow me to type this. Seem strange? Maybe, but I don’t ever want to take the Lord for granted. Anyways, with Spring here I wake up so energized and ready to face the day. (well, after my coffee of course!) When I open my doors and go outside and the smell of daffodils and tulips hit me, the beauty of creation once again blows me away. I love how God is so creative and how He makes everything beautiful.  The yard is so green and I am really feeling the need to kick off my shoes and run barefoot through it. (Note to self, pick up doggie poop first!)

Anyways, no major spiritual discussion today, just loving my Creator and enjoying the day. I am going to go outside while it’s it still light outside and swing on my porch swing. Life is good.

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I have posted! I am finally feeling like my old feisty self again and I am so grateful. I ended up missing another full week of week due to the pleurisy and I found out I had also cracked a rib from coughing so much. That is crazy but the pain was very real. I went to Boca Raton for a work conference and pretty much stayed on pain killers the whole time. I am thankful that I could take the minimal dose and be able to attend all the seminars. I learned alot about my new job and position and am excited about it. I did get a break for a few hours and got to sit on the beach. It was awesome! I haven’t been to the beach in about 3 or 4 years and to just sit there and breathe in the air and listen to the waves crashing was very soothing. I really need to try to take a vacation every year and hit the beach even if only for a few days. I have been so busy taking mission trips all over the world instead of my vacation and I am feeling it. I need to be able to balance both.

I need to start my fundraising soon for my September trip to Uganda, Africa too. I feel like I lost the last month and I need to catch up. I checked all my papers and for the first time in about 4 years, I will not have to get any immunizations. This is great because each year it costs me betweem $150-$300 for all my shots. I am good to go for another couple years!

Yesterday I spent some time with the family which is always good. My 7 yr old niece had her first soccer game. The kids are so cute at that age and they looked confused most of the game! My niece runs like a gazelle but she is not aggressive at all and wouldn’t take the ball away from the other team.  Then right after the game, had to rush home for my 5 yr old nephews birthday party. We played all day and it was so gorgeous outside. My 2 1/2 year old niece kept asking me, “pick me up Auntie Rachel” but I couldn’t because of my rib. I tried and it was a bad idea! But her little face looking up at me pleading with me was more than I could bear. Then she had the nerve to go up to grandma and ask her to pick her up and say, “gramma, you don’t have a boo boo, pick me up.”

Well, I need to get ready for church and I can’t wait to worship! I missed the last 2 weeks and I feel like I just need to be around God’s people. 

And it looks like mine is one of sickness! I just got over the flu and missed an entire week of work not to mention my life but can’t seem to kick this horrible cough. This past weekend I was in so much pain and felt like I was being stabbed in my chest and lungs every time I moved or coughed.  I went into work on Monday and was in so much pain that I left and went to the emergency room. They checked my heart which is fine and took chest xrays and told me I have pleurisy.  Pleurisy is inflammation of the pleura, which is the lining of the lungs, and every time I take a deep breath, cough, talk or move around, it causes excruciating pain.  It feels like I am being stabbed in my chest and upper left lung. I am so grateful it’s only in one of my lungs because I don’t think I could handle having the pain in both. They gave me an anti-inflammatory and cough medicine loaded with pain killers.  Not the codeine kind but the mega, knock you on your butt pain meds.  It really helps to control the cough which is awesome because that’s when it hurts the worse. It makes me dizzy though and I am not supposed to drive while taking it so I am not sure how much pain I will be in tomorrow when I attempt to go back to work. 

I miss blogging and hopefully will be back on track with it once I get 100% well.  I am going to Boca Raton, Florida next week for a work related conference and I am looking forward to it. I get several hours one of the days for free time and will be haning out at the pool. I hope I don’t scare anyone away with my ghostly white legs!