Making the Most of Every Opportunity

My weight. A battle in my life for years. I have a desire to honor God, to look/feel good, and an inability to do it. Most of the time. A friend once shared her own struggle to seek Christ first in it as a struggle between two false gods of pleasure and vanity. That's SO me.  Pleasure-I want whatever food I want, when I want. It's to please me and I look to cake/cookies to satisfy what I know only God can. Vanity- Yet when God gives me the ability to honor Him in daily eating, I lose weight. And i LOVE that I've lost it. I may not brag openly, yet my heart is the same. I still hope people will notice and that becomes my god.  But what is amazing me in my daily battle is God's grace. He knows this about me and as He shows me daily, He's offering a way out. Himself. I'm bouncing back and forth from the path of vanity/glory to the path of pleasure/gluttony and He just keeps gently guiding me back to His path of life and freedom. It's beautiful. I'm so th...

Last year Jimmy asked to start a new Easter tradition. He wanted us to put up a paper cross. Then he cut out black circles for nails. He asked me to write "Jesus died for our sins". But the day of Easter he lead us in a sweet time of confession and forgiveness with that cross. He wrote our names on it by the nails and had us write specific sin near our name and then he stuck the nails over it to show that Jesus' death covered that sin. Wow. Love him and the lessons he teaches me. Jimmy by his cross our sins covered by Jesus the finished cross to remind us in Him is forgiveness of sin

I'm so visual that I knew using candles with lent readings at home would be meaningful to me. But I had no clue how powerful the lenten light readings John and Noel Piper made would be. Wow! Amazing. We use them the week leading up to Easter and place small tea lights from the dollar store on a plate. Each night Andy reads the devotional printed off from desiringgod.org and we blow out a candle each day through Good Friday until Easter Sunday when we light all of them again to show that Jesus beat sin and death and rose again! Andy reading A light is snuffed out after each reading Jim was fascinated Jesus is alive. The tomb is empty. Light of the world has come!!! close up of candles next to our homemade tomb Here's Noel Piper's intro explanation: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” ( John 1:5 ). But for a while it seemed as if the darkness  was  overcoming—for a  long  while. Your seven candles symboliz...

Thinking more and more about Jesus today. Just read this Martin Luther quote. Wow: "If we consider the persons, we ought to suffer a thousand and again a thousand times more than Christ because he is God and we are dust and ashes, yet it is the reverse. He who had a thousand and again a thousand times less need, has taken upon himself a thousand and again a thousand times more than we. No understanding can fathom nor tongue can express, no writing can record, but only the inward feeling can grasp what is involved in the suffering of Christ."