Tag Archives: Bible

Falling Back and the Delicious “Extra Hour”

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Daylight Savings Time and the practice of setting clocks back one hour in the fall and forward one hour in the spring (fall back, spring forward!) does not bug me nearly as much as it did at one time.

Soon after we were married we lived in Kokomo, IN where they did not observe Daylight Savings Time, so when the rest of the world changed, we just defiantly stayed put.  And primetime programming for us was 8-11 pm, and the ten o’clock news came on at 11.  We were out of sync with the rest of the nation for 6 months out of the year, as if we were defending some right to religious freedom?  THAT was weird!  AND you could always count on your lowest church year attendance with that “lost hour” each spring when we pastored.  Very troubling.  This is why, you’ll notice, churches are the greatest trumpeters bar none, of the whole clock-setting, time-changing ordeal! 

But no, I am not troubled by it now like in the old days.  Now I am only aggravated by every single time-related conversation for at least a week after the time change being some thing like:

Me: What time is it?

Other person: It is ____ o’clock…but REALLY it is ____ o’clock!

Yes, people want to tell me what time it would have been if Daylight Savings Time had not just upset our entire universes by one hour.  I’m pretty sure I could calculate that on my own, if I ever needed to.  But it did change, people, it did!  Roll with it.

Now, in the fall, I relish in the wondrous thought of an extra hour.  This morning I am up pondering how to be a worshiper who can bring God joy by my praises, my song, my love.  I have just been sitting here lazily in the dark loving Him and bouncing ideas off of Him for some upcoming things while drinking my Rocky Mountain Thunder (dark roast by Boyer’s). 

We never have enough time, yet – today, we get an extra hour.  This is wonderful.  This is a miracle.  This is a gift: An hour of time to spend any way we want. 

Enjoy yours…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: The question is not “what time is it?” but “what is it time for?”

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”  Ecclesiastes 3.1 NIV

Top Ten Election Predictions

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I ripped this off from a currently-circulating e-mail forward (20%) and added my own (80%).  I am grateful to have my legal citizenship in this great country.  I thank God that I live in a place where I enjoy the right and the privilege of voting, but this world is not my home.  I am part of the Kingdom of God and am really just an alien passing through.  :)  Each presidential election seems to increase fear in our hearts, on both sides of the political fence, but I am hanging on for that “peace that passes understanding.”

Top Ten Truths No Matter WHO Wins this Election:

10.  God is FOR us.  (If God is for me, who can be against me?)

9.  Jesus LOVES me, this I know. (This may be the simplest and most amazing truth ever)

8.  The Holy Spirit will continue to LEAD, GUIDE, and DIRECT our lives.

7.  God is thinking about us and has good plans for our lives (Jer. 29.11).

6.  When I call on the Lord, He will hear me and answer me – telling me the things I need to know (Jer. 33.3).

5.  The heart of the king (and the president) is in God’s hands and God can turn it whichever way He desires  (Prov. 21.1).

4.  This generation will declare the mighty works of the Lord to the next and there will be no end to the increase of HIS Kingdom and HIS government (Psalm 71.18, Isaiah 9.7)!

3.  I will praise Him.   The reason I live is to worship Him. (These are words from my two “life songs.”  This is my commitment, my declaration – He IS the theme of my song, wherever I may lodge, whoever is president.  Psalm 119)

2.  The Word of God will STILL be true.

And the #1 thing that will still be true regardless of how this election turns out?

God will remain faithful.  Because He is.

Stay in peace, my friends, for He is with us always…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: Pray for the nation.

Wind

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Threatened by a forecast of freezing rain turning to snow, we are actually hosting a magnificent and sunny day fully lighting the multi-faceted palette and texture of fall.  Fluttering madly in the autumn breeze and dancing to the tune of the wind chime, the once-emerald leaves of the Aspen clump are becoming more golden by the hour.  The burning bushes are flaming as scarlet as they can be and potted flower heads are bowing in reverance to the power of the season as it blows by, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes as a roar.

Psalm 65.9  The Message
O, visit the earth – ask her to join the dance!
…fill the God-river with living water.  Paint the wheatfields golden.
Creation was made for this!
Drench the plowed fields, soak the dirt clods with rainfall…
Set the hills to dancing! dress the canyon walls with live sheep,
a drape of flax across the valleys!
Let them shout and shout and shout!  Oh, let them sing and sing!

 

 I am singing my head off to You, O Lord, and trying to sing as loud as the trees which are clapping their hands and the bushes which are dancing (the twist) for your pleasure.  You have made all of creation so holy, so set apart for Your glory.  Can I live my life as free, as abandoned? 

God and all He has created are glorious!…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  See His glory.

David – a Word Mosaic

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Shepherd boy, anointed and chosen, leader, giant-slayer, fugitive, covenant friend, musician-Psalmist, worshipper, lust-driven, adulterer, murderer, father, lover, warrior, king.  A man after God’s own heart.

So good.  So terrible.  So high, so low.  So called, so errant.  And yet, God didn’t leave him.  God doesn’t leave us.

Footloose

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“Oh, how sweet the light of day

And how wonderful to live in the sunshine!

Even if you live a long time, don’t take a single day for granted.

Take delight in each light-filled hour,

Remembering that there will also be many dark days

And that most of what comes your way is smoke.

Live footloose and fancy free-

You won’t be young forever…”

Ecclesiastes 11.7-8, 10 The Message

Some days you open your Bible and just realize how much better it is than a thousand fortune cookies!  Truth!  Life!  My delight!  Sweeter than honey to my lips.  His words are like bread – and I eat them! They cause me to break into a prayer of love to the Letter Writer~

Oh, how I love Your law, O Lord.  Your promise preserves my life.  Your words are the lyrics and melody of my song wherever I live – wherever I find myself.  I think about Your Word day and night.  Your decrees light the path I am on and help me find my way back when I am lost.  I have spent my life testing Your promises and I have found them to be true.  I love Your Word, O Lord.  (shamelessly ripping off David in Psalm 119)

I love how the scriptures set us free from self-imposed religious activity and living!  Footloose and fancy free…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  This must truly be a mandate for the coming year.

pictured: a “sample picture” that came with the computer – in case I didn’t know what a picture was

Cease from Your Labors

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Labor Day is a day off for the working citizens of America.   Stop working.   I mean it.   Cease.   Stop it!   Quit working right now!   This is a fedreally mandated day off, for crying out loud!   Plus, God wants you to enjoy time off, too.

Jesus, as quoted in Matthew 11.28-30 (Amplified):

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ease, and relieve and refresh your souls.]

Take My yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle (meek), and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (relief, and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.

For My yoke is wholesome (useful, good – not harsh, hard, sharp or pressing, but comfortable, gracious and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne.

How Many Bibles Do You Own?

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Sorry the quality is low on this graphic.   But hopefully you can see what we’re looking for: new or nearly new Bibles, Children’s Bibles, Bible Dictionaries, Concordances, Bible Commentaries – those that you bought but just sit there on the shelf because you have a different favorite.   If you have any of these that you’d like to see go to making an impact, GWO is taking a truckload down next month to supply the pastors and people of this  four-corners, thousands of square miles Navajo Reservation.   This was the thing they said they most needed at this time: Bibles!

C’mon, do you really need 11 copies of the NIV on your shelf?

Contact me if you’d like more information or have Bibles to donate.   I’ll be happy to get them to Get the Word Out/Mary Jean.   Hey-see if your church would send out an e-blast and gather a load this Sunday or next???

Free Woman

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Fun activity:   Go to www.biblegateway.com  (I LOVE this site!) and choose a book of the Bible.   Turn up the speakers and let Max McClean read it to you.   Have some paper and a pen and just write the phrases (don’t take dictation) that stand out to you – words that sizzle and pop in your heart!

Today I listened to  a book with 6 chapters.   You could listen and  hear a totally different message, but you can see, for me, with a lifelong history and struggle with ‘fear of man’ (approval addiction, craving affirmation, jumping through people’s insatiable hoops, strong need to please) the power-phrases are about living to please God and God alone.   In this book, the church was being led back into bondage through the issue of circumcision, but in our day it can be a prayer meeting (people either inviting you and treating you like less of a Christian if you don’t go, or even being told there is a prayer meeting going on that you are not invited to because it is only for deep intercessors)  or your giving record  or your church attendance or serving or lack thereof, really, any psuedo-super-spiritual way one Christian  uses to make another feel less holy, condemned, enslaved.   But here, God is saying You’re free.   You’re a child and heir to the Promise, born to a free woman.   Live a life of faith expressed in love.   Receive grace and walk in the Spirit (not man-made law and control).   There is good fruit there!

Guess which book of the Bible I was hearing and receiving….

sent not  FROM men nor  BY men…grace and peace from God and Jesus…who gave Himself to RESCUE us…I am astonished…you’ve turned to a different gospel…if anybody is preaching a different gospel – let him be eternally condemned…I received by revelation from Jesus…zealous…I did not consult any man…I went in response to a revelation…sent to spy on the freedom we had…to those who seemed to be important – they meant nothing to me…recognized the grace given to me…REMEMBER THE POOR…afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision…faith IN Jesus Christ, not by observing the law…If I rebuild what I destroyed I prove I am a lawbreaker…Who has bewitched you?…Are you trying to attain your goal by human effort?…believers are children of Abraham…The righteous will live by faith…Christ became a curse for us…To Abraham and his seed – one person, Christ…the law did not do away with the promise…the law…was because of transgressions…if a law had been given that could impart life…locked up until faith should be revealed…Baptized INTO Christ…Abraham’s seed and heir according to the promise…full rights as sons…no longer a slave, but a son, an heir…WHY ARE YOU TURNING BACK TO THOSE WEAK AND MISERABLE PRINCIPLES?…What has happened to all your joy?…zealous…for no good…It is fine to be zealous provided the purpose is good…slave woman – free woman…The women represent two covenants…(Be glad, o barren woman, Is. 54)…YOU…are children of PROMISE…we are NOT children of the slave woman, but of the FREE WOMAN…it is FOR FREEDOM that Christ has set us FREE…you have fallen away from grace…the ONLY thing that counts is FAITH expressing itself in LOVE…as for those [circumcision] agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves…live by the Spirit and you’ll not gratify the desires of the sinful nature…but the FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT IS…Keep in step with the Spirit…

His yoke IS easy and His burden IS light.   Just trying to keep in step with the Spirit today, joyfully, freely…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: Lift my standards and demands off people’s necks, too, so they can stay free.   If I am requiring anything of them God doesn’t, I become the ‘bewitcher’ – the yoke-inducing controller and manipulator, the one Paul curses to eternal damnation for preaching any other gospel…

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Amy Jo’s Scripture Tips

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Guest blogger, Amy Jo Becker:
“I have been reading your blog lately about the Word of God… All my life I have been memorizing Scripture, and at one point I thought about writing a course of study on HOW to memorize Scripture. I just believe it is SO important.
I especially like songs that are directly pulled from Scripture–and there are so many–from Psalms to hymns to children’s music to my goofy “Country Collection” of the Scripture Memory Songs series.
Lately I have been listening to the Psalms over and over (I have the whole NIV on CD, so I can just play it while I get ready for work in the mornings) and it is amazing how much we memorize simply by rote!
Another thing I’ve been thinking about lately is the importance of not only memorizing, but simply just dwelling on Scripture.
Matt. 12:34 “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” Whoa, huh? Yeah.
I want not only what comes out of my mouth, but what forms the basis of my worldviews to be righteous. Refreshing. Wise.”
NOTE FROM JEANIE:  On www.biblegateway.com you can listen to the whole Bible (New International Version) on Real Audio or Flash Player.  I highly recommend clicking on Psalm 119.  It is about 15 or 16 minutes long and some of the most awesome prayer language you’ll ever hear.  After the first 4 or 5 times I listened, I definitely started picking up some sentences just like Amy Jo says.  For the rest, I just personalize it and pray it for myself with the Word of God “prompting” me.

Read your Bible

1 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually Think

bible read

Maybe it should say, “Read your Bible – it will illuminate the very nature of God and His will and will transform you from the inside out”?

But I sort of like this rather abrupt, attention-getting (true) sentiment – especially for us lazy Christians who are paying our pastors to do all the Bible reading and teaching and for the professional pastors who have so much on their plates they aren’t reading it, either.

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  Matthew 4.4 NKJV

You are what you read…Be blessed! Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  “The B-I-B-L-E, yes – that’s the book for me!  I stand upon the Word of God, the B-I-B-L-E!”   One of the first songs I ever learned, one of the first words I ever knew how to spell.  What treasure.  Thanks, mom!