So...very....tired

If anybody tells you that all 2000 yard swimming workouts are created equal, they are lying to you. Trust me on this. I could barely make it up the stairs when I got home. Next year, I am going to set a mileage goal with Master's Swimming "Swim the distance" program. That is my early, New Year's resolution. I am so thankful that I found swimming as an exercise outlet. I think everybody can find some sort of challenging way to exercise that also makes them feel so good afterwards (usually!) that they want to continue with it, and swimming is it for me. Yes, I am very tired this morning, but it is a good sort of tired. Now if I could just recruit some of my friends to swim with me....

A truth of life that I am rediscovering: it is far easier to make a budget than it is to stick with it! My family has been budget-less for years now, but with the economy as it is we are back to using one. I had no idea how much I was spending on food! I'm going to have to look for some ways to eat as healthy as we have been or more so, a little less expensively.

An encouraging passage from a book I am reading: It is from the book "The Bruised Reed" by the Puritan writer Richard Sibbes. "He 'binds up the broken-hearted' (Isa. 61:1). As a mother is tenderest to the most diseased and weakest child, so does Christ most mercifully incline to the weakest. Likewise he puts an instinct into the weakest things to rely upon something stronger than themselves for support." Makes me think of when Paul wrote, "When I am weak, then I am strong."

I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving and setting a day apart to be thankful for all the blessings the Lord has given my family this year. There have been so many.

When God wakes me up early....

Today is the time change, and so I stayed up later than I maybe should have last night because I knew that I would get an "extra hour of sleep". Not so fast, Skippy, as my husband would say. I didn't take into account that the Lord might have some business with me. Which He did. So I was awakened at 4:30 to take care of some physical needs, but instead of going back to sleep, I was consumed with thoughts of people I knew who needed prayer. And I had determined this weekend that I want to be a prayer-investor and not merely a prayer-dabbler, which is what I have been lately. So...I lay there in bed and prayed some, and then thought, "Well, I have done that, so now I can go back to sleep." Nope. I was wide awake by then. So I went downstairs and had my morning coffee and opened my Bible. Now, I have to let you know that this also is not my norm lately. I have not been in the Word nearly as much as I would like, but something that the speaker said at the conference reminded me of how much I used to love to get up in the morning and start the day off with Scripture AND to pray for God to open my eyes to something that He wanted me to see in that passage that day. So, I did. And I read Joshua 11. Now the verse that jumped out at me was verse 20. "For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no favour, but that he might destroy them, as the LORD commanded Moses." The thought that keeps coming back to me is, "What if God, to show His power, is hardening the collective heart of the USA right now, just as He did here and with Pharoah (Exodus 10:1)?" All the more reason to pray for our nation, that many people would be awakened before a great judgement falls on this land. God can show His power through the hardness of human hearts in many ways, one of which (I believe) is for those hearts to be SUDDENLY softened through a great and miraculous revival. May God's people be in prayer for that to happen! May many souls receive the gift of a heart of flesh and have their hearts of stone to be removed. Amen.

I was thinking yesterday about how we are hardwired to want to know that our lives have meaning and significance, to have a sense that we are not just cellular storms with random particles colliding together. Some people find a way to suppress this through atheism, but even atheists deep down want to accomplish something with their lives. What we are searching for has been put there by our Creator, and only our Creator can truly bring fulfillment to that hunger. The greatest satisfaction possible in our meager existence is for the God of the universe to reveal Himself to us, to bring us to truly experience His love and power, and then to allow us to purposefully put our lives in His hands for Him to bring glory to Himself through it. Just ask anybody who has ever had the privilege of seeing God at work through a divine appointment in their lives. They will tell you how amazingly awesome it is to know how weak and feeble and unworthy they are, and yet they have seen God use that very vessel to bring glory to Himself. Not because of what they are, but because of who God is, that He purposes to use sinful man to display His mercy and power and love and everything else of who He is. So I pray, that my truly heartfelt prayer for today would be, that the Lord would give me that great satisfaction in seeing Him glorified in some way, pleasant circumstances for myself or not, through my life this very day. Indeed, if they be unpleasant circumstances and yet I can still praise God through them, would that not bring even more glory to Him? Not that I desire unpleasant circumstances....I just want my life to be useful to God today in displaying some aspect of His character. Because He is worthy.

Back to the song I mentioned yesterday. Google "Indescribable" by Laura Story. And then after you do that, listen to the song. And then, after you do that, repeat with the song "Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone)" by Chris Tomlin. You will be blessed.

Back to blogging

This weekend was a much needed time of refreshment for me. The Lord knew I needed some time where I was a captive audience so to speak, and so He brought me to a ladies' conference. I've been kind of flighty/"too busy" lately, but this weekend He reminded me of how wonderful it is to have eyes that actively look to see Him at work, to slow down and seek after His presence and the still small voice that speaks love and truth to my soul, and to just be willing to be obedient and trust HIM with the results. I know that it is God's will for me to do these things, and so I will endeavor to do them by His marvelous grace.

The whole trusting-Him-with-the-results-thing. That hasn't been something that I have been especially good at lately. I have been "fretting a little" about some things, like the completeness and future of my homeschooled daughter's education. Clearly a sin of not acknowledging in my heart that God is in control and His plans are GOOD!

The speaker at the conference was Lysa TerKeurst, president of Proverbs 31 ministries. The website is proverbs31.org if any of you ladies want to check it out. She was very encouraging. The worship leader was Laura Story, and I would encourage everybody to check out her music. She wrote one of my favorite songs, Indescribable, but I didn't realize it until last night. (The only version of the song I had heard was Chris Tomlin's, and I thought that he had written it.)

Verse for today, one that was spoken of at the conference: II Chronicles 20:15 "...thus saith the LORD unto you, Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's." May we each acknowledge that this day, no matter what our battle may be.

The Inward Man

I have decided to return to blogging. I know that I am not the same person I was when I started my first blog, so I am making a fresh start with a new one. Two verses of scripture are my starting inspirations. Matthew 22:37 is one of them, from which I formed the title of this blog. "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." Yes, I am a KJV girl. The other gave me my blogging address, as a reminder to me that despite my remaining sin, I am His. I sometimes get so distracted by my sin that it is difficult to see that who and what I really am now is defined by what Christ has done and not by my own works. I can look to the delight my soul finds in Christ and be reminded that I belong to Him, because I know that outside of His heart-changing grace I would still be what I was before ---- somebody who feared God but did not truly love Him. Did not have the ability to love Him. Romans 7:22 "For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:" True, there may be times that my flesh appears to be winning the battle (reference: entire ch. 7 of Romans) but I know that who I really am finds delight in doing what pleases my Master. I owe Him my everything: heart, soul, mind, and everything else.