Don't Get Mad

 One time at dinner, my father said something about talking too much. He never used a name, but I remember saying something in my defense. My father pointed out the fact that no names had been mentioned, but since I felt the need to defend myself that meant this was a problem that I had. 
 Have you ever had a friend say something to you that really hurt your feelings? They pointed out something about the way you sing, for example, and you wanted to defend yourself. In your mind, your singing is not as bad as most people’s, and you had been working on it. We experience time after time when someone says something very small about the way we do something, and everything inside of us wants to go into defense mode. 
In the last few days, I have said some things to people that hurt their feelings and some people have said things to hurt mine. The hurt was caused by very minor statements. When looking back at my emotions because of the words exchanged, I could not get rid of the thought, “If what I did was perfect in every way, I would not be offended about the fact they said something to me.” Did Jesus ever explain or defend his actions to the people that scrutinized them? Did he ever get frustrated or angry at people because they judged him wrongly? A person who is an expert or a master at something will never make excuses, or try to explain why they messed up; they take the mess-up, evaluate it and do everything in their power to make sure it does not happen again.  If I was an expert in my walk with the Lord, I would not get mad at the fact someone pointed out a short-coming in my life. I would not try to find a way to explain my actions and thoughts. Little defeats would be accepted and learned from. Pride in us makes this task extraordinarily hard. To walk away after someone has torn us apart, saying, “Thank you,” goes against every fleshly muscle in our body. 
Next time, when someone says something to you, and you want to get mad, stop! And ask yourself if there is any truth at all in what they say. Simply, if it hurt, there must be some truth to what they say.

Hebrews 10:24-25 “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.” 

More often than not, our friends point out the faults in our lives because they truly believe that we will be better off knowing about them. Think of how hard it is to go to your friend and point out a shortcoming in their life. It is an action that should be applauded. 
There are also times that we as humans will get all tied in a knot over something that someone said offhandedly. The saying “Actions speak louder than words,” is very true. Most times when someone says something offhandedly, I do not so much care about what they said; I care about who heard it. What if people actually believed that I do something like that? People will not put full trust in something that they only hear once. If the statement is not true, there should not be a lot of persons going around telling other people about it. Therefore, that particular person who over heard that one comment about you will never hear another to match, unless it was true. Even if said person thought badly about you for what they heard, over time, your actions should be able to prove them wrong in their thinking. 
As sinful humans, we like to think the worst about people. In our minds, even our best friends are judging us and think badly about us. There will always be people out there that think badly of you, but if your actions are blameless before the Lord, you will not get mad or frustrated over this fact. When there is a need for correction and improvement in our life, that is when we are irritated by what people say and think. Even if the only improvement that needs to be made is the gaining of more humility, that in and of itself is a large task.   
   

Project: I do not have a project for you other than, pray. Ask the Lord to help you respond in humility when someone points out a fault. 

Follow-up: God has done a very good job of humbling me gently. I have asked a number of my friends the question for the month, and all of them have been gracious in giving me an answer. By His grace, I have not wanted to take up my defense for my actions...well... not too much, that is. There are still a few friends on my list that I want to ask my question to, but I am sure that even after I have gotten through my list, God will bring new ways for me to work on my humility. 

This next bit of news is only important for those of you who read my blog every month. There will be no more posts on this blog until after the new year. This post marks the first year anniversary of “All to the Glory of Christ” and I thank you so much for reading the random thoughts that God has given me. I am so thankful for all the comments that I have gotten. Some of you have written me letters, or just said something as you passed me in the hall at school. Those little words of encouragement  have given me the power to keep going and to make it to the one year mark. My reason for not posting until after the new year is so that I can focus on my walk with the Lord. Writing these blogs do not take large amounts of my time, but I do not want to be posting for posting’s sake. I want to seek the Lord for a few months and build up my relationship with him. There are a few things in my life that will take some time for me to get sorted out. I feel that it is important for me to get my pride under control before I continue posting here. Thank you once again for your support of my blog. Thank you for your prayers and your friendship. 

I Was Blind

Readers, I have something to tell you that is very hard for me to say, but there is a need for me to apologize. Here I stand giving you words of wisdom that I have seen and heard but I am not living by them. My pride has been blinding me and I did not even know it. Looking back at the last year of my life there, are so many times that my actions and thoughts were filled with pride. For all of this, I am truly sorry and ask for your forgiveness.  

My life this summer has not been anything like what I thought it was going to be. My first week at camp was very good because God used me to usher a little girl of 11 into His family. During the second week of camp, there were so many people that encouraged me in my walk with the Lord, and I was able to make friends that will last a life time. Now I am living in Wyoming till the end of August with the Smith family and Caleb Wilkins, learning home economics and cooking. If you had asked me five days ago what I was learning and how things are going for me, my answer would have been, “Well I am not learning as much cooking as I thought I would, and it has been rather hard for me to live with the Smiths.” As true as that was, I can no long say that. After I had a long talk about the shortcomings in my life with a friend, God started to point some facts about my heart and spirit out to me. Much to my surprise, I learned that the difficulties that I have been facing this summer are 100% my fault.

Did you know that, just like they say, love is blind? Pride is very much the same way only it has worse side effects that last a whole lot longer. I came to Wyoming to learn how to cook.  However, God brought me to Wyoming to show me that the pride in my life was so vast that I had gotten used to it, and I was no longer able to respond to His leading. I was blind to my pride because I was in love with it.

 As a teenager, I have given into the lie that the world, through media, is indoctrinating all of us with the thought that we can do it all on our own. People have learned not to expect great things from the people in this world that are between the age of twelve and twenty; we have even been given the title of teenagers. Teenagers only have to do the things that they want to. Therefore our chances of failing and doing something wrong are very small. We will only submit ourselves to tasks that we have confidence we can do well. We go out for the sports that we are best at. We are able to look the world over till we find the perfect job that is not too hard for us, and will not demand to much of us in areas that we are not very strong. There is nothing at this age that we can get ourselves into that our parents cannot get us out of. Teens are not expected to do much, so what we do end up doing is a really big deal; we then get patted on the back and we feel all good about ourselves. The way that our culture is set up makes the perfect brewing pot for pride and arrogance.

I have this problem of pride that has gotten so large it consumes me. I cannot just say                     there is a problem and leave it at that; I now have to go about finding God’s will on how he wants me to fix the problem. When I was younger, my father called me the most prideful child he ever had. At the time, I thought I could have a small issue with pride, but, in my mind, it was not nearly as bad as my father’s. I thought that, since I was aware of the problem, I would be fine because I would be able to see it in myself now that I knew it was there. Wrong! Since I did not address the problem in the right way, (in fact I really did not do anything about it at all) it is no longer just a problem it is a catastrophe. This time I pray and hope that I do not just brush pride off. Last time it did not even dawn on me that I had acted wrongly towards the people around me; this time I have a very long list of people that I get the pleasure of apologizing to. This project of apologizing is only the start for me; God is going to find the most interesting ways to humble me.      

Psalms 75:5-7 “Do not lift up your horn on high, do not speak with insolent pride.” For not from the east, nor from the west, nor from the desert comes exaltation; But God is the judge; He puts down one and exalts another.

Proverbs 29: 23 A man’s pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honor.

Isaiah 2:17 The pride of man will be humbled and the loftiness of men will be abased; and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.  

These verses are the ones that God has been using in my life the last few days. This is only my first gleaning from what God has to say on pride, and what God has to say is very powerful and is not to be ignored.

Project: The project for this month is 50% something that the Lord is going to do in you: that is, if you ask him. It is very hard to humble yourself before the Lord and men. If you do not want to be humbled, do not ask because even when I have halfheartedly asked, God made it happen.

The other part of this project is asking the people that are your good friends where they see your walk with God is lacking. Your friends will have a lot more to point out then you thought even possible. Take what they say and bring it before the Lord and ask his opinion on it. After you have asked your good friends, ask some people that you do not always get along with. Watch and see what the Lord does with that.

Follow Up: I did not have a project for last month so there is nothing for me to write in this section of my blog that would be entertaining except…

     It is not that the wise are never at a loss for words, but that they rather take this as an indication to stop talking.       ~Caleb Wilkins~ 

Dear Readers

Dear Readers,


This is not a blog about knowing Christ better; in fact, it is nothing like any of my blogs. I wanted you all to know about what I am doing with my summer and what God has done to make the events of the summer even possible. 
I am going to be gone for all of July and most of August. Starting on Monday I will be at  Camp Eden in Golden, Colorado for two weeks. The first week I will be helping out as a counselor in training working with 4th through 6th grade girls. Like all little people, they are high energy and can be a very big handful. In the end though, I always miss them when they go. 
Second week of camp is for teens. I will be attending, not helping, for this week, but just because it is no longer my responsibility to be pouring everything that I am into the campers does not mean that I should take a vacation from being a blessing. My prayer is that I would come back from my two weeks at camp completely empty; that I will have poured myself out 100% to everyone that came in contact with me. 
After camp is all done I will be home for a day and half to do laundry before I go to Cheyenne, Wyoming where I will be living with the Tim and Sue Smith family to learn how to cook under Mrs. Smith and to drink from her fountain of knowledge. I am looking forward to this so much because they are a couple that when you have had one simple conversation with them you walk away knowing that God lives in every corner of their lives.    
I am sorry but this blog is all about me, the writer, but as it came time for me to write a blog before I leave, I was having the hardest time coming up with something to write about until a good friend of mine told me to write about myself and the summer I am going to have. My next blog is going to be about me too, just because God has blessed me so much already by the summer he planned for me. I knew before school even ended that I was called and wanted to go back to Camp Eden, so I committed myself for two back-to-back weeks of camp that would cost me $400 that I did not have. I will tell you that at the beginning I was positive that God would bring the money in, but as I got closer and closer to when I would leave for camp, I became a lot less bold in these thoughts of confidence. But God came through and he has grown my faith in the process. 
He has given random jobs and opportunities to get what was needed. I will tell you this though, there were times that I gave up on Him and tried my own way to get the money that was needed, but those never worked. I praise God for the gifts He has given me; I know that he has great things for me this summer. I still would crave your prayers, though, for I am every much a human and prone  to sin, and I will be away from my family for a very long time so they won’t be around to tell me that I am in a bad mood and stuff like that.




Project: There is no project for this one. My only prayer for you, my reader, and for myself is to walk with the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.


Follow-up: I must say that there were very few days that I got around to telling God thank you 24 times in a day. I did try and tell him thank you for all the things that came to mind when as I would be laying in bed, but  most times I would fall asleep before I reached 24. My best friend told me something that she had heard, “ What if tomorrow all you had was what you thanked God for today?” For me, I know that most tomorrows would not hold very much if that was the case. Thanks is something that I still need to work very hard on.

Something Worth Talking About

As this month came and the time for me to write another blog came upon me, I found myself grappling for an idea of what I should write about. Last night I spent some time outside while there was the most amazing thunderstorm that I had ever seen. It was more brilliant than a display of fireworks, more vibrating than a sonic boom sound system. I sat there, and all the while, all I could think about was ‘why’. Why did God do all of this for us? He did not have to. Just think that if we never had thunder, we would never know what we were missing out on. 
I know that I have written a blog about being thankful in the past, but I wanted to write on it again. Last night it was like God was saying, “Look at all I have made for you. Look at all the detail I have put into everything. I did not have to, but I did, and I did it because I love you and I want you to appreciate it.” 
Time seems to go so very fast, and we always have a million things to do in a day.  I know that I always get mad when I cannot get everything done that I wanted to in a day. Sometimes if I want to get the stuff done in my day and talk to people, I have to multitask. It just came to me that I can multitask in giving God praise and thanks. How long does it take to say thank you? Maybe two seconds max, and yet we are not able to find time to say it to God every day. If you are a polite person you say it to a lot of the people around you; whenever someone brings you a drink or hands you something, it is natural for you to say thank you, even for the small things that they give you. If they give you something big, most people take the time to write a thank you note. Have you ever written a thank you note to God? I do not mean saying something in your journal or something like that. Have you sat down and hand written a note that starts, “Dear God, Thank you”? Thinking back, I am not sure that I ever have.
Why is it so very hard to tell God thank you? Most people pray for their meals and stuff like that, but do you do that out of habit and because you know it is the right thing to do or do you do it because you really are truly grateful for the food God has given you? Thinking about all that God has given me, it just blows my mind. I know that if I thanked Him all day and all night I would still not be able to thank Him enough for all that He has done for me. But just because I know I could never say it enough does not give me the liberty to just stop saying it all together.
Or I am guilty of the crime of just saying, “Oh, I know how much God knows I am blessed by all that He gives me.”  Even if you know someone really likes the gift that you gave them, it is still nice to get a thank you. This is something that is dying among us as a society. People think they have a right to what they get, so they think that they do not have to be grateful for it. 
We have a right to a life time in hell and that is it; that is not a right that I want to claim. Everything that God has given us is a gift, and I am amazed at all that He has given and put into the creation of this world that we do not need. And yet with all that He has given us, we still manage to forget all about Him and His gifts. 


Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above...
James 1:17

Project: To tell God “thank you” 24 times a day; that is once for every hour. We have a practice in our family of being thankful whenever we have devotions together. And sometimes we are so lame that all we can find to be thankful for is polar bears in the North Pole (or wherever they live). But we still have to be thankful for something. I’m sure you can do better than we do sometimes.




Follow up: Well, I know for sure that I will be working on this project some more because just today I was griping about the fact that I was really underpaid for a baby sitting job, but if I had done it out of love and not for the money I should not even care. So I will still be working on this one. 

Out of Love

There is a word that is used in the Bible 150 times; 20 of the times that it is used, it has a word that tags along with it. "Commandment" is a very long word that can mean a lot of things. What is a commandment? For some people it is a law, a line in the sand that you cannot cross. Some people think that it is acts that set apart the good from the bad. It could be the law that the Lord God has given us to live by. To each person this 11 letter word can hold life-motivating power; for some, it is just a line in the sand, the do’s and don’t’s of life.

I was talking to a friend this past week about the laws that God has given us and she had done a study on them. When she looked at the origin of the word "commandment," she found different ways it can be translated. The one that stood out to her the most is the translation of "commandment" into "word". Replace the word "commandment" with "word" in the following verse. John 14:15-- "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." It works, and even more, it makes very good sense.

Most people think of "commandments" as a very imposing set of laws that limit what we are allowed to do with our life. God tells us 20 times that if we love him we will keep his commandments. When you start to think of commandments as words, it makes it a little more personal. The vision and thoughts that I get are a letter that God has written to me telling me about the things that he loves and wants me to do for him. As the youngest of the family, I have been called upon many times to do things for my siblings. In our family we call it a "favor" when someone does something that you want them to, but you really could do it yourself. My sister Sarah would ask me to do favors for her all the time, things like getting her notebook from upstairs or bringing her a glass of water after she went running. As the years have gone by, the favors that my sister asks of me get bigger and bigger. Most of the time I do not mind doing what my sister asks of me, because I love her and I know that it will make her happy if I do them.

God does not need us to keep these commandments/ laws that He has laid down; he is asking us to do it out of love for Him, just because it is the right thing to do. There are times when Sarah would ask me to do a favor for her and I would want something in return for my services; I felt like I had earned something for my hard work. It is the same way with God; sometimes we expect something for our hard work of keeping his commandments. We should have a place in heaven because of all our hard work. God does not need anything from us. He is asking us to love Him, and through that love, to serve Him. It is easy for me to do what is asked of me by the people that I care about and am really close too, so if we were close to God, it should be easy for us to do what He asks of us too.



Project: Do what God and others ask of me, not out of obligation, but out of love.

Follow Up: Joy and happiness are not an easy project to be working on when your sister is getting married. You are always worn-out and are forever short with your family. There are times that I really could have let my tired old self be on display, and there were times that I did do just that. I really had to cry out to God to help me with this one and I was not always able to have victory either, but I must say that it was very good for me and I want to work on it some more.

Emotions Are Not for Entertainment

One day when I was at CHESS/Chambers College, I was sitting in class and I noticed something about the people around me. Some of them had a small smile on their faces, others had indifference on their faces, and one had a very melancholy face. Looking at each one, I started to think, "Which one of these people would I like to spend time with if I just based my decision on their facial and body language?"

People can tell what type of mood you are in by your body, facial expression, and tone of voice. The saying, "Actions speak louder than words," is really true. When someone takes out his or her phone and looks at it when you are in the middle of a conversation with him or her, you probably don’t get the feeling that he or she really and truly cares about what you are saying to him or her. Even if he or she says, "Keep talking; I am listening," you don’t really believe it. This is just one picture I can paint for you.

If you know someone to the point that you call him or her a friend, I hope that you can read his or her body language. Just the other day I was with a friend and I knew that something I asked made him a little uncomfortable just by the way he reacted to my question. The way he looked at the ground said he was thinking, "Should I just go or should I consider what she is saying?" I knew that because he did not give a quick, sure answer like he would have if he was sure.

There are a lot of times with people that I don’t really know, that I can still tell what type of mood they are in. It is not hard for people to look at you and see if you are in a good mood or a bad one. I got to go to my very first fair a few years ago and I looked at a friend of mine and he said, "You are really happy that you got to come, aren’t you?" I asked how he knew that. "By your face," he said. I did not have to say anything; he just knew that I was really happy to go to my very first fair. But this can go the other way too. There have been many times that my friend Tessa can just tell when I am in a bad mood by the way I act; I do not have to say anything.

You must be thinking, "What is she getting at?" Well, I will tell you. We as humans have a way of wearing our emotions on our sleeves. I had never really noticed how much we do it and what it does to the people around us until I met someone that did it all the time, and more often than not, this person was not very happy and made sure that everyone around knew it. Looking at this person and how this person’s lack of joy just pulled everyone down, made me start to think about how much I wear my emotions on my sleeve for everyone to see, whether they wanted to or not.

I have a friend in nursing school and this past week she learned about how people’s friends or lack of friends affects them. One way that stood out to her and to me was that people that have friends that are always depressed or sad make their close friends prone to those types of emotions too.

What good does it do to show your emotions to the world? Looking at this question, the only answer I could come up with was that we like sympathy and somehow we believe that by displaying our bad moods we will get it. We want someone to ask us what is wrong so that we can snap his or her head off or pour our heart and feelings into his or her lap whether he or she truly wanted us to do that or not. Let me tell you something; not everyone that asks you how you are really means it. They are just saying it as a nice social convention because that is the way we greet people in our culture. Hopefully, all of you do have those good friends out there and you have confidence that when they ask you how you are, they really and truly want to hear what is going on in your life. But back to the point at hand. If I am in a social situation where I do not know a lot of people and I have to go out of my way to get to know someone, I am not going to go out of my way to talk to someone that looks like their best friend just died. I will go to the person that is laughing and looks very jolly.

The point that I really want to make is this; you want people to be able to see the joy of the Lord coming out of you. You do not want to turn off that one stranger that you could have witnessed to just because you had a scowl on your face. When we put on a sad face, we are often times giving in to our flesh and we are allowing ourselves to be consumed by ourselves. But when we make the choice to be happy, we are putting aside our desire to wallow in our problems and we are then investing in other people’s lives instead of forcing them to invest in us. I have seen that nothing is better then that man should be happy in his activities, for that is his lot...Ecclesiastes 3:22

Yes, our problems can be very great, and yes, we will have times to tell them to the people around us, but why not try to be the joy-giver instead of the taker? I know that I am always ready to receive, but I am not always ready to give. I do not want to be the old lady in the nursing home with the trouble worn face; I want a face that looks like there is a smile just waiting to burst forth. Being joyful is a choice that each of us get to make each and every day. Being a grump and making sure that people know you are unhappy is simply giving into the flesh and giving into sin.

"Do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." Nehemiah 8:10


Project: to be happy and joyful whenever I am around people. I want people to look at me and not be able to help but smile! I want to beam with the joy of the Lord. This is a lot easier said than done, but please join me.

Follow up: I hope last month’s project went well for all of you. I must admit that I did not spend ten minutes every single day; I did miss two or three, but life goes on and I am trying harder.

Getting to Know You

       Have you ever tried to get to know someone with out spending any time with them? Have you ever tried to find stuff out about a person without talking, using facebook, or twitter? When we want to get to know someone, we take the time to invest in that task. We do not just sit by and say, “It will happen on its own.” Sometimes that other person will go out of their way to invest in your friendship, but people can only do this so long before they get burnt out.
      Time is something that holds us back from doing a lot of things; lack of motivation is another thing that holds us back.
      There is a new kid at your church and you are the one that she sat by in Sunday School. The two of you hit it off right way. You found out that both of you had the same favorite subject in school, both of you liked the same sports team, and both of you liked the same music. After that Sunday, you have more the one option of what you can do with that friendship that you have just made. Option one: grow that friendship, invest the time that is needed to better know the girl and become her best friend. (Random F.Y.I.: it took me over seven years to make my best friend, a best friend.) Good friendships do not happen over night. Option two: only be friendly when someone has been friendly to you. This is a good way to keep friends simply that, just a friend. Option three: do absolutely nothing to help that friendship grow; in fact, you try your very hardest to keep it from going anywhere. 
       I am sure that most of you out there are pretty good friends to most everyone that you have the pleasure of coming in contact with, but there is one person I am sure you are not as good of a friend to as you should be. Who is the one person that walked on this earth that all of us need to have as our best friend? Just in case you have not had your coffee yet and you are still a little slow this morning, the answer is, Jesus. How many of you can honestly say that Jesus Christ is your very best friend? I know that I would have to pause for a minute before I could answer that question. We all know that he should be our most amazing friend ever, but when it comes down to truth, I am not sure I can say that he is my very best friend. Most of us have the, “just friends” type of relationship with God. We go to church on Sunday, during the summer we go on missions trips, and sometimes we even go to the weekly Bible study. These are all good things to do and they are very helpful for your walk with Christ, but if this is all you do, you will stay just friends with God. With me, my best friend Tessa and I spend as much time as we can together. At the beginning of this school semester, Tessa and I would spend almost three out of every seven days together. I learned a lot about her during that time. I knew what school work that she would be having a hard time with; I knew what stuff she was excited for. If I had not spent a lot of time with Tessa, I would not have known what was going on in her life in detail. But to find out what was going on in her life I had to invest the time. Flip this around and think of it as God; how well do you know God’s thoughts and wishes?           
       God invests in our lives more than you know. He gave us the Bible so that we have resources to find out his likes and dislikes. He gave us the Church so that we can be refreshed weekly and gain insight to God’s word. He gave us great Christian men and women to show us how to conquer our faith and know Christ better. Oh, wait! There is one small thing; if you want to reap the benefit of these gifts that God has given you, there is one small thing you have to do first: INVEST THE TIME. Going to church, reading our Bible, learning about great Christians and why they were great all takes time. You should not have day-to-day devotions just because it is the right thing to do. God has allowed you as his child to spend time with Him. Think of how amazing it would be to spend ten minutes with your all-time favorite president. How much more amazing and awesome should we find the time that the Lord has freely given us to spend with him every day? We do not find this amazing because we do not always see the reward. Time is a valuable thing and setting aside ten minutes every day can be a hard task, but there are a few points I want you to keep in mind. 
Back before Jesus came, people could not talk to God when and wherever they wanted. Sacrifices had to be made on their behalf to make them clean. Now that Christ has died for you and me, we have an open line of communication with the Lord; therefore, this is a gift that has not always been there.  
Point two: God will never punish you for spending time with him. Satan might, but God never will. 
Point three: I once heard a speaker make a point that really hit home with me. He said, “There are two commitments each and every one of you should have made by this point in your life. One: to serve God as your savior and Two: to spend five minutes every day with that savior.” Some of you may find this helpful; some of you may say, “Yeah, big deal.” If you want God to be your best friend you have to go part of the way to meet him. Anything of value comes with a price. The price of making God our best friend is giving up some of our time.  



        2 Tim 2:22
 Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.


       Friendship is a two-way street. 


Project: I will spend ten minuets a day with God, by reading my Bible and praying to him. Some times the Bible can be the most boring book on earth to us, but push through the hard times. Your reward is in heaven. 


Follow Up: Well, I think that I will be working on having a child-like faith for the rest of my life, but this was a good project and I had fun with it. I have seen God work in my life so much over the last six months. I can really see him pushing me to have better faith.