What are you doing with your "time"?

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galations 6:9

My dad has dealt with health issues resulting from colon cancer since being diagnosed with it in 1984.  The doctors followed up his surgery with too much radiation, which caused a series of problems for many years to come.  In 2007, he had close to 10 surgeries and spent 6 months straight in hospitals and rehab centers due to complications from his weak, damaged intestines.  Last year he found out the cancer had returned and he had to have yet another surgery and chemo treatments.  My mother doesn’t like to drive on the highways any longer, which meant that I needed to drive her back and forth to Atlanta to care for my dad in the hospital.  After a few weeks of serving them in addition to all my other responsibilities of being a wife and mom, I started to feel very tired.  After a few months, I was exhausted. It was extremely hard to keep up that pace, but it was also extremely necessary.  Why?  Why did I do that day after day after day?   First, because I love God and He calls us to serve Him by serving others.  Second, because my parents are dear to me and I love them very much. 

See, if I claim to be a Christian but don’t serve others or quit when it gets hard, what good is my faith? James 2:14-16 says “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?”  Make no mistake, the Bible is clear that works do not save us and that we are saved by faith alone.  Our works are a way to show others that faith.  My faith gives me the desire to do good things for others. It motivates me to keep going even when I am tired.  Not to bring myself glory, but for the sole purpose of pointing others towards Christ.

Each day we are given a valuable resource.  Our time.  It is up to us to choose how to use it wisely.  There are so many opportunities out there to serve others that we don’t have to look very far.  Smile and offer a stranger a kind word, cook a sick friend dinner, cut an elderly neighbor’s grass, the choices are endless. 

“Yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet come. We only have today. Let us begin.” Mother Teresa

Lord Jesus, Help us to be intentional in the way we serve others.  Help us to use our time wisely, keeping our focus on You.  Help us to be motivated by bringing you and you alone the glory.

Devotion written by Ruth Wittenbrook

Community Makeover Weekend

I saw Jesus today.  Well… I didn’t actually “see” Him as in physically see Him, but I did see Him through the lives of the people from our church and the many other churches in our area that spent their weekend loving on and serving the people in our community the way that God calls us to.  God tells us that the greatest commandment is to love Him and the second is like it – to love others the way that He loves others. That love was shown in abundance this weekend.

Each year an organization called Engage Atlanta organizes an event called Community Makeover.  Individuals, businesses, schools or organizations with a need can submit a project for themselves or someone else.  Engage Atlanta will then disperse volunteers throughout the community to work on the projects.  These projects can range from handing out water to people enjoying the Silver Comet Trail to home repairs, painting projects, even building decks or replacing siding on homes.   This year appx 2000 people, from over 25 churches, worked on over 150 projects.

Our Journey Group worked together to love on a neighbor of one of our members.  Marie is a widow in her 60s.  She has severe diabetes and often has complications resulting from the disease.  She has two dogs who are the loves of her life.  Marie is very unsteady on her feet and her dogs have tripped her many times while she was taking them out on a leash. She even had to spend several months in a rehab facility from a recent fall.  Michelle, one of our jg members asked our group if we would be interested in building Marie a fence in her backyard so that she could just open up her door to let the dogs go out alone. Our group was very excited about the idea.  Michelle submitted the request to Engage Atlanta and they donated some of the funds for the fence and our group donated the rest. Some of the women worked on some housecleaning for Marie while the men worked on the fence.  We even got all of our kids involved with some landscaping projects and to help plant flowers. 

The joy on Marie’s face as she let the dogs out into the back yard to run inside their newly fenced yard was priceless!  She was extremely grateful and appreciative which made her very emotional throughout the weekend.  She repeatedly thanked all of us for our hard work and for loving on her in that way.  It brought our group more pleasure to serve Marie than she received from being served, proving Acts 20:25 to be true – “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”  We are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus.  This was a true picture of Jesus living in us and through us.  Not one person there was doing this to receive personal glory.  Every bit of the glory was for God and God alone.  Matthew 5:16 “In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” God was certainly glorified all throughout our community this weekend.

Daniel in the Lion's Den

Here is the latest devotion I wrote for my church recently.

Ephesians 6:13

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.

As a young teenage boy, Daniel and other Hebrew boys, were taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.  They were forced into a culture that did not follow God’s laws and their Jewish heritage.  But Daniel was faithful because he had resolved beforehand that he would not defile himself with the king’s practices (Daniel 1:8).  Even as a young boy, Daniel proved that he had a strong foundation that rested firmly on God’s word.  This was no accident.  It didn’t happen by chance.  It was a choice that Daniel chose to make daily.

Daniel was tempted, tested and tried over and over again during his captivity.  He consistently remained faithful even when his life was threatened by being thrown into the lion’s den for worshipping God.  He couldn’t possibly have known that God was going to save him and that no harm would come to him but he had made a choice to follow the one true God despite his circumstances and nothing was going to deter him from that choice.  Not even death.

Just like Daniel, we need to train ourselves to resist the temptations that this world offers.  Sometimes we feel like the world can bring us more pleasure than Jesus but the apostle Paul describes it best in Philippians 3:8  “Everything else is worthless compared to the infinite value of knowing Christ. “(NLT).  Why would we want to waste our time on futile pursuits when our prize could be Jesus? The only way that we will be able to have the kind of determination and resolve it takes to be a fully devoted follower of God, is to stay completely and consistently immersed in His word and to rely fully on the power of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, help us to look to Daniel as an uplifting example of how we can stand firm in our obedience to you even while we are surrounded in a culture that tries to distract us and pull us away from you.  Help us to know that nothing this world can offer us will compare to the greatness of knowing you. In your name we pray, Amen

Devotion written by: Ruth Wittenbrook

Power of Influence

Have you ever thought much about how powerful your words can be?  I am amazed at how much power one person can have and how they choose to use that power.

On Monday, a 30 minute video called Kony 2012 was released  on youtube and by Thursday had 32 million hits.  32 million!  That is unbelievable.  This thing caught on like wildfire.  My facebook and twitter accounts had numerous references to Kony which prompted me to go research it and find out for myself what it was all about.  It is unspeakable what this man and his army have done but I’m not here to talk about that.  What amazes me is the power that this one video had on the people.  I was amazed by all of the people blindly reposting the video and retweeting the information because of this one video.  I’m not saying that this isn’t a worthy cause, I’m withholding judgement until I have reviewed all the facts.  We shouldn’t blindly follow someone or something just because it sounds good or seems like truth.  The point I’m making is the amount of influence that this one video had in such a short period of time.

My second example of influence was also from this week.  One of our family’s favorite shows is Survivor. We have watched every episode of every season starting with season two.  I have never in all of those seasons seen one person with so much influence as this one particular man.  This man convinced his entire tribe of 8 men to give up their tribe’s immunity to the women’s tribe for the night in order to vote off another man in their own tribe simply because he didn’t like him.  The men’s team had fought hard to beat the women’s tribe in order to win the immunity idol but just like that, they were willing to give it up to the women that night in order to vote one of their own out.  Not because he wasn’t a good player, not because he was weak or sick or wanted to go home.  Simply because one man didn’t like him and convinced 7 other men to give up their immunity to send him home. No other tribe in 24 seasons and over 400 tribal councils has every done that. Wow!  That is influence.

Proverbs 12:18 says “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”  Our words contain power whether we realize it at the time they are spoken or not.  Words spoken in a moment of anger are powerful and cut deeply. The opposite is true as well. Sincere, kind, encouraging words spoken to someone who is struggling at the moment have the ability to bring life to their situation and healing to their wounds.  Usually more than we know in both situations.  We have power in the words that we choose to use to influence a situation one way or another.  Proverbs 15:1 says “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”  Choose your words carefully and use the power that you possess to lift up and not to tear down, but never, ever underestimate the power in your words.

Psalm 19:14 “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Love

As I contemplated starting a blog, I wondered to myself, what in the world would I write about?  Who would want to read what I have to say? Then I decided it didn’t really matter to me who reads it or not, I just needed to act upon my desire, put my thoughts into writing and send them out into the virtual abyss.  So here it is.

This blog will mostly be about things I love.  I love “love”.  Love is exciting.  Love makes us happy and giggly and makes us do things that we otherwise wouldn’t.  I have been that told love makes the world go round.

I have taught my girls to love “love”.  My daughter Allie, is a hopeless romantic. It is entertaining to watch shows with her that have even a hint of love in them. She gets extremely giddy when two of the characters start to fall in love.  Her world is rocked when they kiss or when they start to kiss then don’t. That brings out incredibly loud outbursts of protest from her.  Thanks to Pinterest, she has her entire wedding all planned out even though she is only 16 and has no idea whom she will marry.  I’m not sure exactly who is paying for this Pinterest worthy wedding, but it’s planned just in case we win the lottery or something. (Which would be a true miracle from God since we don’t play the lottery.) My other daughter, Emma hasn’t matured into a romantic just yet.  She doesn’t want to see kissing and emotional shows of affection between men and women yet but I’m sure it won’t be long before she is following in her sister’s footsteps.  Emma has a huge heart and loves well.

I sit around thinking about the things I love.  Here are some things I love.  Birds.  It doesn’t take long for people to find out I love birds after they enter my house.  I have small bird trinkets. I have bird pictures. I have bird feeders right outside my kitchen window. I have an actual real bird in a cage. A cockatiel whose name is Belle.  She is actually Allie’s bird that she donated to the family room after it squawked so much that she wanted it out of her room.  Belle is actually annoyingly loud, but I kind of love her in her own special birdy way.  Did I mention she lays eggs?  That is another story for another day.

I love pink gerbera daisies, really any kind of daisies, but pink gerberas are my fav.  On my 40^th birthday my husband gave me 40 pink gerbera daisies.  My house looked so beautiful for weeks with all of my daisies everywhere. My friends all gave me different colored gerbera daisies to plant in my yard.  The daisies still come up every year and every year they make me smile and feel so loved.

I love to stare at my husband and think, wow, I love this man!  I love to think about the things I love about him.  I love that he is a Godly man who leads our family with grace and integrity. I love that he is incredibly laid back and after almost 18 years of marriage I can count on one hand or maybe two, the number of times he’s been angry at me for something.  He is incredibly easy to please.  I love cooking for him.  He is very passionate about food and because I’m passionate about him, I try to adopt his passion for food.  He is always so proud of me when I cook something new and fun that it brings me great pleasure to find new recipes that will excite him.

But most of all, I love my Heavenly Father, without whom none of this love inside me would be possible.  I love because He first loved me and I am so thankful each and every day for His love that lives inside of me.